- L.A. County assessor, though in jail, will keep drawing $197K salary plus raise [LAT]
- IRS lowers the regulatory boom on tax preparers [Institute for Justice video, auto-plays]
- On Wal-Mart Mexico bribery, NYT has a bit of a blind eye of its own [Stoll; earlier here, here, etc.]
- Another painful CPSIA regulation: CPSC on testing “representative samples” [Nancy Nord]
- “Popcorn lung” couple “won a $20 million judgment. Now, they’re broke.” [ABC]
- From Todd Zywicki: Libertarianism, Law and Economics, and the Common Law [SSRN via Bainbridge]
- If the courts disapprove of throttling internet speeds, what do they think of throttling class action claims redemption rates? [Ted Frank]
Posts tagged as:
taxes
According to the retailers group [Illinois Retail Merchants Association], Mr. [Stephen] Diamond’s Chicago law firm, Schad Diamond & Shedden P.C., has filed no fewer than 238 lawsuits in recent years against retailers small and large, which in its view failed to collect said shipping-and-handling sales taxes. Since the suits have been filed under a “whistle-blower” section of law, the firm is entitled to as much as 30 percent of any recovered taxes as well as attorneys’ fees for its trouble. And because it’s often easier and cheaper for defendants to settle rather than continue to fight, Schad Diamond reportedly has pocketed millions of dollars.
The office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan says the whistleblower provisions were intended for use by insiders disclosing misconduct rather than by outsiders, while “Illinois Revenue Director Brian Hamer says [the wave of suits] ‘has given Illinois a black eye’ and victimizes those who have made only an ‘inadvertent’ mistake.” [Greg Hinz, Crain's Chicago Business]
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Taking advantage of the media bubble arising from the announced shutdown of Hostess snack-cake operations, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is back with a bill proposing to deny the deduction as ordinary business expenses of money spent advertising kids’ snacks. Kay Bell and Kelly Phillips Erb apply deserved ridicule (via Paul Caron/TaxProf).
Plus: Baylen Linnekin on Denmark’s planned repeal of a pioneering fat tax (earlier) and the rejection by voters in two California cities of soda taxes.
Paul Caron, TaxProf, on one of the more closely watched tax rulings. Earlier here.
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- Forfeiture: “Defend the Right to Carry Cash and Travel Unmolested” [Eapen Thampy, Agitator]
- Recent Japanese racketeering law, unlike our RICO, actually focuses on organized crime [Adelstein]
- Sheriff’s flack to Fiona Apple: shut up and sing [Ken at Popehat]
- Jimenez case: 99-year sentence, “substantial likelihood defendant was not guilty of this offense” [Jacob Sullum]
- Conrad Black continues to speak out on barbarities of “prosecutocracy” [NY Sun]
- “Are whistle-blowers the new IRS business model?” [Victor Fleischer, NYT DealBook]
- “Minnesota Farmer Found ‘Not Guilty’ in Raw Milk Case” [Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason]
- Utah man shoots neighbor he thinks “telepathically raped” his wife, is ruled mentally fit for trial [CBS]
At Prawfsblawg, Paul Horwitz, Rick Garnett and others have a discussion of claims (typified here and here) that it’s oppressive not to let churches electioneer with tax-deductible funds. Other views: Religion News Service/HuffPo, Bloomberg editorial, Stephen Colbert via TaxProf (to an IRS-defying pastor: “Other people have to use after-tax money for their political speech, but you guys get to use pre-tax money for political speech.”) Or is the better answer to liberate both secular and religious 501(c)(3)s to express election views, with the possible result of enabling political donors generally to take a tax deduction on money spent to promote their preferred candidates and causes?
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By ratting on his employer and clients, the UBS informant greatly advanced Washington’s project of preventing Americans from squirreling assets out of reach of the U.S. tax and legal systems. So it’s no surprise that few in the federal establishment — even among longtime critics of what they deem excessive executive compensation — begrudge him the whopping payout. Among his defenders, of course, is Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, patron of the whistleblower program: “Need we add that Mr. Grassley’s longtime aide, who actually drafted the whistleblower law, now represents Mr. Birkenfeld and stands to collect an interesting percentage of the award Mr. Grassley so obligingly applauds? If one were rich, if one had a sense of history, one might well wish to move a part of one’s nest egg out of the way of Mr. Grassley and his ilk.” [Holman Jenkins, WSJ]
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Quite a lot of tax money is at stake: New York is seeking more than $400,000 in back taxes and penalties from one establishment alone. But the broad construction of artistic expression that judges understandably apply in censorship cases under the First Amendment need not carry over to a less constitutionally fraught area such as the application of tax categories. “Can we get past the idea that somehow this is the Bolshoi?” asked one judge. [Naomi Schaefer Riley, New York Post, quotes me]
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Yes, you do have to submit to tax withholding on that back and front pay award, says the Second Circuit [Daniel Schwartz]
- New York plaintiff wanders the South looking for ATMs out of compliance with federal fee sticker regulation [Kevin Funnell, Bank Lawyers' Blog, earlier]
- In the mail: Stephen Bainbridge, “Corporate Governance After the Financial Crisis” (Oxford, 2012), with blurb from NYT “Deal Professor” Steven Davidoff: “an important book for those seeking to understand the theoretical and practical implications of Dodd-Frank, Sarbanes-Oxley, and the federal government’s foray into corporate regulation.”
- American lawprof understandably unpopular trying to defend FATCA to the Swiss [TaxProf, earlier here, etc.]
- Bank is trustee for mortgage holders, says loan servicers are responsible: “LA Files Big-Bucks Suit Against ‘Slumlord’ US Bank, Blames Lender for Condition of Foreclosed Homes” [ABA Journal]
- “Swiss Banks Face ‘Slow Death’ As Foreign Powers Chase Undeclared Assets” [Giles Broom, Bloomberg/Business Insider]
- “A comprehensive list of hyperinflations in history” [Steve Hanke/Nicholas Krus, PDF, via Ian Vasquez, Cato]
- Warning: regs could “wipe out community banking industry by end of this decade” [Cam Fine, ICBA via Iain Murray]
My new post at Cato: “It’s as if the lawmakers in Annapolis didn’t realize that boats are mobile. I wish someone could have explained that to them.” ["Chesapeake Prosperity Sunk By Boat Tax"]
P.S. Not unrelated, Bloomberg video profiling Cherubini firm discusses ill-fated 1990 federal luxury boat tax, repealed after two years, which badly hurt U.S. boat builders by driving buyers abroad (via Chris Fountain).
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If a private creditor failed to follow the law in 22 percent of its collections, I wonder whether its compliance lawyers would start to feel nervous. [Caron/TaxProf]
- Town of Gold Bar, Wash. (pop. 2,100) brought to brink of bankruptcy by multiple lawsuits following political feuds; “We are going broke winning lawsuits,” says mayor [Monroe Monitor via ABA Journal]
- “No one in Youngstown Ohio has a Swiss bank account…except maybe that big new Swiss employer in town?” [Matt Welch, earlier] William McGurn: FATCA and the IRS’s reach abroad [WSJ via TaxProf, earlier here, here] Politicians and lawyers demand “improvements” to IRS bounty-paid-informant program, but what if anything they improve may depend on your point of view [TaxProf, earlier]
- A human rights professor endorses a new model of residential facility that comes with names like “Freedom Place.” But what’s that on the door — could it be a lock to prevent escape? [Maggie McNeill] Romney spokesman says he’ll smite smut, Gov. Gary Johnson takes a more libertarian view [Daily Caller]
- New Mark Herrmann book on in-house lawyering [Victoria Pynchon, Scott Greenfield, Paul Karlsgodt]
- Mortgage eminent-domain seizure plan raises serious constitutional concerns [Andrew Grossman, earlier here, here]
- Central casting? Send over one “business basher,” please: Sidney Wolfe says $3 billion Glaxo settlement too lenient [CL&P, earlier]
- Ted Frank pre-vets the possibilities for Romney VP [PoL] Romney’s law and legal policy team [Brian Baxter, AmLaw Daily]
…there is one item in the collection [of the late New York dealer Ileana Sonnabend], a work by Robert Rauschenberg that cannot be sold. It contains a stuffed bald eagle and under the terms of the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the 1918 Migratory Bird Act, it is a felony to “possess, sell, purchase, barter, transport, import or export any bald eagle — alive or dead.” The estate, advised by three experts, including one from Christie’s, therefore, valued the work at zero. The IRS decided it was worth $65 million, and is demanding $29.2 million in taxes and $11 million in penalties because the heirs “inaccurately” stated its value.
[John Steele Gordon, Commentary on NYT reporting; Popehat]
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One way to rein in some of the abuses — see this CNN story — would be to curb arbitrary impositions of “interest” at far higher than actual market interest rates. Very similarly, requiring the use of realistic rather than inflated interest rates would be one way to restrain tax-farming “probation” firms and other abusive privatization of law enforcement, much in the news lately, and also excessive damage awards in civil litigation (where “prejudgment” and “postjudgment” interest is often set at notional and absurdly generous levels.)
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United Nations experts are touting the idea as a way of redistributing money from richer to poorer countries [Global Governance Watch, Dan Mitchell/Cato at Liberty, Nile Gardiner/Telegraph] Not incidentally, it would carry a potential for greatly augmenting the power of the fledgling transnational governing class, by at last giving them a source of funds not based on individual state contributions [Jacob Mchangama & Aaron Rhodes, NRO] (& welcome Above the Law readers)
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- Lacey Act madness: might Feds be empowered to disrupt summer concerts by seizing musicians’ Gibsons? [Bedard, DC Examiner; earlier; recent Heritage Foundation work; reworded to reflect comment from "Density Duck," below]
- Contributors to new “Privatization Blog” include friend of this blog Coyote, e.g. here and here;
- “Big Government Causes Hyper-Partisanship in the Judicial Appointment Process” [Ilya Shapiro] Fuels Culture War, too: “The faster the state expands, the more likely it is to violate your values” [Matt Welch]
- Demagogy on expatriates: Schumer proposal for stiff tax on emigrants may have read better in original German [Ira Stoll, Roger Pilon/Cato, Paul Caron/TaxProf]
- Georgia high court considers $459 million fax-spam verdict [AJC, AP, my take] “Hot fuel” class actions enrich the usual suspects [PoL]
- New rebuttal to trial lawyer/HBO movie “Hot Coffee” [Victor Schwartz et al, auto-plays video] Ted Frank crossed swords with Litigation Lobby on the movie in January, particularly on the question of coffee temperature and the Liebeck case [PoL]
- Overlawyered “will become the first [law] blog teenager this summer” [Bruce Carton, Legal Blog Watch] “I’ve been a fan of Walter Olson’s Overlawyered blog for years.” [Amy Alkon, Advice Goddess] Thanks!
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