WHAT’S THE BUZZ? TELL ME WHAT’S A HAPPENNIN’ – WEDNESDAY EDITION

An abbreviated BUZZ today.  I am house-hunting in Pennsylvania, and my motel did not have wi-fi.

* Professor Annette Nellen reports on a “Hearing on Expiring Tax Provisions” held on June 8^th by a House Ways and Means subcommittee.

The Professor provides excellent criteria for evaluating any “tax expenditure” -

“Tax expenditures should only be used and continued if they are an appropriate use of government resources and the best way to deliver the intended benefit.”

* Trish McIntire has been on a roll lately, with a lot of good posts at her OUR TAXING TIMES blog.  Here is one on “Rummage Sales (By Any Name)” that saves me the trouble of writing on the topic.

* THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR brings us some of the testimony of Donald B. Marron, Director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, before the recent hearing of the Select Revenue Measures Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee on the perennial challenge known as the “tax extenders” in “The Real Effect of Expiring Tax Cuts”.

Donald correctly describes our current tax system as “needlessly complex, economically harmful, and widely perceived as unfair. It’s increasingly unpredictable. And it fails at its most basic task, raising enough money to pay our bills.”

* Kay Bell, the yellow rose of taxes, tells us that the “IRS Offers Online Help to Students, and Their Parents, In Filling Out FAFSA”.

“The Internal Revenue Service offers FAFSA applicants online access to their income and other tax return information that's required by the form.

With the FAFSA online tool, applicants can automatically transfer the required tax data onto the federal financial aid form.”

* Kelly Phillips Erb, FORBES.COM’s TaxGirl, gives us her weekly “Sunday Mailbag” post while winging her way to Las Vegas.

She manages to sneak in a link to one of my NJ Tax Professional Blog posts.  See if you can find it.

THE FINAL WORD-

I was dining out with friends this past Saturday night and as a result missed the SYFY Channel’s movie JERSEY SHORE SHARK ATTACK.  The movie had the likes of “Nooki” and “The Complication” and other brain-dead idiots, based on the brain-dead idiots who appear on MTV’s steaming pile of excrement THE JERSEY SHORE, battle killer sharks.  And, unfortunately, most survive.

Too bad.  It would have been pleasing if it had a scene where Nooki, staggering out of a harborside bar with a pick-up and heading toward his car to give him the benefit of her “jaws” (a demonstration of her, and Snooki’s, only talent) slips and falls into the water and is eaten by a killer shark.

I think I will also miss it the next time is surfaces.  

TTFN