Growing income inequality and the federal tax system

Laura Tyson of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley has a post on the Economix blog of the NY Times for 11/18/11 - " Tackling I...

Unofficial IRS Guidance and Transparency and Possible Solutions to This Taxpayer Rights Issue

An October 31, 2011 article in Tax Notes - "Olson Says Informal IRS Guidance Lacks Transparency" ties to an issue I've been h...

Think Long Committee Ideas for Improving California

"The Think Long Committee for California aims to offer a comprehensive approach for repairing and renovating California's broken sy...

USA Today - story on shopper's use tax responsibility

One approach for increasing use tax collection that I have noted frequently is better education for consumers so they even know the tax exis...

More on affiliate nexus - Amazon-style + possible federal action

If you are looking for background on the affiliate nexus ("Amazon" type) legislation that has been enacted in varying forms in eig...

Too much bipartisanship for tax and budget reform - too bad for federal finances

It is unfortunate that the Select Committee is unable to reach a compromise to find $1.5 trillion to budget changes to reduce the deficit ov...

Spending, recession and sales tax

The California Board of Equalization Economic Perspective report for November is on Impacts of the Recession by Income Class and Type of Pu...

Problems with small business health insurance credit

To help more people have health insurance, the health care legislation enacted in March 2010 included a new credit for small employers. This...

Rough Road to Even a 28% Corporate Tax Rate

We have heard suggestions for dropping the corporate income tax rate from its current 35% to perhaps even as low as 15%. Typical suggestions...

Need to Fix Sales Tax Collection Problem

A headline in today's Chicago Sun Times is a good reminder of the need to address the issue of sales and use tax not getting collected ...

Pushing for specifics on tax reform proposals

There are quite a few vague tax reform proposals being touted by presidential candidates today. We have 9-9-9, variations of a flat tax, a r...

AICPA suggests that Select Committee follow principles of good tax policy

I am pleased to see the AICPA Tax Division send a letter to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the one to create a plan to r...

Economy continues to hurt states

A Reuters article (11/3/11) by Nanette Byrnes - " Analysis: Economy's shifts erode states' tax bases " notes some new and...

California Budget Problems and Possible Solutions

This is a slide from a 10/27/11 presentation by the Legislative Analyst's Office on California's Budget Woes. I encourage you to loo...

The Tax Law with a Revenue Neutral 28% Corporate Tax Rate

Over the past few years, various numbers have been suggested for a lowered corporate tax rate. Typically, the range from 20% to 28%. This w...