Taxes
Are You Going to Jail Like Lauryn Hill
Maybe! If you didn’t FILE your taxes, you might go to jail like Lauryn Hill.
The Tax Most People Forget to Pay
Chana Joffe-Walt reports that most Americans—except for tax lawyers and accountants—forget to pay use taxes when they file our taxes every year.
Are Corporate Taxes Too Damn High? Or Too Damn Low? Nobody Knows
Public companies—those whose shares are traded on stock markets—are required to disclose all kinds of information about their operations in annual government forms like the 10-K. But one thing they aren’t required to reveal is how much they actually owed the IRS that year, says Fortune magazine editor Allan Sloan.
Once I Wanted to Be the Greatest at 1 Thing
That 1 Thing.
Gay Marriage and Taxes
At Slate, Caleb Crain talks about the difficulties of filing taxes as a gay married couple when there’s a disconnect between states and the federal government on the legality of gay marriage.
For Those Who Need Last Minute Tax Questions Answered
If you have a last minute tax question, expert accountant Gail Rosen will be answering them at The Guardian tomorrow at 1 p.m. EST. You can submit your questions here.
Why Tax Software Companies Are Fighting “Return-Free Filing”
What if instead of hiring a tax preparer or using tax software you have to pay for, the government would do your taxes for free?
The Effectiveness of Tax Cuts
Problem is, there is little evidence that tax cutting has worked as advertised.
Thomas L. Hungerford, an economist with the Congressional Research Service, got into trouble with Republicans last year when he published a study suggesting that the sharp drop in top tax rates since 1945 did little to lift economic growth but probably did contribute to soaring income inequality.
And there’s no clear evidence that lower tax burdens have helped the United States grow faster than other advanced industrial nations with higher tax rates and much heavier tax burdens. Economic growth per person in the United States was a little faster than in France or Australia over the last 40 years. But it was a little slower than in Austria, Germany and the Netherlands, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a research organization for the world’s richest countries.
In the Times, Eduardo Porter examines how effective low taxes have been on economic growth in the U.S. and concludes that there hasn’t been much evidence that it’s worked. But will raising taxes work? According to Porter: “Recent history may even suggest the economy thrives when taxes are higher. Despite President Bush’s tax cuts, the economy during his administration grew only about 17 percent, half as much as during that of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, who had raised them.”
