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Most Recent Posts

Aspen Colorado Waste Reduction Fee Upheld

The ordinance clearly expresses an intent that the waste reduction fees remitted to the City be used for several other functions reducing the cost to the City of litter cleanup and waste disposal, including education regarding trash and waste management, the funding of programs and the presentation of community events regarding trash and waste management, and outreach through the use of a website to educate the public about these topics.

Thus, we conclude that the City intended the charge to finance a particular class of services related to the reduction of trash and waste and to fund education about those matters.

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Princeton University Will Have To Prove It Deserves Property Tax Exemption

Although this is a bit of an oversimplification, there is a grim logic to municipal finance. You take the part of the town budget funded by property taxes and divide by the total value of taxed property and that is your tax rate (often expressed as dollars per thousand). As any bright fourth grader could tell you back in the day, lowering the denominator will give you a higher fraction. That is presumably why other taxpayers have standing to challenge the exemption. Sometimes you will find that dubious tax breaks cannot be addressed by courts because nobody has standing to challenge them. That is what happened with Freedom From Religions challenge to the parsonage exclusion.

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Trump In Worcester – Little On Tax – Much On How Rich He Is

Trump In Worcester – Little On Tax – Much On How Rich He Is

Opening remarks were by Jim Knowlton of the Worcester Republican Committee.  He noted that in 1854, when the Republican Party was emerging from the Whigs, Abraham Lincoln visited Worcester.  That was a different Republican Party and a different Worcester.  The first national women’s rights convention was held in Worcester in 1850.  And in 1854 when the federal government was going to great expense to return Anthony Burns to slavery, it was the tough guys from Worcester, Stephen Foster, Abby Kelley’s husband and Free Church minister Thomas Wentworth Higginson who turned the encounter violent.  After the Burns incident Higginson declared that getting to Worcester would be as good as getting to Canada for future fugitives.

Trump finally came out and greeted us by talking about how great Tom Brady is – a winner.  He pointed to the press, who were confined in sort of a pen on the center of the floor and got everybody to boo at them saying that maybe 30% of them were OK.  He then launched into talking about the problem of money in politics indicating that he knows all the other candidates can be bought because he has been buying politicians.  He then went into how great he is doing in all the polls.  He went on at some length about how rich he is and how bursting with pride he is about his campaign financial disclosures.  That was probably the most detailed part of the speech.

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Ownership Through LLC Kills Local Charitable Property Tax Exemption

Ownership Through LLC Kills Local Charitable Property Tax Exemption

The decision actually illustrates two of Reilly’s Laws of Tax Planning. As far as the exemption being lost to a technicality, the first law states “It is what it is. Deal with it.”. Then there is the fifth law “A tax plan that ignores AMT or SALT is not much of a tax plan.”. Somebody decided that the LLC was fine to use because of it being a disregarded entity for federal income tax purposes apparently not considering that the rules might not be the same for purposes of real estate taxes.

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Bernie Sanders Less Of A Socialist Than Dwight Eisenhower

The moderator kept pressing him on raising rates on the wealthy. That is the shoe that I have been dying to have drop from Senator Sanders, but he was still not forthcoming. He did got a good laugh though when he said that he would not go as high as 90%, the top rate during the Eisenhower Administration, because he is not as much of a socialist as Dwight Eisenhower. O’Malley chimed in that it was 70% in the early part of the Reagan administration

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Former IRS Commissioners Scold Congress For Gutting IRS Budget

Former IRS Commissioners Scold Congress For Gutting IRS Budget

In light of the foregoing, we fail to understand how it makes any logical sense to continue to reduce, rather than increase, the IRS budget for FY 2016 in order to optimize the IRS’ ability to provide taxpayer service and to enforce the tax laws to increase revenue collections. To put it succinctly, we do not understand why anyone with present and projected debts and annual losses as large as those of the United States would refuse to pay for telephone assistance to people trying to fulfill their tax obligations, would turn their back on $8 billion annually in additional revenue, or would fail to make an investment that offers a return equal to at least four times the amount invested. For these reasons, we respectfully call upon each of you to support and work to accomplish the passage of an IRS appropriations request for FY 2016 that is substantially in excess of the appropriation for the IRS in FY 2015. …

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Ben Carson’s Tax Proposal Takes On The Mortgage And Charity Sacred Cows

Robert Bateman did a serious critique of Carson’s West Point story in Esquire. To be charitable, I think it is quite possible, even likely, that somebody might have told Carson that he would be shoo-in for West Point and that since he was not interested Carson did not look into it any further and mentally translated that into an offer of sorts. It would be a bit like me saying I turned down a basketball scholarship, because of all the people who noting my height advised me that I should go out for basketball, which would get me a scholarship, but not nearly as silly.

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