Tax Chats

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff are joined by Brian Mittendorf from THE Ohio State University to discuss not-for-profit entities. We discuss the recent creation of Horns with Heart, a not-for-profit entity recently created to pursue charitable causes using the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) of offensive lineman for the University of Texas football team. If this arrangement proves to be legitimate...

Send us Fan Mail Jeff describes what taxes have to do with Christmas. Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem to be taxed (or maybe to be counted, so they could be taxed). 

Send us Fan Mail Away to pay Taxes (to the tune of Away in the Manger) 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 Joseph They affect you and me When we give birth and w...

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss the OECD's Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project with Tom Neubig, a former Economist with the OECD. We answer basic questions about the OECD, BEPS, Pillar One and Pillar Two, which includes the proposed global minimum tax. The project is designed to stop the "race to the bottom" and to prevent large multinational companies from shift...

Send us Fan Mail Scott describes why it is so difficult to tax giant multinational companies.

Send us Fan Mail In a recent episode of Tax Chats, Scott and Jeff had a little disagreement over a potential downside of tax loss harvesting. In this short, Jeff summarizes his argument that in tax loss harvesting, you should not delude yourself into thinking there is something special about the stock you hold.  You should not decide not to tax loss harvest because you might miss out on a stock go...

Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott discuss how to legally reduce or avoid paying capital gains taxes. We use Satya Nadella's recent sale of half his stake in Microsoft as an example. To reduce the capital gains tax burden, one can: Change the timing of capital gain income sell before a new tax is imposed, or after an old tax is retired wait to sell until capital gain becomes "long term,&quo...

Send us Fan Mail Scott discusses whether domestic companies pay more tax than multinational companies. The episode addresses a commonly held belief that domestic firms are at a tax-based cost disadvantage. An example would be this Op-Ed, published by Bloomberg .  

Send us Fan Mail Jeff explains how it should never be the goal to pay nothing in taxes, but, rather, as far as your financial life goes, to maximize your after-tax income.

Send us Fan Mail We discuss "scoring" with Brigham Young University Professor John Barrick. Scoring is the process used to determine how much revenue a tax bill will generate, or how much revenue a spending bill will consume. Scoring is a major part of every tax bill, including the Biden's Build Back Better plan. For example, the most current scoring of the BBB can be found here . ...

Send us Fan Mail Scott discusses the common narrative that most large publicly traded companies pay very low or no income tax. 

Send us Fan Mail Jeff talks about fair taxes. People always say they want a fair tax system, or that they want people to pay their fair share. What would a fair tax system look like?

Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott discuss a recent report released by Senator Elizabeth Warren's office entitled "Tax Dodgers: How Billionaire Corporations Avoid Paying Taxes and How to Fix It" available here .  We discuss the weaknesses in the report, including the language to describe tax avoidance, and the facts underlying the data in the report. We describe how the report does not...

Send us Fan Mail Scott discusses how much tax millionaires pay. Millionaires and Billionaires are often used in the same way to describe someone who is rich. But the taxes levied on the typical millionaire are vastly different than the taxes levied on many Billionaires. 

Send us Fan Mail Jeff discusses wealth and income tax rates. We are used to thinking of tax rates on income. How do we think about tax rates on wealth? Luckily, there is an easy way to convert a wealth tax rate into an income tax rate, and, the result may surprise you.

Send us Fan Mail We discuss tax issues related to stock options. The discussion is related to Elon Musk's recent infamous twitter poll , in which he asked his followers if he should sell some of his shares in Tesla. Scott buys an option in real time.  Related articles are found here:  1. CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/07/elon-musk-faces-a-15-billion-tax-bill-which-is-likely-the-real-reaso...

Send us Fan Mail Scott explains why companies have two separate accounting systems, one for reporting income to shareholders (GAAP), and one for reporting income to the IRS. He describes some pros and cons to taxing GAAP, as has been proposed by Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and others.

Send us Fan Mail Jeff describes why many billionaires don't pay any tax (or at least pay rates of tax that are far lower than millionaires). He discusses the idea of unrealized gains. 

Send us Fan Mail We discuss some of the not-so-talked-about provisions in the Build Back Better tax plan, including (but not limited to) tax credits for journalists and ebikes, credits for electric vehicles, and some of the complications that arise when trying to provide tax incentives only under specific circumstances. We discuss tax credits, refundable credits, phase outs, tax incidence, and mor...

Send us Fan Mail Scott describes how Salesforce.com used tax deductions from share-based compensation to reduce its U.S. tax bill to $0 despite reporting billions in profits to shareholders.

Send us Fan Mail Jeff briefly discusses how much tax a socially responsible firm should pay. He explains that a dollar of tax paid might translate to one fewer dollar used for other socially responsible objectives.

Send us Fan Mail We discuss the recently proposed 15% corporate minimum tax to be applied to financial accounting earnings. The idea was proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2019. At that time, we wrote several articles that were published in by various media outlets: WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-let-warren-politicize-accounting-11557089967 The Hill: https://thehill.com/opinion/financ...

Send us Fan Mail We discuss the recent proposal for a billionaire's tax. We describe the tax, discuss how it could force the very rich to pay more in tax, and the possible complications of such a tax.

Send us Fan Mail We discuss the recently proposed removal of the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes. The restriction would largely benefit wealthy or high-income taxpayers in states with relatively high tax rates (California, New York, etc.) More information can be found at www.taxchats.org