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Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Panama Papers and IRS: the Gap and ID fraud

Tax Havens Radio Monocle Nicholas Shaxson speaks!



Other Related  Taxing Matters

How 77 ( almost charter 77) profitable companies left Australian taxpayers 56 billion out of pocket

Welcome to the Tax Prof blogosphere, The Surly Subgroup: Tax Blogging on a Consolidated Basis, with Jennifer Bird-Pollan (Kentucky), Sam Brunson (Loyola-Chicago), Philip Hackney (LSU), David Herzig (Valparaiso), Stephanie Hoffer (Ohio State), Leandra Lederman (Indiana), Benjamin Leff (American), Diane Ring (Boston College), and Shu-Yi Oei (Tulane).  Czech out (sik) (sic) their inaugural post ...

From Carellessness to Recklessness to Intentional Disregard: 1000 shades of grey ... The question that often arises is whether the defendant is entitled to a jury instruction in addition to from a standard willfulness instruction.  The defendant whose defense is good faith will want to rivet the jury's attention on that claim of good faith.  Basically, the desired good faith instruction will be some variation of: 
The defendant has raised the defense that he acted in good faith and therefore cannot have acted willfully.  If you believe that the government has not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he did not act in good faith, you must acquit.  


Robert Wood, IRS Encourages Illegals To Steal SSNs, Plus 13 More Sobering Tax Day Facts. Have a nice day.

Ellen Steele, Tax Day From The Trenches: How the IRS Handles Identity Theft (TaxVox)

Bryan Caplan, Tax Day Reflections. “Morally, taxation is unjust; practically, it is unnecessary.”

Mark Perry, Some thoughts, facts, and charts for Tax Day: Bring us back to 1913 (or even better, bring us back to 1912!)

Peter Reilly, Friedman LLP Survey Of Business Leaders On Tax Issues Has Surprising Results. But not this: “Tax Executives Not Feeling The Bern.”


News from the Profession. Accounting News Roundup: Return-Free Filing and Swingers  (Caleb Newquist, Going Concern)

No confidence in our tax system left: IGT 


James Alm (Tulane) presents Whither the Tax Gap? (with Jay Soled (Rutgers)) at NYU today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium Series hosted by Daniel Shaviro and Chris Sanchirico:
For decades, policy makers and politicians have railed against the “tax gap,” or the difference between what taxpayers are legally obligated to pay in taxes and what they actually pay in taxes. To close the gap, Congress has instituted numerous reforms, with varying degrees of success. Notwithstanding these efforts, the tax gap has largely remained intact, and, if anything, its size has gradually grown over the last several decades. 
However, the tax gap may well begin to whither away, if not immediately then over time. Three developments will help narrow the tax gap’s size. First, the ubiquity of credit cards, debit cards, and smartphone payment apps has purged cash—the erstwhile driving engine of the tax gap—from its use in many economic transactions. Second, the availability of third-party sources of information, combined with the universal use of computerization to store, access, and analyze information, has made the use of tax information returns much more feasible in a variety of contexts, often eliminating a taxpayer’s ability to hide income here in the United States or overseas. Third, broad economic trends such as concentration and globalization have generated a workforce dynamic in which taxpayers generally are employed by large business enterprises (where individual tax compliance is fairly high) rather than traditional mom-and-pop businesses (where individual tax compliance is typically low).

"UK legal aid residence test to be challenged in supreme court; Government's denial of aid to people who have lived in UK for less than 12 months is being contested by Public Law Project": Owen Bowcott of The Guardian (UK) hasthis report.