Friday, September 28, 2012

Taxes and Services

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There was an interesting editorial in Monday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, which reacted to a recent study by the Pew Charitable Trusts indicati...
Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Biting the Tax Hand That Feeds the Tax Critic

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The Republican candidate for the presidency holds in disdain people he describes as dependent on government. He considers this dependency to...
Monday, September 24, 2012

Raising the Tax Shame Noise Level

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Attempts to shame people into paying their taxes are multiplying and taking on new forms. Back in March, I considered the effectiveness of t...
Friday, September 21, 2012

Subsidies and Tax Breaks

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In an effort to defend tax breaks available only to the oil, gas, and extractive mineral industry, a variety of commentators are claiming th...
Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Taxes and Teachers

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I’ve known for many years that K-12 teachers dip into their own funds to provide supplies and materials for their students because school di...
Monday, September 17, 2012

When Tax Ignorance Meets Political Ignorance

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If asked which I dislike the most, tax ignorance or political ignorance, my reaction is to duck the question, not by saying “both, equally,...
Friday, September 14, 2012

Building It With Publicly-Funded Tax Breaks

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Here’s a question for NFL fans. Can you identify the only NFL stadium built without any public funding? The answer is provided in this artic...
Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Taxes, Citizenship, and Something More Than Shame

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Six months ago, in Taxes, Citizenship, and Shame , I reflected on the effectiveness of publishing the names of tax scofflaws, noting “We liv...
Monday, September 10, 2012

Do-It Yourself Lawyering Brings Tax Unhappiness

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It is understandable why do-it-yourself lawyering has become popular. Although there always have been a few people who, for reasons of thrif...
Friday, September 07, 2012

Using Taxes (or Money) to Measure Generosity (or Values)

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Last week, in Using Taxes to Measure Generosity , I made the point that using tax information to determine the relative generosity levels of...
Wednesday, September 05, 2012

A Peek at the Production of Tax Ignorance

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Readers of this blog know that I do not like tax ignorance. That dislike is one of the many reasons I teach and write about taxes. In posts ...
Monday, September 03, 2012

Tax Labor

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If asked to define “tax labor,” many taxpayers would think of a tax on labor, such as the inclusion of wages in gross income. Others would p...
Friday, August 31, 2012

When Taxing Social Security, What is Social Security?

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Most retired people, and many not-yet retired people, know that social security benefits are subject to federal income taxation. Describing ...
Wednesday, August 29, 2012

More on Income Averaging

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After my post in which I asked Where Are You, Income Averaging? , an alert reader pointed out that a type of income averaging was revived fo...
Monday, August 27, 2012

Using Taxes to Measure Generosity

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A recent report about the level of charitable giving is certain to generate all sorts of debates about the meaning of its conclusions, but ...
Friday, August 24, 2012

Where Are You, Income Averaging?

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Decades ago, when the federal income tax rate structure included as many as 24 different rates, with the highest reaching 91 percent, the ta...
Wednesday, August 22, 2012

How Not to Claim a Casualty Loss Deduction

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The experience of the taxpayer in Beach v. Comr. , T.C. Summ. Op. 2012-81, demonstrates how easy it is for a taxpayer to make errors when f...
Monday, August 20, 2012

Playing With Tax Numbers

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Over at Forbes Magazine , Nick Schulz brands Exxon-Mobil a “Tax Hero” for paying three times as much in taxes, to governments world-wide, as...
Friday, August 17, 2012

The Tax People Ask, “What is a Telephone Company?”

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A recent case, Alltel Communications Inc v. South Carolina Department of Revenue , No. 27156 (8 Aug. 2012), demonstrates yet again why the ...
Wednesday, August 15, 2012

In Tax, It Almost Always Depends. Generally.

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For as long as I have been teaching, students in my tax classes have been amused or frustrated by the frequency with which “it depends” surf...
Monday, August 13, 2012

The (Tax) Fraud Epidemic

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From a tax perspective, there’s a little something to be said about the value of those television court shows. Twenty months ago, in Judge J...
Friday, August 10, 2012

You Get What You Vote For

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At the end of July, voters in Georgia had the opportunity to approve or reject, through a referendum, a one percent increase in the state sa...
Wednesday, August 08, 2012

The Tax Consequences of Being Paid to Date: The Sequel

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Regular readers can easily guess what went through my mind when I picked up the Philadelphia Inquirer and saw this report . Apparently Nadya...