Tax Chats

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...

Send us Fan Mail President Biden gave the State of the Union address last night. Scott and Jeff talk about the tax components of the address. They discuss large corporations which pay little in tax, billionaires who pay little in tax, and taxing share repurchases., and "apples and elephants comparisons."   Also, Jeff explains why it is impossible for pretty much any taxpayer, let alone t...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Scott and Jeff speak with Ryan Gurule of the FACT Coalition about the types of things companies disclose about taxes in their public filings. We talk about what is good and not so good, and we discuss some of the possible changes that might be made. We recorded this episode on November 1, 2022. Later in the year, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) ann...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff chat with Bryen Alperin about tax credit markets. It is often the case that a company that might earn a tax credit can't use it because it has insufficient income. This creates an opportunity for multilateral tax planning, wherein institutions with large tax bills partner with entities that generate tax credits to take take advantage of tax savings.

Send us Fan Mail This episode originally aired on January 15, 2022. Martin Luther King Jr. is the only person to have ever been tried for perjury with regards to state income taxes in Alabama. Jeff and Scott interview Edgar Dyer about the tax perjury trial of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960. Eddie wrote an article entitled " A Triumph of Justice in Alabama: The 1960 Perjury Trial of Martin Lut...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff chat with David Kemmerer , Co-Founder and CEO of CoinLedger . Our conversation focuses, in part, on the NFT Loss Harvestooor , which is a tool designed to allow investors to dispose of NFTs such that they can claim the tax deduction. The NFT Graveyard is the final resting place of NFTs that were once worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but are now worth essentia...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff chat with Leopoldo Parada , professor of law at University of Leeds about the inequities that Pillar II of the OECD's Inclusive Framework impose on developing countries.

Send us Fan Mail Away to Pay Taxes (to the tune of Away in the Manger) Re-release (originally released Christmas, 2021) Lyrics by Jeff Hoopes, Sung by Stacey Hoopes Oh Joseph and Mary They were there for a task They came to the city To pay their tax But as they remitted  The tax on their worth Oh Mary, a virgin She had to give birth  They went to the city By Caesa­r’s decree As taxes touched Josep...

Send us Fan Mail In honor of the fifth anniversary of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act... I Heard the Bells (of tax reform!) Sung to the tune of I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day Singing by two of Dyreng's Deductions Lyrics of Jeff Hoopes I heard the tale about the day They passed the law TCJA The rate was high our firms payed much So they were blessed by Donald’s touch The rate brought low that fa...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff chat with Daniel Hemel about the House Ways and Means Committee " Report on the Internal Revenue Service's Mandatory Audit Program " that reveals substantial information about former President Trump's tax returns. Additional information was revealed in a report by the Joint Committee on Taxation .

Send us Fan Mail The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed into law on December 22, 2017. In honor of its birth five whole years ago, we talk with the American Enterprise Institute's Kyle Pomerleau, who had a front row seat to the passage of the TCJA. 

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff chat with Daniel Hemel, Law Professor at New York University about the recently enacted excise tax on share repurchases or buybacks . Daniel has thought and written about buybacks, for example, here . We discuss buybacks, dividends, and why both progressives and conservatives might be in favor of a tax on buybacks.

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss the effect of capital gains taxes on  stock prices with Douglas A. Shackelford , former Dean of UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School.  If the capital gains tax rate increases, should stock prices go up, down, or stay the same? Its much more complicated than you might think!

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss what constitutes candy, for sales tax purposes, in North Carolina. The discussion ends with the verdict on craisins--are they candy? Scott is quizzed on other types of food and whether they are candy, and, scores a perfect 0/5.

Send us Fan Mail Todd Castagno, an equity research analyst at Morgan Stanley, responds to a list of possible ways corporations might  react  to the tax on book income recently passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.  

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff talk about Tax Foundation with CEO and President Daniel Bunn . We talk about its missions, where it gets funding, and other tax-related issues. We discuss the pro-growth agenda of the Tax Foundation and note that there could be other legitimate objective functions for a think tank.

Send us Fan Mail Tax Chats is officially one year old! In honor of this anniversery, Scott and Jeff talk through a potential rebranding of Tax Chats with a different name, then go on to discuss two tax headlines. First, they discuss windfall profits taxes on oil companies, then talk about the disclosure of Donald Trump's tax returns. Jeff also misuses the Spanish verb "recordar."

Send us Fan Mail In this episode Scott and Jeff discuss Sales Taxes with Whitney Afonso . We discuss sales tax basics, including the difference between who remits the tax and who bears the burden of the tax. We discuss the purposes of sales taxes. We discuss the regressivity of sales taxes. And we discuss how even Fancy Nancy had to deal with the unexpected pain of sales taxes in Shoe-la-la!

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we talk about the tax consequences of student loan forgiveness. Generally, debt forgiveness is treated as income, and is therefore taxable. If the Biden Administration's current plan to forgive portions of student loans comes to fruition, the forgiven amount would normally be taxable. Provisions have been made to make student loan forgiveness tax free at the f...