White Nationalists Groups are Charitable? Apparently so According to IRS (Cooking the Books Podcast)

By: Philip Hackney, December 22, 2016 Sam Brunson and I discuss an AP story “White Nationalists Raise Millions with Tax-Exempt Charities,” by Michael Kunzelman on a Cooking the Books Podcast today on Sparemin. The recording quality today is not the best, but I really liked the conversation a lot and hated to throw it away. I … Continue reading White Nationalists Groups are Charitable? Apparently so According to IRS (Cooking the Books Podcast)

Podcast: Require Candidates to Disclose Tax Returns?

By: Philip Hackney On this morning where we have a newly elected president, Sam Brunson and I discussed in a #CookingtheBooks Podcast whether Congress should pass legislation requiring a presidential candidate to disclose some number of years of tax returns in order to run for office. Sam argued here on the blog a couple of … Continue reading Podcast: Require Candidates to Disclose Tax Returns?

Cooking The Books Podcast on Trump’s Taxes

By: David J. Herzig Today Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, David Cay Johnston, Phil Hackney, and I got together for a 30 minute podcast discussion regarding the recent NY Times follow-up article about Mr. Trump’s $916 million tax loss (“NOL”). Here is link if you missed hyper-link above: http://share.sparemin.com/recording-5131 The topics ranged from the current tax reporting … Continue reading Cooking The Books Podcast on Trump’s Taxes

Inheriting Property Tax Assessments in California

By Sam Brunson I grew up in the north suburbs of San Diego and, while I haven’t lived in Southern California in a couple decades now, I try to keep a vestigial self-identification as a Southern Californian.[fn1] Part of that self-identification is listening to the Voice of San Diego podcast; it keeps me vaguely up-to-date … Continue reading Inheriting Property Tax Assessments in California

The Surly Subgroup Turns One!

Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess. Today is the one-year blogiversary of the Surly Subgroup. What started off as a group-blogging experiment hatched at last year’s Critical Tax Conference at Tulane Law School has provided quite a bit of entertainment for Surly bloggers and our guest bloggers, and hopefully for our readers as … Continue reading The Surly Subgroup Turns One!

More on Hate Groups and Tax Exemptions [Updated]

On the Cooking the Books Podcast, Phil Hackney and I discussed Michael Kunzelman’s story (that we both spoke to him about) on white nationalist groups that are tax exempt. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh asserts that the IRS cannot constitutionally deny tax exemptions to “hate groups” based on their views, abhorrent that they may … Continue reading More on Hate Groups and Tax Exemptions [Updated]

On Trump and Tax Opinions

Every so often, Brunson and Herzig carve out a day to swap long-winded emails, then those emails are published on the Internet. Sam- I am sure you have seen by now the NY Times story about Donald Trump’s purported tax positions from the 1990. The NY Times has been following up on a story they originally published … Continue reading On Trump and Tax Opinions

Yale Daily News Endorsed a Candidate -Political Campaign Intervention?

By: Philip Hackney, Oct. 31, 2016 Last week the Yale Daily News a college newspaper run by students associated with Yale University endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. While a newspaper endorsing a candidate for president is usually the ordinary course of business, when that newspaper is a section 501(c)(3) organization, its an issue. A charitable … Continue reading Yale Daily News Endorsed a Candidate -Political Campaign Intervention?

Trump Tax (Non) Disclosure

By David J. Herzig Today, Paul Caron in his TaxProf Blog, highlighted an article by John McGinnis (a Constitutional Law Scholar at Northwestern). In the article, McGinnis states that Trump should not have to disclose his income tax returns. His premise is that the norm of tax return disclosure is “bad.” He believes that privacy norms should … Continue reading Trump Tax (Non) Disclosure