Originally published on Forbes.com.
As the year ends, I like to look back on what attracted the most reader interest in 2015. I find it intriguing that some of my posts have a long shelf life and that a couple of things I will mention were written well before 2015. Believe it or not, I write about what I find interesting and take it philosophically when it seems that almost nobody else finds it interesting. Still, I have to admit that I get a charge out of it when posts are popular. Here are the topics that generated the most interest in 2015.
Feeling The Bern
I have been trying to keep up with presidential candidate tax plans, although they mainly coming from Republicans. The plan I was able to pry loose from the Sanders campaign generated a lot of interest as did my discussion of the 90% rate that he is not advocating. Some commentary I saw seemed to indicate that I was altogether wicked for speculating on what moves might be wise to prepare for the contingency of a Sanders administration. Clearly this was coming from people either unfamiliar with or dismissive of Learned Hand’s famous dictum.
Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.
I do find Bernie Sanders rather fascinating. In some ways, you could view him as the most conservative candidate. Republican proposals seem designed to launch us into some sort of libertarian utopia/dystopia or what somebody imagines people from the 1790s would approve. Bernie on the other hand would like to recreate the economic conditions that he grew up in.
I have to note that Bernie, born in 1941, represents a generation so far passed over for the presidency. Carter and Bush Sr. were born in 1924 and Clinton and Bush Jr. were born in 1946, early Boomers. I looked at a list of famous people born in 1941 and the only other name I recognized was Joan Baez. I don’t have any evidence that Ms. Baez is backing her cohort-mate, but she did come out for Obama in 2008.
Doctor Dino And Jury Nullification
I often lament that I am just a tax blogger not an investigative reporter, but I remedied that in my coverage of Kent Hovind this year. Although it goes back decades, the Kent Hovind story began for me over three years ago when I covered the Tax Court decision in the case of his wife. A very brief introduction is that Kent Hovind is a young earth creationist minister who was imprisoned on a variety of charges including structuring. While still in prison the government prosecuted him for filings he had arranged to interfere with the sale of property that had been seized as a result of his first conviction.
The prosecution sparked a powerful social media campaign to “Free Kent Hovind” that bounced around the right wing conspiracy bubble including, for example, Alex Jones – always threatening to break out but never quite doing so. I remedied my deficiencies as an investigative reporter by collaborating with filmmaker Jonathan Schwartz. Jonathan identified and interviewed the single juror who had held out and another juror who had clashed with him.
I should mention that Jonathan built a team of amateur Hovindologists including Dee Holmes, Abigal Megginson, Ben Shefler and Steven Gray.
Thanks to inter alia Rudy Davis, Ernie Land and Don Camacho, the jury holdout, Kent Hovind is a relatively free man today completing three years of supervised release from his original sentence. I called an end to the tax story, or L’affaire Kent Hovind, when his codefendant, Paul John Hansen received a below-guideline sentence.
I haven’t heard anyone else make this argument, but it may well be that Kent Hovind’s new embrace of youtube is evidence of intelligent design. That medium seems to have been made for the good doctor. Almost daily he is on for half an hour or so answering bible questions and occasionally railing about the injustice of his structuring conviction. He even took some time out to do a Bernie Sanders piece.
For continuing critical coverage of Kent Hovind, you can go to Robert Baty’s facebook page Kent Hovind and Jo Hovind v USA-IRS.
End Of An Era
There was a lot of reader interest in the passing of Irwin Schiff, grandfather of the contemporary tax protester movement. I featured his son Peter’s appeal to let his father die at home and Irwin’s death two months later. In the it’s all connected realm, it is worth noting that Schiff was one of the influences on Kent Hovind’s tax theories.
That Facebook Kid
The commitment that Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan made to devote most of their fortune to charity was one of those things that threw the tax blogosphere into a tizzy. I don’t jump into those frays unless I have something to add and I found it disconcerting that there was much discussion of a Limited Liability Company not being a charitable foundation but no talk of the check the box regulations. Besides some good traffic my work was rewarded with a comment from Ronald David Greenberg.
Excellent article. Yours is the first one that I read that correctly treated the LLC feature. Best wishes.
Those Surprise 1099s
My posts from earlier years on people receiving out of the blue 1099s from leveraged life insurance policies burning out or the discharge of non-existent or forgotten debts continue to be of interest. One thing that I should mention is that Northwestern Mutual seems to have more than its share of the insurance-related 1099s. I take this as evidence that Northwestern’s policies actually perform very well. You can put money into them and forget about it and they will last a very long time. The nasty tax surprise that this creates reflects poorly on a small number of insurance agents who are not proactive in serving their clients. Ironically, a poorly performing policy would not create the same sort of problem.
A Hellish Tax Season And Refunds Of Biblical Magnitude
My coverage of the repair regulation barely averted debacle generated quite a bit of interest. There was a threat that tax practitioners would have to unleash a tsunami of paper forms on the IRS or risk grave consequences to their clients. Commissioner Koskinen averted the flood at the last minute. The repair regulations are actually very taxpayer favorable, but frustrating because they require people to look beyond the dollars on invoices to the physical reality of buildings.
S Corporations
A post I wrote in 2013 about the continued viability of using S Corporations to avoid self-employment tax continues to generate interest.
The Pain Of Tax Blogging
One of the things that is just a bit disconcerting to me is that the core of this blog ends up not being the most popular part. I at least look and read a high percentage of federal tax cases and also many state cases. In the process I uncover many stories that otherwise go largely unremarked. Those tend to not be my most popular posts, but I suspect that is what sustains my core readership. There are actually some valuable lessons in many of those posts. I have no intention of changing my ways, as I feel inclined to do all that reading to serve my clients anyway and I can’t resist sharing the really interesting stories even when they end up being seen by hundreds rather than tens of thousands.