Thoreau Disobeys: A Chat about Thoreau and Taxes with Laura Dassow Walls

Send us a textJeff and Scott chat with West Virginia University accounting professor, and lawyer, John Treu, about the regulation of paid tax preparers, including John's empirical evidence that they improve return quality and the Loving case.

Send us a textScott and Jeff discuss what constitutes candy, for sales tax purposes, in North Carolina. The discussion ends with the verdict on craisins--are they candy? Scott is quizzed on other types of food and whether they are candy, and, scores a perfect 0/5.

Send us a textJeff and Scott chat with Cara Griffith, CEO of Tax Analysts about Tax Notes, the main product of Tax Analysts. Tax Notes is a tax practitioner publication catering to tax professionals, and Jeff and Scott talk about who reads Tax Notes, how content is produced, and who the competitors to Tax Notes are.Finally, we discuss Tax Analysts' ownership of the URL https://taxmuseum.org/, which is a direct competitor to the much better http://thetaxmuseum.org. 

Send us a textJeff and Scott chat with Felix Tintelnot about electric cars, and the subsidies they were given before the IRA, and in the IRA. We learn that because electric cars are heavier and therefore more likely to crush you to death if they crash into you, they create negative externalities, in addition to the positive  benefit of reducing pollution. 

Send us a textJeff and Scott chat with Paul Monaghan, the CEO of the Fair Tax Foundation. The Fair Tax Foundation certifies companies for paying a "good" amount of tax, focusing on the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law, certifying companies from small to publicly traded large corporations. How can you tell if a company is paying a fair amount in tax? Listen to the episode to find out!Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate. 

Send us a textJeff and Scott chat with Marcel Olbert, assistant professor of accounting at London Business School, and Daniel Klein, assistant to the CFO at Heidelberg Materials. They discuss carbon taxes, and a new paper Marcel has on carbon leakage. They also discuss how carbon taxes and leakage affect Heidelberg Materials, one of the largest producers of cement in the world. Cement  production contributes an enormous amount of carbon into the atmosphere, and so it is very sensitive to carbon taxation. Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate. 

Send us a textJeff and Scott chat with Nana Ama Sarfo, a contributing editor with Tax Notes, with a special interest in covering taxes in the developing world. They chat about the recent deadly tax protests in Kenya, where a tax increase on basic life staples lead to violence in the street, parliament being lit on fire, and death.Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate. 

Send us a textJeff and Scott chat with economist and professor Matthew Tarduno about the problems that automobile traffic causes, and different ways that have been devised to solve the problem (including tax-adjacent ways!). Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate. 

Send us a textJeff and Scott chat with Senator Daniel McCay, chairman of the Utah Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee, about how he thinks about tax policy, what the objectives of tax policy are, and how he thinks Utah is doing tax-wise.Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate. 

Send us a textJeff and Scott chat with Michael Graetz, Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale, about his new book, The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America. We talk about the start of the anti-tax movement with the opposition to property tax increases in California, the Regan-era tax cuts, and how the desire to cut taxes has shaped American politics over the last 40 years.Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate.