How do you tax religious communists engaged in capitalism through an exempt religious corporation? The Stahl Hutterian Brethren is a 65-member community of
Hutterites that runs a 30,000 acre farm in Washington. The community is incorporated as a religious corporation. Its members give all their "time, labor, services, earnings, and energies" to the community. They disavow individual property ownership, draw no salary, and do not contribute to or collect Social Security benefits. Instead, the community provides for its members' personal needs. And now it is the subject of the most fascinating 9th Circuit
tax case [PDF] you'll read this year!
But before you dig into the 9th Circuit opinion, here's a great
summary and commentary by law professor Shaun Martin. The case addresses the very tricky question of whether, as employees of a non-profit religious corporation, the community members should be allowed to deduct their living expenses, which are paid for by the corporation (they're communists, after all). Tricky additional fact: The 65-member community is all one big family.
posted by The World Famous
on Dec 13, 2010 -
36 comments
Moreover, based on the empirical distribution of height and wages, the optimal height tax is substantial: a tall person earning $50,000 should pay about $4,500 more in
taxes (pdf) than a short person earning the same income. Draw what inferences
you will.
posted by Pants!
on Dec 15, 2007 -
41 comments
Many people want to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana and other drugs, however, few know that many
U.S. states are content simply to tax. In fact,
even the federal government wants a share (middle of p. 89 of the PDF), and
used tax stamps in
early prohibition, but only the states have recently issued
issued cool
stamps (be sure to click "exhibit"). The point, of course, is not to actually tax the drugs, but to
penalize the drug dealers for tax evasion as well as drug sales.
They have brought in some money, though. A few interesting state government pages:
Conecticut,
Nebraska,
North Carolina and their
tax return form, and
Kansas.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim
on Jan 15, 2007 -
30 comments
The bait and switch. A last-minute revision by House and Senate leaders in the
tax bill that President Bush signed today will prevent millions of minimum-wage families from receiving the increased child credit that is in the measure.
posted by four panels
on May 29, 2003 -
21 comments
Millionaires' Havens, Heavens And Hell Holes: Ghastly, depressing
Monaco comes in for a deserved drubbing from Philip Delves Broughton in this week's
Spectator. The idea of billionaires surfing the Web looking for a hide-out makes me giggle and gag, but it appears poor people can play too. Have a look at (free!) e-zine
Escape From America; run your index finger down
a list of
tax havens and choose the
paradise place you'd scarper off to, if your money problems, whether from excess or lack of money, ever become too [
sorry...] taxing.
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Nov 29, 2002 -
9 comments
Proposed IRS rule could limit the freedom to link. The US Internal Revenue Service is proposing a rule that might make it inadvisable for not-for-profit organizations to provide links on their Web sites to
any political site. The IRS is proposing to interpret any link to a political site from the pages of a nonprofit as evidence that the nonprofit is "engaging in political activity" and thus in danger of losing its 503(c) status.
posted by lagado
on Feb 5, 2001 -
8 comments
