State corporate tax reform - things to consider

The February 25 Wall Street Journal included an article - "The State Business Tax Revolt Governors get a jump on corporate tax reform...

The Cost of Tax Administration - IRS FY2012 Budget Request

The IRS budget request was released last week (full text of 166 pages, IRS summary ). This is a reminder of the significant costs to collect...

Continuing EITC Problems Contribute to Tax Gap

On February 9, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration ( TIGTA ) released a report on EITC compliance problems. Per TIGTA : ...

Cell Phone Tax Issues

Last October I posted about the oddity of H.R. 1521 introduced to limit state and local taxes on cell phones so the industry could grow when...

Virtual Tax Dollars

This is post is partly light-hearted, but also notes an area in need of guidance. I saw a Bloomberg News item in the Mercury News today (2...

Twitter and San Francisco proposed tax break

An item on the February 8, 2011 San Francisco Board of Supervisors agenda was the following: "110155 [Business and Tax Regulations Code...

Wanting to Pay More Taxes and Charitable Contribution Issues

The other day, a few of my graduate tax students asked why Congress had enacted a Social Security tax cut for 2011 for all employees and sel...

Tax Expenditures and Income Tax Reform

There has been greater talk, including some op eds, on the need to reign in "tax expenditures" - tax rules that are not necessaril...

Unemployment Tax

There is a good article in the Wall Street Journal today about President Obama's likely budget proposal to increase the base upon whic...

Public Understanding of the Tax Structure

As he promised when he campaigned, Governor Brown should be calling for a vote before the end of June 2011 so the public can weigh in whethe...

California has highest sales tax rate

On February 3, 2011, the Tax Foundation released a Fiscal Fact report - Ranking State and Local Sales Taxes by Kail Padgitt ( html ) ( p...