TAX POLITIX
The Politics of Taxes
Looting and Lawsuits
Everyone remembers ACORN, the community organizing group that engaged in voter fraud and operational irregularities (among other things). Their shadiness was brought to light in 2009 and became the subject of multiple investigations and civil lawsuits which inevitably bankrupted the organization. This was the right thing to happen. Civil lawsuits may very well be the key to getting the looters and rioters under control in the absence of government leadership. Don’t focus on arresting the...
Michael Hendrix and Reopening NYC
I am a long-term supporter of the Manhattan Institute and participate in their events and webcasts regularly. Heather MacDonald, Steve Malanga, and Nicole Gelinas are three of my favorite people. But Michael Hendrix seriously dropped the ball as moderator of the discussion on “Planning for the City’s Reopening” several weeks ago. Given the current pandemic and civil unrest, exploring how business can reopen is a laudable topic; however, the actual discussion was immensely disappointing. He...
Police Culture Problem
The police have a PR problem and a culture of cover up and it’s finally being talked about. On the one hand, the police have millions of contacts with the public over a given year and the vast majority of interactions are fine, even dull. But sometimes you have bad police and sometimes you have a bad interaction (including, though not limited to, a shooting). However, almost never do you see the police admit that they messed up. George Floyd’s situation was unique in that they admitted the...
CEI and the Jones Act: America Last
One of my favorite topics is the Jones Act, a little-known maritime law that has a big impact shipping goods. I have written extensively on it before, so I was delighted to see the Competitive Enterprise Institute publish a paper on the topic since the Jones Act has been in place for 100 years now. Below is the Executive Summary, and then a link to the full paper. It is a must-read for understanding why the Jones Act needs to be abolished. "The Jones Act requires any ship traveling between...
Another Obama Stupidity: Forgiving Student Loans
It is clear, from any economic sense, that compensation paid in the private sector is more beneficial to society than that paid in the public sector. This is because amounts in the former is controlled by people risking their own money making sure it is maximizing output for a given input. (It also works for charities funded by people parting with their own hard earned money). Federal state and local governments and government funded not-for-profits are less good for society, and they normally...
We Need MLK
Martin Luther King’s vision was of a colorblind society. Slowly but steadily, in the years since his death, we have worked to make that legacy a reality, culminating in the election of an African American as President of the United States. Yet what should have been a high point for race relations in this country was instead undermined by the very person who could have embodied MLK’s vision. The Obama administration from top to bottom started looking for race in everything, from...
Chicago is a Microcosm of the Real Problem
The world is going nuts. Between May 29-May 31, “Chicago saw its deadliest weekend of gun violence this year as protests, riots, and looting continued to rock the city after the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. A total of 24 people were killed and at least 61 injured by gun violence…. Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said that 17 of the gun deaths occurred on Sunday alone.” Yet according to the Washington Post police database that has tracked the...
Don’t Perpetuate the Lie
Last week, Nick Gillespie of Reason moderated a webinar on policing and protests with Jacob Sullivan and C.J. Ciaramella. Gillespie is a thoughtful libertarian whose discussions I generally enjoy. Thus, I was appalled to hear Gillespie --no less than five times during the hour-long segment--refer to the 2014 Ferguson incident with Michael Brown as the beginning of the focus on police abuse and brutality. That is completely fictional. It was very clearly established that the police did nothing...
Defunding the Police
In the wake of the George Floyd tragedy, there have been calls to take over police stations and even defund police departments as solutions to perceived systemic racial inequality in law enforcement. Even if systemic racism is a real and serious problem, defunding the police is not in any way a fix. The key reason for this is: any systemic inequality and other systemic bias has been created by the very people who are now demonstrating, because they are responsible for putting in the...
Policing the System
I’ve been thinking a lot about the riots lately from my apartment in Manhattan, watching the looters come down my streets without a cop in sight. At first, I understood the protests to be about George Floyd and wanting appropriate action for the officers who were responsible for his death. So far, that has been handled correctly as the powers in charge have said the right things, and the perpetrators have been charged with murder. But now the tone has shifted; the assertion is that systemic...
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Taxpayer Advocate Report: Some Say Filing Season Was “Worst In Memory”
Every summer, the Taxpayer Advocate releases one of two annual reports to Congress. The summer report is the "Annual Objectives Report" which seeks to identify and work on priority issues for the upcoming Fiscal Year. The Taxpayer Advocate, Nina...
The IRS’s Growing Role as “Rules Interpreter”
A recent article by the National Review brought to light how the IRS has taken on the role of “rules interpretation” in recent years, which is beyond its scope as the nation’s tax collecting agency. The most notorious example of this new role is...
How Much Each Taxpayer Owes Toward the Federal Debt
Forbes recently had a very good article which explores the US Federal Debt and how it affects economic growth. It also reviews government debt for the future, and its affect on the private sector and the debt-to-GDP ratio. Unfortunately, it doesn't...
More Burdensome Tax Compliance For Expats
If you are an American living abroad -- dubbed an “expat” -- you are still expected to pay income taxes and file income tax reports to the IRS. The United States is the only country in the world that has this requirement and it is mandatory until...