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$156bn lost to tax havens enough to end extreme poverty twice over

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

rt.com - May. 22 (News) - Oxfam, the UK based charity, estimates that some $18.47 trillion is being held by individuals in tax havens around the world. Of this some $7.18 trillion is in accounts situated in British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. Tax lost in tax have

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Meet the Senate's Powerful and Progressive Policy Wonk, Ron Wyden

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Joe Conason - May. 21 (Special Report) - Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden has established a reputation as one of the Senate's more serious and diligent members. Over the years on Capitol Hill, he has watched the Republican Party veer constantly further rightward, and yet he continues to believe against all evidence that bipartisan legislative cooperation is possible -- even likely.

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Corporations Are Stealing Billions in Tax Breaks, While the Confused, Screwed Citizenry Turn On Each Other

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Robert Reich - May. 20 (Opinion) - As global capital becomes ever more powerful, giant corporations are holding governments and citizens up for ransom — eliciting subsidies and tax breaks from countries concerned about their nation’s “competitiveness” — while sheltering their profits in the lowest-tax jurisdictions they can find. Major advanced countries — and their citizens — need a comprehensive tax agreement that won’t allow global corporations to get away with this.

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Apple's Web of Tax Shelters Saved It Billions, Panel Finds

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - May. 20 (News) - New York TimesApple's Web of Tax Shelters Saved It Billions, Panel FindsNew York TimesWASHINGTON — Even as Apple became the nation's most profitable technology company, it avoided billions in taxes in the United States and around the world through a web of subsidiaries so complex it spanned continents and went beyond anything most ...Apple skirts US taxes, panel findsLos Angeles TimesSenators to query Apple on tax sheltersSan Francisco ChronicleApple Avoided Taxes on Overseas Billions, Senate Panel FindsWall Street JournalNew York Daily News -The Atlantic Wire -PC Magazineall 158 news articles »

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The 4 Big Ways That Insatiable Corporate Hunger for Profits Has Devastated American Life -- and the World Along with It

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Paul Buchheit - May. 19 (Special Report) - In this dream world of global capitalism, young people are going from zero income on the farm to a few dollars a day on a 12-hour factory shift, and as a result, based on the World Bank's poverty threshold of $1.25 per day, they're no longer "in poverty." So the media piles on praise for free markets. The Economist proclaimed that "poverty is declining everywhere." The Washington Post gushed that "a billion people have been lifted from poverty through free-market competition."

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Apple CEO Cook to Propose Tax Reform for Offshore Cash

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Bloomberg - By Adam Satariano - May. 19 (News) - Apple is facing U.S. government scrutiny after Cook unveiled a plan last month to return $100 billion in cash to shareholders via dividends and buybacks through 2015. Rather than using cash overseas that will be taxed, Apple is borrowing money for the payout, saving as much as $9.2 billion in taxes,

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At I.R.S., Unprepared Office Seemed Unclear About the Rules

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE, DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI, MICHAEL LUO - May. 18 (News Analysis) - During the summer of 2010, the dozen or so accountants and tax agents of Group 7822 of the Internal Revenue Service office in Cincinnati got a directive from their manager. A growing number of organizations identifying themselves as part of the Tea Party had begun applying for tax exemptions, the manager said, advising the workers to be on the lookout for them and other groups planning to get involved in elections.

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New Audit Allegations Show Flawed Statistical Thinking

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By NATE SILVER - May. 18 (Opinion) - FiveThirtyEight: New Audit Allegations Show Flawed Statistical Thinking

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How the IRS’s Nonprofit Division Got So Dysfunctional

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Kim Barker, Justin Elliott - May. 17 (Investigative Report) - The IRS division responsible for flagging Tea Party groups has long been an agency afterthought, beset by mismanagement, financial constraints and an unwillingness to spell out just what it expects from social welfare nonprofits, former officials and experts say.

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Obama appoints Daniel Werfel as acting head of IRS

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Zachary A. Goldfarb - May. 17 (News Report) - President Obama will appoint senior budget aide Daniel I. Werfel as the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, as that agency manages a scandal stemming from its targeting of conservative ...

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"The Other IRS Scandal": David Cay Johnston on Dark Money Political Groups Seeking Tax Exemption

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - May. 16 (News Analysis) - While the IRS targeting of tea party groups has made headlines for days, far less attention has been paid to the roots of the crisis. After the 2010 landmark Supreme Court decision Citizens United, there was a spike in new political organizations seeking tax-exempt status under tax code Section 501(c)(4). The court ruled these groups could raise unlimited corporate money without disclosing donor information. Several groups have claimed to be social welfare organizations while spending tens of millions of dollars on political operations.

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Acting director of IRS resigns amid furor over targeting of conservative groups

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Zachary A. Goldfarb, Juliet Eilperin - May. 16 (News Report) - President Obama on Wednesday demanded and accepted the resignation of the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Steven T. Miller, as part of a multi-pronged effort to quell controversies that threaten to dominate his second term. ...

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Scandalous vs. Scandal Lust

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By CHARLES M. BLOW - May. 16 (Opinion) - I have watched in recent days as a parade of conservatives have used specific and real governmental missteps to justify their wide-ranging paranoia and irrational hostilities. “Aha!” You have to take their glee in sorrow with a grain of salt. For them th

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Obama’s unfortunate scapegoat

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Alex Seitz-Wald - May. 15 (News Analysis) - Miller is a scapegoat in the most pure and classic sense. The acting commissioner was not running the IRS at the time employees improperly targeted Tea Party groups — that would be Bush-appointee Doug Shulman, who resigned as commissioner last year — and Miller’s name isn’t mentioned a single time in the Treasury Department inspector general’s report. Indeed, there is no evidence that Miller was in any way responsible, involved or even aware of the inappropriate targeting of conservative groups by underlings. He is falling on his sword for something he did not do. But why Obama made this decision is easy to understand: The political pressure to fire someone — anyone — was deafening, and the president literally didn’t have other options.

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Blame Citizens United for the IRS scandal

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Jared Bernstein - May. 15 (News Analysis) - the problem here isn’t the president. It’s the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision and subsequent tax law written by Congress that gives these groups tax exempt status (under rule 501(c)(4)) as long as most of their activities are primarily on educating the public about policy issues, not direct campaigning. Of course, the ambiguities therein are insurmountable. Many of these groups, especially the big ones, spend millions on campaign ads mildly disguised as “issue ads,” and under current law they can do so limitlessly and with impunity.

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Meet the group the IRS actually denied: Democrats!

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Joan Walsh - May. 15 (News Report) - Everyone agrees that the IRS shouldn’t have targeted groups with “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names for special scrutiny in awarding tax-exempt status. NBC News reports two agents have been disciplined for doing so, and the Justice Department announced a criminal probe. But so far no one has identified a single conservative group that was denied status in the controversial review, though some faced bureaucratic hurdles and had their tax-exempt status delayed. In fact, the only known 501(c)(4) applicant to have its status denied happens to be a progressive group: the Maine chapter of Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office.

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The Real Scandal: Official Washington Goes Nuts Over IRS Doing Its Job

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Steven Rosenfeld - May. 14 (News Analysis) - The IRS was doing its job. Its staff was overwhelmed by the thousands of obvious political groups that sought the cover of being designated as charities in the 2010 and 2012 elections; so they could raise money and hide their donors names. Some IRS employees spent far too much time or were assigned to spend time on lowest-hanging fruit—political amateur groups from the Tea Party movement—and not enough on the bigtime players, such as Karl Rove, who was lawyered up. And the IRS still has not ruled on the tactics and likes of the Roves ( Crossroads GPS), Koch brothers ( Americans for Prosperity) and the pro-Obama groups ( Organizing for America and Priorities USA) that put millions into thepresidential election via groups pretending to be charities.

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IRS Fallout: The Real Scandal is Secret Money Influencing US Elections

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Ari Berman - May. 14 (Opinion) - The IRS is under siege for investigating conservative political groups applying for tax-exempt status. But the real problem wasn’t that the IRS was too aggressive. It was that the agency focused on the wrong people - “none of those groups were big spendes on political advertising; most were local Tea Party organizations with shoestring budgets,” writes The New York Times—and wasn’t aggressive enough.

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Casinos Are Booming Thanks to State Governments' Need to Exploit Gambling Addicts for Revenue

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Alyssa Figueroa - May. 13 (Special Report) - Today, however, state governments work with casino managers in the name of revenue, which they justify by allotting the money to projects that are meant to enhance communities. In reality, however, governments’ partnership with casinos ultimately harms communities. Unlike other “sin taxes,” like those on tobacco, alcohol and, in the near future, possibly soda, which act to discourage destructive behavior, casino taxes are collected with the government’s encouragement, through partnership and advertising.

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The Facts Are In and Paul Ryan Is Wrong

Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Magazine - By Jonathan Chait - May. 10 (News Analysis) - Changes in the way we think about the world are not “news” in the classic sense — they occur gradually, without discrete events to signal them. But they matter. Two such developments have come together recently, both reported in the New York Times. The f

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10 Reasons Austerity Is a Crock

Wed, 08 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Stephanie Kelton - May. 08 (News Analysis) - When we allow our economy to operate below full employment (as now), we are sacrificing trillions of dollars in lost output and income each year. We can never go back and recover it. It is gone forever. You’ve seen the debt clock? Here’s the lost output clock.

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Obama Embraces Plutocrats Again With His Billionaire Commerce Secretary Choice

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Steven Rosenfeld - May. 07 (News Analysis) - her record as a businesswoman shares similarities with Mitt Romney’s. Her massive wealth is kept in tax-avoiding offshore accounts. Her family’s best-known business, the Hyatt hotel empire, is known for bitter and ongoing disputes with labor unions. Her resume includes running a bank that pioneered high-interest subprime loans and then failed miserably, leaving uninsured depositors with losses averaging $6,000.

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Reinhart, Rogoff Backing Furiously Away From Austerity Movement

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Mark Gongloff - May. 02 (News Report) - Under steady attack after their seminal research was found to be riddled with errors, Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff are making a show of backing away from the austerity that their research encouraged. They claim that their views on austerity have never changed, but the record tells a different story. They're still trying to have it both ways -- advocating for government belt-tightening while trying to avoid being seen as political.

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2 More Grad Students Claim To Find Another Flaw In Reinhart-Rogoff Research

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Mark Gongloff - Apr. 30 (News Report) - Like Scooby-Doo villains, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff keep getting done in by meddling kids. First, University of Massachusetts-Amherst grad student Thomas Herndon shot holes in their influential research paper, "Growth In A Time Of Debt," by pointing out several mistakes and omissions the Harvard economists had made. Now, two PhD students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City have a new paper that they say finds another flaw in that same research.

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Washington's Backward Retirement Policy: So Wrong, and Yet So Easy to Fix

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By - James Kwak - Apr. 30 (Opinion) - money is being wasted on tax subsidies for "private" retirement accounts such as 401(k)s and IRAs. In 2012, these subsidies added up to $199 billion, or about 1.3 percent of GDP.

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