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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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President Obama Could End Special Tax Treatment For Two Twenty Guys

President Obama Could End Special Tax Treatment For Two Twenty Guys

As a political analyst, I make a good tax preparer.  Nonetheless, I’m going to say that President Obama killing carried interest by regulation seems like great politics.  The attack on carried interest is one of the key populist pieces of both Bush and Trump’s tax proposals.  Here is a chance for the President to pull the populist rug out from under them.
The regulation that Professor Fleischer proposes is drafted so that its effect would be fairly limited.  When I discussed the idea of using regulation back in 2011, there was concern by some experts that such an approach could create too much uncertainty.

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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.