Monday, August 31, 2015

The Tax and Benefits Conundrum

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The anti-tax crowd, along with those who are willing to tolerate minimal taxation but want to cut significantly government spending, must no...
Friday, August 28, 2015

Traffic Ticket Fines Based on Income?

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Over at debate.org , TheUnapologeticTruth asked, “Should traffic tickets be scaled to personal income like taxes?” No matter one’s conclusio...
Wednesday, August 26, 2015

A Rudeness Tax?

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A reader alerted me to an unusual book, Tax the Rude, Not Me! . The examples provided in the preview tend to confirm the depiction of the b...
Monday, August 24, 2015

Tax Return Preparer Gone Bad

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It is not unusual to see stories about tax return preparers who are convicted of tax fraud, or of ripping off their clients. It happens too ...
Friday, August 21, 2015

Be Careful With Divorce Tax Planning, Part II

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About a month ago, in Be Careful With Divorce Tax Planning , I noted the lessons learned from two Tax Court cases in which the taxpayers end...
Wednesday, August 19, 2015

More Tax Fraud in the People’s Court

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Roughly a month ago, in Tax Fraud in the People’s Court , I described a case on one of the television court shows in which both parties enga...
Monday, August 17, 2015

Rebutting Arguments Against Mileage-Based Road Fees

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No sooner had I noted, in Mileage-Based Road Fee Inching Ahead , that the Editorial Board of the New York Times had published remarks favori...
Friday, August 14, 2015

Does It Make Tax Cents?

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The question of whether it is permissible to pay one’s taxes with pennies is one that does not seem to go away. In many instances, the issue...
Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Congress Fixes a Tax Problem

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Four years ago, in United States v. Home Concrete & Supply, LLC, et al , the Supreme Court held that a taxpayer’s overstatement of adjus...
Monday, August 10, 2015

This Tax Change Will Help But It Won’t End the Problem

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Taxpayers who are partners in partnerships, and tax practitioners preparing returns for partners, have far too often encountered the delays ...
Friday, August 07, 2015

Perhaps This is Why June 30 C Corporations Aren't Within the New Due Date Rule

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This morning, in So Who Is It That Gets Hit With This Special Tax Rule? , I asked why C corporations with a June 30 taxable year were not wi...

So Who Is It That Gets Hit With This Special Tax Rule?

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Section 2006(a)(2)(A) of the Surface Transportation and Veterans Health Care Choice Improvement Act Of 2015 , H.R., 3236, amends section 607...
Wednesday, August 05, 2015

Mileage-Based Road Fee Inching Ahead

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For at least eleven years, beginning with Tax Meets Technology on the Road , and continuing through Mileage-Based Road Fees, Again , Mileage...
Monday, August 03, 2015

Do Sales Tax Holidays Make Sense?

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As mentioned in several reports, including this one , the state of Massachusetts has set up another sales tax holiday. Under the terms of th...
Friday, July 31, 2015

Another Problem with Targeted Tax Credits

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Readers of MauledAgain know that I object to using the tax law to accomplish what can and should be accomplished, if at all, through other m...
Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Changing the Look of Tax Forms

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A reader pointed me in the direction of a three-year-old paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the Unit...
Monday, July 27, 2015

Tax Fraud in The People’s Court

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Every now and then an episode from a television court show touches on taxation. Sometimes it is tangential and sometimes it is direct. At va...
Friday, July 24, 2015

Yet More Proof Targeted Tax Breaks Miss the Mark

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In my post earlier this week, Who Benefits from Tax Breaks for the Private Sector? , I shared this thought about tax breaks for specifically...
Wednesday, July 22, 2015

When Raising Taxes Isn’t a Tax Increase

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If a sports team that lost two games after winning the first five games of its season claimed to be undefeated because the losses came after...
Monday, July 20, 2015

Who Benefits from Tax Breaks for the Private Sector?

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Many people, I suppose, would respond to the question, “Who benefits from tax breaks for the private sector?” with the answer, “The private ...
Friday, July 17, 2015

Be Careful With Divorce Tax Planning

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Two recent Tax Court cases, published on the same day, illustrate the need for taxpayers to be careful when planning how to work out the eco...
Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Goodbye Because of Tax? Hardly.

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As Pennsylvania moves deeper into budget crisis, rhetoric over the governor’s attempts to replace the shale impact fee with an extraction ta...
Monday, July 13, 2015

So Is It a Tax or a Fee?

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There’s a difference between a tax and a fee. I explained it in Please, It’s Not a Tax . So why do some people use the word “tax” to describ...
Friday, July 10, 2015

When the Rich Beg, for Tax Breaks

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It’s getting tiresome, this begging by wealthy people and entities for tax breaks. Actually, it’s not so much begging as it is blackmail. We...
Wednesday, July 08, 2015

Name a Tax

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A reader sent me this story , and asked a question. First, the story. According to the story, the governor of Rhode Island has proposed a ...
Monday, July 06, 2015

So What’s a Taxpayer To Do?

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Almost all taxpayers who retain tax return preparers to prepare their federal income tax returns do so because they find the task too challe...
Friday, July 03, 2015

When the Job of a Tax Is Finished

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What should be done when the purpose of a tax is finished? Presumably, the tax should be repealed. We know, of course, that this doesn’t hap...
Wednesday, July 01, 2015

Learning About Tax from the Judge. Judy, That Is.

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When, from time to time, I mention that I watch episodes of Judge Judy whenever I get the chance, sometimes the reaction is one of bewilderm...
Monday, June 29, 2015

The Anti-Tax Bully Strikes Again

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Readers of MauledAgain know that I consider Grover Norquist to be an anti-tax bully. In Debunking Tax Myths? , I shared opinions expressed b...