Fiat justitia

ruat caelum

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Watching a Master at Work

For reasons personal and professional, I’ve been closely following the Federal government’s price-fixing case against Apple, set to go to trial in New York next month.

For reasons personal and professional, I’ve been closely following the Federal government’s price-fixing case against Apple, set to go to trial in New York next month.

Buried in the material released in the case are a series of emails between Steve Jobs…

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Filed under apple DOJ ebooks negotiation Steve Jobs

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Apple and Taxes

When the fox eats all the chickens, the farmer doesn’t get to blame the fox for the shoddy henhouse construction. The fox is just doing what a fox is supposed to do. It is up to the farmer to secure his chickens.

Same goes for lawmakers lamenting the…

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Filed under apple taxes

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I’m going to to miss this one. hatethefuture: It’s over, I’m afraid. I’ll be here if you need me. Not that it matters, but Hate The Future began about four years ago, when I was fresh out of college, in a boring job, and having the generic existential crisis. Since then, I’ve gotten married, written for some magazines, made a few friends, survived a car accident, taken vacations, gone to concerts, seen doctors, voted, published a novel, sat through sibling graduations, thrown up, acquired a second dog, moved twice, fucked in the afternoon, watched movies, slept through alarms, kept secrets, celebrated birthdays, revised, regretted, relived, repeated myself.  I still have the boring job and existential crisis, but they seem no longer to call for work like this, if indeed it was work. It may simply have been the kind of procrastination that has the flavor of work. A stretching of neurons, that they might not atrophy under the feeble fluorescence of a boring job. I set limits just to disobey them. I told myself a thousand posts would be the endpoint and cruised right past that goalpost, too. Even now I can’t wrap things up. There should be no idiotic farewell, I’m sure of that, and here I’ll finish tapping it out. Inspiration, as we know, doesn’t last. I might have quit two years ago if not for laziness, inertia, the comforts of routine and the very warm following that unexpectedly cropped up. You’ve been very kind, all of you, especially on the frequent occasions when I wasn’t funny at all. To the countless photographers and artists whose work I unapologetically stole, my thanks. I believe I’ve confused, misinformed and offended as many people as I’ve made laugh, and it’s on that balance alone I am willing to claim success. Not that provocation was the objective. But I’m no comedian, either. I don’t know, maybe you can tell me—why the hell were you reading this?  The illustration above comes from Bruce McCall’s Zany Afternoons, my favorite book as a kid. I grew to adore all the usual science fiction, but McCall has a singular vision that will always stick with me—a blending of the now and the soon and the recent past—a dreamy nostalgia for disasters that hadn’t happened yet, like time was a pure contradiction, expanding in every direction. Our moment is one human’s fantasy, another’s history. The present, they say, lasts about three seconds. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stand it.      

I’m going to to miss this one.

hatethefuture:

It’s over, I’m afraid. I’ll be here if you need me.

Not that it matters, but Hate The Future began about four years ago, when I was fresh out of college, in a boring job, and having the generic existential crisis. Since then, I’ve gotten married, written for some magazines, made a few friends, survived a car accident, taken vacations, gone to concerts, seen doctors, voted, published a novel, sat through sibling graduations, thrown up, acquired a second dog, moved twice, fucked in the afternoon, watched movies, slept through alarms, kept secrets, celebrated birthdays, revised, regretted, relived, repeated myself. 

I still have the boring job and existential crisis, but they seem no longer to call for work like this, if indeed it was work. It may simply have been the kind of procrastination that has the flavor of work. A stretching of neurons, that they might not atrophy under the feeble fluorescence of a boring job. I set limits just to disobey them. I told myself a thousand posts would be the endpoint and cruised right past that goalpost, too. Even now I can’t wrap things up. There should be no idiotic farewell, I’m sure of that, and here I’ll finish tapping it out.

Inspiration, as we know, doesn’t last. I might have quit two years ago if not for laziness, inertia, the comforts of routine and the very warm following that unexpectedly cropped up. You’ve been very kind, all of you, especially on the frequent occasions when I wasn’t funny at all. To the countless photographers and artists whose work I unapologetically stole, my thanks. I believe I’ve confused, misinformed and offended as many people as I’ve made laugh, and it’s on that balance alone I am willing to claim success. Not that provocation was the objective. But I’m no comedian, either. I don’t know, maybe you can tell me—why the hell were you reading this? 

The illustration above comes from Bruce McCall’s Zany Afternoons, my favorite book as a kid. I grew to adore all the usual science fiction, but McCall has a singular vision that will always stick with me—a blending of the now and the soon and the recent past—a dreamy nostalgia for disasters that hadn’t happened yet, like time was a pure contradiction, expanding in every direction. Our moment is one human’s fantasy, another’s history. The present, they say, lasts about three seconds.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stand it.      

3 notes

Simplifying the Tax System in Two Easy Steps

Tom seems to have put out a call for tax reform plans, so here’s one of mine that I’ve been kicking around for a while:

Simplifying the Tax System in Two Easy Steps

1.) Simplify the process. For the vast majority of filers, taxes are an “honesty test.” The IRS already have all of your income and deduction information via the automatic reporting from financial institutions. It should be a simple process of logging in, viewing a summary of your 1040, and clicking Accept.

2.) Establish a National Tax Clearinghouse. Ideally, we’d harmonize state tax codes, but I’d like to see a show of hands for how many readers think that is likely to happen this side of never. Instead, for more complex situations, like Tom’s interstate corporate tax debacle, we establish an IRS-led tax clearinghouse. Each state tells the IRS what their tax coed says each year. You simply pay your taxes through this clearinghouse, often under the system outlined in #1 above. A computer runs through all the nuances of your situation, sends money to the appropriate states, and processes your refund back to you. If you owe money, the IRS bills you directly. We effectively eliminate the state tax return.

Benefits: The states save money because instead of 50+ (DC, PR, etc.) separate systems, it is all effectively “outsourced” to the IRS. Sure, there will be plenty of jobs lost in processing centers and tax preparation companies, but we’re hemorrhaging jobs right now anyway. Long-term systemic realignments tend to cost jobs. If we want jobs for these now out-of-work IRS agents, there are plenty of high net worth / high income tax scofflaws out there in need of an annual audit.

More importantly, the individual taxpayer saves time, which is arguably the most valuable thing anyone has, and money for not having to hire someone to assist before or after the tax forms are filed.

And all this without the politically difficult task of reforming the tax code. Just fix the processing and automate as much as possible and many problems with the system will simply go away.