Category Archives: Taxes

Meet the Hedge Funders and Billionaires Who Pillage Under the Shield of Philanthropy

For every dollar these billionaires give, they take 44 from the rest of us.

Another Private Equity Scam – Tax Receivable Agreements

As one tax expert put it, “Private equity is a tax gimmick with an acquisition attached.” We’re going to discuss a very big tax gimmick that virtually no private equity investors seem to be aware of. The failure of private equity general partners to publicize a tax scheme that on paper should benefit their limited […]

Why Carbon Taxes Would Be the Ultimate Energy Game-Changer

Carbon taxes are one of the most effective ways to curb the use of fossil fuels and promote renewable energy sources. And they also help businesses because providing for a predictable price of carbon encourages investment. Has their time finally arrived?

IRS Cracks Down on Private Equity Management Fee Waiver Tax Abuse

The IRS has finally decided to crack down on an not-well-known but flagrant private equity tax abuse, management fee waivers. State and local tax officials enabled this practice, which lowers Federal tax receipts and thus hasthe effect of shifting the tax burden off the 0.1% of private equity kingpins to small fry like you and me.

How Recessions Crush Certain Geographic Areas: Puerto Rico as a Case Study.

How US policy neglect helped created Puerto Rico’s lousy economy.

Caymans Exposed: Tax Havens Lucrative for Big Finance, Leave Only Crumbs for Locals

Being a tax haven isn’t all it is cracked up to be.

Did Ireland’s 12.5 Percent Corporate Tax Rate Create the Celtic Tiger?

Offshore banking and tax haven expert Nicholas Shaxson has launched a new blog, Fools’ Gold, to look at issues of ‘competitiveness’ and so-called ‘competition’ between nations. We’ve often taken issue with that policy goal, since it gives precedence to crushing labor as a way of lowering product prices to stoke exports. This approach is dubious for anything other than small economies, since all countries cannot be net exporters. Undue focus on exports as a driver of growth results in increasing international friction, such as the currency wars that are underway now. Moreover, as we have discussed separately, trade liberalization has gone hand in hand with liberalization of capital flows, in no small measure due to US efforts to make the world safe for what were then US investment banks. Yet Carmen Reinhardt and Ken Rogoff pointed out in their study of financial crises, higher levels of international capital flows are associated with more frequent and severe financial crises.

In addition, lowering wage rates reduces domestic demand. In countries like the US, where the domestic economy is much larger than the export sector, lowering internal demand to stoke exports is misguided.

Here we look at a first case study, the real reasons behind the growth and meltdown of the famed Celtic tiger, Ireland.

Bill Black: HSBC CEO – My Pay Was so Outrageous I Had to Use Tax Havens to Hide it from My Peers

This tidbit from HSBC reveals a new low in the standards of banking, which given how low those already are, amounts to an accomplishment of sorts. Perhaps we should create a Stuart Gulliver Award for other instances of creative extreme seaminess. Nominees?

Where are the “Progressive” Democrats on Loretta Lynch’s HSBC Money Laundering Wrist Slap?

Some Republican Senators are having a field day, and rightly so, over the fact that Obama’s attorney general nominee, Loretta Lynch, looks to have allowed bank giant HSBC, and more important, its executives and officers, off vastly too easy in a massive money-laundering and tax evasion scheme. And where are the inquisitive Democratic senators to be found?

Robert Parenteau: Get a TAN, Yanis: A Timely Alternative Financing Instrument for Greece

TAN, or tax anticipation notes, would way be a for Greece to give itself more fiscal spending wriggle room without violating Eurozone rules. That will likely be necessary if Monday’s meeting in Brussels results in no extension of the current Eurozone bailout.

What Thomas Piketty and Larry Summers Don’t Tell You About Income Inequality

In a new paper for the Institute For New Economic Thinking’s Working Group on the Political Economy of Distribution, economist Lance Taylor and his colleagues examine income inequality using new tools and models that give us a more nuanced — and frightening —picture than we’ve had before. Their simulation models show how so-called “reasonable” modifications like modest tax increases on the wealthy and boosting low wages are not going to be enough to stem the disproportionate tide of income rushing toward the rich. Taylor’s research challenges the approaches of American policy makers, the assumptions of traditional economists, and some of the conclusions drawn by Thomas Piketty and Larry Summers. Bottom line: We’re not yet talking about the kinds of major changes needed to keep us from becoming a Downton Abbey society.