A Tax Problem

In my travels I come across a number of items like this one.  And I am always struck by the nonchalance with which tax practitioners make statements like "Dr. Child had a tax problem in that he [is] a highly compensated medical doctor specializing in radiology."  Apparently, for a lot of people, the fact that you make a lot of money and have to pay tax on it is a "tax problem."  


Gee, I thought that, you know, working in a foreign country and having to pay tax there and in your home country (double taxation) was a tax problem.  Or losing money on an investment but because of tax accounting rules you are treated as making money - that is a tax problem.


But simply making money is not a tax problem.  And thinking that it is makes you a greedy SOB.

Booman on Palin and Reagan

Palin ≠ Reagan:

Yes, it is true that Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush gained power by "mobilizing the most retrograde elements of American society." Yet, with each succeeding generation, those retrograde elements have leeched more into the GOP gene pool and infected the leadership and even the policy shops. From down below, the footsoldiers of the Reagan Revolution see this as a good thing. No longer are a bunch of Connecticut Yankees paying lip service to their evangelicalism while they munch pork rinds and clear brush on their temporary ranch. But everyone else, on the right and the left, is appalled to see one of our two viable political parties reach the point where Dan Quayle looks absolutely statesmanlike. 

Palin and the Tea Partiers are indeed retrograde. They are only coherent in their anger and white-hot resentment. They have no foreign policy beyond 'kill-them-all-and-sort-them-out-later.' Unless, of course, they subscribe to kind of 'stopped-clock-paranoid-isolationism' of Ron Paul. They rail against government run medical care while telling us to keep our hands off their government-run (Medicare) medical care. It's an insult to Ronald Reagan to compare him to these people. 

I haven't heard a Republican make an honest and fair statement in a year now. And I mean that. I haven't seen it in any forum. Privately, and quietly, Republican policy wonks are lamenting the complete lack of seriousness in anything that the party leadership has to say about anything.. They know that the Republicans are in no condition to govern. 

And, honestly, that is the biggest threat facing this country. Bigger than the threat of terrorism or a nuclear arms race in the Middle East is the threat that the American people will tire of the Democrats and have no alternative but a bunch of Steve Kings and Michele Bachmanns with the temperament of John McCain and the foreign policy objectives of Bill Kristol. That's a recipe for the end of the world as we know it. And you know it.

 Amen to that.

Praying for the Pope

OMG.

This is the sort of thing that, as a Catholic, really makes me cringe.  I mean, come on.  Jesus was persecuted  and executed for challenging a powerful, entrenched and corrupt political and religious elite.  The pope is being accused of defending and covering up corrupt - and likely criminal - behavior by a powerful, entrenched religious elite.  The two are complete opposites.

Somehow I think that Jesus cannot be very happy with the Catholic Church right now.

Overcoming the Con

Steve Benen is absolutely correct.

But the Democrats will never be able to overcome the propaganda so long as they play nice.  And Obama, the leader of the party, seems seems to value playing nice over everything else.

Self-Indulgence

Incredibly stupid.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  The conservative elite of this country view the masses as little more than fodder whose role it is to enrich themselves.  That is the only explanation I can come up with for explaining why billions of dollars in aid to financial institutions is necessary, but health care is an "indulgence."

A Waste

This is the sort of thing that really pisses me off.  You'd be surprised how much of this stuff gets passed every day.

Home Grown Militias

Scary.

Bossier Parish is located across the Red River from Shreveport.  About the only thing there that could possibly be a terrorist target is Barksdale AFB.  I guess since a "terrorist attack" can take place at Ft. Hood in Texas, one can take place there too.

Oh, yeah, and there is the CenturyTel Center, home of the Shreveport Bossier Mudbugs of the Central Hockey League.

One shudders to think of just what these folks think they're protecting - and who are they protecting it against.

Disguising an Economic Issue as a Tax Issue

I recently was forwarded this article from the Financial Times entitled "Multinationals face gathering tax storm." It begins thus:

The once-radical idea that natural resources - and possibly foreign aid - might be more of an economic curse than a blessing has become accepted wisdom. Countries that raise their own taxes are more likely to be accountable to their citizens and promote broad economic growth, the theory goes.

So far, so uncontroversial. But the resulting drive to improve the tax-gathering capacity of developing countries has blown up into a row engulfing multinationals and their accountants.

At issue is the arcane question of how multinationals price transactions between different arms of their businesses. A formidable array of charities and campaign groups accuse them of manipulating "transfer prices" to artificially shift profits out of developing countries.

The campaigners say that hundreds of billions of pounds - far more than the inflows of aid - are being siphoned out of developing countries. In 2008 Christian Aid published a report, Death and Taxes, in which it asserted that 1,000 children were dying every day due to poverty that could be blamed on transfer pricing abuses.

The article then notes that multinational corporations (as if they have emotions) are "bemused" by these accusations.

Yes, internationally mobile capital has become more difficult to tax. Yes, they often clash with governments over transfer pricing, as illustrated this week by AstraZeneca's £505m settlement of a long-running transfer pricing dispute with the British government.

In franker moments, they admit to shifting profits from high tax countries to low tax ones. But they see the idea that they shift profits out of developing countries to developed ones as fundamentally misconceived. Businesses have no incentive to do this because developing countries are themselves low tax jurisdictions.

But who says the issue is tax avoidance through transfer pricing abuses?  

The article notes that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Accounting Standards Board are considering proposals which might require country-by-country disclosure of financial results by multinational corporations.  The article just assumes that the reason for this is tax avoidance, and quotes in the article from corporate executives address that question.  But tax avoidance is not the reason for the campaign.  The focus of the complaints is that multinationals are siphoning excessive profits through sweetheart deals with the governing elites in the developing countries involved.

The campaigners are unimpressed. They want chapter and verse, enforced by a full international financial reporting standard for all multinationals. It is not just a matter of putting pressure on multinationals. They also want to hold to account the developing country governments that do sweetheart deals with favoured companies.

So why does the Financial Times turn an issue of exploiting developing countries into an "arcane tax issue"?

Do you really need an answer to that question?


UPDATE:  It should be made clear that many participants in the "campaign" described in the article are also very concerned about modernizing the tax systems of developing countries.  But the goal of these efforts is again to prevent these countries from being looted by corrupt tax systems that are easily manipulated by local elites and multinational corporations.  The issue here is corruption - not arcane tax policy.

The Toyota Thing

I always suspected that there was a lot more (or less) to this than meets the eye.  But there's nothing like making our Japanese friends bow to us.  Good for the soul.