In the last CalPERS Investment Committee meeting, one of the most revealing incidents took place when Investment Director Christine Gogan repeatedly refused to answer a simple, direct question about a widely-used private equity tax abuse, management fee waivers.
Read more...Examining an excellent in-depth investigation by Reuters into global financial stability issues, and the role of tax havens in this giant game of pain and plunder.
Read more...This Vice News segment makes the normally dry and daunting subject of taxes (really tax policy) accessible and entertaining. Plus it features Lee Sheppard.
Read more...The Republican candidates for President all made shameless appeals for even more plutocracy, in particular preferential treatment for the rich.
Read more...For every dollar these billionaires give, they take 44 from the rest of us.
Read more...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 […]
Read more...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?
Read more...How big corporate tax avoidance hurts local schools.
Read more...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.
Read more...How US policy neglect helped created Puerto Rico’s lousy economy.
Read more...Being a tax haven isn’t all it is cracked up to be.
Read more...As they have for decades, Americans poll in favor of higher taxes on top earners.
Read more...Accounting Control Fraud is one play in the elite playbook; this post argues that Self-Licking Ice Cream Cones are another.
Read more...The best budget policy: Let the government deficit float and spend on programs to produce full employmen and solve our many other problems.
Read more...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.
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