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Taxation & Estate Planning

Start Making Sense

Unfair but balanced commentary on tax and budget policy, contemporary U.S. politics and culture.

Post Frequency: 2.2/day

Last Entry: November 04, 2020 at 16:18:00

Baseball idea

Posted on October 29, 2008
There should be a rule, solely for the post-season, that games are never treated either as rained out before they have become official, or as terminated short of 9 innings, on account of weather. Rather, they would in all cases be suspended and resumed where they left off at the next opportunity...

Douglas Holtz-Eakin disgraces himself yet again

Posted on October 27, 2008
I am really starting to wonder about Doug. Doesn't he plan to spend his life after the election - at least assuming McCain loses - in some sort of academic or intellectual setting? Does he have any inner compass of integrity left whatsoever? Are they drugging his food?The McCain campaign has dredged up an Obama quote from 2001 that is today's new attack point...

McCain explains his tax position

Posted on October 26, 2008
McCain keeps saying, so far as I can make any sense of it, that asking higher-income people to pay more tax than others is "socialist." Thus, he appears to be advocating a uniform head tax as the only alternative to "socialism," though needless to say he declines to make this explicit...

GWU Law School conference on generational equity

Posted on October 24, 2008
Yesterday I attended the first half of a conference at GWU Law School in Washington, D.C., organized by Neil Buchanan, concerning generational equity. 5 panels: philosophical perspectives, government finance (my panel, obviously), environmental, reproductive rights, "living constitution...

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"Socialism"

Posted on October 22, 2008
I seem to be having Internet problems. I can't download, or even find any reference to, the McCain proposal to replace the income tax with a uniform head tax. Yet he must be planning to announce this, given his newfound aversion to "socialism."

THE big news story of the day

Posted on October 22, 2008
Working out in the health club this morning, I could see (from screens tuned to CNN and even Fox) that the big news story of the day, hands down, is Palin's $150,000 clothing budget from the RNC.It is of course comical that a story like this should be so prominent, or should matter at all...

Jon Stewart's Daily Show

Posted on October 21, 2008
I actually got to attend a taping today, courtesy of a friend from out of the country who had an extra ticket (requested months in advance). I must say, McCain continues to give these guys great material, day after day, since almost any scurrilous or silly thing he says comes with ready videotape of a complete contradiction...

Fiscal stimulus and the budget deficit / fiscal gap

Posted on October 21, 2008
Paul Krugman is among those mocking the idea that we need to worry about the long-term fiscal situation given the risk of severe recession and the need for fiscal not just monetary policy to address it.Okay, I'm on board for fiscal stimulus this time around, although I don't like it in general because I think politicians tend to misuse it in other circumstances as an excuse for whatever they happen to want to do (e...

Budget policy next year if Obama wins

Posted on October 15, 2008
Jason Furman is apparently telling budget hawk Congressional Democrats that Obama would seek to establish "a government unified around the concept of fiscal discipline and centered around the pay-go rule. Insisting on paying for things will lead to better economic policy...

Paul Krugman wins the Nobel Economics Prize

Posted on October 13, 2008
Interesting to have this happen now; I have no idea whether the Nobel committee cares about Krugman's public intellectual role. He's obviously a meritorious pick in any event for his economics work, which reflected a trajectory from (a) challenging the conventional wisdom, such as about international trade, to show that things were a bit more complicated and ambiguous, to (b) defending the conventional wisdom against rejections of it that were ignorant and overstated...

Budget deficit update

Posted on October 10, 2008
According to Martin Sullivan in the 10/6/08 Tax Notes, the budget deficit for 2009 could end up as high as $914 billion, or 6.2% of GDP, both of which would be all-time national records. This would reflect scoring the financial rescue plan on what seems the correct basis, if it can be done sufficiently accurately, which is to treat only the excess of outlays over the estimated present value of future receipts as a write-off...

Doug Holtz-Eakin, your thesis advisor is calling

Posted on October 09, 2008
His latest public statement was to the effect that Obama opposes the new McCain bailout plan because Obama just wants to help Wall Street, not Main Street.Doug, did anyone tell you that the McCain plan is a direct pay to Wall Street, giving them face value rather than just market value for bad mortgages? Indeed, isn't it partly your plan? (I'd assume you helped draft it...

Staying calm in tough times

Posted on October 09, 2008
What do you tell yourself when, by market measures, your net worth declines by, say, a couple of hundred thousand dollars in the course of a week? (I haven't checked, but for someone my age with retirement saving it's a fair guess.)I tell myself that all that's really changed is the median prediction for the future by a bunch of over-excitable folks who are playing Keynes' famous beauty contest game (trying to figure out who everyone else will think everyone else thinks is the winner)...

The time I met John McCain

Posted on October 06, 2008
Okay, I haven't told this story here yet. It was 1999. I had a book coming out soon on Social Security. Someone at NYU who handles press relations told me that Good Morning America was going to have John McCain stop by to discuss Social Security privatization (this being before that term was forbidden), and if I came I could ask him a question...

IRS Chief Counsel Donald Korb steps down

Posted on October 03, 2008
Courtesy of the Tax Prof blog, I gather that IRS Chief Counsel Don Korb has stepped down effective no later than next January 19, so that the next Administration can start right out with his successor.This is not a surprise, since no one would be expected to want to stay in the Chief Counsel job forever...

VP debate - not the comment readers might expect

Posted on October 02, 2008
I really can't watch these things straight through - too tedious and stupid an experience for me.But I would give a lot of money to put an end to the faux populism that resonates everywhere in American politics. All these durn "regular folks" who want your vote while pretending they have no money and aren't famous & powerful...

There's a time and a place for lying

Posted on October 01, 2008
One of the hassles of my line of work is being asked frequently to write tenure and promotion letters. This can be a slog even when the bottom line is clear (as it usually is - tenure in law schools is much closer to automatic than, say, in leading economics departments)...

A nice heap of sugar

Posted on October 01, 2008
The Senate passed the bailout bill tonight after sweetening it with $150 billion ($110 billion net of offsets) in new tax breaks, including "extenders" that no doubt will soon be extended again. The bill, originally just 3 pages (although that gave the Treasury excessive authority without oversight), now apparently exceeds 450 pages...

Campaigns as a political institution

Posted on September 25, 2008
Presidential campaigns are supposed to provide information so people can make intelligent choices. Partly from the candidates' announced intentions, and the rest from what we can discern about character, temperament, and intellect.I've had my doubts sometimes about how well campaigns work, in an age of over-the-top media manipulation and contrived narratives, to do what they are supposed to...

2009 NYU Tax Policy Colloquium

Posted on September 25, 2008
It's never too soon. In that spirit, here is the schedule for the 2009 NYU Tax Policy Colloquium, which I will be co-teaching with Alan Auerbach:SCHEDULE FOR 2009 NYU TAX POLICY COLLOQUIUM(All sessions meet on Thursdays from 4-6 pm in Furman 120, NYU Law School) 1...

Case study in how bitter political fights destroy social capital

Posted on September 24, 2008
I've been thinking a lot lately about Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, which I read and enjoyed while on vacation this summer. While much of it is about the eponymous Trickster, a perennial favorite topic of mine, it's really mainly about a broader trend in our society that Nixon was brilliant and innovative at exploiting but that really goes way beyond his direct influence (i...

Country last

Posted on September 24, 2008
It's amusing that McCain apparently wants to avoid voting on the bailout, but is eager to have Democrats provide the votes to pass it so that he can then safely grandstand as the noble naysayer. (Details here.)Having been shamed into a press conference, he's quoted as follows:"This issue should be - and their vote should be determined in how we can resolve this crisis and get America going again," McCain said...

Good day

Posted on September 23, 2008
My cold or allergies receded, I was productive and am close to finishing my paper on generational equity/efficiency/political economy and the fiscal gap, the expanded Pavement reissue of Brighten the Corners was announced for mid-November, the Mets won while the Yankees were eliminated, and Paulson got some of the tough questioning that he deserves.

Could the bailout actually make money for the Treasury?

Posted on September 23, 2008
Republican Senator Norman Coleman apparently is arguing that it could.Theoretically speaking, Coleman actually is potentially right. The deleveraging theory that I've mentioned in earlier posts suggests that assets may end up having market values well below fundamental value in a temporary squeeze where there simply isn't enough money on the "long" side to compete away the windfalls suggested by the spread...

The Paulson Catch-22

Posted on September 22, 2008
While Paulson is generally well-regarded, we don't really know a great deal about him as a public official. From that standpoint, his demanding a close to zero-oversight blank check grant of authority, followed by his calling for a "clean" bill to forestall, not Congressional pork barrel attachments but meaningful oversight, is not encouraging...

More on the bailout plan

Posted on September 21, 2008
Imagine that it's January 2009, and that Treasury Secretary Phil Gramm has $700 billion to dole out as he likes to Wall Street companies claiming distress. Phrases that occur to me include Teapot Dome (or perhaps I should say Iraq reconstruction), crony capitalism, and great Republican Party fundraising tool...

Understatement of the day

Posted on September 21, 2008
From Peter Goodman, "But Will It Work?" in today's NY Times, page A-1:"Some question the prudence of adding [$700 billion] to the nation?s overall debt at a time when the Treasury relies on the largess of foreigners to cover the bills."The best argument in favor of being so reckless is not an edifying one...

Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of bailouts (according to Paulson)

Posted on September 19, 2008
Absolutely no need to finance it, of course.

Subsidizing the Yankees

Posted on September 18, 2008
A House sub-committee is holding hearings today on alleged improprieties in the use of tax-exempt bond financing to pay for the new Yankee Stadium. Not to put too fine a point on it, but highly questionable representations concerning site value seem to have been made in the IRS private letter ruling request, which found the financing eligible for tax-exempt treatment without its being subject to the dollar cap on issuance of private activity bonds...

War with Spain?

Posted on September 18, 2008
Sorry guys, but you're going to have to wait your turn in line. After Iran, Russia, China, Syria, and North Korea, we will see what we can do.

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