Bernie Sanders May Have Drawn Crowd Over 30,000 In Boston – Not Much Tax Talk
Karen Higgins, President of the National Nurses Union spoke about “breaking the class ceiling” and Bernie being for education not incarceration and the that he would be the President of the 99%. Jimmy O’Brien President of the Boston Carmen’s Union spoke about a move to privatize parts of the MBTA. They were followed by Jillian Brownsford, a nursing student at UMass-Boston and environmental author Bill McKibben, who took off his hat to show us he was as gray as Bernie.
Rand Paul Suffers Setback In Foreign Reporting Lawsuit
Gabriel Zucman in his The Hidden Wealth of Nations-The Scourge of Tax Havens makes the case that as much as 8% of the world’s financial wealth is squirreled away in tax havens. The estimated number is $7.6 trillion. His basis for making the argument is one that an accountant has to love. When statisticians draw up national balance sheets investments by foreigners in that country are counted as liabilities and investments by the country’s own citizens in other countries count as assets. It turns out what we used to call the “big balance sheet in the sky” is out of balance with more credits than debits.
Zucman believes most of the assets are hidden to avoid taxes. He estimates the avoided taxes worldwide annually to be $200 billion. At any rate Zucman’s proposed solution to the problem, a “worldwide registry of financial wealth” would probably make the brains of the plaintiffs in the Crawford case explode.
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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.