Joseph Thorndike discusses the history of the income tax.

As Joseph Thorndike, a historian and director of the Tax History Project, put it, Tax Day is "something we all share but not something any of us want to do."

Chris Bergin discusses tax reform.

Joseph Thorndike discusses the history of the income tax.

Joseph Thorndike, research director of the online Tax History Museum, describes it this way: "It seemed unfair that the bulk of national revenue flowed from regressive tariff rates that taxed ordinary Americans at the point of consumption, while the profits of giant enterprises like railroads, sugar refiners, and steel manufacturers went untapped."

"That's sort of the untold story of American history -- the different points at which Americans have supported the tax system, have supported higher taxes for purposes and goals that they believed in," said tax historian Joseph Thorndike. He says we may see ourselves as a nation founded on resistance to taxation, but that's only part of the story.

"As it stands now, pharma companies can enter into cost-sharing agreements with their own overseas entities and then move assets—including valuable patents—into these subsidiaries. If the government limits the ability to shift profits out of the U.S., Sullivan said, “that would seriously hurt the pharmaceuticals, the biotechs and the medical device manufacturers.”"

David Cay Johnston, columnist for Tax Analysts, debates different strategies and whether real tax reform is possible.

David Cay Johnson, columnist for Tax Analysts, opines on secret offshore accounts.

“The short answer is, there have always been preferences,” says Joseph Thorndike, director of the tax history project at Tax Analysts, a publisher in Falls Church, Virginia. “From the start, there was a deduction for interest paid. It was intended to be a business deduction -- a cost of doing business -- but people with mortgages started to deduct interest.”

"Reagan also enacted the largest tax increase in four decades, according to Joseph J. Thorndike, the director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts. But Reagan obscured the tax increases by calling them a different name: "revenue enhancements" that were achieved by closing loopholes in the tax code."

"Disciplined savers in those plans with higher caps can reach $3 million in savings without unusual investment strategies, said Clint Stretch, senior tax policy counsel at Tax Analysts."

Lee Sheppard, an attorney who writes for the journal Tax Notes, said a haven should be located close to the investors it serves and have native speakers of the clients' language, "because people want to visit their money and feel it's safe."

“The Tax Reform Debate” was part of the three-day Society of American Business Editors and Writers 50th anniversary spring conference, held at George Washington University’s Marvin Center.

Byline by Joseph Thorndike.

"A second "great crusade", Goulder writes, began when US authorities took on UBS, forcing the Swiss bank to pay $780m in 2009 to settle allegations that it had helped Americans dodge taxes. David Cameron has now vowed to use his leadership of the G8 to help crack down on tax evasion."

"Marty Sullivan, chief economist at Tax Analysts in Falls Church, Virginia, said the chamber’s comments don’t move the tax debate forward, in part because the group is trying to avoid offending large portions of its membership."

David Stewart was interviewed for this story.

“The British think they do finance well,” says Lee Sheppard, a tax and banking specialist at the U.S. trade publication TaxAnalysts. “No. They do the legal stuff well. Most of the big investment banks there are branches of foreign operations. . . . They go there because there is no regulation whatsoever.”

“Many professors and academics who study partnership law felt like the whole partnership system was falling apart, because it had become so complicated and not administrable,” said Martin Sullivan, the chief economist for Tax Analysts, the tax news and analysis publisher.

Martin Sullivan, chief economist of Tax Analysts, a nonprofit publisher, calculated last year that the members of RATE pay an average effective world-wide tax rate of about 32%. Lowering the statutory tax rate to 25%, as many firms want, would cost as much as $1 trillion over 10 years. Much of that amount would need to be offset by closing loopholes and eliminating deductions.

Byline by Jeremy Scott.

"The crisis in Cyprus sheds a light on how investors shelter their wealth. A panel joins Diane to explain how tax havens work and their effect on economies around the world."

"In order to use the DTAs, you have to have taxable income, and at Citi you don't," said Lee Sheppard, a tax lawyer and managing editor at Tax Analysts. "Their balance sheet looks like the European Central Bank right now, with a huge pile of garbage."

Joe Thorndike was interviewed by Chuck Jaffe, a senior columnist for MarketWatch and host of MoneyLife.

"Tax Analysts have compiled many of them for the Tax History Project – now, you can leaf through the personal returns of presidents from Nixon to Obama on the internet. And it’s all legal."

Tax Notes was ranked among the top five major tax journals – Florida Tax Review, Tax Law Review, Tax Lawyer, Tax Notes, and Virginia Tax Review – in Washington & Lee University Law School’s 2003 – 2012 tax law review annual combined rankings.

Shamik Trivedi was referenced in this article.

Op-ed by Christopher Bergin. It was also included in The Huffington Post.

The article featured comments from Marty Sullivan. This was also picked up by PharmaGossip, NJ.com, FirstWord Phrama, TaxProf Blog, and The Record.

Martin Sullivan was interviewed on tax preferences and loopholes.

“By resisting a general sales tax so much, they missed the boat on consumption taxes, which the rest of the world used on a bigger welfare state,” said Joseph Thorndike, a historian and columnist for Tax Notes magazine.

“You can cry all day about how you hate the income tax and the corporate tax, but you have to have a substitute,” said Martin Sullivan, a columnist for Tax Notes magazine and former Treasury Department economist.

Tax Notes was referenced in the committee's hearing.

Interview with Joe Thorndike regarding his book, Their Fair Share: Taxing the Rich in the Age of FDR.

Interview with Clint Stretch on the sequester.

The post includes Washington & Lee's top 25 tax journals ranking, which highlights Tax Notes as third place.

NPR featured an interview with Joe Thorndike. This was also picked up by several radio stations including WLRN, NWPR, and WQCS.

Includes an interview with Joe Thorndike.

This special edition cites Lee Sheppard's "Intangibles Migration and Excess Profits."

The House Committee on Ways & Means website references Tax Notes in its February 14 Hearing on Tax Reform and Charitable Contributions. This was also picked up by TaxProf Blog and the Nonprofit Law Prof Blog.

Former Treasury Department economist Martin Sullivan, an international tax expert, estimated in an interview that Apple avoided at least $2.4 billion in federal taxes in 2011 through its various tax positions, including its leasing of royalties on digital products such as downloaded songs and mobile apps.

"Salaries get taxed when you earn them. Capital gains only get taxed when you sell, and they get taxed at a lower rate. That's a benefit in and of itself, and it's in the law," says Lee Sheppard, a contributing editor with Tax Analysts.

WNUR features an interview with David Cay Johnston

Before income taxes, the government was mainly getting its money from tariffs and sin taxes on things like alcohol and tobacco, said Joseph Thorndike, director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts.

David Brunori's "Jindal's Bold Move" was republished by The Georgia Public Policy Foundation.

Bob Goulder's comments from a May 18, 2011 article in The Center for Public Integrity were featured.

The publication features an excerpt from Joe Thorndike's new book Their Fair Share: Taxing the Rich in the Age of FDR.

Camp “put out the first draft in October 2011, and now, this is January 2013,” said Sullivan. “At this pace, you need to move a little more quickly if you want to get a sweeping tax reform through Congress.”

"Apparently, the Italians have found a way to make their unpopular income tax even more unpopular. In the face of rampant cheating, they've adopted a new enforcement technique. Now, instead of just pawing through paychecks, bank statements and the like, officials will also scrutinize spending habits."

"Everywhere you look, governments are cutting back on spending for teachers, police, fireman—things that the citizenry generally wants more of," Robert Goulder, the editor-in-chief of Tax Analysts' international publications, told Ars.

This release notes that the IRS intends to renew its subscription with Tax Analysts for another 12 months.

This article references Jeremy Scott's blog post "Phil Mickelson Overreacts to Uptick in Taxes."

Eric Kroh's "New Tax Gap Estimates Show Compliance Largely Unchanged" was featured in this article.

The National Black Chamber of Commerce's website includes an article referencing State Tax Notes. This was also picked up by Black Voices of America, and the Philadelphia Tribune.

The publication featured Chris Bergin's "A State of Uncertainty" and Joe Thorndike's "Peggy Noonan and the Beleaguered 1 Percent," which has produced over 250 comments.

The Pepperdine/Tax Analysts Symposium was highlighted in TaxProf Blog. It was also discussed in WITNESSETH Blog, Tax, Society & Culture, Isaac Brock Society, and Freedom from the tyranny of U.S. citizenship-based taxation for U.S. and dual citizens outside the U.S.

"In a 2012 paper, Joseph J. Thorndike, director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts, noted that the high income tax rates of the 1950s were often offset by favorable capital gains treatment, breaks on dividend income and a very generous depreciation regime."

David Brunori's blog "Virginia's Gas Tax Reform" was featured in this article.

“They’ve mucked up the code, and so the more you muck it up, the easier it is to reform it,” said Martin Sullivan, chief economist at Tax Analysts in Falls Church, Virginia.

Martin Sullivan, the chief economist at Tax Analysts, said that the nation’s two top parties must find common ground on revenue levels before they can tackle the broader issue of rewriting the nation’s complex tax code.

This article credits Tax Analysts for the initial reporting. It was also noted in the Chicago Tribune, Business World, and Wall St. Cheat Sheet.

The analysis, by David Cay Johnston, a law professor who previously received the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of tax policy for The New York Times , finds that “federal deficits will continue at much larger levels than if Congress had done nothing and simply let the temporary George W. Bush income tax cuts end.”

We checked in with Joseph Thorndike, director of Tax Analysts’ Tax History Project, who told us that he thought Paul’s statement at the debate was fair. Pointing to the temporary nature of the wartime tax and the four decades that the United States went without an income tax before 1913, Thorndike said his view is that the Civil War-era tax should be a "relatively small caveat" to the statement that there was no federal income tax until 1913.

As Robert W. Wood, a tax lawyer, said in a 2009 Tax Notes article, “The tax deduction for business expenses is broad enough to include most settlements and judgments.”

So, we asked our tax strike team member Martin Sullivan of Tax Analyst what part of the tax legislation is going to have the biggest effect on the average 2012 return. You know, most of these laws are 2013 and 2012. He says the AMT patch, that 30 million people, 30 million of you out there, are going to be saved from the AMT and that is why the IRS had to cause the delay.

“As you can see from Apple’s numbers, every year it grows and grows and grows, and it’s getting to be a very unwieldy situation,” says Martin Sullivan, a former Treasury Department economist who is now with the news publisher Tax Analysts. “The good news is, gee we’re really good at tax planning, we’re paying hardly any tax to the IRS and we have high profits for Wall Street. But the bad news is we can’t get the cash without paying the tax, and that’s a big problem, especially if you want to do a domestic acquisition or pay some dividends.”

David Brunori was quoted in John Spry's Blog and True North discussing state sales tax.

Chris Bergin was featured on CBS Radio Los Angeles discussing the tax breaks included in the final tax relief act.

David Cay Johnston discusses coverage of the last minute deal in the Senate and House to avert automatic spending cuts and tax hikes.

Tech companies are able to easily shift “intellectual property, and the profit that goes along with it, to tax havens,” said a former Treasury Department economist, Martin A. Sullivan.

A second fantasy about the 1950s is that government soaked the rich. Joseph Thorndike and Martin Sullivan in Tax Notes magazine took a look at the tax distribution of the decade. They found that those earning more than $100,000 paid less than 5 percent of the taxes collected in the U.S., a far smaller share than the wealthiest shoulder today.

The outlet highlights State Tax Today in "Tennessee Tax Issue Of The Year And Year In Review" and Tax Notes International in "New Foreign Affiliate ‘Dumping’ Rules Constitute Major Canadian Tax Policy Change."

Joseph Thorndike's "Is Obama the Worst Legislative Negotiator of the Last Century?" is highlighted in the article.