Microbusiness News Briefs Podcast » tax gap

Taxpayer Advocate Still Fingers Self-Employed Tax Gap

Dawn Rivers — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 15:23:10 +0000

Yes, folks, the Microbusiness News Briefs Podcast is back!

I’ll confess that I’m a little out of practice but it’s good to know that I haven’t completely forgotten how to ride this bike.

And it’s a good time for me to get back to work.

There are times when it really does seem as if there is this peculiar anti-microbusiness sentiment in Washington and one doesn’t have to go far to find its source. Many lawmakers seem to think the self-employed are a bunch of tax cheats.

In fact, some of them seem to think we choose to be self-employed so that we can be tax cheats. Or, at the very least, they assume that the self-employed deliberately underreport their incomes and underpay their taxes.

For this, we have the National Taxpayer Advocate to thank.

Don’t get me wrong. The tax gap is a very real problem, as is the complexity of the tax code. The problem comes in when the relevant parties try to imagine why so many sole proprietors aren’t paying the correct amount of income tax. They pay lip service to the idea that most of the time these are honest mistakes but they don’t seem to actually believe it.

It makes them tend to be petty and ungenerous when it comes to small business policy and the self-employed.

And that, in turn, makes them into a bunch of hypocrites whenever they start talking about how much they love small businesses.

Okay, okay, not all of them. But quite a few of them. Mostly Democrats.

For more information:

Microloan Seen Through A Different Lens

Dawn Rivers — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:27:14 +0000

Before anything else, I need to apologize for all the bumps and thumps in this week’s recording. My podcasts usually sound better than this and I have no idea why my mic was loose during my recording. I plan to have that fixed before next Monday’s podcast.

This Congressional session has been a peculiar one so far, simply because there has been the usual amount of hot air expended on Capitol Hill but it all seems to be expended in discussing only one or two topics.

One might argue about how well lawmakers walk and chew gum at the same time but, I’ll confess, now that everybody has turned themselves into Johnny-One-Note, covering Capitol Hill is not at its most interesting.

This week, we have small businesses and access to capital (Microloan with a twist), the tax gap, and small firms and health care reform. There will be more on that last subject next week; Senate Small Business Committee Chairwoman Mary Landrieu will convene a hearing on that subject later this week.

For more information:

Self-Employment May Do What Card Check Won’t

Dawn Rivers — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:07:28 +0000

We’ve got a slightly truncated edition of the podcast (and newsletter) this week, largely because there just wasn’t that much news fit to report last week. In fact, this week’s news report consists of items that happened last month but that I wasn’t able to get to before now.

Let’s hear it for evergreen stories.

Truth to tell, it wouldn’t be accurate to call these evergreen stories. They are a couple of heavy hitters, which is the primary reason why I thought it made sense not to search too hard for a bit of fluff to insert as my third article. It’s not really necessary.

Heavy hitters = the Employee Free Choice Act and the tax gap. ‘Nuff said.

For more information:

Hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, “Rebuilding Economic Security: Empowering Workers To Restore The Middle Class” (Hearing Archive)
Peter Orzag, OMB Director, Transcript of 3/25 Teleconference with Press (PDF)
National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE)

Once-Promising Biofuels Industry Hampered By Everything

Dawn Rivers — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:41:28 +0000

There’s not much in this week’s news that is truly, truly microbusiness specific (except the bit about the tax gap, obviously). Which is why I’m really excited to be able to bring you, in addition to this week’s podcast, a new white paper written by yours truly and published by the Microbusiness Research Institute.

The white paper combines some of the ideas I’ve been ruminating about over at The Journal Blog for the past couple of years with some of the recently-encountered ideas of Umair Haque, economic thinker extraordinaire.

The result is a vision of the 21st century economy that I think you may find interesting.

You can download the paper with the link below in the “For more information” section.

And I will once again apologize to my regulars for being late with the podcast this week. Dentist. ‘Nuff said.

For more information

House Small Business Committee
Tax Gap: IRS Could Do More to Promote Compliance by Third Parties with Miscellaneous Income Reporting Requirements (PDF)
Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
White Paper: White House Office of Management and Budget
Senate Committee on Appropriations
Report: Payroll Taxes: Billions in Delinquent Taxes and Penalties Due But Unlikely to be Collected (PDF)