Download or read book Learning to Love Form 1040 written by Lawrence Zelenak and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-03-29 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No one likes paying taxes, much less the process of filing tax returns. For years, would-be reformers have advocated replacing the return-based mass income tax with a flat tax, federal sales tax, or some combination thereof. Congress itself has commissioned studies on the feasibility of a system of exact withholding. But might the much-maligned return-based taxation method serve an important yet overlooked civic purpose? In Learning to Love Form 1040, Lawrence Zelenak argues that filing taxes can strengthen fiscal citizenship by prompting taxpayers to reflect on the contract they have with their government and the value—or perceived lack of value—they receive in exchange for their money. Zelenak traces the mass income tax to its origins as a means for raising revenue during World War II. Even then, debates raged over the merits of consumption-based versus income taxation, as well as whether taxes should be withheld from payroll or paid at the time of filing. The result is the income tax system we have today—a system whose maddening complexity, intended to accommodate citizens in widely different circumstances, threatens to outweigh any civic benefits. If sitcoms and political cartoons are any indication, public understanding of the income tax is badly in need of a corrective. Zelenak clears up some of the most common misconceptions and closes with suggestions for how the current system could be substantially simplified to better serve its civic purpose.
Download or read book Guilty Pleasures written by Laura E. Little and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Guilty Pleasures, legal scholar Laura Little provides a multi-faceted account of American law and humor, looking at constraints on humor (and humor's effect on law), humor about law, and humor in law.
Download or read book Guilty Pleasures written by Laura Little and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-12 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few people associate law books with humor. Yet the legal world--in particular the American legal system--is itself frequently funny. Indeed, jokes about the profession are staples of American comedy. And there is actually humor within the world of law too: both lawyers and judges occasionally strive to be funny to deal with the drudgery of their duties. Just as importantly, though, our legal system is a strong regulator of humor. It encourages some types of humor while muzzling or punishing others. In a sense, law and humor engage a two-way feedback loop: humor provides the raw material for legal regulation and legal regulation inspires humor. In Guilty Pleasures, legal scholar Laura Little provides a multi-faceted account of American law and humor, looking at constraints on humor (and humor's effect on law), humor about law, and humor in law. In addition to interspersing amusing episodes from the legal world throughout the book, the book contains 75 New Yorker cartoons about lawyers and a preface by Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor for the New Yorker.
Download or read book Taxes For Dummies written by Eric Tyson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-01-06 with total page 663 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Take the anxiety out of tax season and file your return with confidence In Taxes For Dummies, 2022 Edition, you'll get line-by-line advice and plan ahead strategies that take the fear and anxiety out of tax season and save you money now and in the months and years ahead. This completely updated edition includes detailed coverage of the numerous tax bills have passed in recent years. You'll learn everything you need to know to file your own taxes with confidence and intelligently plan year-round tax strategies. In this book, you'll: Discover how to take advantage of every deduction and tax credit that applies to your specific circumstances Learn to navigate the IRS website and the newest versions of the most popular online tax preparation and filing options Understand new retirement account options and the implications of new foreign taxation rules Plan ongoing, multi-year tax strategies that will help you achieve your financial goals at every stage of your life Taxes For Dummies, 2022 Edition is the perfect resource for any United States taxpayer planning to file their own 2021 taxes. Whether you're a first-time taxpayer, an expat filing from outside the US, or a seasoned veteran of tax season looking for the latest deductions and strategies to reduce your tax bill, this book is a must-read resource that'll transform how you think about taxes.
Download or read book Taxation Citizenship and Democracy in the 21st Century written by Yvette Lind and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2024-07-05 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proposing innovative ideas on the links between taxation, citizenship and democracy, this multidisciplinary book contributes to ongoing research and scholarship by emphasizing the importance of taxes to the functioning of democracy.
Download or read book Our Selfish Tax Laws written by Anthony C. Infanti and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why tax law is not just a pocketbook issue but a reflection of what and whom we, as a society, value. Most of us think of tax as a pocketbook issue: how much we owe, how much we'll get back, how much we can deduct. In Our Selfish Tax Laws, Anthony Infanti takes a broader view, considering not just how taxes affect us individually but how the tax system reflects our culture and society. He finds that American tax laws validate and benefit those who already possess power and privilege while starkly reflecting the lines of difference and discrimination in American society based on race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, immigration status, and disability. Infanti argues that instead of focusing our tax reform discussions on which loopholes to close or which deductions to allow, we should consider how to make our tax system reflect American ideals of inclusivity rather than institutionalizing exclusion. After describing the theoretical and intellectual underpinnings of his argument, Infanti offers two comparative case studies, examining the treatment of housing tax expenditures and the unit of taxation in the United States, Canada, France, and Spain to show how tax law reflects its social and cultural context. Then, drawing on his own work and that of other critical tax scholars, Infanti explains how the discourse surrounding tax reform masks the many ways that the American tax system rewards and reifies privilege. To counter this, Infanti urges us to work together to create a society with a tax system that respects and values all Americans.
Download or read book Read My Lips written by Vanessa S. Williamson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A surprising and revealing look at what Americans really believe about taxes Conventional wisdom holds that Americans hate taxes. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. Bringing together national survey data with in-depth interviews, Read My Lips presents a surprising picture of tax attitudes in the United States. Vanessa Williamson demonstrates that Americans view taxpaying as a civic responsibility and a moral obligation. But they worry that others are shirking their duties, in part because the experience of taxpaying misleads Americans about who pays taxes and how much. Perceived "loopholes" convince many income tax filers that a flat tax might actually raise taxes on the rich, and the relative invisibility of the sales and payroll taxes encourages many to underestimate the sizable tax contributions made by poor and working people. Americans see being a taxpayer as a role worthy of pride and respect, a sign that one is a contributing member of the community and the nation. For this reason, the belief that many Americans are not paying their share is deeply corrosive to the social fabric. The widespread misperception that immigrants, the poor, and working-class families pay little or no taxes substantially reduces public support for progressive spending programs and undercuts the political standing of low-income people. At the same time, the belief that the wealthy pay less than their share diminishes confidence that the political process represents most people. Upending the idea of Americans as knee-jerk opponents of taxes, Read My Lips examines American taxpaying as an act of political faith. Ironically, the depth of the American civic commitment to taxpaying makes the failures of the tax system, perceived and real, especially potent frustrations.
Download or read book Tax Justice and Tax Law written by Dominic de Cogan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people would agree that tax systems ought to be 'just', and perhaps a great deal more just than they are at present. What is more difficult is to agree on what tax justice is. This book considers a range of different approaches to, and ideas about the nature of tax justice and covers areas such as: - imbalances in international tax arrangements that deprive developing countries of revenues from natural resources and allow wealthy taxpayers to use tax havens; - protests against governments and large business; - attempts to influence policy through more technical means such as the OECD's Base Erosion and Profits Shifting project; - interpersonal matters, such as the ways in which tax systems disadvantage women and minorities; - the application of wider philosophical or economic theories to tax systems. The purpose of the book is not to iron out these underlying differences into a grand theory, but rather to gain a more precise understanding of how and why we disagree about tax justice. In doing so the editors are assisted by a stellar cast of contributors from four continents, with a wide variety of views and experiences but a common interest in this central question of how to agree and disagree about tax justice. This is, of course, not only an intellectual exercise but also a necessary precursor to achieving real-world change.
Download or read book Tax Law and Social Norms in Mandatory Palestine and Israel written by Assaf Likhovski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the changing role of law and social norms in creating tax compliance in mandatory Palestine and Israel. It is of interest to legal, economic, social, cultural and political historians, historians of Israel and the Middle East, and tax scholars.
Download or read book For Profit Philanthropy written by Dana Brakman Reiser and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-17 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book exposes a migration of business practices, players, and norms into philanthropy that strains the regulatory regime sustaining public trust in elite generosity through accountability and transparency and proposes legal reforms and private solutions to restore it. Practices, players, and norms native to the business sector have migrated into philanthropy, shattering longstanding barriers between commerce and charity. Philanthropies organized as limited liability companies, donor-advised funds sponsored by investment company giants, and strategic corporate philanthropy programs aligning charitable giving by multinationals with their business objectives paint a startling new picture of elite giving. In For-Profit Philanthropy, Dana Brakman Reiser and Steven A. Dean reveal that philanthropy law has long operated as strategic compromise, binding ordinary Americans and elites together in a common purpose. At its center stands the private foundation. The authors show how the foundation neatly combines donor autonomy with a regulatory framework to elevate the public's voice. This framework compels foundations to spend a small but meaningful portion of the assets their elite donors have pledged to the public each year. Prophylactic restrictions separate foundations from their funders' business and political interests. And foundations must disclose more about the sources and uses of their assets than any other business or charity. The philanthropic innovations increasingly espoused by America's most privileged individuals and powerful companies prioritize donor autonomy and privacy, casting aside the foundation and the tools it provides elites to demonstrate their good faith. By threatening to displace impactful charity with hollow virtue signaling, these actions also jeopardize the public's faith in the generosity of those at the top. Private ordering, targeted regulation, or a new strategic bargain could strike a modern balance, preserving the benefits of the compromise between the modest and the mighty. For-Profit Philanthropy offers a detailed roadmap to show how it can be accomplished.
Download or read book Making the Modern American Fiscal State written by Ajay K. Mehrotra and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-30 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the turn of the twentieth century, the US system of public finance underwent a dramatic transformation. The late nineteenth-century regime of indirect, hidden, partisan, and regressive taxes was eclipsed in the early twentieth century by a direct, transparent, professionally administered, and progressive tax system. This book uncovers the contested roots and paradoxical consequences of this fundamental shift in American tax law and policy. It argues that the move toward a regime of direct and graduated taxation marked the emergence of a new fiscal polity - a new form of statecraft that was guided not simply by the functional need for greater revenue but by broader social concerns about economic justice, civic identity, bureaucratic capacity, and public power. Between the end of Reconstruction and the onset of the Great Depression, the intellectual, legal, and administrative foundations of the modern fiscal state first took shape. This book explains how and why this new fiscal polity came to be.
Download or read book The Leap of Faith written by Sven H. Steinmo and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Why are citizens in some countries more willing to pay taxes than in other countries? This book examines the history of the relationship between citizens and their states in five countries, (Sweden, Britain, Italy, Romania, and the United States), and demonstrates how and why people in in some countries have come to trust the government with their money while in other countries they do not. The book explores the evolution of this relationship in detail, in each case showing how some governments developed the fiscal and technical capacity to tax their citizens fairly and deliver public services efficiently. In short, how and why some countries became more trustworthy than others. The volume concludes by examining the implications of these five cases for developing countries today and the lessons that can be learned.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development written by Richard M. Valelly and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars working in or sympathetic to American political development (APD) share a commitment to accurately understanding the history of American politics - and thus they question stylized facts about America's political evolution. Like other approaches to American politics, APD prizes analytical rigor, data collection, the development and testing of theory, and the generation of provocative hypotheses. Much APD scholarship indeed overlaps with the American politics subfield and its many well developed literatures on specific institutions or processes (for example Congress, judicial politics, or party competition), specific policy domains (welfare policy, immigration), the foundations of (in)equality in American politics (the distribution of wealth and income, race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexual and gender orientation), public law, and governance and representation. What distinguishes APD is careful, systematic thought about the ways that political processes, civic ideals, the political construction of social divisions, patterns of identity formation, the making and implementation of public policies, contestation over (and via) the Constitution, and other formal and informal institutions and processes evolve over time - and whether (and how) they alter, compromise, or sustain the American liberal democratic regime. APD scholars identify, in short, the histories that constitute American politics. They ask: what familiar or unfamiliar elements of the American past illuminate the present? Are contemporary phenomena that appear new or surprising prefigured in ways that an APD approach can bring to the fore? If a contemporary phenomenon is unprecedented then how might an accurate understanding of the evolution of American politics unlock its significance? Featuring contributions from leading academics in the field, The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development provides an authoritative and accessible analysis of the study of American political development.
Download or read book Figuring Out the Tax written by Lawrence Zelenak and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-26 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Figuring Out the Tax recounts the forgotten early development of the federal income tax in the US, resulting from the interplay between Congress and the Treasury Department in the decades following the enactment of the tax in 1913. It covers a wide range of topics including the income tax treatments of marriage, capital losses, charitable contributions and homeownership, as well as the rise, demise and resurrection of income tax withholding. Lawrence Zelenak deftly illustrates how the income tax achieved its current form through a range of stories which are new to tax history scholarship and involve some remarkable personalities and surprising plot twists. Although of particular interest to tax academics and professionals, this book will also serve as a useful introduction to the development of income tax for undergraduate students and law students.
Download or read book The IRS Research Bulletin written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book My Two Moms written by Zach Wahls and published by Avery. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An advocate and son of same-gender parents recounts his famed address to the Iowa House of Representatives on civil unions, and describes his positive experiences of growing up in an alternative family in spite of prejudice.
Download or read book P S I Love You More Than Tuna written by Sarah Chauncey and published by Sounds True. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna is both a lighthearted celebration of the loving bond between human and cat, and a touching meditation on the eternal nature of that love.” —Jackson Galaxy, host of Animal Planet’s My Cat From Hell An illustrated gift book for adults grieving a companion cat, celebrating the often-quirky bond between humans and felines. Our cats occupy a unique space in our hearts. When they’re gone, the loss can be devastating, the grief profound. P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna gives us an opportunity to give friends, loved ones, or ourselves tangible comfort during the grieving period, when so many of us feel isolated and misunderstood after a beloved pet dies. The author and illustrator (devoted cat lovers themselves) offer this book as a universal love letter from the felines we've bid goodbye to. It celebrates the special bonds we forge with our four-legged companions and reminds us that their love for us—and ours for them—need never end.
