Why Not a Negative Income Tax? "What kind of program could help protect every citizen from destitution without granting excessive power to bureaucrats, creating disincentives to work, and clogging up the free-market economy, as the modern welfare state has done? [Nobel-prize winning economist Milton] Friedman’s answer was the negative income tax, or NIT."
posted by shivohum
on Mar 14, 2011 -
106 comments
How Private Is 'Private Charity'? Private charity may be
more accurately described as "private donations coupled with involuntary, tax-financed public subsidies." And
it's not fair: "very low-income people paying only payroll taxes get hardly any leverage for their donations. Very high-income people in states with high income-tax rates – such as New Jersey and New York – can through the tax code virtually double the money funneled to a charity per dollar of their own sacrifice." (
previously)
posted by kliuless
on Jan 17, 2011 -
39 comments
Where does my tax money go? From USA Today, a calculator and graph that lets you enter your salary and shows you how your tax dollars are spent. You can also change the year shown, so that you can compare now and then.
posted by OmieWise
on Feb 3, 2010 -
39 comments
Alan Grayson (D - FL) has introduced
a bill to tax corporate political campaign donations at 500% (
via). The bill is called the "Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act."
posted by lohmannn
on Jan 25, 2010 -
93 comments
Blow the whistle on the rich and powerful, go to jail, while they avoid jail. Tax Notes, the weekly publication on federal taxation, announced its "2009 Tax Person of the Year" - a whistleblower from Swiss banking giant UBS whom it called "the Benedict Arnold of the private banking industry." Bradley Birkenfeld came forward and exposed the tax fraud dealings of UBS which led thousands of millionaire tax cheats to come forward and pay billions in back taxes. His reward? Tomorrow he
goes to jail.
The Government Accountability Project (GAP), a Washington watchdog organization that has extensive whistle-blower experience, says a chilling effect is already apparent: a senior executive at a European bank that offers similar U.S. tax shelters is having second thoughts about going public because of the Birkenfeld case.
posted by caddis
on Jan 7, 2010 -
42 comments
Secrecy Jurisdictions: Mapping the Faultlines highlights research on 'the jurisdictions and mechanisms used to facilitate illicit financial flows worldwide, including especially flows from developing countries. Those flows, from developing countries alone, are estimated at $850 billion - US$1 trillion per year. At the core of this project is the
biggest survey of tax havens, or secrecy jurisdictions as we prefer to call them, that has probably ever been undertaken.' A project of the
Tax Justice Network.
posted by Abiezer
on Dec 3, 2009 -
5 comments
The Tax Gap - "
The Guardian will examine the extent of tax avoidance by big business, day-by-day over two weeks. We are naming more than 20 major British companies, and analysing their secretive tax strategies to ask: are they paying their fair share?".
posted by Gyan
on Feb 4, 2009 -
34 comments
The Next New Deal With the vaunted post-Cold War "Peace dividend" evaporating, the United States found itself unable to invest adequately in either its infrastructure or its children. Eventually people began to talk of another Great Depression, before the coming of the next New Deal.
posted by Kwantsar
on Oct 1, 2008 -
8 comments
The
Every Child Matters Education Fund, a non-profit organization that lobbies for better education and services for children,
released a report (audio accompanies link text) this week that reveals that geography is as important as race and class in determining which children succeed, and which fail.
The five highest ranking states, based on such factors as child poverty, infant mortality rates, juvenile incarceration rates and the like, were all in New England, with Vermont on top. The bottom five were all in the central South, with Louisiana coming in last... States with a high tax burden did a far better job of minimizing childhood poverty than low-taxing states.
Via John Ibbitson in the Globe and Mail
[more inside]
posted by KokuRyu
on Apr 4, 2008 -
26 comments
A very special '
This American Life' about an administration with the endemic belief that laws only apply to the little people, and a limitless refusal to concede on even petty issues, no matter the costs. The highlight is about immigrant widows of US citizens (30:50). The program also discusses the constitutional beliefs of the presidential candidates.
[more inside]
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94
on Apr 2, 2008 -
43 comments
The poll tax caused massive rioting in the UK. Will the
pole tax move Texans to do the same? There's an interesting
class-war aspect to the story. The
bill specifies that the revenue generated will support sexual assault prevention programs, though the bill's legality is
being litigated.
posted by aerotive
on Jan 8, 2008 -
51 comments
Valentino Rossi is a very successful,
well-compensated motorcycle
racer and winner of numerous Grand Prix World Championships. He is under
investigation by Italian authorities for tax evasion, which
The Doctor allegedly accomplished in part by relocating to London and possibly taking advantage of the
Non-domicile classification [
link to google cache to avoid registration] for tax purposes. According to UK authorities, in 2003, for instance, his
declared income was £650. Even a priests is becoming
vocally upset at Rossi and the public's reaction. On a far larger scale, the UK was earlier this year identified as an Offshore Financial Center in an IMF
white paper [
34 page PDF]and there are those who think the purported
tax-haven monster should be confronted. The Norwegian government
agrees and wants to "facilitate the recovery of assets illicitly stacked away in tax havens" by way of a global coalition, of which the UK is not part.
posted by preparat
on Sep 3, 2007 -
12 comments
