Senate Holds Hearing Today On Creating Opportunity Through A Fairer Tax System

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In the 1930s and 1940s, there was a lively conversation among economists about the theoretical possibility of "full unemployment"

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The HMRC progresses its ten year tax reform strategy on how law, administration, and simplification could make a “…better experience for individuals and organisations…opportunities to further reduce the tax gap…greater resilience and responsiveness…”.

Tax Data Management

The Senate Finance Committee's Subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth holds a hearing today on Creating Opportunity Through a Fairer Tax System at 2:30 PM ET (live video here):

• Abigail E. Disney (CEO & Co-founder, Fork Films, New York, NY)
• Cheryl Straughter (Owner, Soleil, Boston, MA)
• David Gamage (Professor, Indiana University, Maurer School of Law)
  Creating Opportunity Through a Fairer Tax System: The Case for Taxing Extreme Wealth Holdings and “Real” (Book) Corporate Profits and for Improving IRS Funding:
  I am primarily devoting this written testimony to discussing the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act of 2021 and the broader case for levying a federal tax on extreme wealth holdings. As is well known, both wealth and income inequality have exploded over recent decades, with the gains from economic growth disproportionately going to the richest Americans. Meanwhile, as I will explain, our tax system is broken as applied to the ultra-wealthy, with many harmful consequences. A new federal tax on extreme wealth holdings, like the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, should be a central component of reforms for fixing this disgraceful state of affairs.
  Secondarily, I will more briefly write in support of both the Real Corporate Profits Tax Act of 2021 and proposals for improving IRS funding and for making it and other tax enforcement funding less dependent on the annual appropriations process. All of these proposals go together as reforms for raising revenues needed for public investment while helping to fix some of the ways in which our tax system is currently broken and easily exploited by tax gaming by ultra-wealthy individuals and families and by large corporations. For the reasons I will explain, I strongly support all of these reform proposals.

• Scott A. Hodge (President, Tax Foundation)
• Jeff Hoopes (Professor, University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flagler Business School)
• Kyle Pomerleau (Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute)
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OECD on Data

God and Laughter:

Wall Street Journal op-ed:  God Is in the Punch Line, by Mike Kerrigan (Hunton Andrews Kurth, Charlotte, NC):

G.K. Chesterton closed out Orthodoxy, his 1908 masterpiece of Christian apologetics, with a radical thought. He proposed that the one thing too great for God to have shown us when he walked on the earth was his mirth. This suggests that the idea of a blissfulness we can’t even imagine was important to Chesterton. The mere possibility it’s true, that one thing our mortal minds can’t begin to fathom about God’s nature is his joyousness, offers me consolation beyond measure.

Steve Wilkens (Azusa Pacific), What's So Funny About God?: A Theological Look at Humor(2019)

Deborah L. Borman (Arkansas-Little Rock), 'You Should Smile More,' Academic Catcalling, and Women-on-Women Crimes, 65 Vill. L. Rev. 1065 (2020):

Within the legal academy women “catcall” other women in an attempt to control the emotions of colleagues.