The Great American Tax Dodge: How Spiraling Fraud and Avoidance Are Killing Fairness, Destroying the Income Tax, and Costing You - Softcover

Barlett, Donald L. L.; Steele, James B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520236106 ISBN 13: 9780520236103

Publisher: University of California Press, 2002

Synopsis

In The Great American Tax Dodge, a book that should infuriate and galvanize citizens everywhere, the best-selling authors of America: What Went Wrong? expose the millions of Americans who are dodging their income taxes at every honest taxpayer's expense. With the clarity, insight, and readability that earned them two Pulitzer Prizes, Donald Barlett and James Steele explain how Americans are cheating as never before, and why most are getting away with it.

The authors relate the stories of a Manhattan couple who spent $1 million a month to maintain their lifestyle yet never paid income tax, a California couple who provided sport utility vehicles for their children at taxpayers' expense, an entrepreneur in Costa Rica who shows Americans how to hide their money in clandestine accounts offshore, and computer technicians at America's largest corporations who live tax-free.

Barlett and Steele describe how the Internet has democratized tax cheating, as proliferating Web sites and their often mysterious operators offer every service imaginable to escape taxes. They discuss the double standard the IRS employs in tax audits--one for the rich and well-connected and another for everyone else--and how the Justice Department tries to jail powerless citizens accused of tax law violations while allowing the wealthy and influential to go free. This book also documents how Congress is deliberately undermining the income tax in order to replace it with a system that will provide the largest windfall ever for the richest Americans--and increase the burden on everyone else. And it spells out how executives like Kenneth L. Lay bankrolled campaigns to institute such a tax system, based on accounting principles eerily similar to those employed at Lay's Enron Corporation. Finally, the authors consider our chances for reestablishing what was once the fairest tax system in the world.

About this title

Review:

It's often said there's nothing certain in life except death and taxes. According to two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalists Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, however, the latter part of that adage is now decidedly in dispute. The Great American Tax Dodge, the pair's latest examination of U.S. systems gone awry, spells out exactly how massive tax fraud is currently costing the nation enough to provide health care for its 44 million uninsured citizens--and precisely why the problem will continue to grow at virtually all economic levels unless remedial measures are immediately employed. In their fully detailed but always readable style, Barlett and Steele authoritatively discuss multimillionaires who never file tax returns, Internet sites that can link anyone to shady tax havens, the use of "phantom children" and "invisible employees" to illegitimately shelter income, and evasive techniques like offshore accounts and holding companies that illegally keep money from reaching the government agencies to which it is owed. But the problem cannot exclusively be blamed on those individuals who choose to shirk their civic responsibility, the authors note. Congress, which regularly looks the other way, and the IRS itself, which consistently fails to enforce its own rules, also share much of the blame. Packed with specific examples and unsettling particulars, the book will frustrate everyone who dutifully files a tax return each April and expects their fellow Americans to do the same. Fortunately, it also includes a simple yet plausible proposal for turning the situation around. --Howard Rothman

From the Inside Flap:

"Barlett and Steele...are masters at mining obscure documents to see the big picture where most investigators never even knew there was a frame...Year after year, Congress continues to make tax laws more complex and more unfair, then refuses to give the IRS adequate resources to ferret out fraud. If the tax code isn't reformed soon, the authors warn, the consequences might be dire."―Baltimore Sun

"A hard-hitting expose of perceived gross inequities in the U.S. tax system."―Publishers Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0520236106
• ISBN 13: 9780520236103
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 302