ataxingmatter

More on Torture

Torture is still on the national conscience.  Condi Rice has been filmed telling students that she isn't responsible because she just passed along the orders to the CIA, and because if the President said it was ok, then it was.  The Justice Department ethics probe (conducted by Bush officials in the Department's Office of Professional Responsibility) of Bush era attorneys who from all appearances enabled torture by means of twisted, inventive, and incomplete legal reasoning--Yoo (currently a tenured law professor), Bybee (currrently an appointed-for-life federal appeals court judge) and others-- is apparently fairly harsh, possibly supportive of state bar action including perhaps disbarment, but stops short of recommending prosecution for war crimes. 

Two things are worth noting here, assuming that the report as released does recommend disciplinary action.

First, we shouldn't wait for Holder's decision on whether to prosecute to start considering other appropriate actions. I hope justice prevails and the Department of Justice does prosecute the enablers of torture, but I'm not counting on it.  Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against Bybee, and Berkleley should consider whether there is sufficient cause for removing Yoo's tenure.  No federal judge should sit in judgment on actions by others who has played the role Bybee played in the U.S.'s darkest hour of shame in recent times.  No one should teach future lawyers who used such twisted reasoning to rationalize torture to avoid the Geneva Conventions.

Second, Justice Dept. officials shouldn't be swayed by former officials' lobbying for leniency.  Apparently, there is an effort underway by Yoo and Bybee to appeal to Justice Dept. attorneys to shelter the former officials by arguing that legal advisers simply shouldn't have to worry about being prosecuted for failure to heed the law in their legal advice--i.e., trying to get them to worry that they too could be on the hot seat of public scrutiny for their legal advice, as though that were a negative.  See, e.g., Bush Officials Try to Alter Ethics Report, Washington Post, May 5, 2009.   Sorry, folks.  Being on the hot seat for the adequacy of your legal advice is part and partial of being an attorney.  Government attorneys don't get a free ride.  You might even argue that they have a higher duty to uphold the law, as they are sworn officers of the court by virtue of being attorneys and sworn officers of the government by virtue of being government attorneys. The idea that Justice Dept. attorneys' actions should be viewed with leniency because of the strident times post 9/11 or because of their role in advising the President is a slippery slope argument that leads to government attorneys acting as tools of potential dictators. 

Is Swine Flu a Reason to Change Tax Laws to Favor Telecommuting?

Ed Zelinsky, a tax law professor at Manhattan's Cardozo law school who famously tried (and lost) his case pressing the unconstitutionality of New York's taxation of his income earned for days he wrote and researched at his home in Connecticut rather than at his Manhattan office, writes in the Oxford University Press blog about Swine Flu, Telecommuting and New York's Extraterritorial Taxation of Nonresidents' Incomes, OUP.com, May 4, 2009.

Zelinsky's arguments for a governor-imposed telecommuting incentive suspension of New York's taxation of nonresidents' income earned based on their jobs originating in New York boil down to the following: 

1. Swine flu is contagious, and the workplace is a place where communicable diseases can be spread.  Physical commutes are more harmful to the environment (air pollution, use of energy) than telecommutes.  Therefore, we should encourage employees to telecommute from home rather than work in their offices.

2. New York State taxes nonresidents who work in the city on their city-earned income, whether they are physically present or telecommuting.  Telecommuters do not use any public services on the days they work at their out of state residence.  Therefore, New York State's tax system amounts to "double income taxation" for those days, which discourages telecommuting.

3. Accordingly, New York should "suspend" its rules taxing nonresident New York employees on days they telecommute rather than commute to New York and Congress should enact legislation preventing states from taxing telecommuting nonresidents on such days.

I care about the environment, and I don't think people should be overtaxed or, importantly, undertaxed.  So do I agree with Zelinsky?  I have a lot of questions, so I'm not yet convinced it is a good idea.

First, the argument about communicable diseases seems stretched, since children go to school (often transported long distances so that they can attend a private school or a selected public school) and are likely the primary vectors for spread of easily communicable diseases that require good hand washing and no sharing of cups and spoons.  Telecommuters are presumably going into the office a good bit as well.  Would more days of telecommuting really help stop the spread of various communicable diseases?

Second, don't most states credit the tax paid by their residents to the states where their residents work against any tax due on that same income in the home state? See. e.g., Maryland 2008 form for credits.  Now, there may be some risk of the "double taxation" that Zelinsky decries, because credit systems are never perfect, but it seems to me that the person who chooses to live in a state other than the state where the primary work is has less grounds to complain on that basis.

Third, is it really accurate to say, as Zelinsky does, that "New York provides no public services to the nonresident telecommuter on his day working at his out-of-state home"?  The idea that a person who sometimes telecommutes should not be taxed in the primary work state for those days because he gets no benefits from that state on those days implies a fragmentation of benefits that appears to be an unreasonable parsing of the way we benefit from the various overlapping governments that have jurisdiction over us.  Zelinsky, for example, actually continues to benefit from New York's overall transportation arrangements even on days when he does class prep for his Cardozo classes at home in Connecticut.  What if, for example, he gets a call from a colleague and learns that an important meeting has been scheduled for that evening, and he is able to use New York's various transportation facilities to get to that meeting.  The mere existence of that possibility is a benefit that he enjoys even on days that he doesn't actually take advantage of it.  The same would be true for countless tangible and intangible benefits provided by the state, from ongoing police and fire support (his office isn't as likely to be burglarized or burned to the ground when he is not there, leaving him with lost papers and personal effects) to ongoing sidewalk repairs and building code violation inspections (his students are less likely to be hit by falling cranes; he currently enjoys the psychic relief of expecting safe sidewalks on future commute days).  Accordingly, even if one believes the "benefits received" rationale is the only justification for taxation, this suggestion fails to convince me of the unfairness of New York State taxation for those absentee days of work.

Fourth, wouldn't this "days worked by telecommuting" proposal for a state with a vast horde of nonresident, full-time employees of employers in the state  impose a large variety of additional administrative, employer and taxpayer burdens--from taxpayer fraud (inappropriately claiming excessive days worked outside the state to reduce taxes), to employer information reporting burdens (requiring more refined records of days worked in and out of state and reporting of days to the state), to employee burdens (requiring a verifiable method of signing in and out each day of in-state work), and expensive administrative compliance checks (increased audits comparing employer and employee records for all nonresidents who commute some of the time into the city to work)?  There are always some people whose place of work is of necessity spread over many different places for which these kinds of determinations are necessary (think professional athletes, for example). New York's current policy takes that into account, since it allows for eliminating days worked outside of New York when they are "services which of necessity, as distinguished from convenience, obligate the employee to out-of-state duties in the service of his employer."   New York State Dept. of Tax'n and Finance, TSB-M-06(5)I, May 15, 2006.  See also Instructions to New York's Form IT-203-B and Form IT-203-B.  Zelinsky's telecommuting-for-convenience proposal would be a many-fold increase in the number of workers to whom this policy would apply and to the complexity of the accounting required. 

Fifth, would the proposal really result in tax savings for the telecommuter?  I could imagine that the various administrative burdens such additional employees/costs to audit workforce records, noncompliance costs, and difficulty in estimating state revenues might well lead to increased tax rates on income earned in the state to compensate for the lack of taxes from nonresidents for work with a nexus to the state.

Sixth, as an academic, I must say I find the increasing trend for law professors to live far away and come in only for classes or "necessary" meetings discouraging.  It makes maintaining the sense of a collegial academic community of scholars and teachers harder, and it discourages faculty who live far away from coming to community events.  "I'm working at home today, so sorry, I won't be able to attend the open house for newly admitted students" is likely an increasingly common statement these days in respect of numerous events that are important to an academic community.  People who choose to live a considerable distance from their ordinary workplace have made a choice that has many different ramifications.  I'm not sure I want to see a rule that  encourages that practice by incentivizing purchases of homes at a distance from work through the tax break for telecommuting.

These multi-faceted considerations require in-depth deliberation to determine the relative costs and benefits of such a major change in a state's system of taxation.  There are clearly strongly motiviated coalitions pushing for these changes, see, e.g., the Telework Coalition, and perhaps we will ultimately conclude that they make sense.  But I don't think Zelinsky has made the case yet for the proposal he supports.

The Bush Regime Usurpation of Constitutional Power

This is not a post on tax issues, nor a post on the economy.  But the subject of this post is highly relevant to everyone who thinks that democratic egalitarianism is important, who values our democratic institutions, who believes that governments should operate under the laws and not above the law, who is convinced that the military must remain subservient to civilian rule and constitutional mores, and who thinks that legal advice must not be so colored by the desire to advance a position that it could threaten to destroy the fabric of the law itself.

Yesterday, the Obama administration released nine of the already notorious Bush Justice Department memos, products of the Justice Department Gang of John Yoo (the infamous author of the "torture is okay" memo whom the University of California at Berkeley somehow saw fit to hire to teach their law students--do they expect him to show them just how to ignore the law in writing a legal "memorandum" intended to justify what your boss wants to do?), Robert Delahunty, and Alberto Gonzales (then White House counsel).  

These memos told Bush that being president gave him enormous powers, in spite of the apparent Constitutional safeguards, that were not much short of dictatorship.  The New York Times, in what amounts to an incredible understatement, notes that "taken together, the opinions disclosed Monday were the clearest illustration to date of the broad definition of presidential power approved by government lawyers in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks."  Lewis, Memos Reveal scope of the Power Bush Sought, NY Times, Mar. 2, 2009.

Under the memos--not disavowed until a few days before the end of the Bush administration in a move that looks suspiciously like Steven Bradbury's effort to distance himself from memoranda that are an embarassment to the nation as well as possibly a disgrace to the authors (and those who allowed them to stand for years) as legal product, Bush could take the following types of actions, merely because he held the title of "president" in a time of "war" (of his own making):

• use the military to strike --including with deadly force--within the US as a self-defense measure, on his own conclusion that he was going after terrorists
• unilaterally determine the appropriate treatment of detainees, without regard to anything Congress might say (since proven wrong by Supreme Court caselaw)
• subordinate First Amendment speech and press rights "to the overriding need to wage war successfully"
• conduct raids without search warrants
• abrogate unilaterally foreign treaties
• ignore Congressional rules for dealing with detainees considered suspect of terrorism, including carrying out "rendition" of prisoners to other countries
• conduct domestic eavesdropping without search warrants (on the claim that it was similar to precedent permitting use of deadly force in self-defense)
• ignore the Posse Comitatus Act (barring military from conducting domestic law enforcement) by claiming that such military functions are national security functions and thus not really domestic law enforcement.

Of course, Bush did unilaterally abrogate treaties, in his disregard for the Geneva Conventions.  We learned that he did get wiretap information illegally on domestic calls.  He did use "rendition" to cause prisoners to be delivered to black sites in foreign countries, apparently for torture.  He did subordinate press rights, issuing fake press propaganda reports to mislead the American people and preventing the press from adequately covering the "war" on terror or the real wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  And he did throw American citizens in military brigs on his say-so that they were terrorist suspects.

We allowed our country to stoop to unimaginable lows, all on the sayso of a few irresponsible legal hacks.  We are all guilty for not doing more to stop the shameful exercise.  But those people in power that wrote those memos and allowed them to stand are especially at fault.  The professional bar associations should consider whether they merit some kind of sanction for their actions.

By the way, it has also now been revealed that the Bush Administration destroyed 92 tapes, not just 2, of harsh interrogation of Queda suspects.  See Mazzetti, U.S. Says CIA Destroyed 92 Tapes of Interrogations, NY Times, Mar. 2, 2009.  Remember that these tapes were destroyed in November 2005, long after a federal judge had ordered the government to preserve all evidence relevant to the trial of a Guantanamo detainee.  Tapes Not Part of Court Order, CIA Insists, NY Times, Apr. 18, 2008.  Intentional self-serving coverup, anyone? 

Tax Tidbits: links worth following

[edited Mar.11, 2009 to correct failed link]

There are a few good links to be followed on issues that relate to the many complex concerns about the economy, taxation and political decisions relevant to both of the former items. 

Salon, for example, has an article by Andrew Leonard on the bad economics of stopping gay marriage, since Focus on the Family, which devoted considerable resources to support the California ban in the recent election, is now laying off workers.  As readers know, I find the attempt to ban gay marriage ridiculous.  It is founded in the same discriminatory motives that banned miscegenation until the Supreme Court finally ruled in Loving against racial marriage discrimination.  Fundamentalists argue that gay marriage threatens straight marriage, which is utter nonsense--if anything, it strengthens it because it makes marriage itself that much more important to couples, whether straight or gay. And the "bad economics" of stopping gay marriage means a lot more than just the impact on the Focus on the Family organization.  The bad economics applies as well to thinking about the care and nurturing of children that gay couples adopt:  policies that discourage stable gay couples and discourage gay couples' adoption of children result in unadopted children who live less stable lives at state expense, which requires, guess what, more taxes at a time when states across the nation are scrounging for dollars because of the recession.  That's really bad economics, when those children could be in good families.

Then there's Steven Greenhouse's op-ed in the New York times on November 16 (Sunday)--will the safety net catch the economy's casualties?  As we face a deep recession for the first time since Reagan first took office, we face it as a "far different place" after four decades of Reaganomics--deregulation, privatization, tax cuts for the wealthy, military buildups and scaled back social protections (from  Reagan's increases in payroll taxes to Clinton's welfare "reform" to Bush's stingy treatment of the S-CHIP program).  Greenhouse quotes Hacker's comment that "some of the core elements of the social safety net have eroded" and cites the Center for American Progress and National Employment Law Project report (Helping the Jobless Helps Us All) issued on the 14th on the importance of expanding unemployment insurance.  The lesson here isn't very different from the lesson about denying the opportunity for a stable legal marriage to gay couples and their children--"the deterioration of the safety net will not only mean more pain and poverty for millions of families, but a longer recession."  A society that takes care of the wealthy and lets everybody else fend for themselves is not one any of us should want to be a part of.  We're all worse off when some of us suffer needlessly.

Thankfully, Congress has not yet given up on realizing that the core problem that needs to be dealt with in connection with the collapse of the speculative housing bubble is the fate of ordinary Americans.  Millions of homeowners are in danger of losing their homes.  The bailout can't be used just to shore up the big banks that caused the problem in the first place by loosening credit standards and attempting to securitize the risk away.  See Brian Knowlton and John Cushman Jr., Lawmakers Renew Call for More Help for Homeowners, NY Times, Nov. 18, 2008.  The discussion doesn't go far enough, though.  Congress should pass a law permitting modification of mortgages on primary residences in bankruptcy.  It's disgraceful that the Republicans prevented that as a part of the bailout provisions.  Now that the election has demonstrated that the majority of Americans want real change, Congress should provide that change by enacting this legislation that will make a real difference in the foreclosure rate.  And the bailout--modify its terms to require: no dividends, no bonuses, no acquisitions using bailout funds, more lending.

And here's an older tidbit from Wisconsin Truth Watch--one of several posts expounding (as I admittedly do sometimes) on the problems of privatization versus the value of tax-supported government services.  Always nice to see sites that recognize that taxes are like the dues we pay to any organization to have the organization perform its key functions.

The Reasons I Support Obama for President

The 2008 election is finally just around the corner.  Next Tuesday those of us who haven't voted early will make our way to the polls and make our choice for President and many other offices.  We have had more information in this campaign than we often have, and some real discussion of issues that matter--from taxes to Social Security, from health care to military spending.  But we've also had one of the worst smear campaigns that I have ever seen--worse than the anti-Dukakis Willie Horton ads.  John McCain, a man who claims for himself the term "maverick" (and  thereby reveals that he is no maverick, since genuine mavericks do not seek out labels by which to endear themselves to fawning bases) and  Barack Obama, a man few Americans knew before he stepped on the world stage in his 2004 Democratic convention speech, have both revealed themselves through the two years that this campaign has gone on.  We Americans are ready to choose one of them to lead us over the next four years.  I've made my choice, and it was not difficult.  I heartily endorse Barack Obama for president, for the following reasons.

1) ECONOMICS AND TAXES:  McCain admits his economic ignorance and surrounds himself with ideological economic voices, leading him to support a tax policy that continues the corporatist philosophy that has dominated the country under four decades of mostly Republican rule--tax laws that consistently favor big business and the powerful wealthy over ordinary Americans.  Obama has some of the best economic minds in the country in his camp, and he supports a tax policy that is more attuned to the greater public good.  Studies of the two policies have made it clear that McCain's would result in larger deficits while providing more tax cuts for the wealthy with incomes above $250,000, whereas Obama's would result in smaller deficits while providing more tax cuts for ordinary Americans with incomes of less than $100,000.  See this New York Times analysis.

2) WAR:  McCain seems almost to believe that war is good (witness his "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" song and dance routine) and shows no judgment about the subtleties of foreign policy diplomacy.  We have already spent billions and likely commited trillions to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, yet McCain would continue to expend scarce resources on a wasteful war that has killed thousands of civilians, created a lasting impression of an imperialistic nation gone awry, and resulted in no gains for the US other than for the greedy, cronyism-based war-industry itself, from Blackwater to Halliburton.  Obama understood from the beginning the dangers of invading Iraq under a trumped-up rationale, and he had the courage of true leadership to speak up about that at a time when many Americans were so fooled by the warmongering propaganda and lies about weapons of mass destruction that they believed war with Iraq was appropriate.

3) INCLUSIVENESS:  McCain has run a hateful campaign of smears, that demonstrate his inability to work well to reach out to a broadly inclusive agenda that serves the public good, whereas Obama epitomizes the inclusiveness that must be the guidestar for this country in the twenty-first century.  McCain's smear campaign suggests guilt by association (using Obama's casual association with has-beens like Bill Ayers and others, even though it turns out that he or his friends are associated with the same people that he tries to smear Obama with) and invites the kind of divisive hate that has for so long kept America from uniting to act in the public good and permitted the corporatist agenda easy dominance.  Obama's campaign has provided informative contrasts to McCain's policies without resorting to smears--even though McCain's history could have invited those smears (the Keating Five scandal, his many affairs, his not-so-stellar record from poor showing in his class to being widely known as an angry man whose temper gets the best of him).

4) SCIENCE  McCain is an anti-intellectual that snobbishly associates wisdom and articulateness with anti-Americanism, whose science advisors are limited, and whose running mate believes in creationism.  Obama is an intellectual who can articulate the concerns of ordinary Americans while understanding the complexities of modern life and the importance of promoting scientific analysis and solutions for the problems we face.  The range of science experts who advise Obama is impressive, and suggests that he will attempt to pick good people and ensure that science is at the forefront of scientific policy decisions, unlike the Bush administration that has let petty partisan politics kick science out of the laboratory.

5) JUDGMENT:  McCain appears to be a rash, angry man whose judgment is clouded by petty issues and vengeful thinking.  His selection of the inarticulate, poorly educated, inexperienced, unqualified, small-mined, and divisive Sarah Palin as running mate suggests that as president he would put momentary gain above the long-term wellbeing of the country, resulting in poor choices about people who will hold enormous power, including Supreme Court justices, Secretary of State, and other positions.  Obama, on the other hand, has consistently shown a willingness to listen, to consider, to reflect, and his selections of people to work with him have shown how well that reflection works in ensuring that people understand the message, work together to achieve a good result, and take note of mistakes so that they are not repeated.  His selection of Joe Biden as running mate suggests that as president he will consider the long-term wellbeing of the country: Biden isn't perfect, but he is deeply concerned about ordinary Americans (although rich, he is not in the super-wealthy class that generally populates the Senate) and he is qualified to take on the office of President if he must. 

Liechtenstein: First German Conviction in Case

The Liechtenstein LGT bank controversy continues.  Remember that a disgruntled former computer tech stole a number of account documents from the bank run by the principality that showed what appears to be a pervasive pattern of facilitating tax evasion.  The documents ended up in the hands of German government officials, who shared relevant ones with the US and other countries' tax administrators.  From that has come a focus on the issue within the IRS and in Congress, leading to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report and hearings yesterday.

The German court today convicted a 66 year old real estate mogul of tax evasion in connection with the Liechtenstein LGT Group bank scandal, for which he received a two-year suspended sentence for evading 7.5  million Euros in tax and was required to pay 7.5 million euros to charities.  See First German Convicted in Tax Case on Liechtenstein, Bloomberg. com.   Germany has conducted a number of raids, and a number of taxpayers have turned themselves in voluntarily (presumably suspecting that they will be found out one way or another).  See Germany Punishes First of Liechtenstein Tax Dodgers, Deutsche Welle, July 18, 2008.

News Flashes: OECD, Chicago Banker-cum-Minister-ex-sexual harasser)

There is an interesting update on the story about the Chicago property-tax-saving "minister" who purportedly converted a portion of his $3 million home into a church saving thereby about $80,000 a year in property taxes.  Turns out the "minister" lost a nasty sexual harassment suit by one of his bank's employees.  Farfaras v. Citizens Bank & Trust Co., 433 F.3d 558 (7th Cir. 2006).  Read all about it on Tax Prof, with a link to the breaking story in the Chicago Tribune.

The OECD released several items related to international taxation:

OECD Model Tax Convention update 2008 news release.

Description of the report on attribution of profits to permanent establishments, with a link to the report.

Update on treaty relief for collective investment vehicles .

Center for Economic Progress "summit"

The Center for Economic Progress, through the National Community Tax Coalition and with Frontera Assets, is hosting a "summit" on financial independence for working families in Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, New Mexico, Nevado, Texas and Utah.  It will be held in Scottsdale Arizona, with "pre-event" sessions July 23 and "event sessions" July 24 and 25m with a charge of $150 for affiliated organizations and $200 for others.  You can register at www.tax-coalition.org.  and apply for scholarships at this link: click here.

The Center is a coalition of organizations that focuses on helping working families. You can read about its various programs at this link:  http://www.economicprogress.org/index.php/c/About_Us

Here's what the organization has to say about the event:

From food to housing to child care, working families face rising costs at every turn, while their wages stagnate or even decline.  The National Community Tax Coalition, a leader in the movement to connect working families to tax credits and economic opportunities, wants to help you combat this crisis for working and immigrant families.  Join us as we share tools and strategies to create change on a larger scale.  During this summit, we will talk about the state of low-income workers nationwide, in the South, and along the Southwest border.  By focusing on skill building and action planning, and providing opportunities to network with other programs, experts, and elected officials, we will help you to take your organization from a practitioner in the field to a leader in the movement.

****

General Sessions:

30,000 Feet: State of Low-Income Workers, A National View

Drilling Down: State of Low-Income Workers, A Regional Perspective

What to Expect: Let's Go Deeper?

Panel Discussion: IRS News Flash

Concurrent Sessions:

Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Using Datat to Improve Your Program

The Flip Side of Free Tax Prep: Being a Strong Voice for Low-Income Workers in Your Community

Hitting Rock Bottom: Helping Low-Income Workers Navigate the Marketplace

New Tax Blog

I'm delighted to welcome to the "blawging" world Ted Seto, a tax professor colleague at Loyola Los Angeles who has just begun a new blog.  His blog is called Understanding Tax. 

Ted is a wonderful colleague who listens well and always has incisive comments on current tax issues.  He is a Harvard grad--with a Phi Beta Kappa B.A. and a magna cum laude J.D., service as executive editor of the Harvard Law Review and clerk for Judge Mansfield on the Second Circuit, and 14 years of experience as a civil litigator and tax attorney at prominent firms.  Whenever he posts an article on SSRN, I rush to skim it, knowing that I will be enlightened by his perspective.  I know that his blog will provide similarly insightful comments on tax affairs.  His entry on bonus depreciation provides a good review of the economics of the excess depreciation that has been passed in recent tax bills and touted as a great economic stimulus.  Enjoy! and visit often.

Tax as News: some articles worth reading

Here are a few links to articles on tax (or in some way related to tax) that are worth a read.

Patrick McGeehan, Big Chains Benefit From City Tax Incentives but Don't Create Jobs, Report Says, NY Times, May 29, 2008 (noting that fast-food restaurants, gas stations and national chain stores have reaped the benefits of Manhattan tax breaks (to the tune of more than $400 million last year and more than the city Housing Authority has in its budget) to displace independent competitors, without creating new jobs).

Mary Williams Walsh, In Stock Plan, Employees See Stacked Deck, NY Times, May 29, 2008 (noting the concerns of US Sugar employees and former employees regarding its treatment of its ESOP program; employees are cashed out on retirement according to an "independent appraisal" that is supposed to ensure they get fair value for a privately held company, but US Sugar, a company that went private under the Mott family, has found a way to use the ESOP that is supposed to benefit employees to its advantage.  It paid employees considerably less than 2 offers it received for the stock over a two year period--the offers were for $293 a share, and many employees received as little as $194 a share under the "independent appraisal" and were not told about the offers for the higher price (nor were they allowed to attend a shareholder meeting, which is normally permitted).  The company rejected the offer of 293 a share in part because it had another appraisal for that purpose valuing the company at more than $1000 per share.  The company also stopped paying dividends on the shares.  The company benefits when retirees are cashed out (especially if they are cashed out at a cheap price) because it concentrates share ownership back in the non-employee owners of the company.  In the US Sugar case, the Mott family, and possibly a private foundation established with Mott family shares because of a need to reduce their percentage ownership of the company, are the beneficiaries.  (See next item for more on the Foundation.) Not surprisingly, some of the employees feel cheated, and they are taking their case to court.  ESOPs are primarily at private companies--95% of the 10,000 ESOP plans.  Makes one wonder if these tax-benefited plans are primarily serving the companies in getting employees to be super-productive and then ripping them off with appraisals that undervalue the stock.....).

Mary Williams Marsh, Ostensibly Independent, a Charity is US Sugar's Swing Vote Shareholder, NY Times, May 29, 2008 (noting the role of a charity in supporting US Sugar, whereas if it sided with the employees (i.e., the ESOP), the two blocks would control the company).

Jeremy Peters, New York to Back Same-Sex Unions from Elsewhere, NY Times, May 29, 2008 (noting Governor Paterson's order to agencies to ensure that Full Faith and Credit is provided under New York law to other state's marriage laws, including all tax and other economic benefits (such as filing a joint tax return) that accrue under state law to married couples.  This is another good move that steps the US towards a decent and egalitarian policy towards committed couples, rather than the biased, religion-based policy that dominates the country today.).

Brian Krebs, New Tax Plan could Jeopardize Small Business Owners' Privacy, Washington Post, May 22, 2008 (noting business concerns about loss of privacy and potential ID theft if a White House proposal for credit card companies to report merchants' income is approved).

Jonathan Weisman, McCain Offers Tax Policies He Once Opposed, Washington Post, April 25, 2008 (chronicling McCain's early statements about the harm of tax cuts directed towards the nation's wealthiest taxpayers and comparing them to McCain's campaign positions favoring the Bush tax cuts).  And you might want to remember what we thought back then--see Jonathan Weisman's 2004 article on "Tax Burden Shifts to the Middle".

Alec MacGillis, Economists Knock Proposed Gas Tax Break, Washington Post, May 1, 2008 (noting that oil companies would get richer, funds for infrastructure repairs would be substantially reduced, and Americans would hardly see the difference at the pump).

(I'll be off in Montreal for the Law and Society meeting through Sunday.  Ataxingmatter will be on a break as well.)