From the Washington Post: The New York Times risked legal trouble to publish Donald Trump’s tax return

Will this be the Pentagon Papers of 2016?

- Click here for the article.

Dean Baquet wasn't bluffing.

The New York Times executive editor said during a visit to Harvard in September that he would risk jail to publish Donald Trump's tax returns. He made good on his word Saturday night when the Times published Trump tax documents from 1995, which show the Republican presidential nominee claimed losses of $916 million that year — enough to avoid paying federal income taxes for as many as 18 years.

Federal law makes it illegal to publish an unauthorized tax return or "return information":

It shall be unlawful for any person to whom any return or return information (as defined in section 6103(b)) is disclosed in a manner unauthorized by this title thereafter willfully to print or publish in any manner not provided by law any such return or return information. Any violation of this paragraph shall be a felony punishable by a fine in any amount not exceeding $5,000, or imprisonment of not more than 5 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution.

The term "return information" covers not only return documents themselves but also the "amount of his income, payments, receipts, deductions, exemptions, credits, assets, liabilities, net worth, tax liability, tax withheld, deficiencies, overassessments or tax payments."

The Times published the first page of Trump's 1995 New York state resident income tax return, the first page of his New Jersey nonresident tax return and the first page of his Connecticut nonresident tax return.

Under New York law, it is unlawful "to divulge or make known in any manner the amount of income or any particulars set forth or disclosed in any report or return." Non-government employees face fines of as much as $10,000 and imprisonment for as long as one year.

In New Jersey, "any person ... divulging, disclosing or using [tax] information shall be guilty of a crime of the fourth degree," which carries a maximum sentence of 18 months in prison.

Connecticut's law against disclosure of tax information is more narrowly worded and, as the Hartford Courant reported, appears not to apply to the Times.

Baquet said during a panel discussion at Harvard that if the Times' lawyers advised him not to publish Trump tax returns, he would argue that such information is vital to the public interest because the real estate mogul's "whole campaign is built on his success as a businessman and his wealth."

Two weeks later, Times reporter Susanne Craig found tax documents in her mailbox.

A variety of graphs about taxes

A hodge-podge really:

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From the Tax Foundation: 2016 Tax Brackets

FYI - again, in honor of tax day.

- Click here for it.

From Vox: Lots of stuff on federal taxes

This might be worth perusing in 2305. Its a series of slides explaining different issues associated with federal taxes. Much of this information is contained in the sections on budgeting and economic policymaking.

- Click here for it.

They answer basic questions about the variety of taxes collected at the national level.

This looks provocative also: |

- The greatest trick the rich ever pulled was making us believe they pay all the taxes.

Co-Founder of Texans for Lawsuit Reform dies

The Houston Chronicle details the life of Leo Linbeck Jr. a recently deceased construction company executive who founded one of the more consequential interests groups in Texas: Texans for Lawsuits Reform.

He co-founded Texans for Lawsuit Reform to overhaul the state's tort laws and Americans for Fair Taxation to lobby for reform to the federal tax structure.


"Leo was a gentleman and a scholar whose knowledge, wisdom and vision have been gifts to his family and friends," said Dick Trabulsi, president of Texans for Lawsuit Reform. "His contribution to his community and to public policy cannot be calculated, nor expressed adequately."

He also had a hand in creating Americans for Fair Taxation.

In 1995, Linbeck joined forces with Robert McNair, owner of the Houston Texans, and investor Jack Trotter to create a grassroots group that advocates replacing federal income tax with a national consumption tax, repealing the 16th Amendment and eliminating the Internal Revenue Service.

Wonkblog's graph of the day

From the Congressional Research Service: Taxes and the Economy: An Economic

The Congressional Resrach Service issued a report analyzing tax rates and job growth over the past 60 years and finds no evidence that tax cuts are related to job growth.

Read the report here.

Commentary from the Atlantic, plus some handy graphics:

The unemployment rate since 1945:

The top end tax rate since 1945:

Who does pay taxes anyway?

Romney's comments do raise a question that surfaces from time to time: who pays taxes? and what type of taxes do different people pay? Romney's point was about the income tax. Everyone lays some type of tax. Since we will be discussing budgeting and fiscal policy soon enough, I'll post a few items on this topic starting with this one.

Some smart guys at the Hamilton Project (you should know a few things about Alexander Hamilton by now) posted information about this in April of 2012. I'd recommend at least a glance at it.

A couple points made in the article, the number of people who pay income taxes corresponds to the state of the economy. In 2007, 13% more people paid income taxes than do so now. And the percentage increases when payroll taxes (the money drawn from your check to pay for Social Security and Medicare) is included.
And the percentage of people who pay income taxes varies depending on age. If you are young, you have deductions based on child care - and your income might be low enough to qualify for the earned income tax credit. If you are old - you aren't working most likely. Here's a graph charting this. So one of the factors determining how much someone pays in income taxes is how old one is, meaning how much someone is likely to be earning.

Taxing the Rich, Over Time

David Leonhardt explains why the wealthy are paying a larger share of taxes despite having increasingly lower tax rates:

In brief, tax rates for the wealthy have fallen more than for other income groups. Tax rates for the very wealthy have fallen more than they have for the merely wealthy. Incomes at the top have also increased much more quickly than incomes have for other groups.

Add it all up, and you can see why the wealthy are paying a greater share of federal taxes even though they are paying less tax on each dollar they earn. They’re simply making many more dollars than they used to.

Super rich see federal taxes drop dramatically

An AP story:

As millions of procrastinators scramble to meet Monday's tax filing deadline, ponder this: The super rich pay a lot less taxes than they did a couple of decades ago, and nearly half of U.S. households pay no income taxes at all.

The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.

Over the same period, the average federal income tax rate for all taxpayers declined to 9.3 percent from 9.9 percent.
Gallup reports that "Americans Still Split About Whether Their Taxes Are Too High"

The Economist is Confused by Conflicting Stances Taken Towards the Deficit

Story here:

I'M HAVING trouble writing about the GOP effort to reach a compromise over whether to cut $100 billion out of the 2011 budget, or just $50-60 billion. My problem is that I can't really write about the advantages or disadvantages of one or another version of the cuts when the entire enterprise appears completely senseless to me. The notion, apparently, is that continuing unemployment and slow growth in America are caused by the federal budget deficit. So shrinking the deficit by $50-60 billion will presumably lead to faster economic growth and renewed hiring. Yet exactly one month ago, these same Republican leaders eagerly agreed to a tax-cut package that raised the federal deficit for 2011 by over $400 billion. Even if there were a plausible argument that unemployment and lethargic growth today stem from the current budget deficit, any impact congressional leaders hope to see from their spending cuts will add up to no more than noise around the edges of their tax cuts.

A History of the U.S. Tax System

I just stumbled across this.

Are Federal Taxes Constitutional?

Wesley Snipes' lawyers are arguing that they are not and that criminal tax evasion charges are groundless. One argument that has been made, unsuccessfully, is that the income tax (established in the 16th Amendment) is unconstitutional. The responses to this story in the Baltimore Sun give you a taste for these positions.

The more nuanced position apparently concerns interpretations of Section 861 of the Federal Tax Code which states what income is taxable--basically any income in case you were wondering. But advocates argue that it can be interpreted to tax "only income from specific types of commerce, all of which have some kind of connection to international commerce or federal possessions."

Not everyone agrees, which might suggest that we won be seeing any movies from Mr. Snipes for a while. Well maybe a prison movie.