Thursday, October 18, 2018

Who killed reform? Give and Take: The Citizen-Taxpayer

“The law's the law, but people are people.” 
  M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans    

Interviews with people born in the 1820s
The government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.


Kim Jong-un's Rolls-Royce shows sanctions are 'a bit of a joke'


North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may be under international sanctions - but that did not stop him turning up for a meeting in a brand new Rolls-Royce.


‘I had a moral duty’: whistleblowers on why they spoke up The Guardian



A black dog stalks the public service
CRISIS IN CONFIDENCE: Alarming new research for the IPAA National Conference has revealed the black dog stalking the public services of Australia as their unique professional obligations are afforded less respect than in the past.

Minister reveals ‘personal relationship’ with dept head, both step aside
TASMANIA: The secretary of the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, John Whittington, could face an investigation over a “personal relationship” with the minister, Sarah Courtney.

Using AI to support better government decision-making
TECHNOLOGY: How do you generate useful analytic insights using artificial intelligence to support decision-making for government?


The future of regulation: principles for regulating emerging technologies
  Sweeping technological advancements are creating a sea of change in today’s regulatory environment, posing significant challenges for regulators who strive to maintain a balance between fostering innovation, protecting consumers, and addressing the potential unintended consequences of disruption.
  Challenges emerging technologies present to traditional regulatory models, ranges from coordination problems to regulatory silos to the sheer volume of outdated rules.
 Below is Deloitte’s set of principles for the future of regulation
 Adaptive regulation: shift from regulate and forget to a responsive iterative approach
  Regulatory sandboxes: prototype and test new approaches by creating sandboxes and accelerators  Outcome based regulation: focus on results and performance rather than form
 Risk weighted regulation: shift from one-size-fits-all regulation to a data driven, segmented approach
 Collaborative regulation: align regulation nationally and internationally by engaging a broader set of players across the ecosystem. Source: Deloitte, Principles for regulating emerging technologies


Anthony C. Infanti (Pittsburgh), Our Selfish Tax Laws: Toward Tax Reform That Mirrors Our Better Selves (MIT Press 2018):
Most of us think of tax as a pocketbook issue: how much we owe, how much we'll get back, how much we can deduct. In Our Selfish Tax Laws, Anthony Infanti takes a broader view, considering not just how taxes affect us individually but how the tax system reflects our culture and society. He finds that American tax laws validate and benefit those who already possess power and privilege while starkly reflecting the lines of difference and discrimination in American society based on race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, immigration status, and disability. Infanti argues that instead of focusing our tax reform discussions on which loopholes to close or which deductions to allow, we should consider how to make our tax system reflect American ideals of inclusivity rather than institutionalizing exclusion.

Shirley Tillotson (Dalhousie University) presents Give and Take: The Citizen-Taxpayer and the Rise of Canadian Democracy (University of British Columbia Press at Toronto today as part of its James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop Series:
Can a book about tax history be a page-turner? You wouldn’t think so. But Give and Take is full of surprises. A Canadian millionaire who embraced the new federal income tax in 1917. A socialist hero, J.S. Woodsworth, who deplored the burden of big government. Most surprising of all, Give and Take reveals that taxes deliver something more than armies and schools. They build democracy.
 Wall Street Journal, IRS Internal Watchdog Faults Vigilance on Nonprofits' Political Activities:
The IRS is still struggling with its role policing nonprofit groups’ political activities, the tax agency's inspector general said in a new report [Review of the Processing of Referrals Alleging Impermissible Political Activity by Tax-Exempt Organizations (2019-10-006) (Oct. 4, 2018)].

Who killed reform?  I know who Hacking Jim Did ...
GARNAUT vs COSTELLO: The age of reform is apparently dead, but there isn’t much agreement about who killed it.


Where to for the Australian Public Service
PETER WOOLCOTT: The APS needs to become more politically astute in its advice to ministers, the commissioner says in his first major address.


Jack Handey once observed "It's funny that pirates were always going around searching for treasure, and they never realized that the real treasure was the fond memories they were creating. . ."

Article on the Klein/Defraud Conspiracy Deployed by the Special Counsel Against Russian Targets 




Swiss Dispute Sharing Data with U.S. 



Swiss-US tax data transfer method 'violates law' (SWI swissinfo 10/7/18), here.  The article is short. 


France Take UBS to Court on Cross-Border Evasion for French Taxpayers 



The much anticipated French trial of UBS for its cross-border tax evasion scheme for the French has started.  Cross-border evasion is basically the same as U.S. offshore evasion through Swiss banks.  Here are some articles and excerpts:

Inti Landauro and Emmanuel Jarry, Swiss bank UBS on trial in France over alleged tax fraud(Reuters 10/8/18)here.  Excerpts:




Harvard Political Review – October 8, 2018: “The musty scent of old paperback. The groan of a creaky, carpeted floor. The sight of endless shelves filled with unread volumes. But when one steps through the marble columns into the Reading Room of Harvard’s flagship Widener Library today, they find a very different scene. Rows of tables host students consumed by laptops, not encyclopedias. Librarians clack across the oak floor to answer questions on how to access databases, not to retrieve documents. The traditional library experience now seems to be a thing of the past. While the American foray into the digital age would lead many to classify libraries as obsolete, the continued — if not heightened — importance of the library’s core mission to provide knowledge, as well as new skills of librarians and changes to the design of libraries, make them relevant in our changed world. Their continued evolution will be essential to the future of scholarship and citizenship…”

Krebs on Security: “Most of us have been trained to be wary of clicking on links and attachments that arrive in emails unexpected, but it’s easy to forget scam artists are constantly dreaming up innovations that put a new shine on old-fashioned telephone-based phishing scams. Think you’re too smart to fall for one? Think again: Even technology experts are getting taken in by some of the more recent schemes (or very nearly







Web scraping: How to harvest data for  untold stories