Taking Credit Where No Credit's Due- October 24, 2006 On Monday, Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich's office issued a press release trumpeting "Governor Ehrlich Cuts Unemployment Insurance Taxes by $95 Million--Millions in Reduced Taxes Go to Maryland Employers." In other words, the Governor implied that he engineered a tax decrease.He didn't.To understand what actually occured, one has to know a little bit about unemployment insurance and the Maryland Unemployment Insurance Trust ("UIT").Unemployment insurance is funded by a payroll tax. The tax is..http://taxbiz.blogspot.com/2006/10/taking-credit-where-no-credits-due.html Front Page News- October 18, 2006 TaxProf takes note of two pieces in today's WSJ. One was an interview, on page 1 (i.e., a news page), of this year's winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics, Columbia University professor Edmund Phelps. The other was an op-ed piece by Brian S. Wesbury, the chief economist at First Trust Advisors L.P. The two pieces clashed, with Prof. Phelps suggesting higher taxes ("It would be a good thing for the federal government to raise taxes and run big surpluses until we have retired the...http://taxbiz.blogspot.com/2006/10/front-page-news.html The Sweet Science- October 17, 2006 The Journal of Law and Policy at Brooklyn Law School has an interesting student note by Joshua A. Stein, Hitting Below the Belt: Florida's Taxation of Pay-Per-Pay Boxing Programming is a Content-Based Violation of the First Amendment. Stein concludes that:Florida is one of numerous states to authorize a tax specific to telecasts of boxing. As these taxes are specific to a type of television programming, they should be held by courts to be content-based restrictions on speech. However, boxing..http://taxbiz.blogspot.com/2006/10/sweet-science.html |