There is a lot of noise that goes on in ICU. The people are oddly silent. But the ambient noises ricochet from bay to bay. The beeping, the alarms, the dripping. I remember those sounds as if it were yesterday. I remember looking across the hospital bed and seeing my brothers, one a tatted up…
You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer. – Frank Zappa There was a time when, if following Zappa’s criteria, the U.S. might not have…
Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s efforts to claw out of a series of legal quagmires suffered a serious setback this week when a Milan appeals court upheld his conviction on tax fraud charges. Berlusconi was convicted last year for his role in a tax fraud scheme involving a series of offshore companies. The companies…
I was one of those kids who always did the right thing. I followed the rules. I did what I was told (ok, mostly). I was just that kid. I was also one of those kids who whined incessantly because I felt like being good wasn’t its own reward. I watched as the kids who…
In the end, simply paying the tax wasn’t enough. Despite assurances to the court today that her outstanding tax liabilities had been paid in their entirety, Lauryn Hill was slapped with a three-month stint in prison for failing to file and pay taxes on time. The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Court Judge…
“Why are you so quiet?” I’m never accused of being quiet. But this time, I have been quiet and I guess a bit of an explanation is in order. What everyone is talking about – and I have not been talking about – over the past couple of weeks is the so-called Marketplace Fairness Act,…
Birds in Germany are dying by the millions and Peter Berthold of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, Germany, says that cats are to blame. By his calculation, cats kill approximately 50 million birds each year in Germany alone. The solution, he says, to this travesty, is a cat tax. No, this isn’t…
Just one day after the Internal Revenue Service additional Proposed Regulations to clarify governance issues related to the Health Care Act, a group of taxpayers filed a lawsuit in federal court, hoping to put the brakes on the IRS’ right to enforce the Act. The case, Halbig et al v. Sebelius et al, (downloads as…
Usually, companies land themselves in hot water with taxing authorities for waiting too late to take action. But it’s actually possible to get into trouble for acting too quickly. Just ask retailing giant Target: a Target store found itself under the microscope in South Carolina for allegedly implementing a new sales tax a month early….
On jersey days at school, most kids show up wearing Eagles or Flyers jerseys. My kids? Philadelphia Union or Bayern Munich jerseys. We even have the scarves, balls, and banners – we’re largely a soccer family. It’s fun for the kiddos to play – and fun to watch. We’re hardly alone. Soccer is played by…