Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The Precision of Tax Language

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Last week, I was reading an article about partnership taxation when I came upon something very disturbing. Rather than embarrassing the auth...
Monday, February 27, 2012

Getting to the Tax Return on Time

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For most people, trips to the gym generate benefits for their physical health. My gym visits not only improve my physical condition, at leas...
Friday, February 24, 2012

Tax: Perspective Matters

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Adopting an approach taken in other states, Pennsylvania is adding to the income tax form a line on which people are expected to “declare ‘u...
Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Tax Statutes: More than Just the Internal Revenue Code

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Back in December, when the Congress decided to extend the payroll tax cut by two months, I explained, in How Politics Generates Tax Complexi...
Monday, February 20, 2012

From Tax Until Eternity

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Suppose a person owes $2.5 million to another person. How much would be an appropriate monthly payment to pay off the debt plus interest acc...
Friday, February 17, 2012

Tax Computations of the Daily Kind

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A question on the ABA-TAX listserve [list subscribers can access the discussion here ] gave me a reason to look more closely at how the tax ...
Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Tax Code Overuse

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When it comes to politics, I dine at the buffet. My focus is on the nation, principles, and policies, rather than on policies, caucuses, or ...
Monday, February 13, 2012

Tax Prediction Comes True

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Every so often I make a prediction in one of my blog posts. Every now and then one of them comes true. Admittedly, this was a fairly easy pr...
Friday, February 10, 2012

Tall Tax Tales

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When I was a child, I was introduced to tall tales. Presented as supposed recounting of actual events, it was understood that they were fict...
Wednesday, February 08, 2012

When Double Taxation Doesn’t Exist

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Last week I received an email conveying issue 9.04 of Tax Bytes , released by the Institute for Policy Innovation . Titled “Investing Earns ...
Monday, February 06, 2012

TV Judge Gets Tax Observation Correct

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A little more than a year ago, in Judge Judy and Tax Law , I commented on a tax question that popped up on the Judge Judy television show. S...
Friday, February 03, 2012

The Frequent Flyer Flap

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Tax law complexity is more than a matter of computational gymnastics. Consider the following question, which does not require computations t...
Wednesday, February 01, 2012

When It Comes to Tax Legislation, Access and Clout Matter

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Several weeks ago, a reader passed along a link to a blog post asking the question, Will I Be Taxed on My Employment Law Settlement? . The a...
Monday, January 30, 2012

An Oily Tax Question

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Thanks to a question from a subscriber to one of the Tax Management portfolios that I wrote, I had the opportunity to review an interesting ...
Thursday, January 26, 2012

Lying About Tax Myths

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Peter Pappas is at it again. In More Lies about Tax Lies , he attempts to rebut the points I made in Tax Myths, Tax Lies, and Tax Twisting ....
Wednesday, January 25, 2012

A Must-Read Tax and Economic Policy Book

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When I characterize a book as a must-read, I try to put my characterization into context. Thus, some books that I have read are tagged as a ...
Monday, January 23, 2012

Tax Myths, Tax Lies, and Tax Twisting

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For me, the difference between a myth and a lie is that the folks believing in the former don’t know any better and those spreading the latt...
Friday, January 20, 2012

Some Tax Lessons Are Difficult for Some People to Learn

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Though the decision to cut taxes while initiating military action turned out to have had serious adverse consequences for the American econo...