David Cay Johnston has published Bailing Out Tax Abusers, 121 Tax Notes 211 (Oct. 13, 2008):

Watching as artificially inflated assets collapse, and as Washington makes a vain and costly attempt to defy reality to prevent it, can be really depressing. But the news is not all bad, and as Ronald Reagan would have said, a room full of horse pucky implies there must be a pony in there somewhere.

This pony is buried deep in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, way down on page 244. …  The provision should make wage earners, and all honest taxpayers, stand up and shout for joy. I did. Literally.

We will finally get independent reporting of the prices paid for stock, mutual funds, and other securities. That will make it harder to lie about the price of a stock to understate gains and overstate losses, which is to say, to cheat.

This was one small step toward tax fairness, and one giant leap for Congress after three decades of enabling tax cheats.

Starting in 2011, brokerages will have to independently report to the Internal Revenue Service the basis for stocks sold by clients. That means the simple trick of moving shares from one broker to another to create a record of superficial basis will not fly, thanks to section 403 of the bailout bill. Independent verification of mutual fund basis starts in 2012, and other securities will be subject to verification in 2013. …

As far as capital gains and losses go, investors will now be on an equal footing with wage earners, whose pay is independently reported to the IRS.