Tax Chats

Send us Fan Mail Nina Olsen was the National Taxpayer Advocate for the United States, a position overseeing the IRS which was created by Congress and described in the Internal Revenue Code. The National Taxpayer Advocate is responsible for overseeing more than 2,000 employees of the office of the National Taxpayer Advocate.  We discuss the responsibilities of the taxpayer advocate, the creation of...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we chat with author and historian Brady Crytzer , who recently published " The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis ". Brady also hosts " Dispatches: The Podcast of the Journal of the American Revolution " Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are publish...

Send us Fan Mail Jeff was recently asked to opine on whether Republican GOP candidate for president Vivek Ramaswamy grew up with a lot of money. Scott and Jeff dive into Vivek's tax returns for evidence. Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax C...

Send us Fan Mail The  Inflation Reduction Act extended the provision of  tax incentives for electric vehicles, but, added stipulations that these EVs be produced in North America.  Manufacturers outside of North America, including Korean auto manufacturers, had a problem--would they miss out on these subidies that their customers had previously been getting? Trade economist Chad Bown tells the sto...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff Discuss the upcoming Supreme Court case, Moore v. USA, with Jake Brooks, a professor of law at Fordham University. Jake explains that Mr. and Mrs. Moore held shares in an Indian corporation , and, as  a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, faced some $15,000 in taxes. They claim that this tax is unconstitutional, and, the case has implications for many featu...

Send us Fan Mail In honor of the first birthday of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Jeff and Scott discuss the major provisions of the IRA, and references the episodes they have recorded about these provisions. They discuss the green incentives and their changing estimated cost, and, the three major way the IRA was intended to pay for those  incentives--a tax on adjusted financial statement inco...

Send us Fan Mail The tax law allows taxpayers to trade one piece of property for another piece of property and not recognize any taxable gain. These exchanges are called like kind exchanges, and, in this episode, we chat about them with Eric Tellekamp, a managing director at BDO.

Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Jenny Williams, Tax Administrator with Chatham County, North Carolina. We discuss the ins and outs of property tax collection, including garnishing wages, repossessing assets, and foreclosing on real property. We talk about how the county manages to collect over 95% of property taxes owed. We bust a few myths about property taxes in the process. 

Send us Fan Mail We chat with  James Freeman about Filing for Freedom, a non-profit organization that helps military personal comply with the tax law by aiding in the tax return filing process. 

Send us Fan Mail Historian Ben Carp talks with us about the role of taxes in the American revolution. Among many other things, we discuss whether taxes were the only grievance the colonists had against Britain, how heavily the colonies were taxed relative to the English in England, and, most importantly, how much of a party was the Boston tea party. Ben is the author of several books, including, r...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff chat with Gary Hecimovich about the transferability of tax credits in the post-IRA world, including the markets for tax credits, and how non-profits can now take advantage of the new green energy incentives provided in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott Chat with Kelly Necessary , a Partner at FORVIS , a large public accounting firm.  We chat with Kelly about the role of automating routine tax tasks that historically have been very time consuming. We also talk about whether opening envelopes can be mechanized. 

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff chat with Joel Slemrod , Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan about tax research over the past 30 years.

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Scott and Jeff chat with Berkeley Professor of Marketing Sarah Moshary about the Pink Tax. Sarah and co-authors have written a paper that systematically examines the issue. 

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Marna Ricker , Global Vice Chair -- Tax at EY joins us from the Milken Institute Global Conference 2003 to discuss the global tax landscape. We get Marna's perspective on the OECD's Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project, the TCJA, and how AI might affect the world of tax practice.

Send us Fan Mail We chat with Morris Pearl, Chairman of the Board of Patriotic Millionaires, an organization of millionaires who, among other policy objectives, are advocating to alter the tax system so that the rich pay more in tax.

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Send us Fan Mail We chat with Silencer Central CEO Brandon Maddox about the excise tax stamp on firearm suppressors, which is a $200 federal tax introduced as part of the 1934 National Firearms Act. , which is part of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC § 5801 – 5872). We discuss the origins of the tax, its purpose, and how it is implemented today. We discuss the formation of so-called " gun trust...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff chat with Jay Zagorsky from the Questrom School of Business at Boston University about his experience trying to pay his tax bill with cash. We discuss the complexities of paying with cash, and the costs that might be incurred if one does not have access to the traditional banking system. Jay wrote about his article here: Can you pay your taxes with cash? One economi...

Send us Fan Mail Starbucks is piloting a reward program called Odyssey in which members get rewarded with NFTs. We discuss the possible tax consequences to Starbucks and its customers. We also discuss the issues surrounding taxation of NFTs in general.

Send us Fan Mail In "The Wealth of Nations",  Book V, Chapter ii, Adam Smith lays out some fundamental principles of taxation. We discuss some of those principles, and describe how they are still being applied today.

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff chat with Sir Andrew Dilnot , currently serving of Warden of Nuffield College, Oxford, about his experience evaluating bias in the BBC's coverage of tax-related topics. We discuss the complications reporters face when covering complex economic issues. We review the findings of his recent report  entitled "Review of the impartiality of BBC coverage of taxat...

Send us Fan Mail Jeff asks ChatGPT a series of tax-related questions, and Scott evaluates the answers.

Send us Fan Mail We chat with James Wetzler about the time a legislative mistake accidentally abolished the corporate tax in 1975. This leads to other discussions, including when the New York State Tax Authorities tried to impose sales tax on a kids lemonade stand, the dilemma that arose when the tax authorities seized pornographic videos from a delinquent taxpayer, and the strange situation where...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff chat with Evelyn Smith and Hadi Elzayn, two of the seven coauthors on a recent working paper entitled " Measuring and Mitigating Racial Disparities in Tax Audits ." We ask them details about the paper. We find that the unconditional audit disparity between (estimated) black tax payers and (estimated) non-black taxpayers  is about 5%. We ask about the condi...