Sneak Peek

This is the time of year when IRS works on revising its multitude of forms & schedules. If you’re interested in previewing what to expect, you can download the new forms from the IRS’s website here.

KMK

Value of MBA

It has long been debatable whether or not an MBA degree is worth the investment it requires. I don’t have a definitive answer to this because there are so many examples of where it pays off and plenty of others where it doesn’t. I have always believed that the school of real world business experience is worth a lot more than theoretical book knowledge. It’s really hard to counter the example of Bill Gates, who dropped out of college and became the richest person in the world by building a real world company.

I must admit that I went back to school five years after earning my BS to get an MBA in order to distinguish myself more in the financial world. Since I was in the corporate world at the time I started, just having a CPA wasn’t as attractive as having a CPA and an MBA. Ironically, I left the corporate world and went into full time self employment half-way through my MBA courses. I finished it up; but have to honestly say that having an MBA in the CPA profession hasn’t really impressed anyone.

I think it is good to have the debate over the value of an MBA, as in this article. As can be expected, the colleges that offer MBA programs don’t take kindly to this skepticism and consider it sheer blasphemy to question the conventional wisdom that an outrageously expensive MBA is always a quick path to riches.

KMK

Crooks In Charge

At election time, try to think of the candidates, especially the incumbents, as officers of a corporation of which you are a shareholder. If they continue to pull tricks like this, do they deserve to be running our lives and squandering all of our money?

KMK

Attacking Tax Cuts

It’s been amazing, but no surprise, to see & hear all of the liberals blame the Bush tax cut for the demise of the great Federal budget surpluses that the Clintons supposedly gave us. As always, the media continue to parrot the party line of “irresponsible tax cuts for the evil rich” that their Fellow Travelers espouse. Of course, the only solution is to repeal the tax cut.

As Bruce Bartlett discusses, this entire argument is wrong on so many levels as to not warrant any serious consideration by those of us in the real world.

The effects of the Bush tax cut haven’t even been felt yet because the entire law was skewed to the back end, with the real cuts not taking effect for up to ten years away.

As I have explained on too many occasions, there never was a real Federal budget surplus. It was a complete fabrication by our rulers in DC. Contrary to the impression that they try to give of being able to predict future finances for the government, that is a completely impossible task. It can’t be done and is just a matter of making up numbers. Even the supposedly non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) does nothing more than guess. Any publicly traded corporation that used the same kind of financial forecasts would have its officers in prison.

Tax cuts are despised by our rulers for one very important reason. They reduce the power of the rulers to control how money is spent. Money is power and the more that private individuals are allowed to keep is less power for our megalomaniac rulers.

KMK

Why You Shouldn’t Brag About Some Jobs

Circling The Drain

Our Founding Fathers thought like CPAs when they set up the Federal government with three official plus one unofficial (the press) branches, and established checks and balances and division of duties so that there would be less likelihood of collusion among them against the best interests of the people. If they had a crystal ball back in 1789, and could see how such collusion has occurred, I imagine they may have divided things up even further, with a dozen or more branches.

The ultimate check on ensuring compliance with the Constitution was supposed to be the Supreme Court. With justices appointed for life terms, they were supposed to be immune from the forces of public opinion and stick to a rigid defense of the Constitution. However, as described by Howard Bashman, that last bastion of defense has fallen. Our current Supreme Court is using popularity polls on which to base its decisions. I would call for impeaching the justices who think it’s more important to please the ignorant people than support the Constitution; but that would obviously garner little support; especially since so few people in this country have even a clue as to what the Constitution says. Very sad for the USA.

KMK

What’s A Vacation?

Fellow workaholic self employed folks will relate to this:

Adjusting Capital Gains For Inflation

History repeats itself yet again. There is a lot of discussion of changing the tax law to allow capital gains to be adjusted for the effects of inflation. The underlying assumption is that Congress has to pass such a law. That is not true. Bush doesn’t have to wait for Congress to change the law to adjust the cost basis of capital assets for inflation. He has the power to do this on his own.

Back in 1992, Bush 41 was encouraged to do just that; but he wimped out because it would have been too confrontational. I am afraid that Bush 43 is just as timid. While he talks tough on the war on terrorism, he is scared to death to take on the liberals on domestic issues, such as taxes.

I have written extensively about this topic, including this.

KMK