'Free Speech, Free Press, Free Society”
“On May 1, 2019 at 1:30 p.m., the Law Library of Congress will present its annual Law Day event. Join Law Librarian of Congress, Jane Sánchez, in a conversation with American Bar Association President, Bob Carlson, for a discussion on this year’s Law Day topic, “Free Speech, Free Press, Free Society.” Please register for this event via Eventbrite. The discussion will take place in Room LJ-119, located on the first floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C. In addition, a collections display featuring items from the Law Library of Congress and the Serials and Government Document Division will be open at LJ-113 from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Held annually on May 1, Law Day is a national day to celebrate the rule of law. Law Day underscores how law and the legal process contribute to the freedoms that all Americans share. Law Day also provides an opportunity to recognize the role of courts in democracy and the importance of jury service to maintaining the integrity of the courts. This program is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required but registration is highly recommended. For additional event information, please contact the Office of External Relations atlawoutreach@loc.gov.”If you can’t find something on MEdia Dragon or Google, does it even exist? When it comes to free tax-filing offerings, at least, TurboTax maker Intuit sure as hell seems to hope you think the answer is no.
TurboTax Purposely Hid Its Free Tax-Filing Page From Google Search
Dennis J. Ventry, Jr. (UC-Davis) presents Free File: A Story of Agency Capture at Georgetown today as part of its Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop Series hosted by John Brooks and Lilian Faulhaber:
The IRS Free File program and the Free File Alliance (FFA) harm taxpayers. Meanwhile, the IRS refuses to conduct any meaningful oversight over the program or FFA companies, thereby failing to protect taxpayers and exacerbating an already abusive program.Worse, Congress wants to make Free File a permanent part of the Internal Revenue Code, obligating the IRS to partner in perpetuity with FFA companies and their abusive tactics.
ProPublica, Lawmakers Just Confronted the IRS Over Tax Audits That Target the Poor:
Over the past six months, ProPublica has detailed the myriad ways the IRS has been gutted and how that has impacted its ability to do its job. In sum: The wealthy escape scrutiny while the working poor, an easier target, are audited at high rates.
This week, Congress, in two separate hearings, confronted IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig with the findings.
“How can the Congress stand by a tax-enforcement system that punishes working people and gives the wealthy a green light to cheat?” asked Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, during his opening statement on Wednesday.
Wyden was referring to a ProPublica investigation last week into the fate of the elite unit the IRS formed to keep up with the complicated tax-avoidance schemes of the wealthy. Faced with staff cuts and blowback from the wealthy and their tax representatives, the effort fumbled and was scaled way back.
Pamela Paul, editor of The New York Times Book Review, decided to downgrade her tech two years ago. “It has worked out, with paper and DVDs instead of the latest apps and gizmos…Strictly in terms of review process, our desk hasn’t changed much — because the vast majority of our editors and reviewers prefer to work in print
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George Christensen says voters don't care about his Philippines trips - and he's mostly right - The Age
Medieval Monks Were A Distracted Lot. Here’s How They Focused
It occurred to historian Jamie Kreiner that the monks she studied spent a lot of their time trying to figure out how to stay focused. And maybe their advice might be useful to the present-day world full of digital distraction. – Aeon
The IRS Free File program and the Free File Alliance (FFA) harm taxpayers. Meanwhile, the IRS refuses to conduct any meaningful oversight over the program or FFA companies, thereby failing to protect taxpayers and exacerbating an already abusive program.Worse, Congress wants to make Free File a permanent part of the Internal Revenue Code, obligating the IRS to partner in perpetuity with FFA companies and their abusive tactics. ...
Each year, I encourage my tax students to use Free File to file their federal income taxes. (I also encourage them to use CalFile, California’s truly freee-filing web-based software, for their California income tax returns and to avoid being upsold state filing services from FFA companies.) I also warn them about the upselling and forced arbitration and likely impermissible use and disclosure of their tax return information. Armed with this knowledge, they become savvy consumers of FFA companies’ purportedly free products. Also armed with this knowledge, they can report back and chronicle the abuses of the system, which they have done for years. This year was no exception. ...
Alice Abreu (Temple) & Richard Greenstein (Temple), Rebranding Tax/Increasing Diversity, 96 Denv. L. Rev. 1 (2018):
Tax gets a bad rap. It is generally thought to be coercive, burdensome, complicated, unpleasant, and boring. The annual ritual of filing tax returns underscores the taking aspect of taxation by reminding even those who receive refunds that money has been taken from them. This view of tax—that it is about taking—is not only inaccurate and incomplete, but it may have had two related, significant, deleterious, but unexamined effects. Viewing the tax system only as an instrument of taking may contribute to the creation of a tax bar that is more white and less diverse than the bar in general, and that may, in turn, contribute to the existence of a tax system that disproportionately favors the relatively non-diverse population of taxpayers at the top of the income distribution. This Article examines the first of these effects. We attempt to answer to a question that has gone unasked for far too long: Why is the tax bar so white?
Steffen Mau (Humboldt University (Berlin)), The Metric Society: On the Quantification of the Social (2019):
In today’s world, numbers are in the ascendancy. Societies dominated by star ratings, scores, likes, and lists are rapidly emerging, as data are collected on virtually every aspect of our lives. From annual university rankings, ratings agencies, and fitness tracking technologies to our credit score and health status, everything and everybody is measured and evaluated.
In this important new book, Steffen Mau offers a critical analysis of this increasingly pervasive phenomenon. While the original intention behind the drive to quantify may have been to build trust and transparency, Mau shows how metrics have in fact become a form of social conditioning. The ubiquitous language of ranking and scoring has changed profoundly our perception of value and status. What is more, through quantification, our capacity for competition and comparison has expanded significantly — we can now measure ourselves against others in practically every area. The rise of quantification has created and strengthened social hierarchies, transforming qualitative differences into quantitative inequalities that play a decisive role in shaping the life chances of individuals.
Six years after it was excoriated for allegedly targeting conservative organizations, the agency has largely given up on regulating an entire category of nonprofits. The result: More dark money gushes into the political system.
In the past decade, people, companies and unions have dispensed more than $1 billion in dark money, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The very definition of that phrase, to many critics, epitomizes the problem of shadowy political influence: Shielded by the cloak of anonymity, typically wealthy interests are permitted to pass limitless pools of cash through nonprofits to benefit candidates or political initiatives without contributing directly to campaigns.
Such spending is legal because of a massive loophole. Section 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code allows organizations to make independent expenditures on politics while concealing their donors’ names — as long as politics isn’t the organization’s “primary activity.” The Internal Revenue Service has the daunting task of trying to determine when nonprofits in that category, known colloquially as C4s, violate that vague standard.
George Yin (Virginia), 'Who Speaks for Tax Equity and Tax Fairness?': Stanley Surrey and the Tax Legislative Process:
This article examines and assesses Stanley Surrey’s view of the federal tax legislative process. One of the most influential tax professionals of the twentieth century, Surrey is likely best known for his advocacy of specific tax policy ideas. But Surrey saw legislation as the prime route for adoption of most of his ideas, and he thus focused and provided many commentaries on the tax legislative process. He drew on extensive experience with the process, serving two lengthy terms (almost 20 years) in the Treasury Department, and remaining closely involved with it throughout his academic years.
Wall Street Journal Tax Report, The Profitable Prospects of Snitching for the IRS:
These are boom times for snitches who turn in tax cheats to Uncle Sam.
The Internal Revenue Service awarded more than $312 million to tipsters last year, according to a little-noticed report released in February [Whistleblower Program Fiscal Year 2018 Annual Report to Congress]. This total far outstrips the previous record of $125 million awarded in 2012. The 2018 rewards, paid in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, were for additional collected revenue of $1.4 billion, compared with $191 million in fiscal 2017.
Alice Abreu (Temple) & Richard Greenstein (Temple), Rebranding Tax/Increasing Diversity, 96 Denv. L. Rev. 1 (2018):
Tax gets a bad rap. It is generally thought to be coercive, burdensome, complicated, unpleasant, and boring. The annual ritual of filing tax returns underscores the taking aspect of taxation by reminding even those who receive refunds that money has been taken from them. This view of tax—that it is about taking—is not only inaccurate and incomplete, but it may have had two related, significant, deleterious, but unexamined effects. Viewing the tax system only as an instrument of taking may contribute to the creation of a tax bar that is more white and less diverse than the bar in general, and that may, in turn, contribute to the existence of a tax system that disproportionately favors the relatively non-diverse population of taxpayers at the top of the income distribution. This Article examines the first of these effects. We attempt to answer to a question that has gone unasked for far too long: Why is the tax bar so white?
