Internet Tax Lawyers

David Logan of Tax Policy Blog writes in The Income Tax Burden of the Top 1%:  A Geographical Perspective: In 2009, the top 1 percent of taxpayers—1,379,822 of them—paid more than the bottom 90% combined.  Geographically, this is equivalent to a city the size of San Antonio, TX paying more in income taxes than every person living [...]

Courtesy of Paul Caron, here is a must-watch interview of New York University Law School Professor Richard Epstein: Richard Epstein: The Income Inequality Myth Watch Does U.S. Economic Inequality Have a Good Side? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour. The Daily, Don’t Mind the Gap:  Occupiers Blast Economic Inequality but Fail to Notice Growing [...]

David Logan of Tax Policy Blog has another reality check for the 99 percenters occupying Wall Street: An Overlooked Two-Year Trend: Incomes of the Top 1 Percent Decline While Effective Rates Increase It’s true.  In 2008 and 2009, the average taxpayer in the top 1 percent made less money than they did in the prior [...]

The irony is richer than Warren Buffett’s secretary. Reuters reports that the Occupy Wall Street mob, after two short weeks of relatively peaceful occupying, has gone violent in a global day of rage (emphasis is mine): Hundreds of hooded, masked protesters rampaged through Rome in some of the worst violence in the Italian capital for years Saturday, [...]

Now this is awfully unfair to the bottom 50% of Americans, don’t you think? I mean, what kind of a society treats its most vulnerable citizens this way? Surely, the Occupy Wall Streeters will start focusing on this horrifying inequity, right? Oh, wait. I almost forgot. The bottom 50% don’t pay any income tax at all. Nevermind. Bookmark [...]

WebCPA reports that tennis player Rafael Nadal will not play in the traditional Wimbledon tennis tournament warm-up event next year because of stringent British tax laws: The No. 2-ranked Spanish tennis player said Thursday he can “lose money” playing in the Queen’s Club tournament because of the tax laws that affect athletes, musicians and actors. [...]

It can’t be denied that the gap between the rich and the middle class has grown larger in the last ten years. So, the questions we should request now are, 1) Why? 2) What do we do about it? Steven Ratner was on MSNBC this morning suggesting that the reason for the increase in the income/wealth [...]

Howard Gleckman of TaxVox writes in The Democrats Millionaire Tax: Smart Politics, Awful Policy: Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid’s plan to fund a $445 billion stimulus, err, jobs bill with a 5.6 percent surtax on millionaires is not all bad. After all, Tax the Rich does make a nice campaign bumper-sticker. But it is mostly [...]

Janet Novak of Forbes writes today in Billionaire Poster Boys for Tax Reform: Mellon, Buffett, Schwarzman…And Koch? President Barack Obama’s decision to brand his bid to tax the rich more—the “Buffett rule”–  is hardly unprecedented,  but it is plenty savvy.  “Anecdotes have caused all sorts of tax legislation,’’ says Columbia University Law Professor Michael J. [...]

Here is Debunking a Myth Before Further Propagation by David S. Logan: Does a large portion of America’s rich get away from the IRS scot-free, escaping federal income taxes? Absolutely not. In fact, according to 2009 IRS data (table 1.1), only 0.3 percent of non-payers (tax filers who pay no federal income tax) earn more [...]

In a post titled Fact Checking the President’s Tax Claims Richard  Morrison of The Tax Policy Blog says this: It seems the President has decided to join along with Warren Buffett in decrying the fact that his (considerable) income is (unfairly) taxed at a lower rate than most middle-class Americans. In a recent speech, he suggested that [...]

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet the Prince of Denmark overhears his uncle, King Claudius, pray for forgiveness for the murder of his brother, Hamlet’s father: O, what form of prayer can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder’?  That cannot be;  Since I am still possess’d of those effects for which I did the murder; My crown, mine own [...]

Republican Mitt Romney recently caught flak for his statement that corporations are people. He was right, of course, and we told you why. Now, here comes Tim Worstall of adamsmith.org with more: One of the more annoying things we hear from the left side of the political aisle is that “companies must pay more tax”. [...]

WaPo reports: President Obama will announce a proposal on Monday to tame the nation’s rocketing federal debt, calling for $1.5 trillion in new revenue as part of a plan to find more than $3 trillion in budget savings over a decade, senior administration officials said. The proposal draws a sharp contrast with Republicans and amounts more to [...]

On Saturday, Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post said the following in an article titled Ever-Increasing Tax Breaks for U.S. Families Eclipse Benefits for Special Interests (emphasis added):  As President Obama and congressional Republicans argue over how to rewrite the U.S. tax code, the debate has revolved around “loopholes” for corporate jets and ending “carve-outs” for well-heeled [...]

I just saw a MoveOn.org¹ commercial on MSNBC that exploits Warren Buffett’s absurd suggestion that secretaries pay taxes at a higher rate than their multi-billion dollar bosses. Like the slaves in the movie Spartacus who claimed they were all Kirk Douglas, the women in the commercial all begin by saying “I am Warren Buffett’s secretary.” One [...]

William Jacobson writes about some interesting comments made by Elizabeth Warren, the ex-Obama administration member who is now seeking the Democrat’s nomination to run against Republican Senator Scott Brown in the 2012 Massachusett’s Senate election: The progressives are in a lather about this video by Warren in which she proclaims an almost perfect theory of why redistribution of wealth [...]

Knox Marlow of Tax Didactic is the latest in a long line of tax bloggers to yank the covers off Emperor Buffett: Buffett is a legendary investor and has created fantastic wealth for thousands of his shareholders. However… Buffett’s proclamation that millionaires and billionaires should pay higher taxes reeks of hypocrisy. And somehow, the hypocritical [...]

Chris Edwards writes in Warren Buffett’s Tax Story is Bogus that Warren Buffett’s tax story is bogus: For years, Warren Buffett has been claiming that his secretary pays a lower tax rate than he does. Recently, President Obama has taken that claim and ran with it. I don’t know Mr. Buffett’s particular tax situation, but [...]

“Everyman is guilty of the good he didn’t do.” – Francois Marie Arouet (Voltaire) – Robert Frank of WSJ Wealth Report tells us in France’s Rich Say ‘Tax Us More’ that sixteen of France’s richest citizens have sent a letter to the French government begging it to tax them more. In the letter the Sweet Sixteen said that they [...]