Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Gabriel Zucker about Code for America's efforts to enable better access to free tax filing, both at the federal level, and, facilitating state tax filing as the IRS roles out its direct filing program. Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn ...
May 09, 2024•37 min•Season 1Ep. 125
Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Partho Shome about taxes in the colonial era in India, especially the excise tax on salt. They then discuss how these taxes lead to the famous "salt march" led by Mahatma Gandhi, which ultimately lead to Indian Independence. This experience is contrasted to the American independance movement, which also had roots in taxes levied by the British East India Company, and lessons for modern tax policy are discussed. Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE ...
Apr 30, 2024•42 min•Season 1Ep. 124
Send us a text Recorded on April 15, Jeff and Scott Chat about tax code complexity. Why is the tax code so complex? Is it because life is complex? Because we have chosen to hone the tax code to achieve certain social goals? Jeff and Scott chat about it all in light of Scott not being able to complete his tax code until the very last moment. Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to down...
Apr 15, 2024•36 min•Season 1Ep. 123
Send us a text Scott and Jeff chat with Nic Duquette , Professor of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. We discuss charitable giving, tax deductions related to charitable giving, tax exempt organizations, and the like. Listener submitted correction: "there is no longer an above-the-line charitable deduction for cash contributions for tax years after 2021 (it was a temporary Covid-era provision as Scott had thought in asking the question). It was first enacted in the CARES Act...
Mar 22, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 122
Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Samford University law professor Tracey Roberts about Cordell Hull. Hull was a senator, secretary of state, and, won the Nobel Prize for his role in creating the United Nations. However, he also had a substantial role in creating the income tax, which Tracey, Jeff and Scott discuss. This episode is based on Professor Roberts article, " A Man for His Era and for Ours: Cordell Hull, Father of the Federal Income Tax ", published in the Cumberland Law Review. ...
Mar 22, 2024•34 min•Season 1Ep. 122
Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Clyde Ray , a political scientist and author of the book John Marshall's Constitutionalism , about the Supreme Court case McCulloch v Maryland, which hinged on whether a state could tax a federal bank. In this case, John Marshall teaches us that "the power to tax involves the power to destroy."...
Mar 12, 2024•26 min•Season 1Ep. 121
Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Alexander Arnon. Alex serves as the Director of Business Tax and Economic Analysis at the Penn Wharton Budget Model, and he explains the Wyden-Smith tax deal, including the extension of the business tax components of the TCJA, the expansion of the child tax credit, and the Employee Retention Credit. Alex talks about the background on the deal, as well as how Penn Wharton provided their revenue estimate. Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses ...
Feb 21, 2024•41 min•Season 1Ep. 120
Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the President of the American Action Forum, former director of the CBO, and former chief economic policy adviser to Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. Doug has also testified before Congress more than anyone else that did not do so as a requirement of their job. Jeff and Scott discuss the purpose of Congressional testimony, who is asked to do it, and some of Doug's experiences testifying. Get CPE for listening to Tax Cha...
Feb 14, 2024•37 min•Season 1Ep. 119
Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Wojciech Kopczuk, professor of Economics at Columbia University, an editor at the Journal of Public Economics, and IgNobel Prize Winner , about the trends in income inequality. The long-standing received wisdom is that income inequality is high, and growing higher. A recent paper published in the Journal of Political Economy by Gerry Auten and David Splinter call into question that finding. Jeff, Scott and Wojciech talk about the difficulties in measuring ...
Jan 31, 2024•47 min•Season 1Ep. 118
Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Laura Snyder, an advocate for an improved tax system for Americans living abroad. Laura is currently the President of Stop Extraterritorial American Taxation, (SEAT) and is also an American living abroad. They talk about the different types of Americans living abroad, and how their lives are complicated by the American tax system. Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit h...
Jan 24, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 117
Send us a text This episode originally aired on January 15, 2022. Martin Luther King Jr. is the only person to have ever been tried for perjury with regards to state income taxes in Alabama. Jeff and Scott interview Edgar Dyer about the tax perjury trial of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960. Eddie wrote an article entitled " A Triumph of Justice in Alabama: The 1960 Perjury Trial of Martin Luther King, Jr. " Fred Grey, Martin Luther King's attorney, said of the trial, "No one would have predicted t...
Jan 15, 2024•34 min•Season 1Ep. 117
Send us a text For the second time, Jeff and Scott chat with Benjamin Alarie, a law professor at the University of Toronto, and, the founder and CEO of BlueJ. They talk about one of BlueJ's products which predicts tax court case outcomes, and also discuss the future of AI and taxes generally. Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, r...
Jan 05, 2024•41 min•Season 1Ep. 116
Send us a text A Way to Pay Taxes (to the tune of Away in the Manger) Re-release (originally released Christmas, 2021) Lyrics by Jeff Hoopes, Sung by Stacey Hoopes Oh Joseph and Mary They were there for a task They came to the city To pay their tax But as they remitted The tax on their worth Oh Mary, a virgin She had to give birth They went to the city By Caesar’s decree As taxes touched Joseph They affect you and me When we give birth and when we die How much we work And what car we buy For ev...
Dec 21, 2023•3 min•Season 1Ep. 115
Send us a text Jeff and Scott talk about two taxes levied at the Hoopes household, the "floor tax", and the "toilet tax." These two taxes demonstrate how the tax system can be used as either a carrot or a stick, and the benefit of each approach, and the importance of administrative costs (which made the toilet tax impractical). We also discus how, and whether, taxes can be used to solve social problems. Scott vows to do better in taxing the subjects of his kingdom....
Dec 20, 2023•26 min•Season 1Ep. 114
Send us a text Jeff and Scott talk with UNC Marketing professor Kristopher Keller about his work on the effect of marketing on soda taxes (joint work with Jonne Guyt and Rajdeep Grewal). After passing a soda tax, a tax on sugared beverages meant to discourage their consumption, stores can change their marketing of soda. Kristopher, with coauthors, show that stores actually decrease the amount of marketing they do, which contributes to some of the decline in soda consumption which has been docume...
Dec 14, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 114
Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Benjamin Angel, the Director for Direct Taxation, Tax Coordination, Economic Analysis and Evaluation at the European Commission. The EC has recently proposed rules that would enable smaller business that have operations across EU countries to have a simplified tax filing process, reducing compliance costs and making the tax filing process easier. These rules will allow companies to calculate their tax base according to a common set of rules (not a differen...
Dec 04, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 113
Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with two state and local tax experts, Stacey Roberts and Meredith Smith, about the state and local tax deduction cap put in by Congress in 2017, and ways states are allowing their residents to get around it. Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn...
Nov 28, 2023•41 min•Season 1Ep. 113
Send us a text In this episode, Jeff and Scott chat with Nick Guest, Assistant Professor of Accounting at Cornell University's SC Johnson College of Business about a recent study he conducted related to stock repurchases, available published here or in working paper version here ....
Nov 02, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 113
Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Benjamin Alarie, a law professor at the University of Toronto, and, the founder and CEO of BlueJ. They talk about one of BlueJ's products, Ask BlueJ, which is a generative AI system that allows users to ask it technical tax questions, and, get answers. They discuss how responses are quickly improving, how this AI is different from ChatGPT, and, the future of generative AI for tax research. Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available ...
Oct 31, 2023•48 min•Season 1Ep. 112
Send us a text Jeff and Scott discussed a new tax proposal with Natasha Sarin, an economist and lawyer at Yale Law School and Yale School of Management. Natasha, in collaboration with Kim Clausing, developed a plan aimed at increasing tax revenue. This plan also anticipaties several tax provisions expiring in 2025. The proposal, " The Coming Fiscal Cliff: A Blueprint for Tax Reform in 2025 ," includes the following proposals, among others: Raising the corporate tax rate. Overhauling the current ...
Oct 18, 2023•52 min•Season 1Ep. 111
Send us a text Nina Olsen was the National Taxpayer Advocate for the United States, a position overseeing the IRS which was created by Congress and described in the Internal Revenue Code. The National Taxpayer Advocate is responsible for overseeing more than 2,000 employees of the office of the National Taxpayer Advocate. We discuss the responsibilities of the taxpayer advocate, the creation of the Office of National Taxpayer Advocate, and, the types of work the taxpayer advocate has been engage...
Oct 12, 2023•41 min•Season 1Ep. 110
Send us a text In this episode, we chat with author and historian Brady Crytzer , who recently published " The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis ". Brady also hosts " Dispatches: The Podcast of the Journal of the American Revolution " Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a s...
Sep 29, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 109
Send us a text Jeff was recently asked to opine on whether Republican GOP candidate for president Vivek Ramaswamy grew up with a lot of money. Scott and Jeff dive into Vivek's tax returns for evidence. Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate....
Sep 19, 2023•44 min•Season 1Ep. 108
Send us a text The Inflation Reduction Act extended the provision of tax incentives for electric vehicles, but, added stipulations that these EVs be produced in North America. Manufacturers outside of North America, including Korean auto manufacturers, had a problem--would they miss out on these subidies that their customers had previously been getting? Trade economist Chad Bown tells the story about how the US Treasury, by regulation, appears to have solved Korea's problem by regulation. Get CP...
Sep 01, 2023•35 min
Send us a text Scott and Jeff Discuss the upcoming Supreme Court case, Moore v. USA, with Jake Brooks, a professor of law at Fordham University. Jake explains that Mr. and Mrs. Moore held shares in an Indian corporation , and, as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, faced some $15,000 in taxes. They claim that this tax is unconstitutional, and, the case has implications for many features of our current tax code, for the TCJA in general, as well as the hopes some have of taxing unrealiz...
Aug 23, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 107
Send us a text In honor of the first birthday of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Jeff and Scott discuss the major provisions of the IRA, and references the episodes they have recorded about these provisions. They discuss the green incentives and their changing estimated cost, and, the three major way the IRA was intended to pay for those incentives--a tax on adjusted financial statement income (which celebrated its first CAMT-iversary), increasing the budget at the IRS, and an excise tax on s...
Aug 16, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 106
Send us a text The tax law allows taxpayers to trade one piece of property for another piece of property and not recognize any taxable gain. These exchanges are called like kind exchanges, and, in this episode, we chat about them with Eric Tellekamp, a managing director at BDO.
Aug 02, 2023•27 min•Season 1Ep. 105
Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Jenny Williams, Tax Administrator with Chatham County, North Carolina. We discuss the ins and outs of property tax collection, including garnishing wages, repossessing assets, and foreclosing on real property. We talk about how the county manages to collect over 95% of property taxes owed. We bust a few myths about property taxes in the process.
Jul 26, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 104
Send us a text We chat with James Freeman about Filing for Freedom, a non-profit organization that helps military personal comply with the tax law by aiding in the tax return filing process.
Jul 18, 2023•29 min•Season 1Ep. 103
Send us a text Historian Ben Carp talks with us about the role of taxes in the American revolution. Among many other things, we discuss whether taxes were the only grievance the colonists had against Britain, how heavily the colonies were taxed relative to the English in England, and, most importantly, how much of a party was the Boston tea party. Ben is the author of several books, including, relevant to our discussion today, " Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party & the Making of ...
Jul 03, 2023•29 min•Season 1Ep. 102
