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Comprehensive Tax Reform Threatens Supply Of Affordable Rental Housing

But you might not be able to create the same coalition to support a spending program, which by its nature seems to compete with all other spending programs, while tax incentives seem like a free lunch.  And to take the argument one step further, it may be that tax incentives, while not a free lunch, might be a bargain lunch.  The assumption in the concept of tax expenditures is that if you eliminate them revenue will rise by a corresponding amount, by I am a little skeptical of that.  It might be that some of those responding to tax incentives would engage in flakier behavior of less social utility than whatever the tax incentives were pushing them toward.

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Tax Shelter Guru Gets $60 Million IRS Penalty And No Day In Court

Tax Shelter Guru Gets $60 Million IRS Penalty And No Day In Court

Due to circumstances beyond the scope of this post, John Larson was one of the very few participants who ended up doing time because of all these shenanigans.  Being generally aware of these circumstances I was puzzled about how he could have possibly had the $1.4 million that he put up to try to get his day in court.  I found a clue in another decision that came down while he was still in prison.  Larson had originally been fined $6 million, which he paid.  He appealed the fine and a court cut it in half, but the IRS went for a jeopardy assessment on the refund, because they were still not done with him civilly.  In the litigation on the jeopardy assessment we get:

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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.