The deficit talks led by Vice President Biden faced a dispute over whether to include the Pentagon in any spending caps or deficit triggers, but the office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Friday that taxes were the only reason the talks collapsed Thursday.
“There were some disagreements on defense, but the issue is being greatly overblown to distract from Democrats’ push to raise taxes,” spokesman Brad Dayspring said. “The tax issue was the sole reason the talks reached an impasse, but it’s important to recognize that the group made great progress in identifying trillions of dollars in spending cuts that can serve as a blueprint for a potential compromise,” he said. [The Hill]
So capital market servants, filed your tax returns yet? No? Too busy, you say? Fine. We’ve all got our excuses. Personally, we’re holding out until Doug Shulman and/or Tim Geithner start returning our calls about their compliance efforts for 2009. Since we’ve been encouraged to not hold our breath on this, we’ve already filed our extension.
But where are most of the kings of putting off the 1040 until the last minute? The greatest concentration of “I’ll do it this weekend” types? The engineers of procrastination station?
Well if you guessed Houston not only are you correct but you’ve got more useless knowledge in your brain than Ken Jennings.
TurboTax’s rankings are based on the largest number of people that file between April 14 – 17. Here are your biggest putter-offers for 2009 (with previous year ranking in parents):
1. Houston – (#2)
2. Chicago – (#4)
3. New York – (#3)
4. Austin, Texas – (#11)
5. San Francisco – (#1)
6. Seattle – (#7)
7. San Diego – (#5)
8. Los Angeles – (#8)
9. Dallas – (#9)
10. Las Vegas – (#10)
This marks the fourth time that H-town has topped this list but we’ll be damned if we can figure out why. Does the humidity and obesity cause a hibernated state that we’re not aware of or is just good old fashioned, “we’re Texans and we hate taxes”? California too. What the hell is their problem?
In order to get to the bottom of this, we asked a friend (and strangely enough, a tax guru) who is a current Los Angeles resident and former resident of Houston to explain and she put in this way:
“Well.. Californians are selfish and think they can do whatever they want to get theirs…and pretty much Texans are the same, but they do it with a smile and an accent.”
It makes sense that financial crimes increase during a recession. People get desperate and they start taking crazy-ass chances. Crazy-ass chances like, let’s request a tax refund for a couple hundred million dollars. Justice.gov:
Papers filed in the cases say the defendants prepared tax returns requesting a total of $562.4 million in bogus refunds. One defendant – Dick Jenkins, of Heber City, Utah – allegedly holds himself out as a CPA and requested a $210 million fraudulent refund for one customer. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) catches the vast majority of the bogus tax returns and blocks the claimed refunds…Altogether, according to the IRS, redemption scheme participants (including customers of the defendants in the seven lawsuits filed this week) have requested a total of $3.3 trillion in fraudulent refunds.
According to the AP, “Officials say the tax preparers often falsely tell customers the government maintains secrets accounts of money for its citizens that can be accessed by filing false returns.”
So your tax preparer tells you that by filing a fake tax return you’ll be able access a secret pile of money. Is this remotely believable? Believable to the point of saying, “Excuse me, Internal Revenue Service, you owe me $210 million”?
Some discretion, people. DOJ Charges Seven With Seeking $562m of Bogus Tax Refunds [TaxProf Blog] Feds file suits over $562 million bogus tax claims [AP]
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The deficit talks led by Vice President Biden faced a dispute over whether to include the Pentagon in any spending caps or deficit triggers, but the office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Friday that taxes were the only reason the talks collapsed Thursday. 