Tuesday, September 17, 2013

WHAT’S THE BUZZ, TELL ME WHAT’S A HAPPENNIN’ - TUESDAY EDITION


* I provide some commentary on New Jersey state income taxes for fellow blogger Peter J Reilly of FORBES.COM at the end of his post “Real Estate Partnerships and State Income Tax - Nasty Surprises”.
My bottom line is this - don’t live in New Jersey!

* Have you seen my latest item at MAINSTREET.COM – “Expiring Tax Benefits”?

* Is there anyone who has not checked out THE LAKE REGION SOMETHING yet?  Why not?

I am interested in your thoughts on my tax-related editorial.

* Joshua Wilson correctly suggests that “many employees are probably not aware of the risk that they are taking by being given check signing authority”.  He gives a real life example of the possible consequences in his post “Employees Liable for Payroll Taxes?”.


As PP explains –

They are aimed at reducing controversy over the determination of whether an expense may be currently deducted as a repair or must be capitalized.”

* For those of you who have been following these two blog series – TAXPROF Paul Caron is up to “The IRS Scandal Day 130” and Prof Jim Maul’s MAULED AGAIN series on partnership taxation is up to “Polishing Subchapter K: Part XX”!  
 
* According to Phil Hodgen of the HODGEN LAW INTERNATIONAL TAX blog,"Tax Law is Considered Harmful”.

Phil makes some excellent observations –

Tax law is written by 10,000 authors of wildly varying intelligence and intention. Different pieces were written at different times — sometimes decades apart.

Sometimes the authors of the novel we call the Internal Revenue Code talk to each other. Sometimes they read what they wrote, but other times they just take someone’s assurance that the passage they just wrote is OK.

I’m talking about Congress of course. None of them read the laws they pass. If they did, do you think they would understand it? NFW. They listen to staffers and lobbyists and vote accordingly. I would wager that there are people in Chief Counsel’s office right now who have spent 20 years in a particular area who from time to time get handed some new law from The Hill and who can only look at it and utter ‘WTF is that?’”

I am pretty sure I do not have to explain WTF (I was using this acronym in the 1990s, if not earlier).  But do I have to explain NFW?

THE FINAL WORD:

I found it odd that Paula Deen received a 10-minute standing ovation during her return to television on a Houston TX cooking show.

She was not returning to the public eye after being away for medical treatment.  She had been away for making an indefensible racial slur.

Her statement was not made in the heat of anger, or a slip of the tongue.  It was a purposeful casual statement made in the context of a pleasant family setting.  While I do think Paula’s racism is inbred – and can be explained as a result of her upbringing in the deep south – it certainly does not deserve a standing ovation.

An indication that, despite electing a black President twice, perhaps we have not progressed as much as we thought.

TTFN

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