Somehow, every Arizona factory and wholesaler selling parts to us became our branch office when we asked them to ship directly to our customers. Address labels became stores, refrigerator magnets became salespeople and, magically, RockAuto was in Arizona.

No previous court case (including ours in the Arizona Tax Court) found a retailer "physically present" without employees or assets or someone making in-state contact with customers. ADoR's own publications say "drop-shipping" from Arizona suppliers does not create tax liability. But ADoR persists in demanding six years of taxes (which we didn't collect from customers) plus interest and penalties — far more money than we earned in 20 years selling auto parts to Arizonans!

The Tax Poem

Tax his land, Tax his bed, Tax the table at which he's fed.

Tax his tractor, Tax his mule, Teach him taxes are the rule.

Tax his work, Tax his pay, He works for peanuts anyway!

Tax his cow, Tax his goat, Tax his pants, Tax his coat. Tax his ties, Tax his shirt, Tax his work, Tax his dirt.

Tax his tobacco, Tax his drink, Tax him if he tries to think.

Tax his cigars, Tax his beers, If he cries tax his tears.

Tax his car, Tax his gas, Find other ways to tax his ass.

Tax all he has, Then let him know, That you won't be done till he has no dough.

When he screams and hollers, Then tax him some more, Tax him till he's good and sore.

Then tax his coffin, Tax his grave, Tax the sod in which he's laid.

Put these words Upon his tomb, 'Taxes drove me to my doom...'

When he's gone, Do not relax, Its time to apply the inheritance tax.

Through 2023, the firm focused on training staff on how to use chatbots and write effective prompts.

In 2024, it started building agents, including the TaxBot mentioned above.

Munnelly said building that bot started with locating tax advice written by partners, which he said was "stored all over the place" – often on tax partners' laptops. KPMG found as much of that advice as it could and placed it in a RAG model along with Australia's tax code to produce an Agent that creates tax advice.

"It is very efficient," Munnelly told the Forrester conference. "It does what our team used to do in about two weeks, in a day. It will strip through our documents and the legislation and produce a 25-page document for a client as a first draft.

"That speed is important," he added. "If we have a client who is about to do a merger, and they want to understand the tax implications, getting that knowledge in a day is much more important than getting it in two weeks' time."

"That is really changing our business and how we work."

Munnelly said KPMG built the agent by writing a 100-page prompt it fed into Workbench. The Register asked for details of the prompt and Munnelly said a substantial team worked on it for months, and the resulting agent asks for four or five inputs before it starts working on tax advice, then asks a human for direction before generating a document.

Only tax agents can use the tool, because its output is not suitable for people without deep tax expertise. //

The chief digital officer said KPMG has deployed agents that do frustrating and time-consuming work people would rather avoid, and that staff surveys suggest employee satisfaction has risen as AI frees them to spend more time working on challenging tasks, leading them to rate the firm as more innovative.

"They just don't want to do the boring stuff," Munnelly said. "They want to get out there and help clients with chewy problems." //

An_Old_DogSilver badge
Sprawling, Unmaintainable, Spreadsheet Macros: The New Generation

1. Does this new, faster method produce complete and accurate results? No.

2. Is this 100-page LLM prompt effectively-maintainable software? Probably not.

3. Does this smack of corporate-image-spinmeistering over rationality and logic? Yes.

You can retire. You can pay off your mortgage. But if you stop paying property taxes, the government comes for your land. That’s not just theft—it’s tyranny.

From a pro-liberty perspective, property taxes violate the very foundation of individual liberty and private property rights. If true ownership is the cornerstone of a free society, then no government has the moral authority to charge citizens for the right to live on land they’ve already purchased. //

Notime4U
3 hours ago
Property tax for those who pay, is effectively income tax. Unless the property is income-producing, which is unlikely, the money to pay comes from income. The big problem, to me, is the annual "assessment" which is arbitrary and ALWAYS goes up. In my 14 years on my current property, my tax has doubled, from less than 2K per year to more than 4K. My state has an income tax too. If the real estate market declines, the assessor might lower the valuation, but it takes two years for me to realize the difference, which is minimal. The next year, it goes right back up. This scam should end, but it won't. Government pigs need to keep the trough filled.

The existing limit on state and local tax deductions for itemizers is inequitable. It leads to businesses and workers relocating from districts where the cost of living is increased due to the distortionary SALT cap. This is not what Adam Smith had in mind. The greatest economist of all time would likely suggest keeping the cap but adjusting each district’s standard deduction based on its cost of living.

Start with a base of $30,000 for the 2025 tax year and adjust it annually for national CPI increases. But make geographical, not just temporal, adjustments according to differences in the cost of living among different parts of the country. Residents in New York metro area congressional districts would receive twice the annual amount, $60,000, that taxpayers get in the average district. Residents of Des Moines would receive approximately 10 percent less than the specified amount of $30,000.

It’s really very simple. Use a table like that provided by The Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER) Cost of Living Index (COLI). Taxpayers in each Congressional district can be identified via https://www.coli.org. Ensure no tax increase for any taxpayer in the first year, and then gradually adjust the amount each year to achieve a fair and efficient system for everyone. If still deemed unfair, use some of the increased tax revenues to balance it out. //

Mike Ford
5 hours ago
What you pay in federal taxes should not be determined by where you live.

anon-pmcw
5 hours ago edited
How to fix the SALT tax cap? Eliminate it. State and local taxes should be paid by people in those jurisdictions, not shoved off onto the rest of the country via letting those people pay less federal taxes. //

Wbcoleman
5 hours ago
This is crazy. The SALT deduction is a subsidy to the taxing state. This proposal gives every state a direct incentive to raise taxes.

NOBLE COUNTY, Ind. (WANE) – Residents living in the Central Noble Community Schools (CNCS) district have voted down an operational referendum that would have increased property taxes by nearly $200 annually in a special election Tuesday.

More than 1,300 residents voted on the referendum, with 764 against the proposal and 569 in favor of it.

Results come after years of the school district losing a combined $2.4 million in state funding, which CNCS said is now going to voucher programs instead of public school students. District Business Manager Kim Baumgartner said the referendum is one solution the district sees to lessen future cuts to the school system.

The referendum would have raised property taxes by $0.19 per $100 of net assessed value. That means each household would have been paying $15.64 more in taxes per month, or about $187.72 more annually.

We all remember our first jobs. Those were the days! You were pretty sure you were going to be swimming in dough. My first attempt at "experiencing the joys of capitalism," as my dad was fond of saying, was at a movie theatre in my junior year of high school. I think I must have seen "Porky's" about 90 times. I can also remember seeing two different totals on that first paycheck, and my dad explaining to me what was meant by "net" and "gross." A recent video on X of a high school girl getting her first lesson in taxation will bring back memories for all of us, and it is also the one thing that young people should be taught when they land that first job.

Elon Musk to pay record-breaking $12 billion tax bill
CNBC’s Robert Frank reports on Elon Musk’s tax bill which is the largest in history. Musk will pay a total of $12 billion for 2021. Frank joins ‘Squawk on the Street’ to discuss the details.
Wed, Dec 15 202110:51 AM EST

Donald Trump’s first term began with an unsuccessful attempt to repeal Obamacare. His second term could begin with a successful attempt to expand it.

That’s one possible outcome from a strategy Senate Republicans are attempting to use to pass their budget and spending blueprint. The wonky accounting maneuvers could make it easier to pass a permanent extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) provisions, but they could also make it easier to pass a permanent extension of enhanced Obamacare subsidies in the process.

DataRepublican (small r)
@DataRepublican
I've had a change of heart on federal income tax. On the surface, it's just a way for the government to generate revenue—it has to get its funding from somewhere. But I now see that the method of taxation itself fundamentally alters the relationship between the government and its people.

When the government relies on taxing individual income, it shifts from serving its citizens to exploiting them as a revenue source. This dynamic creates an inherent friction, where the government no longer answers to the people but to the system that extracts from them. And if you look around, it's clear—whatever our tax dollars are funding, it’s not serving us.

This is what modern economists fail to grasp when they dismiss tariffs, sales taxes, or luxury taxes as harmful. The structure of taxation matters, not just the amount collected. The income tax distorts governance itself—and it needs to go.

Eric Daugherty
@EricLDaugh
The thing about an income tax is that it literally just makes it a pain to succeed.

A consumption tax makes it a pain to consume things you don't need. BIG difference.

In a consumption tax-heavy environment, when people are tight on money, they can simply do what any rational person does: buy less "wants," buy only necessities.

In an INCOME tax-heavy environment, it doesn't matter. You lose a flat 15-30% of your income. It doesn't matter how smart or purposeful you are with your money. The government just swipes it away. Then, it essentially throws it into a black hole.

And the REAL problem, and why the elites DON'T want a system based on tariffs and domestic consumption taxes?

They encourage self sufficiency. You don't pay taxes on potatoes and peppers growing in your garden. You can take steps to eliminate purchases, or the prices of the things you do buy by shopping smartly, thus lowering your taxes, while having more money. Consumption based taxes, taken to their logical end, would mean a government that physically cannot be as bloated as it is now while still remaining even somewhat solvent.

Eric Daugherty
@EricLDaugh
That's why the structure matters. "Punishing" people for buying a bunch of stuff seems much more "fair" than punishing people for... trying to make a living.

And the people who want to min-max their finances can simply spend time and effort minimizing the costs of their purchases, and minimize the quantity of their purchases.

But that would require the presumption Americans have the capability of being smart, rational and self sufficient - not something the elites are interested in entertaining.

As the headline says, whenever a political figure or a leftist claims that "paying taxes is patriotic," you will note that they are about to tell you that you should pay more. This is a fundamental law of the universe, to be known henceforth as Clark's Law of Taxational Patriotism: "When taxation is levied, the claim that paying taxes is an act of patriotism shall invariably be followed by a demand for a higher taxes.". //

The left seems to have this idea that the tax system is a dial they can turn up, that an increase in marginal rates will always return an increase in receipts, and that just isn't so.

The other thing the left doesn't get about taxes is that paying them isn't some noble, patriotic gesture. If it were, we wouldn't have an army of people on the public payroll making sure those taxes are paid. No, taxes are monies confiscated from the people by force of law, and if you doubt that, try not paying your taxes and see how long it takes for the government to send men with guns out looking for you. And if the left really believed that paying taxes was a noble, patriotic gesture, they'd pay more voluntarily. They never do, so there you are.

Taxation is, at best, a necessary evil. //

Government spending is taxation. When you look at this, I've never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity; let alone I've never heard of a poor person taxing himself into prosperity.

And no country ever taxed itself into prosperity. Remember that next time you're confronted by some whining leftie claiming that paying taxes is patriotic.

If you are a clergy member or minister, you must:

• Include the rental value of the home you live in, or the housing allowance, if it was provided to you by the church
• Include income you get for working as a minister if you are an employee

Ministers' housing
If the church provided housing to you as part of your minister’s pay, you should include the rental value of the home or housing allowance as part of your earned income from self-employment for the EITC.

The rental value of the home is the money the church would get if they charged you rent.

Since she mentions Social Security, let's start with the obvious. How does an illegal immigrant manage to pay into that program without committing fraud? Social Security numbers are only given to citizens and permanent residents. So is the argument that criminality is fine as long as you contribute taxes along the way? Because that sure seems like the argument. //

In 2024, fiscal outlays totaled around $7 trillion dollars. That means illegal immigrants contribute just 1.43 percent toward total annual expenditures. That already doesn't sound like a lot, but when you consider that illegal immigrants make up 6.25 percent of the population (using the commonly accepted estimate that there are 20 million of them in the country), then their contributions become even more minuscule.

But wait, there's more. That $100 billion number Crockett is citing is actually from a 2022 study conducted by the Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy, and it includes state and local taxes paid as well. So the above percentage I cited is actually much less on the federal level, and when you dig deeper, illegal immigrants only contribute around $25 billion to Social Security. How much does that entitlement cost taxpayers a year? The answer is a whopping $1.7 trillion, meaning illegal immigrants pay for just 1.47 percent of Social Security. That is the supposedly massive, irreplaceable contribution to the program that Crockett and other Democrats are asserting should override immigration laws. //

in 2023, it was estimated that the federal government spent $66 billion on illegal immigrants for medical care and various entitlements like food stamps. That doesn't even count how much it costs to house, clothe, and feed those who are being detained at various Customs and Border Patrol facilities. //

Clare Boothe Lucid
6 hours ago
Let’s just look at education cost. An estimated 620,000 illegal alien children are enrolled in K-12. The average cost is about $18,600 per students (with the ESL and other needs immigrants may cost more, but I’ll use the average). That would be $11.5 Billion per year just for education of the illegal kids. That does not include the anchor babies.

At the heart of this issue is the de minimis provision, which originates from Section 321 of the Tariff Act of 1930. This provision was initially designed to prevent the government from incurring excessive costs and hassles for small imports made by individuals in a single day, as long as the fair retail value of those imports did not exceed $1. Over the years, Congress has raised this threshold multiple times, and it currently stands at $800, making it the most generous de minimis exemption in the world. In contrast, Canada’s de minimis exemption is capped at only $15. //

A congressional report revealed that between fiscal year 2018 and 2021, more than two-thirds of de minimis imports came from China (including mainland and Hong Kong). In 2023 de minimis imports comprised an astonishing 1 billion parcels valued at approximately $54.5 billion, with around $18 billion in shipments originating from China.

The Select Committee on the CCP estimated that two Chinese companies accounted for more than 30 percent of the daily de minimis shipments in the U.S. These companies are Shein, a fast fashion online retailer based in Singapore that sources most of its products from China, and Temu, a China-based e-commerce marketplace offering a wide range of items from cosmetics to knock-off iPods. These companies ship their merchandise directly to American consumers at extremely low prices, utilizing small shipments that are exempted under de minimis provisions.

Graham Allen @GrahamAllen_1
·
This was the greatest interview EVER!

JOE ROGAN: “Did you just float out the idea of getting rid of income taxes and replacing it with tariffs? — Were you serious about that?”

DONALD TRUMP: “Sure, why not?”

8:26 AM · Oct 26, 2024 //

Trump went into American political history to explain why tariffs are a better source of government revenue than a system such as an income tax on citizens. The American Founders agreed.

They debated and soundly rejected a federal income tax system, opting instead in 1789 to institute an ad valorem tariff on “all articles of foreign manufacture” as the sole mechanism for funding the federal government. The Tariff Revenue Act of 1789 was the very first law on the books of the very first Congress. That’s why a constitutional amendment was required in 1913 just to make an income tax system legal in this country. //

The income tax system has fueled a monstrous expansion of federal power and created a military-industrial complex that is insatiable in its quest for control of global resources to keep itself in power. This complex seeks to destroy the last vestiges of our Founding system in favor of a globalist “New World Order” and will destroy or even kill anyone who stands in its way — including Trump.

Tariffs Mind America’s Business
Our founders, by contrast, sought not an empire, but a peaceful commercial republic. Our national purpose was to avoid at all costs foreign entanglements that made us vulnerable to the whims of foreign powers.

The tariff revenue system, they reasoned, achieved that. It also met their two major domestic objectives: 1) it was sufficient to obtain the annual revenue for a very limited but fully functional federal government, and 2) it is by far the least oppressive option for Americans.

Some ideas are like horror movie villains. They’re dangerous, and no matter how many times they’re defeated, they never seem to die.

The misguided idea of taxing unrealized capital gains is back on the scene. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., floated a proposal to tax unrealized capital gains in 2021.

It was widely debated in 2022, when Congress was considering a multitrillion-dollar tax and spending package.

Opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to taxing income before it’s earned helped defeat the idea then.

But the idea was far from dead. President Joe Biden included a version of the tax in his latest budget.

Vice President Kamala Harris also has endorsed the idea.

The first step in killing a bad idea is to recognize it for the scourge it is.

A realized capital gain—which we currently tax—is the difference between the price you sold an asset for and the price you paid for it. An unrealized gain, on the other hand, is an estimate of what that difference would be if you had sold an asset that you still hold.

The difference between taxing realized capital gains and unrealized gains is the difference between the government taxing people on income they’ve actually received versus the government taxing them on income they might receive later.

It would give the government the first claim on income, taking a big slice before the supposed owner of the asset ever sees a penny.

In effect, it would turn property owners into property renters, with Uncle Sam as their landlord. //

If you bought a house for $300,000, and the value rose to $500,000 a couple years later, you could be stuck paying tax on the $200,000 of gain even as you’re struggling to make mortgage payments. At a 25% tax rate, it would cost you $50,000 in federal taxes.

It would be like having a second mortgage, but in some ways worse.

At least mortgage payments end after 30 years. But you would never finish paying off your unrealized capital gains tax payments, as long as you owned the asset and its value was increasing—even if that increase was only from inflation.

And unlike mortgages, which give homeowners clearly defined payment terms, unrealized capital gains tax payments would be unpredictable, rising or falling depending on the housing market, inflation, and subjective assessments of a house’s value. //

Those in Washington who propose taxing unrealized capital gains generally include broad exemptions for certain asset classes and based on income or asset thresholds. These exceptions would give investors a path to escape from the tax, which is better than the alternative. The tax would have fewer direct victims as a result.

But the tax-induced capital flows still would wreak economic havoc—and without managing to raise much government revenue. So, the new tax would do little to satiate lawmakers’ appetite for more tax dollars.

And once a horror movie villain—or a bad idea—gets a foot in the door, it quickly can swing the door open wide and claim more victims. When the income tax was first implemented in 1913, it applied to less than 1% of the population, and most of those who paid it paid only a 1% rate. That small initial income tax spawned something far worse and more widespread over time.

Allowing the government to tax income that doesn’t exist sets an even more dangerous precedent.

First, "fair share," as defined by whom? Rhetorical question — the Democrat Party, of course. Second, the Democrat Party is incapable of reaching peak wealth redistribution. The left will never reach a point where it believes it is finally robbing a sufficient amount of money from the wealthy to redistribute to the poor.

Never mind that the top 1 percent of earners already pay 45.8 percent of federal income taxes, and the top 50 percent of all taxpayers pay 97.7 percent, while the bottom 50 percent pay the remaining 2.3 percent. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/

"Fair share"? Seems to me that the bottom 50 percent of earners need to pay their fair share. //

While the left continues to preach the zero-sum-game mentality, or a "scarcity mindset"; the belief that there are limited resources, so if someone else has something you want, you believe there is less of it for you, conservatives subscribe to an "abundance mentality" — the belief that there is enough wealth, resources, and success in the world for anyone who works to achieve their goals.

Henry Ford famously wrote an autobiography, "My Life & Work":

As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish special privilege, we are going to see poverty spread and special privilege grow.

If exposing money behind Arabella-aligned organizations is the price for outing conservative donors, that’s a trade Democrat operatives would gladly make. //

All of this raises a question: If “dark money” is so beneficial to Democrats, why do the party’s leaders consistently push for new and expansive donor disclosure laws?

The answer may be simple: Even when the left outspends the right, the value of silencing conservatives far exceeds the value of spending by left-leaning nonprofits. //

By establishing nonprofit donor databases, the DISCLOSE Act would open the door for Democrats to potentially create target lists of conservative donors and businesses to harass and bully into silence. As Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer infamously put it years ago, the “deterrent effect” of disclosure “should not be underestimated.” //

Even if some left-leaning donors are exposed, leftist ideas would still receive enormous platforms in the media, entertainment industry, academia, and government bodies. Conservatives, despite being outspent by the left in recent election cycles, are uniquely dependent on their donors and nonprofits to support their intellectuals and promote their ideas; disclosure mandates would be akin to declaring open season on these conservative institutions.

 The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a part of President Trump's 2017 'Tax Cuts and Jobs Act' that levied a tax on capital appreciation is constitutional. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

The court ruled 7-2 that the mandatory repatriation tax, or MRT, is constitutional under the taxation regimes defined in Article I and the 16th Amendment. In short, the MRT imposed a one-time requirement for US citizens and companies to repatriate money held overseas. //

The Moores had earned $0 from their investment, but the value of their investment had increased because the business they invested in was successful. Because their investment was successful, that unrealized gain, which could totally disappear in a few months if things went pear-shaped, was taxed.

Why is this important?

The lodestar of the far left is "income inequality." They want everyone to be poor but them. Where their policies are defeated is by frugality and investment. //

The wealth tax's strategy is to prevent the accumulation of intergenerational wealth and penalize those who work hard, save, and invest in favor of those who consume. Every time your stock portfolio or home increases in value, a wealth tax would make that gain taxable, even if you didn't cash out. //

FreeWilledThinker
an hour ago
I just read the opinion and, even though I am a Constitutionalist and favor strict construction, I would have voted with the majority on this one. The reason why is due to the pass-through nature of the company. Every LLC in the U.S. works this way, where you get a K-1 and get taxed, even where not a cent has come into your bank account.

I think the muddy water comes from the ownership mechanism. As a shareholder, the Moore's wish to treat the pass-through as though it is not taxable on the owned company's income, but it would be were it based in the U.S. and did not pay any tax on the base income. //

Buckeye kamief
18 minutes ago
But that interest would be taxable if NOT in an IRA -- which is the crux of this. These folks were catching gains on a foreign corporation NOT in an IRA, yet because of reinvestment, they weren't paying any taxes. Compare to US tax code in existence -- if you have a stock and it's in a dividend re-investment program, which is effectively exactly what they were doing, you DO PAY TAXES on those dividends, even though you chose to re-invest. That's another reason I agree with the USSC on this one. Their Indian corporation was making money, but not calling it a "dividend", and they kept putting it back in....sorry that's basically tax evasion by US code.

First: Eliminate withholding. Everyone, every quarter, has to send money to the IRS. Everyone gets their entire paycheck and then has to pay up. The withholding system is too painless; most people scarcely glance at their paycheck stub, and if everyone were required to write a check for quarterly estimated taxes and send it to the various levels of government, I'd wager a substantial sum that they would suddenly become a lot more interested in what government does with their money.

Second: Eliminate “progressive” taxation. Implement a single-rate flat tax with no exemptions or deductions for individuals. Everyone pays something. I’d be willing to consider exempting the first, oh, $40k from taxation, if that’s what it took to get it done – in return, I’d want major welfare reform, to include lifetime limits and severe restrictions on how public aid is delivered – no more open-ended debit cards.

Third: How about eliminating the capital gains tax next? You want people to invest their hard-earned in business ventures, then stop double-taxing them on income earned from money they already paid taxes on once. Want businesses to start bringing capital back from overseas? Eliminate the capital repatriation penalty. Both of those taxes are well to the left of stupid if economic growth is on the agenda, but these taxes were sold by the “We’ll soak those rich guys” school of political campaigning.