IRS Employee Whose Job Was Assisting Victims Of Identity Theft Charged In $1 Million Identity Theft Tax Fraud

In 2006 AD Vaclav Havel asked Media Dragon how their tax haven profiling linked with their  writing. They said, ‘It prevents it’ ;-) 

‘Career change’ a myth to keep workers docile Daily Mash

The professional benefits of using curse words

A Strategic Guide to Swearing

HMRC: Why has Lin Homer become Dame Lin?  

HMRC admits to winding up inquiry into HSBC tax evasion claims  

Peter Reilly, How Much Is That Picasso In The Window? Tax Court Says Quite A Bit 

Scott Hodge, New Treasury Data Shows How Progressive America’s Tax Code Really Is (Tax Policy Blog)

Bloomberg, Apple May Be on Hook for $8 Billion in Taxes in Europe Probe:

Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper has quickly removed tracking devices from journalists' desks after a backlash from unions and staff. OccupEye issued a statement saying "we regret if any staff within any of our client workspaces have not received communication in advance of an OccupEye deployment and thus had unfounded concerns – we can only reassure those people that they have nothing to fear from our system ... quite the opposite, they are working for a smart organisation" Outrage sparked by daily telegraph use of employee tracking devices

Happy hours ****** culture of sex pests infecting bank traders at the ANZ

Not so happy Hour Jamie Clements and NSW ALP Sex Pest

Automatic Information Exchange: a trove of useful new data. Here's a template for using it  
New research: ‘competing’ aggressively on tax reduces growth  

Britain's regulator secretly stopped looking into HSBC's tax scandal and this could be a terrible sign for things to come 

In 2012, The Times quoted an HMRC (HM Revenue & Customs) source who said that film tax schemes had enabled investors to avoid an astonishing £5bn in tax

Patricia Apps (University of Sydney), The Central Role of a Well-Designed Income Tax in 'The Modern Economy' 

Wayne Swan in the Guardian Tax avoidance impoverishes us all. Fighting it requires challenging the powerful  

*Shared Economies ... Scary future for our children ...Apploitation in a city of instaserfs Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. How the “sharing economy” has turned San Francisco into a dystopia for the working class by Andrew Callaway

Martin Shkreli Is Worth At Least $45 Million Gawker: “In terms of character, like many of his peers, Shkreli isn’t worth shit.”

The New Yorker, Why Firms Are Fleeing Taxing Train Inversion

Professor Richard Murphy asks Is HMRC well managed? 

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) Staff Survey 

Australian tax office dodging more wage talks cpsu and asu allege

Who Owns U.S. Business? How Much Tax Do They Pay? NBER

What Is The Tax Court? Congress Speaks (or Attempts To, Arguably Unsuccessfully), by Kristin Hickman (Minnesota):

In the latest round in the Kuretski brouhaha, the new omnibus appropriations bill passed by Congress and signed by President Obama last week adds the following text to the Internal Revenue Code:

The Tax Court is not an agency of, and shall be independent of, the executive branch of the Government.

What does this amendment mean, and why does it matter—or not?

13600 ATO tipped to up scrutiny on tax agents

The latest annual Taxpayer Advocate Report to Congress is the first I’ve heard about this mostly-secret IRS initiative. 

Megan McArdle has some wise thoughts on the tax law in Why We Fear the IRS 

Department of Justice Press Release, IRS Employee Charged in $1 Million ID Theft Tax Fraud Scheme:

Federal officials today announced arrests and charges in a stolen identity tax-refund scheme believed to involve more than $1 million in false claims and run by an IRS employee who was supposed to be assisting taxpayers experiencing problems resulting from identity theft.

Paul Caron/TaxProf; Tim Cushing, TechDirt

Government Accountability Office, Deteriorating Taxpayer Service Underscores Need for a Comprehensive Strategy and Process Efficiencies (GAO-16-151) (Jan 14, 2016):

Illustration: Michael Mucc

New York Times Deal Book, The Tax Sleuth Who Took Down a Drug Lord:

Gary L. Alford was running on adrenaline when he arrived for work on a Monday in June 2013, at the Drug Enforcement Administration office in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. A tax investigator, he had spent much of the weekend in the living room of his New Jersey townhouse, scrolling through arcane chat rooms and old blog posts, reading on well after his fiancée had gone to sleep.

The work had given Mr. Alford what he believed was the answer to a mystery that had confounded investigators for nearly two years: the identity of the mastermind behind the online drug bazaar known as Silk Road — a criminal known only by his screen name, Dread Pirate Roberts.

New York Times, For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions: The Very Richest Are Able to Quietly Shape Tax Policy That Will Allow Them to Shield Billions in Income

U.S. Will Track Secret Buyers of Luxury Real Estate New York Times

Australia: Government orders more forced sales of properties illegally held by foreign nationals 

Tax Office trawls for owners of boats, planes, horses  

Are luxury condo purchases hiding dirty money? (+video) Christian Science Monitor 

Uber is getting dangerously close to undermining its own business model Quartz

Wall Street Journal Law Blog:  Texas Can Deny Tax Breaks to Films it Doesn’t Like, Appeals Court Rules, by Jacob Gershman...

This month, the New York Times published a front page article on How The Ultra Wealthy Buy Tax Policy, which contained this statement:

Two decades ago, when Bill Clinton was elected president, the 400 highest-earning taxpayers in America paid nearly 27 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to I.R.S. data. By 2012, when President Obama was re-elected, that figure had fallen to less than 17 percent, which is just slightly more than the typical family making $100,000 annually, when payroll taxes are included for both groups. 

Recently, the IRS released updated data showing that in 2013 the Top 400 taxpayers bore the highest tax rate since 1997...

Wall Street Journal, Tax Rate for Top 400 U.S. Taxpayers Climbed in 2013: Obama Administration Policies Reversed a Decadeslong Trend Toward Lower Tax Burdens for Wealthiest Americans

Data Security and Breach Notification Legislation: Selected Legal Issues, Alissa M. Dolan, Legislative Attorney. December 28, 2015

The Blaze op-ed:  Despite New Limits, The IRS is Not Yet Under Control, by Andrew F. Quinlan (President, Center for Freedom and Prosperity):

The massive omnibus spending package passed by Congress included new limits on the IRS, in particular on the agency’s ability to harass political non-profits. Congress is not done, however, as an ongoing dispute between the tax collection agency and Microsoft demonstrates that the IRS continues to operate outside the bounds of the law.

The IRS is in the midst of an almost nine-year audit of Microsoft. That’s unusual given the three-year statutory limit for audits. Sometimes they can be extended when necessary, but the IRS has asked and been granted permission by Microsoft to do so eight times already. Most notable, however, is the fact that Microsoft just wants to pay its bill and move on, but the IRS has refused to submit one. That might be due to the fact that the never-ending audit is proving quite profitable for a powerful, politically-connected law firm.

Again acting outside normal procedure, the IRS brought in lawyers from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, a major contributor to Barack Obama and the Democrat Party. This despite the fact that the IRS already employs a veritable army of lawyers and accountants with more relevant expertise.

The use of outside lawyers raises serious concerns regarding taxpayer privacy and potential conflicts of interest. Namely, that a $1,000-per-hour firm is going to be less motivated to resolve a case quickly and efficiently than the taxpayers footing their bill.

Taxpayers still guilty until proven innocent: government

College party culture is worse than you think...