Internet Tax Lawyers

Last month in American Tax Compliance Rates Highest in Civilized World Despite What David Cay Johnston Says I refuted David Cay Johnston’s absurd claim that America’s low tax rates are the cause of it’s alleged rampant tax evasion: Johnston claims that there is “rampant evasion in the U.S.” even though the very study he cites shows that there [...]

By way of Paul Caron, the WSJ reports that the Buffett Rule, if enacted, won’t apply to its namesake: Wall Street Journal, Will Buffett Avoid the Buffett Rule? The Sage of Omaha Is Already Positioned to Shield Most of His Rising Wealth From Such a Tax, by James Freeman: Billionaire Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett [...]

Please bear with me on this one. If Warren Buffett really does pay taxes at a lower rate than his secretary does, it is a fairer result than if he paid taxes at a higher rate.¹ Here’s why: Warren Buffett employs his secretary. Debbie Bosanek employs no one Warren Buffett, directly and indirectly, employs hundreds of thousands of workers. Debbie [...]

In his post Lying About Tax Myths Professor Maule responds point by point to my recent post More Lies About Tax Lies. I have published Maule’s entire post below. After each of his assertions, I give my rebuttal. 1.  Maule’s Assertion: Peter Pappas is at it again. My Rebuttal: I agree, I am at it again. “It” being the [...]

Professor James Maule has, once again, lied about who tells tax lies. He lists five myths – he really means lies – which he says the right tells about taxes. In this post I will discuss and hopefully refute the first three of them. Maule’s First Myth The first myth, that “47% of Americans do not [...]

“When you’re rich they think you really know.” – Fiddler on the Roof – The left thinks we should listen to this guy on tax issues: Bookmark & Share:

In a 2007 blog post appearing in The American Stephen Moore reported that the top one percent of American income earners pay 37% of the federal income tax: The latest data show that a big portion of the federal income tax burden is shoul­dered by a small group of the very richest Americans. The wealthiest 1 percent of the population earn 19 [...]

Self-declared undertaxed billionaire Warren Buffett says he’ll contribute money to the Treasury if self-declared overtaxed Republicans do the same. You read that right. Let me illustrate Buffet’s crazy reasoning with a bit of imaginary dialogue straight from the theater of the absurd: Warren Buffett:  All rich people should pay more taxes because I don’t think I don’t pay [...]

In today’s WSJ, Stanford economics professor Ronald McKinnon makes what he calls a “conservative” case for a wealth tax (the emphasis is mine): In order to have a fairer tax system, we should implement a new federal wealth tax in addition to the federal  income tax. Unlike the current income tax, the wealth tax would not rely on how [...]

Chris Moody of The Ticket reports that : Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has added a new item to his repertoire of attacks against Mitt Romney since his decision to turn up the heat on the former governor, telling a local Republican group on Friday that Romney raised taxes on the blind. “Governor Romney … [...]

Tax law professor and blogger Linda Beale chimes in on the Inequality Tax: I’ve often argued here that vast inequality is harmful to democracy, and that the kind of unequal society that we have today, reflected the Gilded Age of yore, is especially worrisome.  Much of what is happening in this country that threatens freedom [...]

If you had any doubt about the socialist objectives of the progressive left, read Professor James Maule‘s approval of a new-fangled mechanism of class-warfare called The Inequality Tax and they will be assuaged: Ian Ayres and Aaron Edlin have come up with an interesting tax idea. In Don’t Tax the Rich. Tax Inequality Itself, they propose that [...]

The Republicans are no longer the party of tax cuts. I never thought I would hear myself say that, but it’s true. At least for the short term. Yesterday, House Republicans abandoned their principles and agreed to a whopping two month extension of the payroll tax cuts that were signed into law two years ago. Of [...]

I have said many times before that the goal of the pro-tax left is not to raise the dinghies of the poor, but rather to sink the Yachts of the rich. Kay Bell sums it up in her post Taxes as a tool of economic equality (emphasis added): Americans are quite proud of, among other things, [...]

There was a time when if you called a left-winger a socialist he’d sock (slap?) you in the face. But now, in these days of abject class warfare, he wears the label on his sleeve for daws to peck at. From the New York Times, by way of Paul Caron, it seems a blatant money grab is afoot: [...]

Once again the left gets hoisted with its own petard in the tax debate. Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal today in which he noted: A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office says, “The share of income acquired by the top 1% grew from about 8% [...]

Here is an interesting chart from the Tax Foundation that shows the average effective tax rate by zip code. The bluest areas have the highest tax rates and the light brown areas the lowest: Before you rely on this chart, check out Mary O’Keefe’s post Am I Colorblind? How Can This Tax Map be Correct?  Bookmark & [...]

The tax-the-rich rantings of multi-billionaire Nick Hanauer are proof that you don’t have to be a genius in America to get rich. Here’s Hanauer writing for BloombergBusinessweek (emphasis added): I’m a very rich person. As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I’ve started or helped get off the ground dozens of companies in industries including manufacturing, retail, medical services, [...]

The pressures of having to write a daily column can cause perverse results and nobody demonstrates this phenomenon better than the New York Times’ Paul Krugman. William Anderson of Krugman-in-Wonderland has the latest manifestation of Krugman Cloven Foot-in-Mouth disease: In his latest column, Krugman demands higher taxes on “the rich” (of which category multi-millionaire Krugman resides), Krugman calls for a financial transactions tax, [...]

Mark Cuban is a billionaire and a very smart guy, but his opinion that reducing corporate taxes does not create jobs is off the mark: Companies hire because they need people to compete and keep customers happy, not because of lower tax rates … . Bottom line is that while CEOs of public companies and financial engineers [...]