Most Recent Posts
IRS Scandal Daily Coverage: The Final Chapter
Ms. Kabbany’s comment on the series is perhaps indicative of the most unfortunate effect of the TaxProf’s method as she mentions the “long list of blog entries” being a “sight to behold”. That comment is an indication to me that Ms. Kabbany has not actually taken the trouble, as have I, to read all the entries. To her, there are a thousand nails in the IRS coffin. What I see is less than a dozen nails pounded on numerous times and then pried up and pounded on a few more times and a lot of folks using the occasion of the wake to talk about other things.
TaxProf Calls An End To Day By Day IRS Scandal Coverage
It seems that the IRS Scandal even more than usual is something that is viewed through ideological glasses. If you would really like to take a hard look at the core scandal, I would recommend the Senate Finance Committee report. The report is in three parts. It lays out the agreed facts that have been determined from fairly exhaustive investigations and then two narratives, one Republican and one Democrat that can be drawn from those facts. The notion that the Obama administration was directing the IRS to target conservative groups is now something of an article of faith on the right. The Republican narrative relies on a kind of a tone at the top dog whistle to support that belief.
Getting Out Of The Blue Calls From IRS? Just Hang Up
On a special day that happens to be just a couple of weeks before the end of tax season, we would get on the speakerphone and each of us would call a family member of one of the others pretending to be an IRS agent with questions about that persons return. Having the return in front of us strengthened the credibility. It was particularly satisfying to pull the prank on my brother who often used his ATT job to pull jokes on the family. He one time convinced my mother to put a paper bag over the phone while they blew the dust out the lines. Ah, the good old days.
Donald Trump On Getting Mad AND Getting Even – The Twissing of John Lewis
I've decided to create a portmanteau - "Twiss" - a combination of Tweet and Diss. Since twist is already a word, it might not work, but we'll see how it goes. And of...
Ninth Circuit Upholds Tax Court In Disallowing RV Business Deductions
The Jacksons made a really good case that attendance at RV rallies was an integral part of their insurance business which involved the sale of policies tailored to RVs. Any personal use, even watching some TV would count against them as a personal use day causing them to break the fourteen-day limit. My own speculation was that perhaps if they had gotten rid of the kitchen appliances, they might have moved the RV out of the dwelling unit definition, but I’m not sure that would have worked.
Xavier High School Memories Of The First Inspection
One of my early blogging goals was to become the "Tom Sawyer" of blogging by getting other people to create material for me. Sadly one of the occasional edicts from...
Pastor Calls For Church Transparency With IRS Form 990
Reverend Jones has not attracted a lot of attention with his petition as far as I can tell. Religious leaders might want to take note and ponder whether the exemptions and privileges that they cling to so fiercely might be counter-productive to their mission.
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.
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:
Rudy Davis And The Prisoners He Looks Out For
When Kent Hovind was facing another conviction last year that would have meant much more time in federal prison, a fair analysis might be that his liberty was saved by...