Friday, December 2, 2011 at 9:13AM The IRS has announced that it is holding $153.3M in undelivered tax refund checks for 100,000 taxpayers. The average refund check is $1,547.00.
If you are still waiting to get your refund you should check to see if it was returned to the IRS as undeliverable. Frequently taxpayers change residence and forget to notify the IRS of the new address.
More information can be found here.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 10:25PM Earlier this week, Governor Gregoire proposed a supplemental budget for 2012.
The budget includes a proposal to increase the Washington sales tax by 0.5%. The governor's office anticipates that by June 2013, this tax increase will raise almost $500 million.
Applying this proposed increase to data compiled by the Tax Foundation in July, this will increase Washington's combined State and Local sales tax rate to 9.29%. If this sales tax is passed, Washington will have the 2nd highest combined State and Local sales tax rate of all states.
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 1:48PM A recent report from the EU Commission task force on Greece shows that Greece currently has approximately $80 billion in outstanding unpaid taxes. These unpaid taxes are reportedly due to tax avoidance and lack of compliance, things the rest of us call tax cheating.
The unpaid taxes represent 25% of Greece's gross domestic product. To put that into perspective, this would be like the U.S. having $3.75 Trillion of outstanding unpaid taxes. This is the equivalent of the IRS not collecting any tax revenue for 2010 and half of 2009.
I recently finished a very insightful article from October 2010 that gives good background on the Greek tax revenue shortfall and recommend it to anyone interested in the Greek debt and tax issues.
Jess Monnette
The Greek government has published a list of more than 4,000 tax dodgers in an effort to shame them into paying up.
From the New York Times article:
"The list published late Sunday includes the veteran crooner Tolis Voskopoulos with debts of nearly $650,000; Pavlos Psomiadis, the owner of a defunct insurance firm, with arrears of nearly $2 million; and Giorgos Batatoudis, a former soccer club president who owes more than $3 million. Greece is under pressure from foreign creditors to curb endemic tax evasion, a key barrier to its economic recovery."
Monday, November 14, 2011 at 12:46PM According to this WSJ article, the student loan debt picture for current students is going from bad to worse.
The article explains that graduates in the class of 2011 are expected to have much higher student loan default rates than previous students on account of current predictions concerning job prospects and earning potential.
From the article:
Historically, investors have assumed 25% to 30% of student loans bundled into their bonds will default. But today they are baking in between 30% and 40% default rates among the current crop of graduates, said Chris Haid, a director in asset backed trading at Barclays Capital. Even those assumptions are a best guess and defaults could ultimately go higher if unemployment rises, Mr. Haid said.
This analysis translates into some surprising insights for students and policy makers. For example, in the current economy, it may make more sense to enter a technical college than to go to law school.
It should be noted that unlike other unsecured debt, student loans are generally not dischargeable in Bankruptcy proceedings per 11 USC § 523(a)(8) & § 1328. The exception to this rule is when a debtor can prove that the loans impose an "undue hardship." If the assumptions made in the article prove to be correct then between 30% and 40% of 2010-2011 graduates with loans will eventually default on those loans and not be able to discharge them in bankruptcy like other debts.
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 12:14PM On October 25 Rick Perry announced his Tax and Spending Reform Plan in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. He calls it the "Cut Balance and Grow" tax plan. Here are the highlights from that Op-Ed.
Highlights