If you treat life well, life is usually good to you. And I love life. There's a long-standing affair between us.
— Françoise Sagan, who died in 2004
Jeremy Bearer-Friend (George Washington) presents Should the IRS Know Your Race? The Challenge of Colorblind Tax Data, 73 Tax L. Rev. (2019), virtually at UC-Irvine today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium Series hosted by Joshua Blank, Victor Fleischer, and Omri Marian:
This Article draws from original archival sources to document a century of colorblindness in federal tax data. It traces the omission of race and ethnicity from IRS statistical publications since 1913, Joint Committee on Taxation publications since 1926, and Treasury Office of Tax Analysis publications since 1974. It shows how these omissions are exceptional relative to other areas of public policy where federal data on race and ethnicity are readily available, such as student achievement or healthcare exchange enrollments. It then evaluates the merits of colorblind tax data and argues that tax data should include race and ethnicity in order to meet goals of transparency, democracy, and equality. Colorblind tax data obscure racial inequality and prevent its remedy. Colorblind tax data also undermine the democratic accountability of tax policy. In fairness to the status quo practice of colorblindness by federal tax data institutions, this Article also considers whether the possible justifications for colorblind tax data should override principles of equality and transparency. It argues they should not.
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Why isn’t Donald Trumpeting His Foreign Policy Record?
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Universalism and means-testing Interfluidity
Less than 1% of calls to state unemployment call centers were answered, audit shows Journal-Sentinel
The Trump Tax Returns: Donald deducts $US70,000 for hair-styling
That Trump is a serious tax cheat is no surprise to DCReport readers. Four years ago, I revealed that Trump lost two income tax fraud trials. He fabricated a consulting business in 1984. It showed no revenue, yet Trump claimed more than $600,000 in deductions. He could not produce a single receipt.
Trump’s longtime tax lawyer and accountant, Jack Mitnick, testified during one of the two civil fraud trials that Trump forged the tax return. Mitnick was Trump’s witness, by the way, showing just how much chutzpah Trump has.
The forgery testimony would have justified a criminal charge. It was also part of a pattern. In 1983, New York City Mayor Ed Koch took note of Trump’s multiple sales tax frauds. The mayor said Trump belonged behind bars. One city audit of his first big project, the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan, showed Trump hid and destroyed records so he could cheat the city out of $3 million a year.
“A serious tax cheat” is how his biographer David Cay Johnston
describes Donald Trump. Johnston reports on the New York Times
investigation into the finances of the US president, revealing Trump has
previously lost two income tax fraud trials.
The richly detailed examination of Donald Trump’s taxes in the New York Times carries
two crucial but unstated messages. One is about Trump. The other about
what chumps we Americans are when it comes to our income taxes.Trump
paid no income taxes in 10 of the last 17 years while raking in as much
as $153 million in a single year.The year he ran for president he paid
just $750. He paid the same sum during his first year in the Oval
Office. That’s less than the average monthly rent paid
by Americans, which was $1,023 in 2018.That Trump is a serious tax
cheat is no surprise to DCReport readers. Four years ago, I revealed
that Trump lost two income tax fraud trials.
He fabricated a consulting business in 1984. It showed no revenue, yet
Trump claimed more than $600,000 in deductions. He could not produce a
single
Cuts to JobSeeker, Jobkeeper: out of the frying pan and into the fire
by Michael Tanner
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