Internet Tax Lawyers

The left would have you believe that 1 percenters like Warren Buffett and Mitt Romney are the poster boys for a tax system that favors the rich. Enter James Ross, a 1 percenter who paid 102% of his 201o taxable income in federal income, state income local taxes. James Stewart of the Associated Press has the story: [...]

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 [...]

One of the first rules of debate is that you should endeavor to understand your opponent’s argument – both the strong and weak points – better than he does. The pro-tax left is, apparently, unaware of this rule. Count left-leaning economist Robert H. Frank among those who simply do not understand why many conservative Americans, the [...]

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 [...]

John Berlau and Trey Kovacs of The Wall Street Journal point out that Mitt Romney’s capital gains income was paid with after-tax corporate dollars and, therefore, taxed twice. I don’t expect people on the left to understand this. And even if they do, I don’t expect them to stop their anti-rich, class-warrior, Buffett secretary nonsense. But hope springs eternal. [...]

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 [...]

John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for President in 2004, paid a lower rate of taxes than Mitt Romney paid in 2010. Of course, we didn’t hear much about Mr. Kerry’s low tax rate from the mainstream press even though, unlike Romney, he thinks the rich are undertaxed. It almost seems unfair to point out that unlike Mr. Romney, who [...]

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 [...]

The AP reports that the IRS has continued to allocate more of its resources to the examination of the tax returns of the super rich: One in eight people earning at least $1 million annually was audited by the Internal Revenue Service last year, making them far likelier to be examined than those making below $200,000, [...]

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 [...]

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% [...]

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, [...]

WebCPA reports that a group of millionaires visited the halls of Congress in an effort to convince lawmakers to raise tax rates on incomes of $1 million a year or more: The group, known as the “Patriotic Millionaires,” made the visit as the November 23 deadline approaches for a congressional “supercommittee” to come up with a [...]