Monday, October 31, 2011

The Scary Part of Halloween Costume Sales Taxation

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Two years ago, in Unmasking the Deductibility of Halloween Costumes (2009), I examined the deductibility, for federal income tax purposes, ...
Friday, October 28, 2011

A Tax Complexity Contest?

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One of my readers, noting that I had disclosed having read the Internal Revenue Code, asked if I agreed that all of the Code, and even the r...
Wednesday, October 26, 2011

When Tax Revenues Are Insufficient: Affordability, Resistance, and Diversion

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Though it sounds good at a theoretical level, the practical problem with cutting taxes in order to force a cut in government spending is tha...
Monday, October 24, 2011

Taxing Capital to Help Capital

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A few readers have suggested to me that I dislike, or worse, hate the wealthy. That’s not true. I dislike what many, not all, wealthy do in ...
Friday, October 21, 2011

A Tax Book for Writers (and Others)

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Almost five years ago, in A Tax Advice Book for People Who Write and Illustrate Books , I reviewed Julian Block’s “TAX TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINE...
Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Collecting the Use Tax: An Ever-Present Issue

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On Monday morning, while listening to KYW news radio, I heard a report that caught my attention because the reporter mentioned the word tax...
Monday, October 17, 2011

Taxes and Due Diligence

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Anyone looking closely at the “Links to Other Tax Blogs” on the left side of this page will notice that I’ve added a link to Due Diligence ....
Friday, October 14, 2011

From Fat Tax to Accountability: The Failure of Choice

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In last Friday’s post about The Fat Tax , I commented on a Danish citizen’s concern that taxes designed to influence behavior raise the spec...
Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Revenue: It’s Not Just the Name, It’s Also the Place

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Ever since the Marcellus Shale natural gas boom got rolling, I argued that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as representative of its citize...
Monday, October 10, 2011

Pets and the Section 119 Meals Exclusion

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As further proof that those who teach learn by doing so, I share a question that arose recently when I was guiding the students in the basic...
Friday, October 07, 2011

The Fat Tax

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No, the fat tax is not a tax on fat cats. Nor is there a typographical error, as the fat tax is not the flat tax. The fat tax is a tax enact...
Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Expending Tax Dollars to Litigate Settled Tax Questions

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It is a basic principle of federal income tax law that gross income includes all income unless an exclusion can be identified that applies t...
Monday, October 03, 2011

The Strangeness of Tax: When “Bodily” is Not "Physical"

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Section 104(a)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code excludes from gross income “ the amount of any damages (other than punitive damages) received...
Friday, September 30, 2011

Infrastructure, Tolls, Barns, Jackasses, and Carpenters

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The subheadline of a Philadelphia Inquirer article earlier this week caught my eye. “People want improvements, but no one wants to pay for ...
Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Taxes and the Funding of (De)Regulated Markets

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The anti-tax lobby is fond of singing the praises of the “free market” and justifying, in part, their aversion to taxation because it provid...
Monday, September 26, 2011

Disaster Relief, Taxes, and Offsets

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Last month, in Storms, Public Infrastructure, and Taxes , I criticized the posture of the anti-tax crowd for its insistence that governments...