Monday, December 07, 2020

How Taxpayers are Picking Up the Bill for the Destruction of Local Restaurants

 How Taxpayers are Picking Up the Bill for the Destruction of Local Restaurants Public Seminar


IN THE MAIL:  Backlash: How China’s Aggression Has Backfired.


How gambling authorities missed Crown’s criminal ties

It was the kind of news that should have spelt big trouble for James Packer’s Crown casino empire. Continue reading 


Mary Theresa Vasquez & Anthony Head, From the Texas Cotton Fields to the United States Tax Court: The Life Journey of Juan F. Vasquez(2020):

Judge VasquezThe story of the life of the first Hispanic American appointed to serve on the United States Tax Court. An educational and inspirational story of a professional career, the book is acces


Consumer Bureau to Decide Who Owns Your Financial Data

DC Report: What Should Banks, Fintechs Be Allowed to Do With All that They Know About You? – “A federal agency is gearing up to make wide-ranging policy changes on consumers’ access to their financial data. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is looking to implement the area of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act pertaining to a consumer’s rights to his or her own financial data. It is detailed in section 1033. The agency has been laying the groundwork on this move for years, from requesting information in 2016 from financial institutions to hosting a symposium earlier this year on the problems of screen scraping, a risky but common method of collecting consumer data. Now the agency, which was established by the Dodd-Frank Act, is asking for comments on this critical and controversial topic ahead of the proposed rulemaking. Unlike other regulations that affect single industries, this could be all-encompassing because the consumer data rule touches almost every market the agency covers, according to the story in American Banker…”



The True Costs of Misinformation: Producing Moral and Technical Order in a Time of Pandemonium - YouTube – Video via The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, December 3, 2020 – “It all feels like a precursor to a bad joke: What do foreign agents, white supremacists, conspiracists, snake oil salesmen, political operatives, white academics, and a disgruntled bunch of zoomers have in common? The groups have collided in a centrifuge of chaos online, where the tactics they use to hide their identities and manipulate audiences are more prevalent than ever. Social media companies are trying to patch the holes in a failing sociotechnical systems, where the problems their products have created are now shouldered by journalists, universities, and health professionals, just to name a few. What can be done to restore moral and technical order in a time of pandemonium? Joan Donovan answers these questions and more during a presentation and Q&A.”



UK banknotes worth $90 billion go 'missing' and nobody has an explanation



Discussion of Criminal Tax Issues in Oral Argument in CIC Services (12/5/20)

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court held oral argument in CIC Servs., LLC v. IRS, 925 F.3d 247 (6th Cir. 2019), reh., en banc, denied 936 F.3d 501 (2019), cert. granted 140 S. Ct. 2737 (2020), a case involving the interface of tax law and administrative law.  I discuss the oral argument on my Federal Tax Procedure Blog.  CIC Services Supreme Court Oral Argument (12/3/20), here, where I link the oral argument recording and transcript.  In the oral argument some of the discussion turned to willfulness and the difference between willfulness for tax crimes and for other types of crimes.  Readers of this blog will know that for most Title 26 tax crimes,  where an element of the crime is that the defendant act “willfully,” a very high level of intent  is required -- The intentional violation of a known legal duty.  See Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192 (1991).