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Monday, January 15, 2018

 How a Simple Tech Upgrade at the IRS Could Transform the Economy



Plutus Payroll collapse leaves $100m black hole | afr.com



How the Plutus Payroll scheme worked | afr.com





Vodafone Australia - Top Tax Dodger

Vodafone, a company which is rarely far from controversy for its tax affairs, has come under fire from Australian journalist Michael West. West is currently putting together a list of corporate tax dodgers. Vodafone is to appear at number 7. It is easy to see why; over three years the company has made $11.8bn in revenues in Australia, but has made no profits and paid no tax.
West points to a range of related party transactions in the Vodafone Australia accounts, with the company spending hundreds of millions of dollars with other Vodafone companies overseas. 


Vodafone: more side-deals than a Saigon cock-fight Michael West
‘The michaelwest.com.au Big Tax List of Australia’s top tax avoiders is in production and will be announced soon. Vodafone Hutchison Australia ranks at number 7.’
 
On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we thought it would be appropriate to look at some of the journalism from his era, and try to find a way to explore the emotions around his death from an assassin’s bullet on April 4, 1968.









Happy New Year
Seventy-seven nation industrial reserve army New Socialist. On the Paradise Papers.

DFAT's $100k junket for European journalists 


Amazon Is Thriving Thanks to Taxpayer Dollars New Republic


Uber developed secret system to lock down staff computers in a police raid Guardian 

When Mark Astrinos is asked what he does, the response is typically muted. “I’ll just say, ‘I’m a CPA,’ and the conversation will end,” said the certified public accountant and financial planner with Libra Wealth in San Francisco.

Not lately, though. Thanks to the sweeping tax-overhaul bill passed by Congress and signed this month by President Donald Trump, people now “light up and they’re so intrigued and they want to know how they’ll be affected,” he said.

In part because of the attention, Mr. Astrinos said, “It’s never been a better time to be a CPA.”






Our credit system runs on the power of data. A simple IT upgrade at the IRS would put more of this power in your hands. ...

The IRS Data Verification Modernization Act of 2017, recently introduced in Congress by Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), would set up an application programming interface (API) at the IRS.



Jordan M. Barry (San Diego), Taxation and Innovation: The Sharing Economy as a Case Study, in Cambridge Handbook on Law and Regulation of the Sharing Economy (Nestor Davidson, Michèle Finck & John Infranca, eds., Cambridge University Press 2018):

This chapter considers the relationship between the U.S. federal income tax system and innovation, using the sharing economy as a focal point for analysis. It makes two main points.

First, the tax system is currently a questionable tool for encouraging innovation. Regulators are understandably concerned that taxpayers will use tax incentive provisions in unanticipated ways, and thus are inclined to tightly limit such provisions’ scope. This reduces incentive provisions’ net benefit to taxpayers, and can even cause such provisions to miss their marks entirely. Moreover, small and new companies are key drivers of innovation, and evidence suggests that they are relatively unresponsive to tax incentives.

Second, innovation can help improve the tax system. To fix a problem, one must first identify it; innovation provides opportunities to see where tax law is achieving its goals and where it is falling short. The sharing economy experience suggests some strengths, such as the tax system’s definition of income, as well as weaknesses, such as the dividing line between independent contractors and employees.

The false economy of sacking public servants in favour of consultants

 

It's not just the fat cats, we all pay when taxes go up - The Australian

 




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