Targeted tax measures rather than across the board cuts

A tax system most likely to meet principles of good tax policy has a broad base (few, if any, deductions) and low rates. Our current federa...

Helping Small Businesses

Congress have a variety of bills it has been working on that are supposed to help small businesses. These include: H.R. 4849 , the Small Bus...

Congress' Multitude of Multistate Bills

There are ten bills in the 111 th Congress that involve multistate tax issues. Several have been introduced in prior Congresses. I've ...

101 Top Tax Policy Blogs

Mark Macaluso , who maintains a website on Masters of Accounting programs, recently created a list with links of what he viewed as the top 1...

Sales Tax Flaws

I've been writing for some time about the numerous flaws in most state sales tax - particularly that of California. Most recently - the ...

Past time for California to address digital consumption

Recently, Amazon announced that in the past three months, it sold 143 Kindle (digital) books for every 100 hardcover books that it sold ( 7/...

Tax Foundation Tax Calculator - Effect of 3 Different Scenarios

The Tax Foundation has an interesting tax calculator that will compute your 2011 federal income taxes under three scenarios: Bush tax cuts...

More on BNRT

We haven't heard much lately about the Business Net Receipts Tax ( BNRT ) proposal of last fall from the California Commission on the 21...

Tweaking Corporate Estimated Tax Payments - More Tax Oddities

H.R. 4380 , the United States Manufacturing Enhancement Act of 2010, which passed in the House on July 21 (378 - 43) includes a revenue offs...

Sales Tax Holidays - more on this tax "oddity"

In my list of " tax oddities " I include sales tax holidays (particularly ones for gun purchases). There is an article in today...

Cost of extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts

A report by The Pew Economic Policy Group - Decision Time: The Fiscal Effects of Extending the 2001 and 2003 Tax Cuts , concludes that even ...

Deficit reduction - crazy?

The Wall Street Journal (" White House, Business Group Duel on Jobs ," 7/14/10) and Tax Notes ("Fiscal Commission Cochair ...

California Local Governments

The California Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) recently issued a brief report on California's numerous local governments ( Overvi...

Opportunity vs. Hope vs. Reality - Tax Incentives for Higher Ed

The federal income tax law includes several incentives and subsidies for higher education expenses. The Hope Scholarship credit that has bee...

The need for broader tax and budget education

There is a great post in TaxVox today from the Tax Policy Center (not to say that all of their posts aren't great). It is entitled - ...

Call for more energy credits - good idea?

President Obama has asked Congress to expand the advanced energy project credit. Apparently, this is the IRC §48C - Qualifying advanced en...

Taxing Services - Michigan

An article today in the Detroit Free Press says that Governor Granholm has given up on a tax reform plan to extend the sales tax to servic...

Tanning Tax Questions

The 10% excise tax on indoor tanning services went into effect on July 1 and there has been a fair amount of negative press that is likely c...

Tax Oddity - Messing with Corporate Estimated Tax Payment Rules

Sometimes Congress makes changes to the timing or calculation of estimated tax payments to create a revenue raiser. This is a really odd tec...