Tax Guru – Ker$tetter Letter

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.

John Kerry’s Tax Hypocrisy – In typical liberal fashion, JFK is always calling for higher taxes on the evil rich. His state of Massachusetts actually has two ways of computing its income tax; at 5.3% or at a higher 5.85% for those who want to help out the state government some more. Guess which rate John Kerry paid. Higher taxes are only appropriate for everyone else, and when given a chance to pay more, in true selfishness, he does what 99.97% of his fellow MA taxpayers do, and pays the lowest rate available.

As those of us who believe in lower taxes have always said to liberals, they are free to send in every penny they have to support their beloved Big Government programs. It’s a very different story when they push to have the government use its awesome power to forcefully take money from other people who don’t believe in Big Government.

Special-Interest Add-Ons Weigh Down Tax-Cut Bill – Our rulers are hopelessly addicted to pork.

“Bling Bling” Not Deductible, Says IRS

Anyone who lists the costs of purchasing or maintaining bling-bling as a tax deduction might as well write “Audit Me Please” in big red letters on their tax returns.