Friday, February 07, 2020

Bloomberg: Truth decay: when uncertainty is weaponized

Bloomberg (2020)Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire presidential hopeful, is including more new taxes in his plan than his moderate rival Joe Biden but less than Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.
Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York unveiled a plan on Saturday that would raise an estimated $5 trillion in new tax revenue from high earners and corporations, a proposal that would almost certainly raise his personal tax bill but is less aggressive than those from his most liberal rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The proposal includes a repeal of President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for high earners, along with a new 5 percent “surcharge” on incomes above $5 million per year. It would raise capital gains taxes for Americans earning more than $1 million a year and maintain a limit on federal deductions of state and local tax payments set under the 2017 law, which some Democrats have pushed to eliminate.

APPARENTLY, HE ACTUALLY IS DEAD, JUST A BIT LATER THAN THE INITIAL REPORT: The Coronavirus Whistleblower Who Gave His Life.

 

What should I ask Ross Douthat?


Here is my first CWT with him, I will be doing another, based in part around Ross’s new book The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, reviewed by me enthusiastically here.  So what should I ask him?

Sadness And Worry After 2 Men Connected To Butterfly Sanctuary Are Found Dead NPR
Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior PNAS
How McKinsey Destroyed the Middle Class The Atlantic
Urban Institute: Thirty percent of student debtors are enrolled in Income-driven repayment plans Condemned to Debt

 Truth decay: when uncertainty is weaponized Nature


Dutch court rules AI benefits fraud detection system violates EU human rights

A Dutch court has demanded that an algorithm-based system used by the government to identify and track down potential housing and benefit cheats is dropped with immediate effect. 



Imperiled information: Students find website data leaks pose greater risks than most people realize Harvard School of Engineering.
[I]n less than 10 seconds she produced a dataset with more than 1,000 people who have high net worth, are married, have children, and also have a username or password on a cheating website. Another query pulled up a list of senior-level politicians, revealing the credit scores, phone numbers, and addresses of three U.S. senators, three U.S. representatives, the mayor of Washington, D.C., and a Cabinet member.
Researcher: Backdoor mechanism still active in devices using HiSilicon chips ZDnet. Read all the way to the end.


Government was warned robodebt scheme was unlawful – but won't say when 
 Emails between senior tax office officials reveal advice came on the same day the government announced it was overhauling the scheme

  Anatomy of a rental phishing scam Jeffrey Ladish

Yuskavage Presents Professional Tax Preparers Reduce Tax Compliance Today At Georgetown

Alex Yuskavage (Office of Tax Analysis, U.S. Treasury Department) presents Seeking Professional Advice: The Effects of Tax Preparers on Compliance (with Jason DeBacker (South Carolina), Bradley Heim (Indiana) & Anh Tran (Indiana)) at Georgetown today as part of its Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop Series hosted by John Brooks and Brian Galle:
Georgetown (2016)Professional and legal advisors, such tax preparers and lawyers, are expected to help clients to better understand and comply with the law. We test this expectation in the context of tax compliance, using data from IRS random audits. We exploit the diffusions of tax preparation services within a ZIP code and workplace as plausibly exogenous instruments for the taxpayers’ decision to adopt the preparation service. Contrary to the expectation, we find that professional tax preparers reduce tax compliance.
On average, tax returns that were filed with a professional preparer have audit adjustments that are roughly $3,100 larger than similar self-prepared returns. However, we find preparers under the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) programs actually increase tax compliance. This indicates different motivations of professional advisors may lead to opposite effects in compliance.

Ring Presents Falling Short In The Data Age Today At Toronto

Diane Ring (Boston College) presents Falling Short in the Data Age (with Shu-Yi Oei (Boston College)) at Toronto today as part of its James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop Series:
Ring (2017)Humans are imperfect and do not always comply with the law, but the reality is that we are sometimes permitted to fall short of law’s requirements without consequences. This informal space to fall short and not be held accountable—which may arise from a confluence of information imperfections, resource constraints, politics, or luck—exists in addition to formal legal provisions that allow flexibility and discretion (such as tiered penalties or equitable provisions allowing leniency under specified circumstances). Fall-short spaces often pass unnoticed, but are in fact quite significant in intermediating the relationship between humans and the law.
This Article examines how the increasing access to data and information will change the availability and shape of law’s fall-short spaces. We introduce a taxonomy of how leeway arises, outlining the reasons it exists and the different ways it is deployed. Applying this taxonomy, we show how increasingly ubiquitous data and information have caused and will continue to cause the availability of leeway to contract, and we highlight the risk that we will see disparate contraction for different populations


Inside the files that reveal alleged identity takeover of more than 100 Australians


Adam Jones has been charged over an $11 million cyber fraud in which he allegedly obtained the financial profiles and identities of more than 100 people.

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