Wednesday, December 30, 2020

In the Tax World, Signatures Matter But How Many Taxpayers Fully Understand What That Means?

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A recent U.S. Court of Federal Claims case, Brown v. United States , demonstrates what not to do when it is time to sign an amended tax retu...
Monday, December 28, 2020

High Quality Tax and Economics Research Exposes Money Addiction

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For years I have been arguing that trickle-down supply-side economics, a theory used to persuade people that tax cuts for the wealthy are go...
Friday, December 25, 2020

Christmas Trees and Christmas “Gifts”

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It has been decades since I learned the meaning of “Christmas Tree legislation.” It was when I was working in Washington, D.C., dealing with...
Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Tax and Spending Hypocrisy

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Three years ago, the Congress, or more specifically, the Republican members of Congress, didn’t flinch when they enacted a tax bill that gav...
Monday, December 21, 2020

Fraudulent Tax Return Preparation for Clients and the Preparer

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When tax return preparers get into trouble, it’s almost always because they falsify client returns or invent fake clients in order to get fr...
Friday, December 18, 2020

Bribing the Tax Collector: Bad Outcomes on Both Sides of the Deals

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The headline to this story caught my eye: “2 women charged with bribing former DeKalb tax official.” I thought to myself, what happened to ...
Wednesday, December 16, 2020

It’s Not Just Sports Franchise Owners Grasping at Tax Breaks

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Time and again I have written about my opposition to the use of tax breaks to finance construction of facilities for, or operations of, prof...
Monday, December 14, 2020

A Better Alternative to a Wealth Tax?

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Last week, in Learning About Wealth Taxes By Watching What Happens in Argentina , I pointed out some of the administrative drawbacks to weal...
Friday, December 11, 2020

Not That More Proof Is Needed, But Here’s Another Example That Taxes Aren’t “Just Numbers”

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Many people think that tax is “just numbers,” including students who would arrive in my office before or at the beginning of the basic feder...
Wednesday, December 09, 2020

Learning About Wealth Taxes By Watching What Happens in Argentina

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According to numerous reports, including this one , Argentina has enacted a wealth tax to fund a variety of measures related in some way to ...
Monday, December 07, 2020

Taxes and the New Naturalization Test

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Within the past week, there has been a good bit of criticism, analysis, and commentary with respect to the new naturalization test. The focu...
Friday, December 04, 2020

Think It Takes Too Long to Read the Internal Revenue Code?

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For many years, commentators, tax practitioners, business owners, and many taxpayers have complained about the complexity of tax law, often ...
Wednesday, December 02, 2020

This Time, It’s the Corporation’s Owner and Accountant Who Try to Evade Tax Evasion Charges

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Though I often write about tax return preparers who run afoul of the law, in posts such as Tax Fraud Is Not Sacred , Another Tax Return Pre...
Monday, November 30, 2020

Much More Than the Internal Revenue Code

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Over the years, I have written about the size of the Internal Revenue Code, mostly in response to absurd claims about the number of pages it...
Friday, November 27, 2020

Tax Return Preparer Fails to Evade the IRS

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In posts such as Tax Fraud Is Not Sacred , Another Tax Return Preparation Enterprise Gone Bad , More Tax Return Preparation Gone Bad , Are...
Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Different, But Thanksgiving Nonetheless

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Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. For as long as I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve been sharing a Thanksgiving post to express my gratitude for a va...
Monday, November 23, 2020

So It’s Not a Tax Case But It’s a Great One

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When I write about a television court show, I react to episodes that involve tax in some way or at least have some sort of tax angle. This t...
Friday, November 20, 2020

Another Tax Proposal That’s Off the Mark

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Not long after I had written Monday’s commentary, A Tax Proposal That Misses the Mark , but before it published, reader Morris shared with m...
Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Another Tax and Genealogy Story

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Last Friday, in Taking a Walk and Thinking About Genealogy and Tax , I shared a portion of the much longer story about the Maule family and ...