by Charles Lewis & Bill Allison ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 20, 2001
Short on policy recommendations for stopping these outrages, but long on details sure to stoke the debate about American tax...
A hard-hitting, dismaying investigation of how the wealthiest individuals and largest corporations in the US use legal and illegal means to reduce or eliminate their taxes—and thereby stiff everyone else.
As of 1998, taxpayer noncompliance cost the federal government an estimated $195 billion annually. This account of how this massive tax chiseling came to be perpetrated was painstakingly researched by Lewis (The Buying of the President 2000, not reviewed), former Philadelphia Inquirer researcher Allison, and several of their associates from the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity. While admitting that Americans so distrust the IRS that they are unwilling to provide it with manpower adequate for conducting investigations, the authors make the compelling point that, without fair tax administration, the gap between rich and poor will only widen. The numbers alone tell a staggering story: Taxes paid by corporations on profits reported to the IRS declined from 26 percent to 20 percent between 1990 and 1997. At the same time, IRS officials admit that the agency targets the poor and middle-class disproportionately for audits because, unlike the rich, they are unlikely to engage in protracted, expensive legal sieges. Running to more than 17,000 pages in some editions, the Internal Revenue Code offers a labyrinth of net operating losses, offshore trusts, and real-estate shelters. Lewis and his associates use case studies to highlight these and other ingenious dodges crafted by accountants and tax attorneys. For instance, Joe Conforte, owner of a notorious Nevada bordello, insisted that his prostitutes were not employees but independent contractors—a claim later employed successfully by Microsoft, Xerox, and other corporations in shaving costs for Social Security, health insurance, and pensions. Assiduous tax schemers have even forsaken American citizenship or control of their companies to avoid paying the piper.
Short on policy recommendations for stopping these outrages, but long on details sure to stoke the debate about American tax equity.Pub Date: March 20, 2001
ISBN: 0-380-97682-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
by Rebecca Henderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2020
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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