horizontal equity – The Surly Subgroup

By Sam Brunson

On Tuesday, Joe Magats, first assistant state’s attorney for Cook County, announced that he was dropping the charges against actor Jussie Smollett. Instead of a trial and punishment, Smollett agreed to forfeit his $10,000 bond and do community service.

Cook County prosecutors say this is a relatively normal type of alternative prosecution, one that prosecutors have recommended for over 5,700 offenders. It allows prosecutors to use their resources to prosecute violent offenders.

Not surprisingly, there’s some outrage about this alternative prosecution, notably from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CPD Superintendent Eddie Johnson. But this is a tax blog, not a criminal justice blog, so questions about the justice (or not) of dropping Smollett’s prosecution are outside of our usual scope. Which is why I’m going to focus, instead, on Illinois Representative Michael McAuliffe and his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad bill. Continue reading “Jussie Smollett and the Illinois Film Tax Credit” →

halloween-candy1 By Sam Brunson

I was asked on Twitter about the Halloween Parent Tax. And with Halloween coming up, it seemed like it needed a post. So here you are:

Design Considerations

You’ve got a couple options here. Are you going to create an income tax? A consumption tax? A head tax? Each is slightly different, in certain relevant ways:

Income Tax: This is probably what you think of when you think of the Halloween Parent Tax. Essentially, children are required to give their parents some percentage of the candy they get. (My wife’s parents imposed a 15-percent Halloween Parent Tax when she was growing up.) There are some design complications here—for example, are you taking a percentage of the number of pieces of candy the kids get? Or do different kinds of candy have different values? And do you take size into account in calculating candy value?[fn1] Continue reading “The Halloween Parent Tax” →