Bill Black: Republican Candidates Agree that the System is Rigged for the Rich
The Republican candidates for President all made shameless appeals for even more plutocracy, in particular preferential treatment for the rich.
Read more...Category Archives: Taxes
Meet the Hedge Funders and Billionaires Who Pillage Under the Shield of Philanthropy
For every dollar these billionaires give, they take 44 from the rest of us.
Read more...Another Private Equity Scam – Tax Receivable Agreements
As one tax expert put it, “Private equity is a tax gimmick with an acquisition attached.” We’re going to discuss a very big tax gimmick that virtually no private equity investors seem to be aware of. The failure of private equity general partners to publicize a tax scheme that on paper should benefit their limited […]
Read more...Why Carbon Taxes Would Be the Ultimate Energy Game-Changer
Carbon taxes are one of the most effective ways to curb the use of fossil fuels and promote renewable energy sources. And they also help businesses because providing for a predictable price of carbon encourages investment. Has their time finally arrived?
Read more...How Big Corporations Are Starving Public Schools of Billions of Dollars
How big corporate tax avoidance hurts local schools.
Read more...IRS Cracks Down on Private Equity Management Fee Waiver Tax Abuse
The IRS has finally decided to crack down on an not-well-known but flagrant private equity tax abuse, management fee waivers. State and local tax officials enabled this practice, which lowers Federal tax receipts and thus hasthe effect of shifting the tax burden off the 0.1% of private equity kingpins to small fry like you and me.
Read more...How Recessions Crush Certain Geographic Areas: Puerto Rico as a Case Study.
How US policy neglect helped created Puerto Rico’s lousy economy.
Read more...Caymans Exposed: Tax Havens Lucrative for Big Finance, Leave Only Crumbs for Locals
Being a tax haven isn’t all it is cracked up to be.
Read more...Even Affluent American Strongly Support Higher Taxes on the Rich
As they have for decades, Americans poll in favor of higher taxes on top earners.
Read more...Notes for an Elite Playbook: The Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone
Accounting Control Fraud is one play in the elite playbook; this post argues that Self-Licking Ice Cream Cones are another.
Read more...Joe Firestone: When Will the Senate Budget Committee Majority Ever Learn About Sector Financial Balances?
The best budget policy: Let the government deficit float and spend on programs to produce full employmen and solve our many other problems.
Read more...Did Ireland’s 12.5 Percent Corporate Tax Rate Create the Celtic Tiger?
Offshore banking and tax haven expert Nicholas Shaxson has launched a new blog, Fools’ Gold, to look at issues of ‘competitiveness’ and so-called ‘competition’ between nations. We’ve often taken issue with that policy goal, since it gives precedence to crushing labor as a way of lowering product prices to stoke exports. This approach is dubious for anything other than small economies, since all countries cannot be net exporters. Undue focus on exports as a driver of growth results in increasing international friction, such as the currency wars that are underway now. Moreover, as we have discussed separately, trade liberalization has gone hand in hand with liberalization of capital flows, in no small measure due to US efforts to make the world safe for what were then US investment banks. Yet Carmen Reinhardt and Ken Rogoff pointed out in their study of financial crises, higher levels of international capital flows are associated with more frequent and severe financial crises.
In addition, lowering wage rates reduces domestic demand. In countries like the US, where the domestic economy is much larger than the export sector, lowering internal demand to stoke exports is misguided.
Here we look at a first case study, the real reasons behind the growth and meltdown of the famed Celtic tiger, Ireland.
Read more...Bill Black: HSBC CEO – My Pay Was so Outrageous I Had to Use Tax Havens to Hide it from My Peers
This tidbit from HSBC reveals a new low in the standards of banking, which given how low those already are, amounts to an accomplishment of sorts. Perhaps we should create a Stuart Gulliver Award for other instances of creative extreme seaminess. Nominees?
Read more...Where are the “Progressive” Democrats on Loretta Lynch’s HSBC Money Laundering Wrist Slap?
Some Republican Senators are having a field day, and rightly so, over the fact that Obama’s attorney general nominee, Loretta Lynch, looks to have allowed bank giant HSBC, and more important, its executives and officers, off vastly too easy in a massive money-laundering and tax evasion scheme. And where are the inquisitive Democratic senators to be found?
Read more...Robert Parenteau: Get a TAN, Yanis: A Timely Alternative Financing Instrument for Greece
TAN, or tax anticipation notes, would way be a for Greece to give itself more fiscal spending wriggle room without violating Eurozone rules. That will likely be necessary if Monday’s meeting in Brussels results in no extension of the current Eurozone bailout.
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