Tax Chats

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss a program called Tax Inspectors Without Borders with Rusudan Kemularia, Head of Tax Inspectors Without Borders. The program is part of the OECD and is connected with the OECD's BEPS as part of an effort to help provide developing countries with the tools necessary to enforce tax laws in the complex international tax arena.

Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott discuss some interesting tax-related observations Jeff made while visiting Oxford University and Mannheim University in England and Germany.

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss the $80 billion in additional funding that has been allocated to the IRS as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. They also discuss the fact that the IRS owns and uses a variety of guns, ammunition, etc. They break down some of the fear-mongering headlines that have recently been in the press.

Send us Fan Mail In this special episode, we compile several recordings that we have made over the past year related to the proposed alternative minimum tax on financial accounting earnings. The recordings are very much related to two op-ed articles Scott published in the Wall Street Journal, found here: Don’t Let Warren Politicize Accounting - WSJ Elizabeth Warren’s War on Accounting - WSJ Jeff h...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss "carried interest" with Vic Fleischer , Professor of Law at UC Irvine. Carried interest is a special type of income that is taxed at favored capital gains tax rates, and is often associated with high earning individuals who manage private equity partnerships. One prominent example of someone who had significant income from carried interest was form...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff learn from Ashley Jackson how the Taliban create a tax. We discuss how the tax system evolved initially to generate revenue to fund the Taliban objectives, until it became a symbol of its legitimacy. We talk about how the tax system evolved from a system of forced extractions to the point where customer support numbers became available to report mistreatment.

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss the creation of schedule M3 with Lillian Mills , Dean of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Lil was instrumental in the creation of schedule M-3, which is form filed with the IRS that reconciles taxable income to financial accounting income.  We talk about the opportunities that exist for academics, policymakers, and regulat...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss some of the prominent arguments against progressive taxation.

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss the tax status of churches in the U.S. with Lloyd Mayer, Professor of Law at Notre Dame University.  We discuss the basics of tax law as it pertains to Churches. We also discuss special tax benefits that apply to ministers and other church employees. We consider the tradeoffs that exist between providing churches with tax benefits and relying on them to prov...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff ask Andy Grewal to describe administrative law, and why it is so important for taxes. We discuss how significant portions of tax laws are left to interpretation by the IRS or Treasury, and how these interpretations can have a material effect on the experience of taxpayers.

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss income shifting by multinational corporations with Jennifer Blouin. We talk about Jennifer's research that suggests some estimates of the amount of tax revenue the U.S. loses to income shifting are as much as ten times too large. These estimates are important because they drive policy discussions, including debates in the U.S. about tax reform, and abro...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss the effects the tax rate has on how much taxes are raised with Professor Arthur Laffer,  for whom the Laffer Curve is named. The Laffer Curve shows the likely relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. We hear the famous story of drawing the curve on a napkin . We ask  Professor Laffer about the Laffer Curve, and we get his opinion on the revenue maximi...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff are joined by Rita de la Feria @delaFeriaR to discuss her new paper (co-authored with Maria Amparo Grau Ruiz) called " Taxing Robots ".  The abstract of her paper reads in part:  "In recent years, the idea of taxing robots has been progressively gaining momentum. The potential impact of automation on employment, and consequently on income tax revenues...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss whether the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was effective. Often referred to as the Trump tax cuts, or the Trump Tax Reform, recent commentators have argued that it was highly effective. For example, Tyler Goodspeed and Kevin Hassett argued in the Wall Street Journal the TCJA "delivered as promised" by increasing investment, wages, and government reve...

Send us Fan Mail Scott, Jeff, and Paul Kiel discuss the series of articles published by ProPublica based on a massive leak of private tax return data on the wealthiest individuals in the United States. The series of articles can be found here: https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files . We ask about privacy, transparency, tone, influence, leaked data, and more.

Send us Fan Mail Jeff explains why quarters have ridges, and what it has to do with taxes and inflation.

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss the idea of carryover basis with Kathleen Thomas. Currently, when someone dies with appreciated capital gains, they get a step-up in basis, meaning their estate pays no taxes on their accumulated gains. The downside is they have to die. An alternative would be to carryover the basis the the person who died had, which would make many tax planning strategies m...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss Biden's proposed Mega Millionaire Minimum Tax with David Gamage, one of the thought-leaders behind the proposal and its variations. We discuss the basics of what the minimum tax might look like. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this type of tax. The tax is intended to force very wealthy individuals like Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg to pay mor...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss progressive taxation. While most agree progressive taxation is desirable, there is less agreement about how much progressivity is desirable, what it even is, and if our current tax system is progressive.  Scott and Jeff tackle these issues by asking each other questions about taxes on income, property taxes, taxes on cigarettes, and other scenarios. They con...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss the reasons a corporate tax makes sense. The answers might surprise you. Among the least compelling arguments: corporations have a lot of income, corporations use infrastructure, corporations have special legal status. Among the most compelling arguments: corporations make efficient collection agents, corporations have cash, and taxing corporations allows th...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss Crypto taxes with Tyler Menzer, PhD student at the University of Iowa studying the tax implications of Crypto currency in the marketplace. We briefly discuss some of the basics, but, also discuss slightly more complicated crypto issues like airdrops and staking.

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff talk with Rich Prisinzano of the Penn Wharton Budget Model about revenue scoring. Scott, Jeff and Rich discuss topics such as how precise revenue scores are, how private revenue scores are different from those provided by the government, how politicians might use private revenue scorers to get the best "price" for a piece of tax legislation, etc. They end...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss tax justice with Amy Hanauer, Executive Director of Citizens for Tax Justice and its sister organization, ITEP (Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy). We ask Amy what a fair tax system would look like. We discuss problems with the current tax system. We touch on methods the government uses to redistribute income, like the earned income tax credit and th...

Send us Fan Mail Jeff explains how some non-profits owe income taxes on the unrelated business income, but, how because of the mission of the Girls Scouts, they don't pay taxes on the proceeds from the cookies sales.

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Scott and Jeff discuss why financial accounting rules and tax accounting rules are different. They give some examples. They talk about some firms that have reported very high income while also paying very low taxes. They also talk about how the opposite happens, but doesn't get much media attention.