Senate Revives Ban on Taxing Internet – They’re finally doing something on this issue. It’s about time.

When Would the President’s Tax Cuts Expire? – If our rulers in DC don’t get off their butts and make the tax cuts permanent, everyone will be facing huge tax increases very soon. This is why, a few months ago, I added a link to my blogroll on the right side of this page to the impending tax increases we are all facing.

Adam Smith’s Principles of a Proper Tax System – I’ve always admired the “invisible hand” concepts in his book, “Wealth of Nations.”

FTB double-dips into taxpayers’ accounts – I have always been against electronic filing of tax returns because of the inability to properly explain the info on the returns and thus avoid audits and other problems. This snafu in the PRC shows another danger to e-filing.

Pat Boone Fights the Death Tax – We all need to exert more pressure on our rulers to permanently eliminate this evil confiscation.

Giving by Affluent Is Less Generous On Basis of Assets – This is an interesting idea; to compare charitable donations as a percentage of a person’s net worth versus as a percentage of annual income. I do have serious doubts as to the results because, as they admit, the people doing these calculations, New Tithing Group, had to use a lot of SWAGs *Scientific Wild Ass Guesses) for net worth figures. IRS statistics on income and donations are anonymous and grouped together; so it’s not even possible to match them up with specific people for whom net worth figures may be available. Even there, as with the annual Forbes list of the wealthiest people, a lot of SWAGs are used.

Here are direct links to New Tithing’s research report and their press release.

John Frugal Kerry – Going back to his 1991 tax returns, it looks there is a definite trend upwards in his charitable donations as he got closer to running for President.

Linder’s Fair Tax dream gaining steam

Plotting the John Kerry tax curve

Laffer Lines – Good look at the relation between tax rates and revenues. Contrary to popular wisdom, tax rates are very powerful motivators and lower rates produce actual higher tax dollars, as shown by the Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s.

Middle-Class to be Burdened by Hidden Tax in 2010 – More people become ensnared in the idiotic AMT every year.

An IRS Promotion for Bush at Tax Time – Contrary to what many tax protestors claim, the IRS is a part of the Treasury Department, which is part of the Executive Branch of the Federal government. Having them in synch with the top executive (Bush) is the right way to have things. The Dems just don’t like facts getting in the way of their lies about taxes and the economy.

Eric Rasmusen has some more analysis of John Kerry’s tax returns. He has an interesting conclusion: “If Kerry can’t find someone competent to fill out his tax forms, how can he run a government?” He has a good point that, being in high level politics, John Kerry knows full well that the media and the public will be checking over his personal income tax returns. Just as with Al Gore’s miniscule charitable donations, it doesn’t show a lot of brain power on their part to see that they didn’t spruce those kinds of things up; especially when they (DemonRats) are always claiming to be the most compassionate people on Earth.

A good tax preparer should be aware of the intended audience for the returns s/he works on. It’s not always just the IRS who will be using them. For decades, I have made a point of asking clients if they expect someone other than IRS to be looking at their tax returns, such as a lender for a loan application or an investor or buyer of a business. If so, we may go lighter than normal on some of the deductions in order to paint a better picture.

Thanks to Paul Caron for the link to this on his very useful new TaxProf Blog. He also has an interesting review of the recent book critical of the USA tax system, Perfectly Legal, on his blog.

Agency may redefine what a family farm is – Just as with the definition of evil rich for tax purposes, it varies program by program and agency by agency.

A house fit for a cat – Leaving an estate to one’s pets requires some special estate planning techniques.

A Better Mutual Fund Reform – If the various governmental regulatory agencies carry out their (promise) threat to issue new rules to protect investors, we can expect it to be just as successful as Tax Reform has been. The wise move (unfathomable to our rulers) would be to let the market take care of itself.

Single Women in Retirement Peril – It always scares me when news stories start using terms like “crisis” and “peril” because that means some kind of new government program is in the wings to solve the perceived problem.

Fair Tax would live up to its name – Unfortunately, fairness is the last thing most of our rulers want for a tax system that they use for their social engineering projects, especially wealth redistribution.

Tax Compliance Costs – Good look at the increasing costs to our society just to stay in line with the ever changing tax rules. It echoes a sentiment I have long discussed on how unfair it is to require victims of the IRS research projects, with their line by line dissection of every item on their tax returns, to pay for their representation or take time off from work to handle it themselves.

A Taxation Policy to Make John Stuart Mill Weep – While I obviously don’t accept the judgment of this piece, it does have an interesting look at tax policy in regard to “horizontal equity” and “vertical equity.”

Recapping the Benefits of a 529 Plan – There is a lot of confusion regarding these education savings plans, including the misconception that there is a tax deduction allowed for contributions to these accounts. Having different rules for the various state plans also makes it tougher to know what to do.