How to use this Page

Speaking before the Family Research Council, the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, called for a repeal of the “Johnson Amendment.” The Johnson Amendment is part of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and prohibits tax-exempt organizations such as schools, hospitals, and churches from participating in political campaigns. The Republican Party’s 2016 platform echoes Mr. Trump.

The post Churches and politics: why the Johnson Amendment should be modified and not repealed appeared first on OUPblog.

परीक्षा परिणाम और गरीबी आईए दोषारोपण करें … आजकल  जब नतीजा आता है तो पता चलता है कि  बेहद गरीब बच्चो ने बहुत तकलीफों के चलते  बाजी मारी और अव्वल रहे  सारा मीडिया और कैमरा उस और दौड पडता है बहुत अच्छी बात है पर कुछ वो बच्चे इसे पचा नही पा रहे जिन्हें सारी […]

The post परीक्षा परिणाम और गरीबी appeared first on Monica Gupta.

Imagine you’ve been on an out-of-town business trip. Your employer paid for your airfare, but allowed you to keep the frequent flyer points generated by the trip. Some time later, you redeem the points (perhaps along with additional points generated by other business trips) for a free flight to a vacation destination. You might wonder, “Do I have taxable income, either when the points are credited to my account or when I redeem the points for personal travel?”

Under the US federal income tax, it is reasonably clear that there is taxable income in this story, although there is plenty of room to argue about the timing of the taxable event, or that the fair market value (of either the points or the later reward) should be included in income.

Despite the technical “taxability” of employees who benefit from frequent flyer programs, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced a “don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy” in 2002, which stated that “the IRS will not assert that any taxpayer has understated his federal tax liability by reason of the receipt or personal use of frequent flyer miles … attributable to the taxpayer’s business travel.”

Seemingly faced with problems of valuation, enforcement, and taxpayer understanding, the IRS simply declared that it had no intention of enforcing the law, rather than dealing with the issues that would have been created by a serious attempt to administer the taxation of frequent flyer benefits.

Twelve years later, the 2002 announcement still accurately reflects the supine position of the IRS. Regardless of one’s views on the merits of either taxing or not taxing employee-retained frequent flyer benefits, from a rule-of-law perspective, it is troubling that this question has been resolved by a statutorily unauthorized de facto administrative exemption, rather than by a legislative enactment.

The IRS is far from alone among tax administrators in having performed poorly with respect to frequent flyer benefits, despite having had more than three decades to grapple with the problem since frequent-flyer schemes were introduced in the 1980s. The efforts of the Canada Revenue Agency and of the Australian Taxation Office have differed from those of the IRS, but today, all three countries retain the same bottom line: virtually no tax on frequent flyer benefits is collected anywhere, and respect for the rule-of-law (on the part of both taxpayers and the tax agencies themselves) has been eroded.

So what ought to be done? A tax policy purist would suggest that either the tax administrator or the legislature should develop workable rules for valuation, and for third-party information reporting of that value (by either employers or airlines). The development of workable rules would not be easy, but it could be done. If such rules were adopted, the tax administrator could and should enforce the taxation of frequent flyer benefits. It is unlikely, however, that either an agency or a legislature would take on the difficult and thankless task of developing and adopting the necessary rules. If neither the tax agency nor the legislature is willing to get serious about the taxation of frequent flyer benefits, the second-best approach would be for the legislature to solve the agency-as-scofflaw problem by turning the IRS’ de facto administrative exclusion into an explicit statutory exclusion.

Featured image credit: Airplane flight. Photo by Robert S. Donovan. CC BY-NC 2.0 via booleansplit Flickr.

The post Up in the air over taxing frequent flyer benefits appeared first on OUPblog.

        

Related Stories

• One second in the life of an artist
• World AIDS Day reading list
• Shakespeare folio number 233

 

Let’s talk for a moment about why I misfiled my tax extension. Melty Jello brain aside, bad software design almost cost my little family $2,500.

Background:

When I’m not wrestling a one-year-old into tiny shoes, I’m a User Experience Designer. This means I work with software companies to create easy-to-understand interfaces.

It also means that when I screw up my tax extension, I look very carefully at the software path that got me there.

Dramatic Reenactment:

It was April. I needed to file an extension. Like most Bay Area tech nerds, I hate mail. I consider it a personal affront if I have to print out a form, write an address, locate stamps, and put a letter in the whatsit…mailbox…thing. Naturally, my first step was to search irs.gov for “file extension online“.

Problem one: Too many results

The IRS site is too damned helpful. There were 948 results for my search. Many results were press release or blog type articles hinting at the existence of online extension filing, but containing no direct links. I wanted to find one or two good matches. Instead, I found a sea of irrelevance.

Problem two: Too many names

I hopped down a bunny trail for about ten minutes, searching for a feature alternately referred to as “E-file an extension”, “Free file”, “Freefile”, “Free Fillable Forms”, “Free File Fillable Forms”, “Free Federal Extension”, “Form 4868″, “Traditional Free File”, and “IRS e-file”.

Problem three: Inconsistent design

I eventually landed on a modern-looking site that seemed likely. I clicked “Get Started” and wandered through four increasingly less-well-designed pages which jumped from site to site, forcing me to read and parse options despite having already told the system what I wanted.

Problem three: Asshole account requirement

The eventual winner was a page called “Free File Fillable Forms” which required me to create an account and update my Flash plugin. I was already logged in to irs.gov, but that didn’t count. I created “a password that is different than my User ID, between 8 and 32 characters, and contains at least 1 number and 1 symbol”. All the eye-rolling gave me a headache.

Problem four: Misleading email

I received a spammy looking ALL CAPS email telling me my account had been created. I filled out the IRS extension form, which was the easiest part of the process. I submitted, and received another spammy ALL CAPS email saying “Your federal return was successfully transmitted”.

At this point, I fell on the bed and whined to my husband for several minutes about information architecture. Then I fell asleep, secure in the certainty that I had filed an automatic extension. Taxes wouldn’t be bothering us for a few more months, by which time we would certainly be getting more sleep.

Mon

Yes, that was my letter from the IRS.

I misfiled our tax extension. My husband, who is hilarious, wrote a letter to the IRS asking for clemency due to new-baby-induced Jello Brain. The IRS, who are apparently also hilarious, quoted him in their response.

I scanned the letter and he put it on Facebook. It went viral.

That afternoon during a lull in the daily baby-management, I hopped on Reddit to post the letter and discovered that someone had put it up hours earlier. Our funny IRS letter was now at the top of Reddit’s front page.

Over 1,800 people left comments and opinions. Everyone was pretty nice and we enjoyed the discussion. Some IRS employees even chimed in, talking about their jobs and lives.

This is the nature of the Internet. Something strikes a chord in our collective subconscious, and we share it with ourselves at the speed of thought.

I think we are all a little afraid of the IRS.

They seem to speak a slightly different language. They use phrases like: “A nonbusiness bad debt must be treated as a short-term capital loss” and look at us expectantly.

Every year they make us do math. They know our financial secrets, and they remind us that our money will be spent by people we probably didn’t elect, on things we might not like.

They could put us in jail. They took down Al Capone.

As a result, people yearn for a bit of humor from the IRS. I think any reminder that the government is made of people who are themselves parents and taxpayers is welcome news.

Anything to break the tension.

Related posts:

1. How FreeFile Almost Cost Me Plenty Let’s talk for a moment about why I misfiled my...
2. Parenthood by Percentages In case anyone is interested in the relative effects of...
3. A Parent’s Life as a Video Game My job is in the video game industry, so I...

And here is some advice I’ve pulled off of the VTLIBRARIES mailing list about tax assistance for people with disabilities. Here is an obligatory link to an article outlining the effect on some public libraries (in Maine in this case) who are dealing with the fact that people are not getting mailed paper tax forms unless they request them. Currently about 70% of Americans file their taxes electronically.

“Hundreds of the most popular federal tax forms and publications are available for download from IRS.gov for sight impaired individuals. These products range from talking tax forms to Braille formats, and are accessible using screen reading software, refreshable Braille displays and voice recognition software. Click on the links below to download these forms and publications:

Download Accessible Tax Forms (Braille and Text Formats)
Download Accessible Tax Publications (Braille and Text Formats)
Download Accessible Talking Tax Forms

Download Tax Instructions (Large Print Format)
Download Tax Publications (Large Print Format)

The IRS also offers customer service assistance for persons who are deaf or who have hearing disabilities. People with TTY equipment may call 800-829-4059, which is a toll-free number, for assistance.

People who are unable to complete their tax return because of a physical disability may get assistance from an IRS office, or through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program (VITA) sponsored by the IRS. Taxpayers can find a nearby location by calling 1-800-906-9887 or checking the partial list on the IRS’s website.

Publication 907, Tax Highlights for Persons with Disabilities, explains the tax implications of certain disability benefits and other issues, and is available at IRS.gov.

Visit www.IRS.gov

Only sort of related to libraries, but since it’s National Library Week and coincidentally tax week in the US, I thought you might be interested in reading this article about how and why the IRS is moving to e-filing. To me this touches on some digital divide issues. It’s significantly cheaper for the IRS to process a return submitted online.

It costs nearly $3 to process a paper return, but processing an electronic return costs only about 35 cents. The error rate on paper returns is 20 percent, which consumers must compute and workers must enter into IRS computers, compared with 1 percent for e-filed returns.

People also get their refunds more quickly. There are fewer errors with online returns.

Yet after 20 years of e-file availability, we’re still only seeing 66% of returns filed online. And this is happening even as printed state (NJ, KY) and federal tax forms are becoming less and less available in libraries. Some states aren’t even printing the big tax form notebook anymore. And some states aren’t mailing print forms. Some county library systems haven’t been doing the tax form thing for nearly 20 years. The article examines why. If you are helping your patrons file online, be aware that there are free options available for low-income filers and even discounts for non-low income people if they know where to look. My bank, for example, had a discount on TurboTax’s usual rates available just by me clicking a link on their website.

And I’m trying to track down the copy I had of the letter we got at one of the small rural libraries from the IRS that basically said they wouldn’t be sending us printed tax forms anymore. This was back when we still had a dialup connection and it was mighty inconvenient. Having a hard time remembering when this was. Anyone know?

By Edward Zelinsky

Few governmental agencies are as widely criticized as the IRS. Some of this criticism is inevitable resentment towards the tax collector. It is, Edmund Burke famously observed, as impossible “to tax and to please” as it is “to love and be wise.” The IRS rarely pleases and is never loved.

Moreover, the IRS has become a particularly tempting target for opportunistic politicians. Rather than engage in the difficult work of controlling public expenditures and rationalizing the tax law, it is easier for elected officials to engage in faux populist bashing of the IRS for its enforcement of tax laws for which Congress and the President are responsible.

However, a substantial portion of contemporary criticism of the IRS is justified. It is, for example, troubling that the IRS consistently attacks as unreasonable the compensation paid to owners of closely-held corporations while acquiescing to the tax deductibility of far larger salary payments to the executives of publicly-traded firms.

It is, in the final analysis, critical to the operation of a modern society that taxes be collected fairly and efficiently. It is accordingly important for those of us who have criticized the IRS (and expect to do so in the future) to speak up when the IRS gets something right.

And recently the IRS has done something important right: cracking the secrecy of the Swiss banks which help affluent Americans to cheat on their U.S. taxes.

This is a simple matter of fairness. Middle and working class Americans, when they save outside their IRAs and 401(k) accounts, typically put cash into local banks and credit unions. From such institutions, these taxpayers receive Form 1099 annually and generally comply with the legal obligation to pay federal income tax on the interest credited to their bank and credit union accounts. Such middle and working class taxpayers may also be subject to back-up withholding under which the institutions paying them interest retain some of that interest and send it to the IRS.

In contrast, for years, a disturbingly large number of affluent Americans have knowingly cheated on their U.S. tax obligations by placing savings in foreign bank accounts which they do not report to the IRS, even though these citizens are legally obligated to disclose foreign accounts to the IRS and to pay U.S. income tax on the interest earned by such foreign accounts. The result has been something of a two-tier system under which, to paraphrase Leona Helmsley, only the little people pay taxes on bank account interest.

Central to the creation and promotion of this two-tier scheme have been the efforts of Swiss bankers with the active connivance of the Swiss government. Tax evasion and money laundering are major Swiss industries which Swiss bankers have conducted with the support of Switzerland’s bank secrecy laws. Those laws have assured high income U.S. taxpayers that they will not be caught if they violate U.S. law by putting savings into undisclosed Swiss bank accounts and failing to pay the federal income taxes owed on the interest paid on such accounts.

Recently, the IRS has begun to crack the wall of secrecy surrounding Swiss bank accounts by obtaining the names of U.S. citizens holding such accounts and enforcing the tax law against these individuals. Every American who has been paying his federal income taxes on his interest-bearing accounts should applaud this development.

This being the IRS, there are those who have criticized the IRS’s efforts as overdue and as obtaining the names of only a fraction of the U.S. citizens who have cheated on U.S. taxes via Swiss bank accounts. Others have faulted the IRS for giving American citizens an amnesty period during which such citizens will generally be spared the worst penalties if they now come forward and pay the back taxes owed on previously undisclosed Swiss bank accounts.

It would indeed be unfortunate if, having achieved impressive initial success, the IRS were to rest on its laurels, rather than continue its efforts to obtain more names of U.S. citizens with undisclosed Swiss bank deposits. Whatever the merits of the amnesty deployed by the IRS (it probably is a necessary evil), this should be a one-time offer to those who have cheated on U.S. taxes, an offer not to be repeated.

When I was in government, I invariably heard from persons who were unhappy with my performance but rarely received a word of commendation from those who favored my decisions. This always troubled me. So, as one who has not hesitated over the years to criticize the IRS, let me commend the IRS for its crackdown on Americans who have been cheating on U.S. taxes through Swiss bank accounts. On this one, the IRS is getting it right and deserves the support of all U.S. taxpayers.

I’m moving house this week, so I’m living out of my inbox more than usual.

I’ve been getting emails about a Library Hotline article I was quoted in, from my talk at ALA. I gave a presentation with Louise Alcorn as part of the PLA track at ALA. My talk was called “Six Things You Maybe Didn’t Know About Rural Technology” You can see the pdf as well as links to Louise’s presentations on this page, there’s some great stuff about technology for small libraries. It went well and was well-attended.

LH covered it well but they did use this one line “How many of you know that tax forms must be filed online next year? she queried the audience. Many didn’t” What I actually said was that for many libraries they must help patrons GET their tax forms online. Small misquote, no big deal. It’s even possible I misspoke. In any case, I only knew about this when I started getting emails. Often if I post something in error to librarian.net I’ll get a comment about it, maybe two. In this case, I got ten emails within maybe a week or two from librarians asking me about this, and looking for more information about what they thought was a policy they hadn’t heard of. I replied that it was an error and finally wrote to Library Hotline who graciously agreed to print a correction.

This sort of thing always reminds me that in many ways large parts of our profession still rely on print-only sources for at least some of their keeping current. I know that every time I get a copy of Computers in Libraries or School Library Journal I always think “Oh hey I should write about that on librarian.net” and am always sad to not find the content online and linkable.

Remember that song “Autobahn” by Kraftwerk: “fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn”? I’ve got no idea what it means, but it was running through my head today as the_webmeister and I tootled along the autobahn on our way to Berlin.

Perhaps tootled is the wrong word. Here’s a screen shot of the Webmeister’s US GPS which he was using to get an idea of his speed in mph as opposed to km/h.



Man. And I thought I was speeding the day before when it clocked me at 99.6 mph. Sheesh. Still, at least I managed to prove to the Webmeister that I do know how to drive a manual, to the point that he said he MIGHT someday let me drive his BMW M5. That’s when I realized it must be love. Ha!Ha!

Anyway, we made it to Berlin in one piece, checked into our hotel, which is a very cool Artotel on an Andy Warhol theme.

Then we trekked over to the Berlin Zoo to see the adorable, the one and only: KNUT!!!



To say this polar bear cub is adorable is an understatement. Maybe that’s why he has such a fan club:



Although this rather cheeky woman had quite a fan club herself:



(sounds of Sarah singing “Who wears short shorts?”)

I can’t blame her for wanting to be minimalist on the clothing front, although I think she took it a little too far for a child friendly environment. It’s 93 degrees in Berlin and there ain’t a whole lotta places with A/C. I almost cried with joy when I spotted a Dunkin’ Donuts and was able to get an ICED COFFEE!!!!



Funnily enough, that was a large. It’s the same size as a medium at a Dunkin’ Donuts in the States.

I felt really pathetically American for having to go into a US chain while in Germany. But hey – they had ice.