“While such policies will not solve the obesity epidemic in its entirety and may face considerable opposition from food manufacturers and sellers, they could prove an important strategy to address overconsumption, help reduce energy intake and potentially aid in weight loss and reduced rates of diabetes among U.S. adults.”
~ Researchers from the University of North Carolina, who concluded that an 18% tax on pizza and soda could help adults lose an average of 5 pounds a year.
• Porn Nightmare Never Ends for SEC Official [FINS]
Whatever your porn preferences, you’re probably not sharing them with complete strangers. If you are, the cloud of awkward around you has got to be so thick that you may as well have leprosy. However, if you have the unfortunate luck of getting caught viewing this art form at work, then you might be forced to discuss your preferences, how often you’re engaging in the activity, among other things:
Okay, so the past few weeks we’ve seen some psychotic behavior as it pertains to IRS. And yesterday, someone’s llelo (yes, it’s Utah, but that’s the best we’ve got right now) was mistaken for Anthrax and it caused the FBI and Hazmat to storm the building and leave with bodies wrapped up like mummies. If you’re getting worried that people might be freaking out, you’ve got some solid evidence in your corner.
The good news is that not everyone who hates the IRS with every fiber of their being is so cold that they’ll fly a plane into a building, shoot a gun at their spouse or destroy the very home they live in.
As we still tread in the wake of the Joe Stack attack on the IRS, it seems that bizarro things are happening all over this great land of ours and many of them have to do with taxes and/or the IRS. Jailbirds requesting fraudulent refunds and receiving them, IRS-inspired bulldozing of houses and now we’ve learned about a woman who tried to kill her husband who wouldn’t share their tax refund money.
And like Joe, Bulldozer Terry and the Florida inmates, the woman is pretty satisfied with her actions:
Investigators say the woman then went into the city of St. Louis and threw the gun in a sewer. Police contacted the woman a short time later and she turned herself in. Police say she didn’t seem sorry.
• A Bipartisan Plan for Tax Fairness [WSJ]
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) co-wrote an op-ed to introduce their bill for tax reform: The Bipartisan Tax Fairness and Simplification Act of 2010.
The magic word! Bipartisanship! No one will argue against this bill with the magic word in there. Well, we’ll see. In the meantime they plugged all the things voters like to hear:
• Most taxpayers will be able to use a one-page 1040.
• In some cases the IRS will prepare the return for you; all the taxpayer will have to do is sign date and return.
• Reduce the six tax brackets to three: 15%, 25%, and 35%.
• Tripling the standard deduction.
• The first 35% of long-term capital gains income would be tax exempt.
• Flat corporate tax rate of 24%.
Sounds simpler, anyway.
While the apparent kamikaze raid on the Austin IRS offices yesterday may be the first air assault on an IRS office, it’s not the first time somebody on the wrong end of the tax law attempted an entirely stupid and futile gesture of violent tax resistance.
Take Minnesota computer entrepreneur Robert Beale. Rather than showing up for his tax trial, he hit the road and spent 14 months on the run. When in jail awaiting his rescheduled trial, he arranged a “common law court” of associates to “arrest” his judge. He unwisely made these arrangements through a wired prison phone, and got an extra 11 years in prison for his trouble. He had a solution for that, too, telling his sentencing judge: “’I do not consent to incarceration, fine or supervised release,’ he said. ‘I have not committed a crime.’” Amazingly, convict consent is not required in the Federal prison system, and Mr. Beale is currently residing in Yazoo City, Mississippi.
Do you have a client thinking of starting a subversive organization in South Carolina? Are they looking to expand their network of businesses to include one with the expressed mission of overthrowing the U.S. government? Thought so!
Just so you know, they are required by law to register with Secretary of State and declare their intentions or they will be subject to a $25,000 fine and 10 years in prison. Let’s keep the ship tight people.
The Subversive Activities Registration Act was passed last year by the Palmetto State legislature and is now officially on the books. Oh! And there is a $5 filing fee (we attached for the form below for your convenience).
Does Jerry Springer know that his fat twin is a billionaire?
This is Guy Hands, Founder, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Terra Firma a private equity firm with locations in London, Frankfurt, and Guernsey where he currently resides.
He moved there last April from Kent, a county in Southeast England, to “protest at higher income and capital gains tax rates,” and that “he has ‘never visited’ his school age children since he left the [the United Kingdom]. They have remained with his wife at their former family home in Kent and they now have to travel to Guernsey to see him.”
This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.
The Obama administration is slowly starting to pick its battles; starting with taxes on corporations’ foreign earnings.
The administration has abandoned its proposal to eliminate U.S.-based multinationals’ ability to defer tax on income by shifting assets to foreign subsidiaries, according to a published report.
While details are sketchy, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that the administration’s proposed budget for fiscal 2011 shows that it has abandoned its plan to eliminate the so-called “check the box” system under which U.S. companies can defer U.S. tax on income by shifting income-generating assets to foreign subsidiaries without recognizing gains on the transfer.
Private charitable efforts are as American as can be. Toqueville noted our vigorous civil society back in the early days:
Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools. If it is proposed to inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society.
The tax law recognizes this all-American tendency in Sec. 501(c)(3), which grants a tax exemption for associations with the proper purpose, like those in the headlines.
So along comes Eddie C. Risdal from Iowa. Eddie wanted tax exemption for a cause dear to his heart, “Mysteryboy Incorporation”:
