As a temporary Californian, I found this article in the L.A. Times of interest:  Voting Away the Tax Base: Proposition 82 Failed, But Targeted Levies Have Some Fearing How the Wealthy Would React, by Tom Petruno: To live in California is to pay the highest state income tax rate in the nation, if you’re wealthy…

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Following up on yesterday’s tax board game (Audit — The Tax Game):  Stick the IRS:  The Tax Shelter Game: Sticking the IRS does not require pins or needles or knowledge of the Internal Revenus Code. It takes 2-6 adult "Taxpayers" who are willing to take a chance with a "Tax Shelter" that may give financial…

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Interesting op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times, Brand U., by Stephen Budiansky: I recently did some research for a satirical novel set at a university. The idea was to have a bunch of gags about how colleges prostitute themselves to improve their U.S. News & World Report rankings and keep up a healthy supply of…

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The Tax Court yesterday decided an interesting gift v. income case, Peebles v. Commissioner, T.C. Summ. Op. 2006-61 (4/19/06).  You don’t often find facts like these in a tax case: Petitioners are married and lived in DeWitt, Arkansas, when they filed the petition….In 1999, Milton D. Peebles (petitioner) was a police officer in DeWitt. Mrs.…

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Tax Freedom Day® will fall on April 26 in 2006, according to the Tax Foundation’s annual calculation using the latest government data on income and taxes. The report compares the number of days Americans work to pay taxes to the number of days they work to support themselves. Because of the rising tax payments that…

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Daniel J. Mitchell (McKenna Senior Research Fellow, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, Heritage Foundation.) has published Grading Congressional Tax Bills: “B” for the House, “D” for the Senate on the Heritage Foundation web site: [Using an] economic growth yardstick, the House legislation is much better than the Senate legislation. In schoolhouse parlance,…

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The Tax Executives Institute has filed an amicus brief in support of Ohio in Cuno v. DaimlerChrysler, Inc., 386 F.3d 738 (6th Cir. 2004), cert. granted, which held that Ohio’s investment tax credit is unconstitutional because it grants preferential tax treatment to companies to expand within the state.

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[posted by Allison Christians]  Continued coverage of the University of Chicago’s 58th Annual Tax Conference… The second panel of the Chicago Tax Conference introduced a vigorous debate about the relative merits of repealing deferral (by taxing all foreign income currently, treating CFCs as branches, or treating them as domestic companies), in which Barbara Angus (former…

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From the Associated Press:  China Cuts Income Tax for Low Wage Earners: China’s legislature agreed Saturday to cut income taxes on the country’s poorest workers amid official concern that the country’s growing gap between rich and poor could fuel unrest. Chinese who make less than 1,600 yuan a month ($198) will no longer need to…

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Interesting story in the local paper:  150 area residents were bilked out of an average of $100k each by George Fiorini, a financial planner whose clients invested in a "10% Income Plus Plan" that promised them a 10% return each year but actually consisted of unsecured notes in Guardian Investments, a local company.  When the…

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New York Times: When It’s Tax Time, Call In the Professionals (2/22) Case of Vanishing Deductions: Alternative Tax Called Culprit (2/21) California Tests Tax Filing Program (2/20) (quoting Joe Bankman (Stanford)) Focus on Indiana’s Governor, a Tax Cutter Who Has Become a Tax Raiser (2/20) Wall Street Journal: Some Republicans Debate Stance on Taxes (2/22)…

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Herbert N. Beller (Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, Washington, D.C.) has published The New Penalty Regime: Proceed With Caution!, 106 Tax Notes 311 (2005) (also available on the Tax Analysts web site as Doc 2004-23791, 2005 TNT 12-30).  Here is the abstract: This Special Report reviews recently enacted penalties and related statutory provisions and administrative requirements…

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Assaf Razin (Tel Aviv University) & Efraim Sadka (Tel Aviv University) have posted Aging and the Welfare State: The Role of Young and Old Voting Pivots on the NBER web site. Here is the abstract: An income tax is generally levied on both capital and labor income. The working young bears mostly the burden of…

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Wall Street Journal: A Tax Break for Your Kidney: The critical shortage of organs for people awaiting transplants long has vexed policy makers and doctors. Now, an unusual approach is gaining momentum: using the tax code to encourage more people to donate. The effort started earlier this year when Wisconsin began permitting organ donors to…

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Wednesday, September 29, 2004 Assaf Likhovski (Tel-Aviv University) presents Tax Law and Public Opinion: Explaining IRC v. Duke of Westminster today at 12:10 pm at the University of Toronto. (Assaf is visiting at Cardozo during the Fall 2004 semester.)

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Saturday, June 19, 2004 In a letter (via TaxGuru) to the President of Public Advocate of the United States, Inc., the IRS has confirmed that the federal Defense of Marriage Act prohibits same-sex couples from filing federal joint returns: The Defense of Marriage Act (P.L. 104-199) defines “marriage” for purposes of administering federal law –…

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Monday, May 10, 2004 In its Form 10-Q filing on Friday, Merck disclosed that the IRS’s disallowance of various deductions may result in an additional $2 billion of tax liability. For some of the many press reports, see here and here. This is the language from Merck’s notes to its financial statements: The IRS has…

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