There's a lot of nuance in talking about tax policy. It's not always black and white. But sometimes people just lie. And Donald Trump is lying *incessantly* right now about what the new tax law does to the federal income tax treatment of Social Security. itep.org/trump-lying-...

Imagine making a $1 billion drafting error. That's what the authors of the 2017 Trump tax cut did when they failed to coordinate the timing of 2 related corporate tax changes that were part of the tax law's move to a territorial corporate tax system. More here: itep.org/billion-doll...

"Don't Look Up" isn't just a movie. Nebraska Dept of Revenue just released its estimate of how the new Trump tax law will affect state revenues; $216 M budget hole over next biennium. NE Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Obv) says this will be "great for Nebraska families." revenue.nebraska.gov/sites/defaul...

In 25 years of looking at some pretty dumb tax laws, I don't think I've ever applied the adjective "sycophantic" to a bill. Until this one. Per Trump's request, the new tax law extends bonus depreciation retroactively to January 20, the date of his inauguration. www.congress.gov/119/plaws/pu...

The ongoing Colorado special legislative session to deal with an estimated $1B budget shortfall is interesting for a few reasons. #1 is that they're acknowledging the shortfall. Most states haven't come to grips with the budget hole induced by the new tax law. coloradonewsline.com/2025/08/24/c...

The new tax law instructs the IRS to probe public opinion on whether they'd like to keep the Direct File program, which lets many taxpayers file their tax returns for free through the IRS, or whether they'd rather pay Turbotax for that privilege instead. IRS survey on this question is now live:

Morbidly fun question; Will it be possible to find a less effective IRS Commissioner than Billy Long? You could pick a random yokel off the street and they’d be better in the narrow sense that they wouldn’t have introduced legislation to disband the agency.

This is an actual quote from the new IRS Commissioner, Billy Long: “You’ve heard of Direct File...That’s gone. Big beautiful Billy wiped that out.” news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-re...

40 years ago, when the seminal thrash-metal band Stormtroopers of Death released an album called "Speak English or Die," the band members felt compelled to clarify that they "didn't really mean" it. The Trump admin really means it. WaPo reports IRS may eliminate non-English taxpayer services.

Another shot fired in the Republican war on information: the House Appropriations bill for the Securities and Exchange Commission, released Sunday, prohibits the SEC from approving FASB's budget until the agency stops trying to require detailed corporate tax disclosure. www.bgov.com/news/SZRCVWG...

The new tax law has a tax credit for charitable contributions made to a scholarship granting organization. It has two limits. #1 is, the credit can't exceed $1,700. #2 is, the credit is reduced by the amount of state tax credits granted for qualifying contributions. So.... which limit comes first?

Just a year ago, Nike's annual report had a large-font section on "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" which proclaimed that diversity was "a strategic priority for NIKE" & that they were "committed to having an inclusive and diverse team and culture." d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-00003201...

10 yrs ago, when the Nike Corporation published (as legally required by the SEC) its annual list of corporate subsidiaries, it was a 3 page list. Over 150 companies, including subsidiaries in known tax havens like Bermuda & Netherlands. d1lge852tjjqow.cloudfront.net/CIK-00003201...

The new tax law's haircut on deducting professional gambling losses (you can now deduct only 90% of them, a $1 B tax hike) is getting some ink. Less widely publicized is a brewing controversy over whether reporting standard for the slot-machine wins have changed. www.casino.org/news/slot-ta...

Having a state income tax deduction for state income taxes paid, as Arizona, Georgia and North Dakota currently do, is a great way to signal that you're not so interested in collecting income taxes, or I suppose, to signal that you're the reincarnated spirit of Jorge Luis Borges.

Arizona is among the first states to quantify the effect of the new Trump tax cuts on state revenues, and it's a pretty big deal. A new legislative analysis finds the new law will blow a $381 million hole in the state's budget for the fiscal year that just began. azcapitoltimes.com/news/2025/07...

Nice piece from @itep.org 's Joe Hughes on the absurd claim that tariff revenue has created federal budget surpluses. itep.org/june-budget-...

For those keeping score, it took a total of *three days* for someone to introduce legislation repealing one of the faux revenue raisers in the new tax law. Rep. Dina Titus (D-Vegas) thinks professional gambling needs to be nurtured.

Trump's new income tax deduction for tip income doesn't apply to tips-- it applies to "qualified tips," which is "cash tips received by an individual in an occupation which customarily and regularly receive[s] tips." Which means it's up to the Treasury Dept/IRS to decide what 'regularly" means.

Just as the Treasury Dept. is being asked to write regs implementing a temporary federal income tax deduction for overtime pay (and to do it RIGHT NOW since it's retroactive to January 1), Alabama's experiment with "no tax on overtime" ends in chaos. huntsvillebusinessjournal.com/news/2025/07...

The Social Security Administration doesn't generally send out emails cheerleading for tax cuts, so this one received over the weekend was an odd one. SSA wants us to know they are "celebrating" the passage of legislation that blows a multi-trillion dollar hole in the federal budget over ten years.

When the official revenue score for the House-passed tax bill included an $883 million line item for "income derived from services performed in the Virgin Islands," it smelled like a very specific, even company-specific, giveaway. But it wasn't at all obvious who the beneficiary would be. (1/2)

Ratcliffe’s headed goal, off a great pass from Krueger, was a bullet. Dynamite atmosphere at Audi and a great way to end an amazing Pride weekend in DC!

"This should shape how he’s seen for the rest of his public life" is one of the more chillingly understated quotes in this piece. Why should anyone take his opinions seriously about *anything* until he can own up to the casual idiocy of what he did to USAID. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/o...

The $86 million Congress proposes to spend in FY26 repealing the excise tax on firearm silencers is trivial. But it's a little alarming that, at $200 a pop, we apparently buy over 400,000 silencers a year. And JCT appears to think we're going to buy 15% more of them each year going forward.

Trying to count the # of provisions for which the House Ways and Means tax bill instructs the Treasury Department to write regulations to make the bill's more hare-brained ideas implementable. I lost track at 29. There's nothing unusual about this-- Treasury regulations make things go. But...

"No tax on tips" and "no tax on overtime" were never good policy ideas. So I suppose I should be grateful that the House GOP tax bill would implement them for just 4 years, fully reinstating the tip/overtime tax after 2028. (1/2) www.jct.gov/publications...

Registration just opened for the Seagull Century, a 100-mile ride over flat Eastern Shore terrain. Sat Sep. 27. Unlike last year, it doesn't appear that you're able to select your own bib number, which presumably means my son and I won't be # 1040 and 1099, respectively. #taxsky seagullcentury.org

Ignoring, for a brief moment, that the House tax bill is a gory fiscal policy car crash, you do have to admire the brazenness of the provision sheltering "certain income derived from services performed in the Virgin Islands" from tax. www.jct.gov/publications...

My kid is playing “the rain song” on guitar and I am totally in awe. How is this possible.

When I no longer find the title of @wsscwater.bsky.social's regular e-newsletter ("Water We Up To?") funny, that's when I will know I am no longer truly alive. Makes me smile every time.

Didn't know: the official East German name for the Berlin Wall was Antifascister Schutzwall, or "Anti-Fascist Protective Wall." Weaving little nuggets like this into a coherent cultural history is what Louis Menand does really well in "The Free World," which I'm enjoying now. What a crazy century.

The whole concept of "let's extend the expiring provisions of TCJA" is generally pretty clear, whatever you think of the policy. There's a universe of time bombs set to go off 12/31/2025, and Congress has to deal with this. But there's a wrinkle: the $250K/$500K limit on excess business losses.

The federal excise tax on endowments of large universities has existed for >5 yrs now. It's IRS-administered but I've never seen any direct report of a collections amount from IRS/Treasury. I've seen estimates mentioned in media reports, but no actual govt stats. Anyone know where to find this?

The last two minutes of this interview with Trump's CEA guy are thoroughly enjoyable. Start at 9:00 and luxuriate in the slack-jawed, what-do-I-say-now, dead air at 9:30. Turns out when you talk about dumb policies you're going to sound dumb. www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2...

Mississippi's "income tax repeal" legislation getting a lot of ink but it's the most chickenshit income tax repeal I ever saw. There's an automatic phasedown of the rate from 3 percent to zero that doesn't even *start* until 2030, and can't possibly end before 2040. apnews.com/article/inco...

Sigh

You love to see a little capital gains revenue estimating controversy, but Missouri legislative guys are, to paraphrase Bryce Harper, putting out clown fiscal notes on a pretty important tax change: a full deduction for capital gains. missouriindependent.com/briefs/misso...

Honestly I'm just getting a little misty eyed that Billy Long still feels like he has to do ethics filings at all. It's all so pre-Citizens-United. news.bloombergtax.com/financial-ac...

Trinity Rodman. 💖 That’s it, that’s the post.

Good to see some IRS love at the thematically-varied DC protests today.

On the bright side, it's apparently totally feasible to grow your own Szechuan peppercorns right here in the USA. Just, it'll take a few years for your prickly ash tree to mature. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/b...

RIP El Mirador, finest tacos in Pismo Beach.

Email from WAMU radio informs me that they're dumping the BBC Newshour in favor of another hour of Morning Edition because of "your feedback." Any randomly chosen five-minute segment of the BBC show beats the hell out of a bunch of Morning edition repeat segments, any day. This is a bad choice grrr.

Is it unusual that while tickets for the #uswnt match against Canada at Audi are still in presale mode, there are already entire rows of seats being offered by resellers at a big markup? Or is that just how things are? Ticketmaster service charges alone >entire ticket price for #washingtonspirit!

Really enjoyed this at National Gallery. www.nga.gov/exhibitions/.... Elizabeth Catlett was born in DC, Howard U grad, moved to Mexico and was barred from re-entering the US for more than a decade due to her political beliefs in the 60s. It's an exhibition for this moment for sure.

My first (and second-best-ever) job was in a mom-and-pop video store in the mid 80s. Beta *and* VHS. Inmates ran the asylum on weekends, so we'd always have our own selections playing on the wall mounted TV. "Top Secret" and "Real Genius" were in heavy rotation. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/m...

Q for population data experts: last Friday BEA published new state by state population estimates for '24, and revised estimates for prior years-- and some of the revisions look surprisingly big to me. Nationwide pop estimate for 23 is up 0.6% relative to what we thought 2 weeks ago. So, is that big?

With some jokes, it can help to start with the punch line, so here it is. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, while signing a law repealing the state's income tax: “Some of y’all are focused on a typo in the bill, and I’d use the biblical analogy, let he who has not had a typo cast the first stone.”