Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Inside TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free

Inside TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free ProPublica – Using lobbying, the revolving door and “dark pattern” customer tricks, Intuit fended off the government’s attempts to make tax filing free and easy, and created its multi-billion-dollar franchise.
“…Intuit’s QuickBooks accounting product remains a steady moneymaker, but in the past two decades TurboTax, its tax preparation product, has driven the company’s steadily growing profits and made it a Wall Street phenom. When Smith took over in 2008, TurboTax was a market leader, but only a small portion of Americans filed their taxes online. By 2019, nearly 40% of U.S. taxpayers filed online and some 40 million of them did so with TurboTax, far more than with any other product. But the success of TurboTax rests on a shaky foundation, one that could collapse overnight if the U.S. government did what most wealthy countries did long ago and made tax filing simple and free for most citizens…


Manhattan Institute, Issues 2020: Taxing the “Rich” Won’t Pay for Politicians’ Promises


The carousel of VAT abuse: Dozens arrested in connection with multi-million tax evasion schemes


This month, authorities from Europe and beyond have intensified their efforts to crack down on tax evasion.
 



The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) strongly disagrees with the allegation by the ‘Your Right to Know’ coalition of media outlets saying, “The Tax Office can take money directly out of people’s accounts but you’re not allowed to know”.



Mr Kent Nguyen was found to have unlawfully created, operated and benefited from a fraudulent self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) named Tot Form Super Fund. The fund did not comply with the relevant protocol, procedures and requirements of superannuation legislation to make it a legal SMSF.

Between 2007 and 2009, Mr Nguyen used the fund to arrange the unlawful early release of superannuation funds for a number of people in the community. Many of the people were in financial trouble and were approached by friends who told them ‘they knew someone’ who could help.

In each of the 25 cases, the individual’s super balance that was held within a retail superannuation fund was rolled over to Tot Form Super Fund, with the total amount of funds unlawfully withdrawn exceeding $700,000. Mr Nguyen retained a significant portion of this amount telling his clients that the money had been paid to the ATO as tax.

ATO Assistant Commissioner Ian Read said the sentence handed down today demonstrates that promoters who encourage illegal early access to superannuation will be held accountable.


UK government pays millions to firms that use tax havens

UK - Almost three-quarters of companies who have been given major government contracts have operations based in tax havens, according to a new report. Value Added, published on Sunday by the thinktank Demos, reveals that 25 of the government’s 34 strategic suppliers – organisations that receive £100m or more in revenue from the government – operate in offshore centres.


Daniel Hemel (Chicago) & David A. Weisbach (Chicago), The Behavioral Elasticity of Tax Revenue:

This article presents a new measure of the efficiency consequences of tax policies and explains how this new measure can shed light on a wide range of tax law debates. We build upon the “elasticity of taxable income” approach pioneered by public finance scholars over the last quarter century and extend that approach to address complex tax systems with multiple rates, multiple bases, and administrative and compliance costs. The resulting measure — the behavioral elasticity of taxable income, or BETR — captures the change in real resources available to society caused by any marginal change in tax rates, the tax base, or tax enforcement. We argue that the BETR can serve as a guide to a wide range of tax policy issues, and we illustrate the BETR’s utility by applying it to questions such as the proper treatment of mixed personal/business expenses, the appropriate aggressiveness of efforts to address tax shelters, and the optimal mix of audits, recordkeeping and reporting requirements, and penalties.


paul lynch from www.liverpoolchampion.com.au

Just returned to office again, Paul Lynch reflects on life as an MP.



10 Free Internet TV Channels You Can Watch Online - MakeUseOf.com: “We all know about the various streaming services that let you watch live TV. But what about standalone TV channels? Is it possible to watch free internet TV channels from around the world? In this article we’ll help you find the best free TV channels on the web. Every channel on the list has a legal source, which means you’re not going to get in trouble with your ISP or the law




Comey 2Former FBI Director James Comey’s visit to UNLV last month for a moderated discussion with former Gov. Brian Sandoval, book signing and dinner with up to two dozen “VIPs” cost the university’s law school $54,000, according to records obtained by The Nevada Independent.

According to a contract between the university and a booking agency representing Comey, the former FBI director’s September 24 visit to UNLV and speech to the university, “The Ethical Leader,” cost the university’s law school a pretty penny, but a spokeswoman for the university said that all costs were paid by a donor and that Comey reduced his normal speaking fee for the event.