“Skinny” is as “skinny” does. Yesterday, with Vice President Pence’s tie-breaking vote, the Senate agreed to debate how it would change the Affordable Care Act. Late last night, the chamber rejected by 43-57 Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's  Better Care Reconciliation Act. Today, it is expected to take up a repeal-only bill. If, as expected, that measure fails, the Senate will turn to a series of floor amendments to the House-passed bill. After that, the Senate may try a “skinny repeal.” That would be a shell of a bill that eliminates the ACA’s individual and employer mandates and its medical device tax but leaves Medicaid and many other ACA provisions, including its tax increases, in place. The goal: Pass something that could set up a negotiation with the House on a final measure, a process that could all take a while. What will happen to tax legislation in the meantime?

A penny (or far more?) for the Urban Institute’s thoughts. A group of House conservatives wants to fire the Congressional Budget Office’s budget estimating staff and give the role to four private research organizations, including Urban. UI’s  Donald Marron (a former acting CBO director) says thanks but no thanks. He explains why outside research organizations can’t replace CBO’s estimators.  For one thing, they would need substantial new resources. Most important: “CBO works for Congress and only for Congress. CBO works closely with the budget committees and House and Senate leadership to juggle priorities, set deadlines, and provide the analyses Congress needs and wants. CBO obeys congressional budget rules, even when it disagrees with them. CBO has the backing of Congress when it gathers data and information from agencies.”

There’s good news: IRS reports that individual identity theft is down. The agency received 107,000 reports from identity theft victims in the first five months of this year. That’s down from 204,000 during the same period in 2016, and from 297,000 through May, 2015. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said, “We are clearly making progress in this battle,” thanks to working with private-sector tax preparers and state tax officials. Both taxpayers and tax preparers are more aware of data security.

And bad news: Business-related identity theft is up. The IRS has identified about 10,000 business returns as possible ID theft cases in the first five months of this year. That’s up from about 4,000 in 2016 and 350 in 2015. In 2018, the IRS will ask tax preparers to collect more information about their business clients. The IRS says that will help it determine the legitimacy of tax returns.

All that glitters is not gold. Canadian-owned gold mining firm Acacia owes $40 billion in unpaid taxes and $150 billion in penalties and interest to the Tanzanian government. Tanzanian authorities say that the firm has understated its gold exports. Acacia says that if Tanzania’s claims were true, the firm would be producing more from its three mines than three rival companies have extracted from far more mines. The nation’s entire budget in 2015 was $6.4 billion.