President Trump will take his tax return fight to the Supreme Court. A federal appeals court has ruled that Trump’s accounting firm Mazars USA must turn over eight years of Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns to Manhattan prosecutors. The Second Circuit said Mazars, not Trump, was subpoenaed, so the president’s claim of immunity from prosecution or investigation has no bearing. Trump’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow said “We will be taking this case to the Supreme Court.”
CBPP: If the courts strike down the Affordable Care Act, wealthy taxpayers would get a big tax cut. A new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds that taxpayers earning more than $200,000 a year (or couples earning over $250,000 a year) will receive billions of dollars in tax cuts if the courts find the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. That’s because the ACA requires those households to pay a 0.9 percent Medicare tax and a 3.8 percent net investment income tax. CBPP finds that most of the tax cuts would go to households with incomes exceeding $1 million, with an average cut of $46,000 per household.
Would President Trump shut down the government over impeachment? Congressional insiders are increasingly worried about the possibility, and over the weekend Trump would not reject the idea. Government funding runs out on Nov 21 and there appears to be no chance Congress will agree on a full complement of spending bills that soon.
IRS/TPC Research Conference Call for Papers, due December 2. The 10th Annual IRS/TPC Research Conference on Tax Administration will take place on June 18, 2020. Proposals for papers are due on December 2, 2019. Subjects include measuring and influencing taxpayer compliance, estimating costs of compliance, tax complexity, improving tax administration, and understanding the nature and behavior of taxpayers. More information on the call for papers and submitting a proposal is here.
The British tax authority says cryptocurrency is not money. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), updated its cryptocurrency taxation guidelines for businesses and individuals on November 1. The guidelines for cryptocurrency transactions say the following taxes apply: income tax, corporation tax, capital gains tax, stamp taxes, and National Insurance contributions. Notes the Cointelegraph, “The tax authority explicitly stated that it does not consider any of the current types of cryptocurrencies to be money or currency.”
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