csua.org/u/6yv -> www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1591840198?v=glance
David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times , here reveals how fairness and equity have eroded from the American tax system. Johnston describes in shocking detail the loopholes our government provides the super rich-from private individuals to profitable corporations-to hide their wealth, to defer or evade tax payments, and to pass the bill to law-abiding middle-class Americans. The loss in revenue imposes a severe cost on honest taxpayers through reduced services, increased federal debt, and a weight on the middle class that threatens to impede its ability to achieve upward social mobility. Admitting the extreme complexity of our economy and by extension our tax code, Johnston points out that the very wealthy do, of course, pay taxes. However, because of shelters that allow them to understate most of their income, they pay little more on average than most Americans on the dollar. In addition to these offenses, he describes the tax evasion methods of those who simply defy the law and are emboldened by a beleaguered IRA that is too underfunded to serve as an effective deterrent to tax cheats. But because those who most benefit from these laws comprise the donor class that supports the government power structure, our prospects for reform remain very bleak.
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter David Cay Johnston has been breaking pieces of this story on the front page of The New York Times for nine years, work for which one business school professor calls him the de facto chief tax enforcement officer of the United States. With Perfectly Legal , he puts the whole shocking narrative together in a way that will stir up media attention and make readers angry about the state of our country. Since the mid-1970s, there has been a dramatic shift in who benefits from the American economy and bears the burden of taxes. CEOs, big investors and business owners can delay paying their taxes for years and sometimes escape them almost entirely, while wage earners have their taken from each paycheck. Discreet lobbying by the political donor class has made tax policies and enforcement a disaster. Because of obligations to these donors Washington has been unable, or unwilling, to fix these problems. The news media have largely ignored official favors to those who are supposed to pay the corporate income tax, the estate tax, and the gift tax. Millions of families expecting tax cuts are losing some or all of them to a stealth tax that was originally enacted only to apply to the tax-avoiding rich, but that now stings single mothers making as little as $28,000. But the cumulative results are remarkable: the 400 richest Americans pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than someone making $100,000. The 400 richest pay less and less of their income in taxes while the middle class pays more and more. And while the incomes of the very rich skyrocketed over three decades, the average income for the bottom 90 percent fell. Johnston exposes exactly how the middle class is being squeezed to create a widening income gap that threatens the stability of the country.
This is a fantastic book that highlights the shortcomings of the American tax system. Though the author is clearly a Democrat or Progressive this book is a fair assessment of the most unfair tax system ever created. As a result, people with wealth and access to politicians have perverted the tax code to benefit themselves at the expense of all other Americans. For those of you making the the top 50 pay 96 of federal taxes argument you have it correct but you are lying due to an omission of fact. The income tax is only a portion of the governments revenues and that when all federal charges are considered as a whole the tax burden is more and more falling disproportionally on those with the least amount of money. I have now finished reading this book and the ending is a bit of a let-down, yet not enough to deny the rating of five stars. The let down is that as it stands, the tax system is effectively a flat tax system. How about: when corrected for inflation per-capita income has slipped ever so slightly since 1970 for the majority of people whereas the higher your income goes, the faster income has grown. No the world is not a fair place but neither is it an unfair place. If America wants to continue down the yellow-brick road it has been travelling along, we will need to remake its tax system from the bottom-up because the game we are playing right now is rigged.
Johnston, who after all won a Pulitzer Prize based on his journalistic work in this field, certainly does. His research through what I can only imagine was immensely compliated, boring, difficult reports, statistics, and tax codes has been neatly codified into a book as engaging as it is informative. What might in other hands have been mere anecdotes become the tools with which he allows the reader to comprehend the gaping flaws in our system. Many financial and current events books are either so mired in facts without context that they are simply unreadable or so lacking in deep understanding of the subject that they are unfinishable.
Indeed, the writing and obvious comprehension in this work inspired me to find a used copy of Johnstons first book, _Temples of Chance_, and to get a weekend subscription to the Times. I saw this work on their Bestseller list the day I received my second copy - it was number 9 - and Im not in the least surprised. This is a books that deserves and demands a grand readership, and I am sure it will soon have one. All Customer Reviews Average Customer Review: Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
This book is meticulously researched and occasionally deals with tax dodges of huge complexity, but Mr. The conspiracy theory implicit in the title will put off some readers. Johnston really does believe that some dirty deals have been done and says so but most of the book simply tells the story, and the story is important: Just about all the wealth created in the last three decades has gone to people who make more than a million dollars a year. At the same time, the total tax burden including ALL kinds of taxes, not just the April 15 kind has shifted to the middle class and lower - those making less than $500,000 a year. Part of the reason for this shift is a long, slow increase in tax dodging legal and illegal by the richest people and companies. Another part has been by design - on any basis you choose to look at it, virtually all of the Bush tax cuts have gone to those above the $500k level. The tax system in America is not fair and the principles that undergird it have become tattered. Hopefully this book will help equip and motivate some people with a mind to bring some fairness - and enforcement - to the system.
A wonderful and well researched book on the growing tax injustices in the system. The author should be thanked for his excellent research and penmanship. I love chapter 1, the introduction where the tax lawyer is ferried by private jet by his tax free patron, while the rest of us silently pay our taxes. The book begs the question - does anyone really understand the tax code? The book contains many charts, graphs, and facts to back up his opinion. I still advocate a simple flat tax of 17 as per the Forbes election platform but I guess that would cause a lot of unemployment among the accountants, and would never be supported by all the political lobbyists.
This book details with facts, the shift of tax burden to the middle and lower class, away from the upper class. As Bush keeps pushing for more and more tax breaks for the rich, it adds to the bill due from the other classes. This is a great example of starving government programs which help the middle and lower class without the political burden of eliminating by law. Education, public works, aid for the poor, aid for college educations and on and on.
Johnston contributes an excellent review of the history of the American tax system and how it has evolved. The book description will tell you about the major facts uncovered in this book. All of it is verifiable and Johnston has clearly don...
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