“Congress moves to turn back taxes over to debt collectors”
Law enforcement for profit to take another big leap forward? [Washington Post]:
The Internal Revenue Service would be required to turn over millions of unpaid tax bills to private debt collectors under a measure before the Senate, reviving a program that has previously led to complaints of harassment and has not saved taxpayers money.
The provision was tucked into a larger bill, aimed at renewing an array of expired tax breaks, at the request of Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), whose state is home to two of the four private collection agencies that stand to benefit from the proposal.
It requires all “inactive tax receivables” to be assigned to private debt collectors if the IRS cannot locate the person who owes the money or if IRS agents are unable to make contact within a year.
The idea has been tried twice before, but was discontinued both times after poor results including net losses on the program. Nina Olson, who holds the position of Taxpayer Advocate in the U.S. government (and is no relation), strongly opposes the program, noting that some of the money would be recouped by the Treasury anyway through means such as future withheld refunds without the need for paying 25 percent contingency fees to the middlemen. Bounty-hunting freelancers are more likely to resort to tactics such as day-and-night harassing calls, and have less flexibility to work out payment plans for those getting back on their feet after reverses or, in the case of estate taxes, heirs who may have not yet received the inheritances from which they need to pay the tax due.
Compare many state governments’ practice of putting out plaintiff’s-side litigation opportunities to private lawyers at contingency fee, which has created a durable lobby for hardball extractive lawsuits of dubious social benefit as well as showering large sums on law firms that already are or soon become influential political players in their states.
What the New Yorker finds to be “unlikely”
From a September New Yorker profile by writer Ryan Lizza of Tom Steyer, the billionaire political donor promoting environmental causes:
Steyer is, at first glance, an unlikely leader of the environmental movement. He is rangy and square-jawed, and he has exquisite establishmentarian credentials, to say nothing of a vast pile of money. He honed his raffish sense of humor at Phillips Exeter Academy, and went on to get degrees from Yale and Stanford business school. Before starting his own fund, he worked at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley….
This must represent the New Yorker editors’ special idiomatic use of the word “unlikely” to signify “clichéd, stereotypical, and exactly as you would expect.” William Tucker has written at more length about the subject.
Schools roundup
- California voters thought they’d reined in don’t-hurry-on-English “bilingual” instruction methods, but legislators have other ideas [Steven Greenhut, San Diego Union-Tribune]
- “Report: Too Much Regulation Is Hurting Scientists” [Inside Higher Ed via Instapundit; two earlier federal surveys “found principal investigators spend 42 percent of their time on administrative tasks”]
- This should end well: Mayor de Blasio hands keys to NYC school system over to teacher’s federation [NY Daily News]
- “How the Media Again Failed on the Duke Lacrosse Story” [KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor, Jr.]
- Chicago: “Teacher Shows Kids Carpentry Tools, Gets Suspended on ‘Weapons’ Charge” [Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids]
- On school discipline and zero tolerance, Eric Holder draws the wrong lessons [Hans Bader, CEI “Open Market”] “Prior problem behavior accounts for the racial gap in school suspensions” [Wright et al., Journal of Criminal Justice, PDF]
- “The little secret of public higher ed: it’s a massive transfer of wealth from lower to upper classes” [Roger Pilon, 2Paragraphs]
“Minnesota ‘unsession’ dumps 1,175 obsolete, silly laws”
Wow, more of this please [St. Paul Pioneer Press]:
It’s no longer a crime in Minnesota to carry fruit in an illegally sized container. The state’s telegraph regulations are gone. And it’s now legal to drive a car in neutral — if you can figure out how to do it.
Those were among the 1,175 obsolete, unnecessary and incomprehensible laws that Gov. Mark Dayton and the Legislature repealed this year as part of the governor’s “unsession” initiative. His goal was to make state government work better, faster and smarter….
In addition to getting rid of outdated laws, the project made taxes simpler, cut bureaucratic red tape, speeded up business permits and required state agencies to communicate in plain language.
If lawmakers in Minnesota could identify 1,175 worthless or outdated laws that could be rooted out with little real political resistance, imagine how many other worthless or outdated laws there are that are not so easy to uproot because they work to the benefit of one group or other (cross-posted from Cato at Liberty).
More: list of laws.
“A smoking gun in debate over consumer class actions?”
Information hardly ever gets onto the public record about what percentage of notional claims are actually redeemed following a class action settlement, which means there’s generally no way to evaluate participants’ forecasts of robust redemption rates (these forecasts help support not only large fee requests by lawyers in the case at hand, but also the general repute of the class action mechanism as one with genuine benefits for class members — the “consumers win $30 million” sorts of headlines). One class of people who do know a lot about this question are settlement administrators, those who manage the mostly obscure private firms set up to handle payout requests as they come in. But they don’t talk to the press.
That’s why a declaration submitted last month in a false-labeling class action involving Duracell batteries is so tantalizing. … defense lawyers at Jones Day submitted a declaration from Deborah McComb, a senior consultant at Kurtzman Carson Consultants, a settlement administrator. KCC is administering the Duracell settlement, and the point of McComb’s declaration is that the rate of claims in this case is consistent with what KCC typically sees in similar settlements that have received final approval.
McComb provides some hard numbers to support the point — and this is why the declaration is significant. KCC, she said, has administered hundreds of consumer class actions in which class members received notice indirectly rather than directly through the mail. These cases “will almost always have a claims rate of less than 1 percent,” she said.
In fact, the “median claims rate for cases in the KCC analysis” was .023 percent, far lower than 1 percent. The Duracell settlement was said to be worth $49 million, including a stated $6 million to charity, but the amount headed to class members was likely going to come in below $345,000. Class actions with mail notice to class members may perform somewhat better — it’s hard to know how much so — but these revelations tend to back up reformers’ belief that where dollar amounts per claimants are not large enough to justify the time and trouble of redemption, the great majority of redistribution will go on for the benefit of lawyers and other middlemen. [Alison Frankel, Reuters; Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
Indiana: “Lawyer charged with felony intimidation over message to client’s ex-husband”
Wait a minute. You took my profanity-laden, violence-suggestive tirade seriously? Attorney Hanson “said he had not meant to threaten the man, but simply convey that he would gather all relevant evidence to defend his client.” [ABA Journal]
Labor and employment roundup
- “House Report criticizes EEOC for litigation before conciliation” [HRM America, attention-stirring Merrily Archer survey and more]
- Do you gripe about upward spiral of executive salaries? Do you want to force employers into fuller pay disclosure? Be aware of the tension between those two positions [Gary Shapiro of CEI, Daily Caller]
- Because the union is all about respect: Laborers/LIUNA brings giant inflatable rat to St. Louis funeral home [KTVI]
- Reality-based: “during five of last six federal minimum wage increases, nation fell into recession” [Thomas Firey, Cato via @scottlincicome] Minimum wage and automation [Ira Stoll, earlier]
- Minnesota legislature expands employer regulation under apple-pie heading of “Women’s Economic Security Act” [Courtney Ward-Reichard guest-posting at Daniel Schwartz’s] How well are state-mandated employee leaves working in California? [Coyote]
- “EEOC continues fight against severance agreements, while employers fight back” [Jon Hyman, earlier on CVS case]
- OSHA targets auto suppliers in South for enforcement crackdown, rationale to be supplied later [Sean Higgins, DC Examiner via Instapundit (“Well, he can’t come right out and say it’s about hurting non-union shops”)]
“Acting like children”: Toronto judge rebukes feuding families
“The parties do not need a judge; they need a rather stern kindergarten teacher” is just one of the “by turns sarcastic, exasperated, and downright hilarious” lines in this instant-classic ruling by a Toronto judge admonishing two affluent families living next door to each other to lay down their legal feud [National Post, Lowering the Bar, ruling in Morland-Jones v. Taerk]
“The Disclosure Debates: Food and Product Labeling”
Last fall the editors of the Vermont Law Review were kind enough to invite me to participate in a discussion on food and product labeling, part of a day-long conference “The Disclosure Debates” with panels on environmental, financial, and campaign disclosure. Other panelists included Christine DeLorme of the Federal Trade Commission, Division of Advertising Practices; Brian Dunkiel, Dunkiel Saunders; George Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety; and David Zuckerman, Vermont State Senator and Farmer, Full Moon Farm.
Aside from my own segment above, you can find links to the other segments here. Plus: Environmental Health (VLS) summary of above panel.