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Michigan woman dead for six years found only after money runs out For six years the bills were paid, the grass was cut and no one noticed the body of the dead woman sitting in the back seat of a car in a garage of a residential Pontiac, Michigan neighborhood. Her mummified body was finally found this week by someone dispatched to check on the property that fell into foreclosure after the money ran out of her account and the mortgage payments stopped, police said on Friday. "It is kind of the perfect storm for a mysterious set of circumstance...

Will the IRS be using the 'filled in info but didn't buy' as a source for people to target?

What are the tax implications of the zombie apocalypse? The only certainties in life are death and taxes, but how do you handle the taxes when death doesn't go quite as planned? Law professor Adam Chodorow takes a stab at estate planning for the undead in perhaps the only legal paper to cite both the Internal Revenue Code and Weekend at Bernie's II. Chodorow, a professor at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, authored the paper "Death and Taxes...and Zombies," which will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Iowa Law Review. Chodorow notes that, while the...

Fiscal Policy: The latest data show a record number of people with no tax obligation. We also have the highest-earning nontaxpayers ever. With more riding the wagon and fewer pulling, it should soon break down. A record number of the 142 million tax returns filed in 2008 resulted in no taxes owed, according to the Tax Foundation's analysis of the latest IRS data. About 51.6 million returns, or 36.3%, were filed by those whose deductions, exemptions and tax credits wiped out any federal income-tax obligation. These aren't people who have overpaid their taxes or had so much withheld from their...

Fiscal Policy: The new year saw the death of the estate tax. But like Freddie Krueger, this epitome of class warfare and wealth redistribution is sure to return to wreak havoc among the living. Once dubbed the "Paris Hilton" tax, the levy is supposed to target the inherited wealth of the super-rich who really didn't earn it or don't really need so much of it. Or so we're told. But at some point, even inherited wealth was created and taxed in its creation. The death tax is double taxation, and just because you can't take it with you doesn't mean...

Brethren, Patriots, Gentlewomen & Fellow Citizens TAX PROTEST - TEA PARTY - PATRIOTS' RALLY - PROUD TO BE A CAPITALIST PIG TOUR Come all ye fellow patriots and burdened taxpayers! Join us in a patriotic rally in observance of the birth of our Great Nation at ye olde Temecula Duck Pond. We shall gather at the corner of Ynez Road and Rancho California in Temecula, California on Saturday, July 4, 2009 commencing at 11:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. Please bring appropriate signs, banners, flags and attire to dispaly your love of country and to voice your keen displeasure towards those...

Had enough yet? Rick Reiss Friday, May 22nd, 2009. Big government proponents frequently remind us that taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. This line is actually attributed to the former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. While true in some respects, our current tax system is anything but civilized. America now has a government riding roughshod over people and businesses with even higher taxes and more rules and regulations. It is only fitting to remember a quotation by another famous American jurist. “That the power to tax…” wrote US Supreme Court Justice John Marshall “involves the...

TEMECULA: Anti-tax rally set for Wednesday Organizers are preparing for possibility of counter protest By AARON CLAVERIE - Staff Writer Saturday, April 11, 2009 TEMECULA ---- Guy in Grim Reaper costume. Check. A "Zombama" (a President Barack Obama tax zombie). Check. "Don't Tread On Me" flags. Check. Patriotic and anti-tax songs blaring from a boom box. Check. And that's just the top half of the checklist that Rick Reiss has written up for an anti-tax "tea party" rally scheduled for 11 a.m. Wednesday at Temecula's Duck Pond Park. Reiss, a member of the Murrieta-Temecula Republican Assembly, said late last week...

Radio Dialogue paraphrase:Rush was discussing the Audit extremes foisted on him by the State of New York. The new New York State and City Taxes are targeting "rich folk". He will broadcast from his Florida home but also wants to find a Hurricane proof have. He said that he might move to Texas because there is no State Income tax.We Lone Star T=State Freepers should show our support and invite hime to "come on down". Of course as a DFW_phile I'd like to see him in my own backyard!

For Dale Allee, a second-generation cattle rancher in southern Colorado, the idiom that nothing is certain but death and taxes is now a reality. "I just turned 80 last week. You know what that means? That means I'm not going to be around here very long, and somebody's going to have to pay those taxes," said Allee, who fears federal estate taxes will thwart his plans to pass his 4,200-acre Pueblo County ranch to his children. Land-rich but cash poor, Western ranchers are lobbying Washington to exempt them from the estate tax, which can force heirs to sell their inheritance...

Death and Whoopi's Taxes December 10, 2007; Page A18 We don't normally look to Tinsel Town liberals for insights on U.S. tax policy, but Whoopi Goldberg's comments on the estate tax last week deserve more attention. During a discussion of Republican Presidential candidates on ABC's "The View," which the comedian co-hosts, Ms. Goldberg said, "I'd like somebody to get rid of the death tax. That's what I want. I don't want to get taxed just because I died." The studio audience started applauding, but she wasn't done. "I just don't think it's right," she continued. "If I give something to...

IRS to poker winners: Pay up! Fri Oct 19, 11:02 AM ET WASHINGTON - They're not bluffing: Tax collectors will start requiring poker tournaments to report the winners' take. Casinos and other sponsors of poker tournaments will be required to report winnings of more than $5,000 to the Internal Revenue Service beginning March 4, 2008, the tax agency said Friday. Sponsors who meet the reporting requirement won't need to withhold federal income tax at the end of a tournament, it said. If a sponsor does not report winnings, it is responsible for withholding the taxes and sending the money to...

Feeling down? Paying taxes might cheer you up By Joe Rojas-Burke NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE June 18, 2007 Using brain-scanning technology, researchers have found an unlikely force at play in the minds of people paying taxes: pleasure. In their experiment, taxing people for a charitable cause activated the brain's reward centers – the same areas that respond to such sources of delight as food and sex. “Paying taxes can make people feel good,” said William Harbaugh, an economist at the University of Oregon and co-author of the study. Previous research had established that voluntary giving stirs activity in the brain regions...

May 10, 2007 Tax inspectors seek slice of prostitutes’ earnings by Roger Boyes Berlin’s brothels are accustomed to all sorts of nocturnal visitors, but not, on the whole, to tax inspectors with clip-boards and stopwatches studying financial turnover. The cash-strapped German capital this week dispatched inspectors into establishments such as Lust Land to drum up revenue from the city’s 7,000 sex workers. “Prostitution is a strong economic sector in the capital,” says Gerry Woop, spokesman for Berlin’s economic administration. According to the German Institute for Economic Research, prostitution in Berlin has an annual turnover of €300 million (£203 million), making...

To live in California is to pay the highest state income tax rate in the nation, if you're wealthy enough. Last week, voters had a chance to raise that tax rate to new heights by approving Proposition 82. They declined. Did they figure that the Golden State's rich were already thoroughly soaked — or did 82, which would have funded universal preschool for 4-year-olds, just not present a convincing enough case? Nevada is right next door, after all, and it has no income tax, period. Proposition 82 would have raised California's top tax to 12% from 10.3%. Rodriguez sees a...

Public health physician, Wellington, New Zealand. Department of Public Health, Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Otago, New Zealand. New Zealand Ministry of Health, Wellington. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the loss of life expectancy attributable to tobacco taxation (via financial hardship and flow-on health effect) in New Zealand. DESIGN: Data were used on the gradients in life expectancy and smoking by neighbourhood socioeconomic deprivation and survey data on tobacco expenditure. Three estimates were modelled of the percentage of the crude association of neighbourhood deprivation with life expectancy that might be mediated via financial hardship: 100%, 50%, and 25%...

A tax office official in Finland who died at his desk went unnoticed by up to 30 colleagues for two days. The man in his 60s died last Tuesday while checking tax returns, but no-one realised he was dead until Thursday. The head of personnel at the office in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, said the man's closest colleagues had been out at meetings when he died. He said everyone at the tax office was feeling dreadful - and procedures would have to be reviewed. 'Coincidences' According to the Finnish tabloid newspaper Ilta-Sanomat on Monday, co-workers had assumed the dead man...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-000032666may08.story SLOVAKIA A Slovak man who had fallen behind in paying his taxes died after trying to decapitate himself with a homemade guillotine, police said. To read the rest, click HERE.