“There’s real truth to the idea that the tax code for the 1 percent is different from the tax code for the 99 percent,” said Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University of Colorado. “Any taxpayer lucky enough to have appreciated property is usually put to a choice: cash out and pay some tax, or hold the property and risk the vagaries of the market. Only the truly rich can use derivatives to get the best of both worlds — lots of cash and very little risk.”

“This welfare for the well-off — costing billions of dollars a year — is being paid for with the taxes of the less fortunate, many who are working two jobs just to make ends meet, and i.o.u.’s to be paid off by future generations,” said Senator Coburn, a Republican, who has called for limits on tax breaks for high earners.

Please read more here.

Here is U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testifying before Congress - spinning his story as to why he made mistakes in filing his tax returns.

This is really scary. God please help the U.S.A.!

The Institute for Policy Studies has a revealing new report out today, “Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging.” Among key findings: 25 companies “chief executive compensation actually ran higher than the company’s entire federal corporate income tax bill.”

New York Times Op Ed

By WARREN E. BUFFETT

Omaha

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Please read more here.

Michigan Democrat John Conyers, the second-longest serving member in Congress, has introduced H.R. 870, “The Humphrey-Hawkins 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act,” a bill that would put more than five million unemployed Americans to work, let citizens and local communities determine how best people should be employed, and give the long-term unemployed—people whose job skills are growing rustier by the month—the job training they need to help get back up to speed and employable.

Sounds too good to be true, right? Our deficit-obsessed media and Congress will want to know how much this is going to cost. Well, setting aside the fact that economists have explained that unemployment increases the deficit—and that spending is necessary to create jobs—consider this: H.R. 870 is completely paid for with taxes on the richest financial speculators.

The bill’s hiring and training programs would be paid for from a trust that’s funded by “a tax that taxes the purchase and selling of credit default swaps,” says Michael Darner, Conyers’ spokesperson.

Please read more here.

An interesting David vs. Goliath story!

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of companies that cashed in on President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package owed the government millions in unpaid taxes, congressional investigators have found.

Please read more here.

I enjoyed listening to Dr. Ron Paul.

Herman Cain, business man, political conservative, and possible Presidential candidate in 2012 talks about the ways the FairTax plan would supercharge the U.S. economy sooner rather than later.

This poem might be funny if it weren't so true.