Our Tax System: Higher Audit Rates for Lower Income Taxpayers

Paul Caron:

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) of Syracuse University reports  today that only 30 of the nation’s 180,000 plus millionaires were subject to face-to-face audits in FY 2005. When only traditional face-to-face audits are considered, those reporting less than $25,000 in total positive income were six times more likely to be audited than all those reporting $200,000 or more in income. IRS continues to withhold from TRAC statistical data it has made public in the past that might explain the aberration.

Surfing Faster

Leila Abboud:

For years, France’s telecommunications industry was a state-owned monopoly with one of the world’s most backward broadband markets. But thanks to deregulation six years ago, French consumers have access to high-speed Internet service that is much faster and cheaper than in the U.S.

One telecom company in particular has exploited the changes and created competition in France — a start-up called Iliad. Over 1.1 million French subscribers pay as low as €29.99 ($36) monthly for a “triple play” package called Free that includes 81 TV channels, unlimited phone calls within France and to 14 countries, and high-speed Internet. The least expensive comparable package from most cable and phone operators in the U.S. is more than $90, although more TV channels are generally included.

Making a Market in Talent

Lowell L. Bryan, Claudia I. Joyce, and Leigh M. Weiss:

Savvy companies understand the competitive value of talented people and spend considerable time identifying and recruiting high-caliber individuals wherever they can be found. The trouble is that too many companies pay too little attention to allocating their internal talent resources effectively. Few companies use talented people in a competitively advantageous way—by maximizing their visibility and mobility and creating work experiences that help them feed and develop their expertise. Many a frustrated manager has searched in vain for the right person for a particular job, knowing that he or she works somewhere in the company. And many talented people have had the experience of getting stuck in a dead-end corner of a company, never finding the right experiences and challenges to grow, and, finally, bailing out

Evacuating a 900+ Seat Airplane in 90 Seconds

Kieran Daly:

It’s Sunday morning and as usual I’m wearing a numbered bib and doing agility tests in an aircraft hangar with 1,000 Germans I’ve never met before!

As you’ll have guessed, the one thing we had in common is that we all thought it sounded interesting to be a volunteer in the first – and probably only – evacuation trial of the A380.

So here we are on a miserable, wet airfield in one of the biggest hangars in Europe at Airbus’ Finkenwerder production facility next to the River Elbe.

I’m number 873, proud of it, and with a white bib numbered in black to prove it. We hand in everything in our possession which, though I don’t realise it then, is going to make the next five hours pass very slowly indeed.

All of Your Memorial Union Photos Belong to Us

Dane101:

This morning I was chased out of the University of Wisconsin student union by a college student half my age telling me I couldn’t take photographs there. I know, I know…it wasn’t his fault, he was just doing his job. I asked him why I couldn’t take photographs there. He said everything in the Wisconsin Union was copyrighted and no one could take photographs inside the building without a “permit.”

I am begining to find that in Madison, Wisconsin, one of the most liberal cities in America, it is becoming increasingly difficult to take photographs on state owned and/or tax payer financed facilities (i.e. UW, Overture Center, Monona Terrace, etc.). Ironic, isn’t it? What’s worse, I was at a learning institution!

Investing in Ethanol


Norm Alster:

The current excitement over ethanol derives from research that has cut the cost of converting nonfood plant matter like grasses and wood chips into alcohol. Mr. Khosla says he believes that such ethanol, called cellulosic ethanol, will eventually be cheaper to produce than both gasoline and corn-derived ethanol.

Can investors whose pockets are not as deep jump into the ethanol market? Yes, but they are taking a big risk. Picking long-term winners among the companies that make ethanol — or, for that matter, develop other alternative energy technologies — is a very uncertain business. The few public companies that focus on ethanol are typically unprofitable. Pacific Ethanol, for example, has not yet had a profitable quarter and will not until at least the fourth quarter, when its first plant is scheduled to begin production, Mr. Langley said.

Interesting photo, new Janesville assembled Chevy Tahoe SUV with Vinod – a prominent Silicon Valley VC.

IRS Permits Tax Preparers to Sell Our Data

Jeanne Sahadi:

Would you ever agree to work overtime for free, indefinitely, creating profits for someone else?

I didn’t think so.

But that’s often what we do when we buy a product or service from companies. That’s because they can continue to make money off us by selling whatever personal information we give them in the course of the transaction. Your payback: more junk mail and greater risk of identity theft.

And now it looks very likely that tax preparers will be able to profit off clients in ways having nothing to do with taxes.

Thanks to proposed changes to the IRS’ privacy regulation of tax preparers, everyone from H&R Block to your local tax-prep shop may be allowed to sell their clients’ tax return information to any third party, including marketers and data brokers.

Mind you, they would need to get your consent, according to the proposed regulations.

The Case for a Consumption Tax

David Weisbach:

The debate over the choice between income and consumption taxation has been ongoing since the beginning of the modern economy, seemingly without end. Those who argue for an income tax usually claim that taxing capital income is central to a fair tax system because those with capital income appear to have a higher ability to pay. Moreover, reducing taxes on investment income would seem to reduce the progressivity of our tax system, a result that is particularly worrisome at a time of growing inequality.

Ligeti and a Madison Speeding Ticket

Chan Stroman:

Flashing lights from an unmarked black sedan; sudden short blare of a siren out of nowhere. I pull over, but the police car doesn’t move on. Those lights, for me? For me?

I’d been tooling along John Nolen Drive, lost in Ligeti’s propulsive first Étude. Is that what it was about the throbbing blue Beetle, swimming along in a sea of cars going just as fast, that asked for special attention?