Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Does This Halloween Practice Foretell a Scary Future?

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From the outset of this blog, I have made it a point to work Halloween into MauledAgain, usually looking for the silly or goofy but occasion...
Friday, October 20, 2023

Will “Tax and Spending” Get Support in a Place Traditionally Hostile to Taxes and Government Spending?

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Eleven years ago, in How Not to Spend Tax Revenues , I criticized the school district in Allen, Texas, for spending $60 million on a high sc...
Friday, October 13, 2023

Does the Size of the Tax Gap Matter?

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The tax gap is the difference between what taxpayers should be paying if they comply with the tax law and what taxpayers actually are paying...
Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Stop the "Stop EV Freeloading Act" Because The Mileage-Based Road Fee Is a Much Better Way to Go

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Senator Deb Fischer has introduced the “Stop EV Freeloading Act,” a description of which is provided here . The justification for the propos...
Thursday, September 21, 2023

What Is “Net Annual Taxable Income” for Alabama Homestead Exemption Purposes?

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Reader Morris sent me an email the other day, captioned “I am confused.” After looking at the sources he provided, I think everyone is or sh...
Saturday, September 02, 2023

Are Business Expenses Tax Expenditures and Does Tax Expenditure Have an Opposite?

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The other day, in Is a “Tax Expenditure” Necessarily Bad Policy? , I reacted to David Henderson’s commentary in which he claims that the te...
Thursday, August 31, 2023

Is a “Tax Expenditure” Necessarily Bad Policy?

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David Henderson has written for the Institute"> for Policy Innovation an interesting commentary addressing “The Bizarre Economics ...
Sunday, August 20, 2023

How to Pay for Street Reconstruction

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Apparently, streets in St. Paul, Minnesota, are crumbling. According to this report , the amount of funding available for street maintenance...
Monday, August 07, 2023

Complaining About Taxes When Not Understanding Arithmetic and the Time Value of Money

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The recent excitement about a lottery prize topping one billion dollars has generated a blizzard of posts, such as this one , claiming that ...
Wednesday, August 02, 2023

I'm Still Here

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Reader Morris asked me if my July 11 post was my final post. I assured him, no, it was not. Nor is this post intended to be a final post. My...
Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Is It Good Or Bad When Tax Breaks Flow Into Private Hands? Depends on Whose Hands Are Getting the Money

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It is no secret that I oppose public funding of, and tax breaks for, businesses owned by multimillionaires and billionaires. Some of my comm...
Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Some Updates on the Mileage-Based Road Fee

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As an advocate of mileage-based road fees, I keep an eye out for legislative developments and commentaries dealing with the proposal. I’ve b...
Monday, June 26, 2023

Finding Tax Questions in the Trash

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Reader Morris directed me to a question posted on a Rockford, Illinois, Eyewitness News web site . The question, found here , is simply stat...
Wednesday, June 21, 2023

In Tax, Eleven Seconds Can Make a Difference

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Yesterday the United States Tax Court issued an opinion in Sanders v. Comr., 160 T.C. No. 16 , in which it held that it lacked jurisdiction ...
Friday, June 16, 2023

The Mileage-Based Road Fee: Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Than the Alternatives

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Reader Morris has directed my attention to a recent story describing a proposed North Carolina bill that attempts to deal with that state’s...
Wednesday, June 07, 2023

Do Tax Breaks Overcome the “I Wouldn’t Do That for a Million Dollars” Barrier?

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Readers of this blog know that I am not a fan of using the tax law to encourage or discourage behavior that is better regulated through othe...
Monday, May 29, 2023

Indeed, Freedom Is Not Free

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Sometimes when I reread what I wrote in the past, I think that perhaps I could have done a better job with the message, the vocabulary, the ...