Another month, another explosive rise in home prices. May’s median annual housing price rose 23.6%, a new monthly record. Buyers are still buying, helped by low interest and mortgage rates. But since housing construction hasn’t kept pace with demand and economic growth, it will take more housing production to reduce long-term pressure on prices. The buying pressure in housing
Taxes
States received billions of dollars from the federal government to help them manage the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 but one-quarter of them still had to cut spending over the last year to get by. A total of 12 states had to cut a combined $4.1 billion from their budgets in order to balance out projected
“If you think the Bahamas has ruined your global tax system, you have a pretty terrible global tax system.” That’s what Steven Dean, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, told Tax Notes contributing editor Robert Goulder last summer during a broader discussion about international tax policy. They were specifically discussing tax haven blacklists and the ways those lists have been racialized
A corporate minimum tax seems all but certain. The G-7 has agreed to support new rules for a global minimum tax rate on company profits and a new way of sharing the revenues from taxing the world’s largest and most profitable companies. ADVERTISEMENT The deal would impose a minimum tax of at least 15% and
Joseph Bishop-Henchman of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation discusses the litigation of a provision in the American Rescue Plan Act restricting states from using federal funds provided by the law to offset reductions in net tax revenue. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. David D. Stewart: Welcome to the podcast. I’m David Stewart, editor
The IRS says exchanges of one type of crypto for another are taxable, even if no cash changes hands. However, what about before January 1, 2018, was it tax free? You didn’t get cash, so there shouldn’t be any income or gain for the IRS to tax, right? If the IRS mines all the crypto
The American Rescue Plan expanded the Child Tax Credit from up to $2000 to up to $3600 per child for qualifying children. The entire amount of the credit is now fully refundable. That is, even low-income taxpayers who owe no federal income tax are eligible for the full amount of the credit. The portal for
Some 36 million families are eligible for advance payments of enhanced child tax credits for 2021, and the Internal Revenue Service has launched two new online tools to help taxpayers navigate this tax law change. There’s a Child Tax Credit Eligibility Assistant tool, and a child Tax Credit Update Portal. These two tools follow the
Looking to buy a house, but think house prices are going crazy? You’re not wrong. Housing prices are rocketing upwards across the country, showing their biggest annual gain since 2005. Existing homeowners are adding to their housing wealth, while younger, less affluent, and nonwhite buyers are facing little supply and rising costs. Housing price pressures are found across
Taxpayers filing late international information returns continue to encounter difficulties with the IRS’s recent practice of apparently disregarding reasonable cause statements initially and automatically assessing penalties. In particular, late filers of Form 3520, “Annual Return to Report Transactions With Foreign Trusts and Receipt of Certain Foreign Gifts,” have found it challenging to persuade the IRS to even look