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Monday, September 19, 2016

Think Big but Start Small: What are we allowed to say?

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, has made his first public comments on the shock resignation of Labor’s deputy Senate leader, Stephen Conroy, telling reporters in Washington that Conroy informed him he was going to resign via text message Stephen Conroy quietly adjourns political career for expected business role

 David Bromwich: What are we allowed to say? London Review of Books
a-monarch-links
Think Big but Start Small

Report: why we need to tax corporations now, more than ever
Guide to Walking Meeting via Feet First


They don’t require yoga pants or a shower, but the research is clear: Walking meetings count as exercise. ...

Walking meetings are typically held with two or three people over a set route and period—often 30 minutes. They can take place at a nearby park or even in office hallways. Some people are using walking meetings to boost their daily step counts. Others are spurred by mounting research on the physical and mental benefits of being more mobile at work. ...

Walking meetings have been outlined in a TED Talk

and encouraged in a Funny or Die video with the cast of “The West Wing, whose characters were known for their frequent walk-and-talks
Meetings, phone calls and email have come to consume more than 90% of the working time of managers and some other workers, such as consultants. Many of those meetings and calls could be conducted while walking, experts say. Harvard Business Review, How to Do Walking Meetings Right ...

Rather than dish out penalties costing hundreds of dollars for first-time common errors, the ATO plans to allow individuals and small businesses one slip-up every three or four years. A new ATO consultation paper says that tens of thousands of penalties were imposed last year. People who lodge late typically pay $180 for every 28 days overdue, while those who make a wrong claim can be fined 25 per cent of their shortfall amount, plus interest payments Australian Taxation Office proposes to let off first-time

Macquarie Group has been called many things over the years: The Millionaires Factory because it makes its employees very rich; The Silver Doughnut because its logo resembles a frozen Eye of Sauron; and a "bunch of bankers" because Richard Branson didn't like how Virgin Australia was treated by Sydney Airport.  But hats off to the Poms who have come up with "The Vampire Kangaroo" Why the British are calling Macquarie the vampire kangaroo

How MacBank rooked the us government

There is lots of unrealized walking human potential (pdf), genetics study

Breaking Bad: What Does the First Major Tax Haven Leak Tell Us?
Tax Notes International, Vol. 83(8), p. 691, 2016. While there is now significant literature in law, politics, economics, and other disciplines that examines tax havens, there is little information on what tax haven intermediaries — so-called offshore service providers such as trust, finance and other financial service providers — actually do to facilitate offshore tax evasion and other global financial crimes. To provide insight into this secret world of tax havens, this article relies on the author’s study of the first major tax haven data leak obtained by the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists. A hypothetical involving Breaking Bad’s Walter White is used to explain how offshore service providers help non-resident investors engage in offshore tax evasion.
 
… Q&A with Ian McEwan: The art of writing, the writer's life


Les Book (Villanova) presents Thinking About Taxpayer Rights and Social Psychology to Improve Administration of the EITC at Loyola-L.A. today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium Series hosted by Ellen Aprill and Katherine Pratt:
The IRS is a reluctant but key player in delivering social benefits to the nation’s working poor. The earned income tax credit (EITC) is generally praised for its role in reducing poverty and incentivizing low-wage work. While the EITC has generally received bipartisan support, the IRS faces strong criticism over EITC compliance issues. Opponents focus on headline-generating reports of improper payments and a characterization of errors as likely due to fraud. Advocates look to the intersection of legal complexity and the characteristics of recipients as the main driver of error and the relatively low share of the tax gap that is attributable to refundable credits in general and the EITC in particular.

The current compliance challenge presents an opportunity to think about the compliance problem differently than before.


“The living city – London, Singapore, Toronto and Paris top the 2016 benchmark (our 7th edition) of the broad urban qualities that make 30 global business, finance and culture capitals successful. Beneath the headline results of who finishes first, however, findings show the heart of the city revolves around balanced social and economic strengths. And even in this group of cities that power the world economy, quality of life factors jump out in relation to urban success. People are at the center of the big city picture.”How does your city compare? See how individual cities compare in the findings in your areas of interest.”

Fair Taxation: Commission launches work to create first common EU list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions 

Peter Bergman (Columbia), Jeffrey T. Denning (BYU) & Dayanand Manoli (Texas), Is Information Enough? Evidence from a Tax Credit Information Experiment with 1,000,000 Students:

This study examines the effect of information about tax credits for college using a sample of over 1 million students or prospective students in Texas. We sent emails and letters to students that described tax credits for college and tracked college outcomes. We find that for all three of our samples—already enrolled students, students who had previously applied to college but were not currently enrolled, and rising high school seniors—that information about tax credits for college did not affect reenrollment, application, and enrollment respectively.
 
Open plans, glass walls, communal table-desks, exposed brick: The carefully curated aesthetic of the modern office and the grim fate of the "knowledge worker" Buildings 

New York Fed – Liberty Street Economics Blog (first of four blog postings): “The past decade and a half has seen dramatic changes in the higher education landscape, characterized by significant growth in enrollment. This growth has been concentrated mostly in for-profit schools, where enrollment skyrocketed in the first decade of the period, nearly quadrupling between 2000 and 2011.


Revolt of the Elites Jacobin. Account of the September 11, 1973 coup that deposed Salvador Allende.
From zero to seventy (billion) The Economist (Dan K).

Improv-da The Baffler

Daniel Shaviro (NYU), Interrogating the Relationship between 'Legally Defensible' Tax Planning and Social Justice: This article, prepared for presentation on September 23, 2016 at a conference at NYU Law School, organized by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and entitled Human Rights and Tax in an Unequal World, mainly takes the form of a dialogue between two fictional individuals

Google Official Blog: “Many millions of years ago, dinosaurs ruled the Earth and sea dragons were not just Hollywood creations, but fearsome predators that stalked the oceans. It’s a world that vanished long ago, but one that continues to fascinate those seeking to understand the origins of life on our planet. Starting today, anyone, anywhere can explore this world on Google Arts & Culture. We’ve partnered with 50+ of the world’s leading natural history institutions to bring this lost world to life again online. More than 150 interactive stories from experts, 300,000 new photos and videos, and more than 30 virtual tours await you…”

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