Monthly Archives: July 2016

Tax Complexity

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A Private Letter Ruling is a letter the IRS issues to a particular taxpayer—corporate or business—to provide specific instructions/clearance to a specific taxpayer about that taxpayer’s particular circumstance.  PLRs set no precedent for any other taxpayer; even if that other has a substantially similar circumstance.  The price for such a Letter, charged by the IRS to the Letter’s recipient, ranges from $2,200 to $28,300.

The procedure for getting a PLR is set out in Internal Revenue Bulletin:  2016-1, which runs past 260 .pdf pages (the Table of Contents runs nearly 6 pages).  There’s a hint there.

Here’s another hint, from the opening paragraph of 2016-1‘s Section 1, which lays out the purpose of this procedure:

This revenue procedure explains how the Service provides advice to taxpayers on issues under the jurisdiction of the Associate Chief Counsel (Corporate), the Associate Chief Counsel (Financial Institutions and Products), the Associate Chief Counsel (Income Tax and Accounting), the Associate Chief Counsel (International), the Associate Chief Counsel (Passthroughs and Special Industries), the Associate Chief Counsel (Procedure and Administration), and the Associate Chief Counsel (Tax Exempt and Government Entities). It explains the forms of advice and the manner in which advice is requested by taxpayers and provided by the Service. A sample format for a letter ruling request is provided in Appendix B. See section 4 of this revenue procedure for information on certain issues outside the scope of this revenue procedure on which advice may be requested under a different revenue procedure.

Seven different tax specialist head lawyers are needed by the IRS to explain the IRS’ own tax rules to prospective tax advice seekers.

Hmm….

Independence Day

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I posted this in 2012; it bears repeating.

On this day 236 years ago, a group of Americans got together and, pledging their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor to each other while relying on the protection of divine Providence, took our country free from tyranny and set us on a new, wholly experimental course.

These men openly acknowledged both our right and our duty to throw off any government that too badly violates its moral obligations to us sovereign citizens, that for too long abuses our liberties and our individual responsibilities.  At the same time, though, they acknowledged that routinely rebelling at every small offense was equally wrong: Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.  Yet those light and transient offenses want correction along with those abuses and moral failures.

And so, while fighting (and some dying) for our newly born nation and during the immediately ensuing years of a troubled peace, these men, with others from the newly independent and united States joining them, in a second phase of our experiment invented a wholly new form of government.  They created a government that would recognize the essential sovereignty of the members of a voluntarily formed social compact over our compact’s government, and they gave that government a structure and a strictly limited set of authorities designed to maximize our control of government and our ability to maintain that control.

They also invented a wholly new mechanism for throwing off an abusive government and replacing it with one more suited to our needs and to our control: a set of elections that would let us turn all the rascals out of one house of our legislative body every two years, that would let us depose the whole of the other house of our legislative body in sequential one-third increments every two years, and that would let us fire the chief executive of this government every four years—any and all whom we found wanting during their time in office.  This invention was accompanied by another invention of these men: a judiciary that sat, neither above nor below our executive and legislative, but equal to and separate from them—a third powerful check that granted stability to the whole.

We are here today arguing amongst ourselves, usually with great passion, over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, climate change, Benghazi, emails, and a host of other things, too, both momentous and trivial.  And we could not be without the genius and the sacrifice of those men those 235 and more years ago.

As you sit around by your barbecue, or at the beach, or wherever you may be, hamburgers and hotdogs in hand, beer nearby, children screaming and yelling in their own happinesses, take a moment to think about that.

Tony Blair Misunderstands

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Great Britain’s Ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair has sensed danger from the Brits’ vote to leave the European Union.

Blair said in a Friday column in The Daily Telegraph that the future of the United Kingdom is at stake as the country faces negotiations on the terms of leaving the European Union.

Of course there’s danger—there always is when a change as large as this is embarked on.  But Great Britain didn’t get to be as great as it was and still is by being timid.  This move is a great opportunity for the nation, much more so than it is a risk, however real that risk is.

Blair also worried:

Britain is dangerously divided, with “profound dismay” felt by many of the 48 percent who wanted to remain in the EU.

He’s missing the other question, though: would Great Britain be any less divided had they voted to Remain?  Not a bit.

Look forward, not backward.

Loretta Lynch Meets

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US Attorney General Loretta Lynch met with Bill Clinton, former Democrat President and husband of Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, on Lynch’s plane at the Phoenix airport Tuesday.  Lynch said the meeting was unplanned, and all they talked about was grandkids.  Oh, and Brexit.

For anyone who believes this, I might know of some beachfront property north of Santa Fe in which they might be interested.

President Barack Obama (D) has already, three times publicly, instructed Lynch and through her his FBI Director to take no substantive action against Hillary Clinton: in two interviews in which he announced she’d done nothing wrong, and in his endorsement in which he said she should be President.

Bubba understands this; he didn’t go over to Lynch’s plane to shoot the breeze about inconsequentials, or to gossip about Brexit, or to tell her his terms.  He went at her invitation to hear her offered quid pro quo.

As if that’s not enough, there’s this:

Department of Justice officials filed a motion in federal court late Wednesday seeking a 27-month delay in producing correspondence between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s four top aides and officials with the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a closely allied public relations firm that Bill Clinton helped launch.

Notice that: Wednesday—the day after Lynch met with Bubba in her private plane.  And

US District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras, a President Obama-appointed judge, had previously ordered the State Department to release the requested documents by July 21.

Hmm….

Update: Lynch on Friday said she’ll “defer to career prosecutors and the FBI” on matters related to the Hillary Clinton investigation.  A DoJ official prior to her actual announcement:

Determinations as to whether to charge any individual, as well as the findings of the investigation, will be made by career prosecutors and investigators who have been handling this matter since its inception[.]

But what does “defer” mean–she’s explicitly not recusing herself from the case?  What’s the practical value of those determinations being made by career prosecutors and investigators?  Deferral doesn’t mean she’s not retaining final decision-making.  Those prosecutors and investigators will still be working for Lynch after they’ve wrapped things up.

And Lynch has already amply demonstrated her level of integrity with that meeting with Bubba and her subsequent move to try to suppress release of those Clinton Foundation emails she’s been ordered to release.

UpUpdate: At her Colorado news conference Friday, Lynch confirmed that she will defer to her career FBI investigators and prosecutors but will not recuse.

There’s also this tidbit, it turns out, from Christopher Sign of ABC 15 in Phoenix:

The former president steps into her plane. They then speak for 30 minutes privately. The FBI there on the tarmac instructing everybody around “no photos, no pictures, no cell phones.”

Is there any remaining doubt that FBI Director James Comey is as deeply in Hillary Clinton’s (and Bill Clinton’s, whose Clinton Foundation also is under criminal investigation, supposedly) back pocket as Comey’s boss, Lynch?

Democrats’ Censorship

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The Democratic Party’s draft platform calls for

the Department of Justice to investigate alleged corporate fraud on the part of fossil fuel companies who have reportedly misled shareholders and the public on the scientific reality of climate change[.]

This is on top of all the Democratic Party State Attorneys General persecuting companies under pseudo-RICO charges for daring speak.  Because we can’t have the average American individual [who] is morally and intellectually inadequate presuming to dispute with the Democrats’ received wisdom.  Nossir.

And

Democratic members of the Federal Election Commission, in a decision to be made public on Thursday, voted last month to punish Fox News over criteria changes for the network’s first Republican presidential primary debate….

Fox News‘ crime, so heinous in the eyes of Democrats? They altered the format of that first debate to expand free speech by increasing the number of Presidential candidate debaters.  We can’t have, after all, those morally and intellectually inadequate Americans having access to too wide a range of view.  Mm, mm.  Fortunately, the honest members of the FEC succeeded in blocking this travesty.

This is what a Hillary Clinton administration will inflict on us.