From the category archives:

tax policy

Cyber Monday Sales Tax Free for Many – But For How Long?

26 November 2011

I don’t do the whole Black Friday thing. There is nothing (and I mean nothing) that I want/need/crave/desire enough to stand in line with a bunch of total strangers – who may or may not have showered recently – to buy. I do, however, do Cyber Monday, the online version of Black Friday. I’m not [...]

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Is Your Mortgage Interest Deduction At Risk?

17 November 2011

Is your mortgage interest deduction at risk? What about your charitable donation deduction? Your real estate tax deduction? Your medical expenses deduction? Under a new conservative plan introduced by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), one of the members of the “Super Committee”, the amounts that taxpayers could claim as deduction on a Schedule A would be [...]

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Supreme Court Asked to Answer What’s ‘Fair’ When it Comes to Taxpayers

16 November 2011

The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in the case of Armour, et al., v. [entity id="place_4e0a70360f93e476d9b1c10f" style="padding: 1px; color: #fff; background: #336699;" class="forbes_entity" active="true" item_id="place_4e0a70360f93e476d9b1c10f" key="in/indianapolis" latitude="39.76691" longitude="-86.149964" display="Indianapolis" image="http://images.forbes.com/media/lists/places/indianapolis-in_50x50.jpg" natural_id="places/26900" type="place" lists="[]” active=”false”]Indianapolis[/entity], et al (docket 11-161). That’s a lawyerly way of saying that the Supreme Court will hear the matter. Some cases have [...]

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Is a Robin Hood Tax the Answer?

3 November 2011

We love a good underdog story, don’t we? I think that’s why the folklore of Robin Hood – who robbed the rich to the poor – has endured over hundreds of years. We like the idea that a plucky spirit and a good heart can somehow overcome even most seemingly impossible set of obstacles. We [...]

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Is the Flat Tax a Good Idea?

3 November 2011

I was asked to write an Op-Ed piece for US News & World Report that answered the question: Is the Flat Tax a Good Idea? Many of you have emailed me to ask similar questions so I thought I’d pass along the link for your perusal. You can check out the story here. Enjoy. And [...]

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Perry Hints At ‘Simple’ Flat Tax

19 October 2011

Martin Scorsese once said about his work: There’s no such thing as simple. Simple is hard. As taxpayers, that’s what we want, right, simple? I firmly believe that it’s the complexity of the Tax Code that frustrates taxpayers the most – not so much the actual dollars (though I get that we’re not terribly fond of [...]

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Occupy Wall Street Raises Questions About Taxes, Money and Blame

18 October 2011

Yesterday marked the month long anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. I realize that there are those that quibble with the dates as the actual protest has been a long time coming but the first organized group of protestors reportedly hit the streets of New York City on September 17, marking the more or less official [...]

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Cain’s 9-9-9 Tax Plan Continues to Attract Interest

11 October 2011

You just can’t fault a guy for talking up pizza during a good debate – especially when that guy is former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain. Cain grabbed a surprising share of the spotlight in New Hampshire on Tuesday during the GOP presidential debate with talk of his “9-9-9″ plan. The [...]

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The Pot Plot Thickens: Update

7 October 2011

So even as I was writing the story about the IRS’ audit of Harborside on yesterday, I couldn’t make sense of it. It felt so heavy handed on the part of the IRS that it had to be part of some bigger mandate – this was no mere tax audit. I got my answer this [...]

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Will Danes Influence US Tax Policy? Fat Chance.

3 October 2011

There’s no way round it: Americans are getting fat. According to the CDC, there has been a “dramatic increase in obesity” over the past twenty years. Across the country, about a third of all adults are classified as obese, meaning that they have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or higher. To put that [...]

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