Oxymorons In The Tax Law Can Not Be Fixed With Clever Ideas
It is worth noting that even though the taxpayers did not have a really good commons sense argument, they did have an argument. There are some areas of the Code where partnerships and S Corporations are recognized as “taxpayers” – making elections, having distinct accounting methods and engaging in transactions with owners for example. Who knows maybe if they had gotten this up to the Supremes, the late Justice Scalia, God rest his soul, would have been on their side from a strict textual reading. Or maybe not.
How Valid Is Tax Foundation Dynamic Scoring?
I will probably continue to cite the Tax Foundation’s estimates in discussing presidential plans. I have not found anybody who questions their static scoring. When it comes to the dynamic scoring, I am going to suspend judgement, because I don’t think there is as much of a consensus among economists as to how taxes afffect the overall economy as there is, for example, among climate scientists on the effect of carbon dioxide on global warming. So I think we may be giving the Tax Foundation’s model just a little more credibility than it deserves. It has a model that allows it to put out results quickly and that matters a lot in the attention that it gets, but it does not make it right.
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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.