Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Adjustments: "Small Steps, Giant Leaps"

TJN has done more than any other organisation to put fiscal justice at the center of the policy agenda. Tax issues should not be left to those who want to escape taxes! Changes will come when more and more citizens of the world take ownership of these matters. TJN is a powerful force acting in this direction.
 ~ Thomas Piketty, Economist

At its dawn, every technology — like every new love — is aglow with the exhilaration of endless possibility. Its dark sides and eventual demise are unfathomable to the wildly optimistic psyche of the besotted, and besotted we invariably are with each new medium that sweeps across the landscape of culture with the forceful promise of a revolution.


'Elections shouldn't be bought': Push for donation limits to prevent corruption

'Elections shouldn’t be bought,' says former judge and other campaigners


Final count leaves Premier Berejiklian facing tougher upper house

The Berejiklian government may be forced to horse-trade with an expanded crossbench of 11 MPs after the NSW upper house results were finalised on Monday.






Their Tax Rate Is 0%

You should be jealous of Amazon, G.M. and Coors.
Theirs Tax Rate is Zilch
Harvard's Houghton Library is hosting an exhibit called "Small Steps, Giant Leaps" with artifacts from the Apollo 11 mission displayed alongside historic items like "first editions of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton"


ThorndikeJoseph Thorndike (Tax Analysts) presents 'Who Speaks for Tax Equity and Tax Fairness?' The Emergence of the Organized Tax Bar and the Dilemmas of Professional Responsibility, 81 Law & Contemp. Probs. 203 (2018) (with Ajay Mehrotra (Northwestern; American Bar Foundation)) at Duke today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Lawrence Zelenak:

During the first six decades of the 20th century, lawyers in the United States grappled with their role in stewarding the nation’s tax system. As 19th century tariffs gave way to 20th century income taxes, legal professionals found themselves at the center of a complex and momentous transformation of the American state and its fiscal underpinnings. In the early 20th century, a subset of these legal professionals came to view themselves principally as “tax lawyers,” a previously unknown category within the legal profession. This process of self-identification also involved a certain amount of organizational creativity, and during the first four decades of the century, tax lawyers organized a series of ad hoc groups within the broader American Bar Association (ABA).

ASIC doubles wealth investigations - The Australian Financial Review


Some of the parents charged with paying bribes to get their offspring into college could end up owing a lot more to the Internal Revenue Service.

IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig told the Senate Finance Committee his agency anticipates that “numerous other individuals” will be charged with criminal tax violations as a result of the investigation into alleged bribes paid to test examiners and college sports coaches to guarantee spots for students at elite U.S. universities.

The endlessly insightful and inspiring @stevenbjohnson spoke with @alanalda about collaboration, Darwin, diversity of ideas, and more

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes fBreedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. [Adopted and proclaimed by United Nations General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948]

The problem with satire is not that it mocks and belittles; that's the point. The problem is that social media has rendered it both quaint and  futile 





A Year Later, Cybercrime Groups Still Rampant on Facebook
More than 100 Facebook groups with some 300,000 members openly advertising services to support all types of cybercrime, including spam, credit card fraud and identity theft were identified. Facebook responded by deleting those groups. However, only one week later, a similar analysis led to the takedown of 74 cybercrime groups operating openly on Facebook with more than 385,000 members.


Disclosure of tax payments would make it easier to hold politicians accountable. It also would help to reduce fraud and economic inequality.