Don’t be economic girlie-men – Jack Kemp

Why Regulate Insider Trading?

Income inequality – Walter E. Williams

Let’s Talk Taxes – R. Glenn Hubbard

National Sales Tax Promoted as Fairer System – The underlying problem is that the terms fairness and taxes are incompatible in the minds of our leftist rulers who insist on using the tax code for their social(ist) engineering projects.

The ‘compassion’ racket – Thomas Sowell has some excellent points regarding how unfair it is to the rest of us taxpayers to continuously bail out people who choose to live in dangerous places.

Tax Cut Jujitsu

Tax cuts were just the beginning: the President is signaling a far more radical agenda.

The president takes on an entitlement – The “Third Rail” of politics, Social Security.

Creative Accounting Only Goes So Far. Unsound transactions are going to catch up with the government – As I’ve always said, none of the goofy accounting done by Enron and the other big corporations can hold a candle to the absolutely insane accounting done by our rulers in government. While much of the creative accounting done by corporations falls within the wide range of what is called Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), the ways our rulers keep books pretty much defy all financial logic.

Sunsetting Tax Cuts Would Shrink Deficit, CBO Finds – Many in government are literally licking their lips waiting for the tax cuts to drop off because of the stupid way our rulers set them up as temporary. As a reminder of what those coming tax hikes are, here is the summary I posted several months ago. I think it’s obvious that if Lurch were to in some way steal the election in November, there would be no way he would sign any legislation extending the lower rates or making them permanent, as President Bush wants to do.

Ponzi schemes may be technically legal when they’re run by our rulers in DC; but they’re still stupid investments for our future.

The Reform Term – Social Security and the Internal Revenue Code don’t need any more reforming. They need elimination.

John Kerry’s Secret Economic Plan – What isn’t a secret is what a blithering idiot that guy is. I’m starting to feel that a year from now, the name Kerry will become shorthand for “incompetent buffoon” and the worst presidential election blowout in history in much the same way that the name Lewinsky has become the nickname for a different kind of blowout.

The Origin of the Income Tax – Many thanks to Andrew Roth for finding this very interesting history lesson with a lot of juicy facts from well before my time.

President Bush Says Current Tax Laws Are a ‘Complicated Mess’ – And we know how all attempts to fix it end up.

The Franchise Tax Board has officially announced their income tax brackets for individuals for 2004, as adjusted for inflation. I have updated the link to this new schedule on my main website.

Next President to Face Pressure on Taxes

IRS Clarifies Portions Of Home-Sale Tax Law – What’s still amazing to me is that, more than seven years after this huge change in the law for residence sales, there are so many people, including a lot of tax and real estate professionals, who think the old replacement rule is still in effect. Rarely a day goes by that I don’t see or hear someone explaining that the way to avoid tax on a home sale is to buy another more expensive one. That’s very scary for their clients.

What’s also interesting to consider is that the tax free exclusion was set at $250,000 per person ($500,000 per heterosexual married couple) back more than seven years ago. With some of the appreciation in real estate values in places like the PRC and Las Vegas, that often isn’t enough to cover the entire gains people are realizing. Unfortunately, the chances of that figure being raised, or even allowed to rise with the CPI (Consumer Price Index), are very slim. Most of the country already believes that people have to be nuts to live on the Left Coast, and there just isn’t much sympathy for the fact that only half a million dollars of tax free profits every two years isn’t good enough.

You may not be headed for an illustrious career in accounting if your professor uses this text.