A12 Economy & Business
Quotations About Taxes.” It’s a labor of love (or possibly hate) compiled over more than 30 years by Jeffery L. Yablon, a tax partner in the Washington office of the Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman law firm. The book is like canapés for
I
anyone interested in taxes, which ought to be all of us. You can’t devour it all in one sitting —you graze for a while, come back, then graze some more. It features about 250 pages of quotes, many of which are hilarious — if you’re into tax humor. To give you an idea, here’s this one from George Bernard Shaw, “A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can depend on the support of Paul.” I rarely use this space to plug
any sort of product, but I’m shilling for this book because it’s noncommercial, as well as amusing and occasionally
n honor of Tax Day, I’d like to recommend a new book to you: “As Certain as Death:
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KLMNO
This tax season, enjoy some humorous deductions
educational. The book, published by Tax Analysts, a Falls Church-based nonprofit group, goes out next week to subscribers of Tax Notes and the group’s other publications. The rest of us can get it online at
www.tax.com and www. taxanalysts.com.
After reading the book awhile,
I found myself growing angry — which turns out to be just the reaction that Chris Bergin, president of Tax Analysts, is hoping to provoke. Bergin has published Yablon’s ever-growing quote collection over the years, and is promoting it heavily this year. “Considering what a freaking mess this system is, we’ve got to get people to pay attention to it,” Bergin told me. I suspect that one reason the book made my blood pressure rise was that it showed up about the same time I got my tax returns from my accountant. I write about taxes as part of my job — but this year, for the first
Geithner applauds new ties with India
Treasury chief on visit to promote investment in fast-growing market
by Emily Wax
new delhi — India and the United States have launched a new economic partnership that offers “huge opportunities” for both countries, U.S. Treasury Sec- retary Timothy F. Geithner said Tuesday during a two-day visit to India aimed at strengthening ties with one of the world’s fastest- growing economies. Although few details were dis- closed, Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee invited U.S. companies to invest in the coun- try’s booming construction in- dustry, which is building air- ports, railroads and a planned 4,400 miles of highway a year in an effort to make freight traffic more efficient while spreading wealth to India’s rural areas. The world’s second-most-pop- ulous nation, with 1.2 billion peo- ple, desperately needs better roads to support its thriving economy, India’s leaders say, es- pecially as it emerges as a global economic power. Nearly 40 per- cent of India’s world-class agri- cultural products, such as man- goes and tomatoes, spoil because of delays getting them to market, according to Indian economists. “These are vast areas,” Mukher- jee said of India’s hinterlands at a news conference with Geithner in New Delhi, adding that the country’s infrastructure could ab- sorb up to $600 billion in foreign investment over five years. India permits 100 percent for-
eign investment in road construc- tion here. But it has long re- stricted many other forms of for- eign investment, including
importing wine, opening retail chain stores and credit and insur- ance investments. The new part- nership could eventually result in other openings to India’s vast markets, a development long sought by the United States. “We’re at a time of great opti- mism in the United States and around the world about the pros- pects for growth and reform in India,” Geithner said, adding, “this economic relationship of- fers very promising growth and opportunities for American firms, just as it does for Indian firms.” India began to open its econo-
my in the early 1990s. As a result, U.S. private investment here is worth $16.1 billion, about 10 times what it was in the late 1990s, according to the Indian government. But the cap on for- eign direct investment continues to frustrate outside investors. For example, Wal-Mart had to team with an Indian retail outlet be- fore being allowed to open here, and its sales are restricted to wholesalers. Tensions also persist between
India and the United States over U.S. farm subsidies and India’s re- fusal to open its markets to for- eign farmers. Those disagree- ments are blamed for scuttling global trade negotiations in 2008. Still, economists here say,
Geithner was careful not to lec- ture India about specific reforms, especially in view of the U.S. cred- it collapse and India’s demon- strated resilience. “The fulcrum of economic power in the world is shifting eastward,” said Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, a New Delhi economist who is writing a book on how In- dia’s economy survived the eco- nomic meltdown. “Maybe our model has worked well — with controlled and careful reforms. Maybe India will be able to help
PANKAJ NANGIA/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Timothy F. Geithner, left, speaks with an Indian tea vendor in New Delhi on Tuesday. Geithner is on a two-day tour of the nation.
Americans find jobs over here in our markets.” U.S.-India ties have warmed since then-president George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed the framework for a historic nuclear deal in 2005. But Geithner’s visit this week appears aimed at calm- ing more recent worries as well.
“Geithner’s goal in the talks in
India on Tuesday will be to give more prominence to U.S.-Indian relations, which have taken a back seat to Washington’s ties with China in recent years,” said Rani D. Mullen, a South Asia ex- pert at the College of William and Mary.
waxe@washpost.com
DEALS
Allan Sloan
time that I remember, I couldn’t make heads or tails of my federal return. So I just signed the form allowing my accountant to e-file it.
In any sort of normal world,
my tax return would be simple. My wife and I own only the home we live in, have no investment real estate or tax shelters, and the closest we come to exotic investments is units in publicly traded master limited partnerships. Yet our federal tax return was
23 pages long, including four pages of Form 1116, detailing calculations that yielded a $51
alternative minimum tax foreign-tax credit. Or maybe it’s $53. That credit, generated by our share of taxes that some of our mutual funds paid, included $3 (or maybe $5) of credits that we couldn’t use last year, God only knows why. Our alternative minimum tax
payment wiped out about half the tax-deductibility benefit of our state and local taxes. I think. And somewhere along the way, we lost about 20 percent — or maybe about half, I can’t tell — of the value of our personal exemptions. I’m not all that angry about
the amount of income tax we paid — even though, at nearly 24 percent of our adjusted gross income, it’s a pretty hefty bill. What enraged me was being subjected to an intellectually dishonest system that plays bait-and-switch with my deductions and makes it impossible for me to figure out my marginal tax rate. But even in my grumpy state, I had to smile at Yablon’s brief introductory essay. In true lawyer fashion, he’s got footnotes, including this jewel: “One of Leona Helmsley’s employees swore that she said, ‘Only little people pay taxes,’ but Helmsley denied it. She was alive and litigious when the line became famous, so I included it, but parenthetically added the word ‘attributed.’ ” There are well over 1,000
quotations in the book — including two from me, 14 from Yablon and 33 from “anonymous.”
A few samples: “The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it’s just sort of a tired feeling.” — Paula Poundstone “No one who has witnessed tax lobbyists’ perennial infestation of Capitol Hill can ever again confuse the making of tax laws with the making of sausages: at least when you make sausages, you know the pigs won’t be coming back.” — J. Mark Iwry And from Yablon: “Our tax system is so screwed up that even if we could agree on a better one, there is no way to get there from here.” So enjoy the book. Think of it as chicken soup: It may not cure what ails the tax system, but what can it hurt? Besides, you’ll have plenty of snappy lines to use if you go out drinking on April 15.
Allan Sloan is Fortune magazine’s senior editor at large.
Court rules FCC lacks power to enforce ‘net neutrality’
fcc from A1
It did not impose a fine. Comcast appealed the FCC
sanction, saying that the agency’s order was outside the scope of its authority. The court agreed on Tuesday, saying the agency relied on laws that give it some juris- diction over broadband services but not enough to make the ac- tion against Comcast permissi- ble.
“For a variety of substantive and procedural reasons those provisions cannot support its ex- ercise of ancillary authority over Comcast’s network management practices,” the court wrote in its 3-0 decision. “We therefore grant Comcast’s petition for review and vacate the challenged order.” Sena Fitzmaurice, a Comcast
spokeswoman, said the company was “gratified” by the ruling. “Our primary goal was always to clear our name and reputa- tion,” she said. The decision comes as Com- cast is pursuing agency approval of its proposed $30 billion merg- er with NBC Universal, which would put a vast library of televi- sion and movie programming under the control of the nation’s largest cable provider.
Comcast has opposed the
FCC’s efforts to impose tougher network neutrality rules. The company argues, as it did in the BitTorrent case, that it needs to be able to limit some activities, such as downloading massive movie files, that could slow net- work operations for many cus- tomers.
But in hearings this year on the NBC merger, some lawmak- ers expressed concern that Com- cast could wield outsize influ- ence on the content carried on its network and said that net neu- trality rules would ensure that the combined company would not discriminate against compet- ing Web sites.
Some Silicon Valley giants, in- cluding Google and Facebook, have supported government ef- forts to push network neutrality rules. Tuesday’s ruling may en- courage the FCC to respond with what Sanford C. Bernstein ana- lyst Craig Moffett calls the “nu- clear option” — moving broad- band providers into the same cat- egory as phone companies, exposing them to many more rules. That “would have sweeping
implications far, far beyond net neutrality . . . and would bring back a raft of regulatory obliga- tions from the days of monopoly telecommunications regulation,” Moffett said. Verizon, AT&T and some econ- omists have warned against re- classifying broadband providers, arguing that doing so would im- pose policies developed in the last century on a new and unique industry. Michael K. Powell, a former FCC chairman, said that impos- ing net neutrality rules would hurt investments in broadband networks. Under his leadership, oversight of cable broadband modems was placed in a new cat- egory outside the agency’s tradi- tional power over cable and tele- phone services. “I do think the Internet should
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largely not be regulated,” Powell said. “If we want broadband to be a public utility, get Congress to cough up $30 billion a year and have the costs shared by all citi- zens and we’ll regulate that way. But you can’t say you want that with the private market bringing money to the table.” Telecom lawyers say the murky powers the FCC has over Internet access have caused difficulty for the agency as it transitions from phone- and broadcast-era reg- ulation. The decision casts doubt on dozens of policies the FCC hopes to roll out as part of the national broadband plan it released last month. It could complicate the proposed reallocation of $8 bil- lion in phone subsidies to build broadband networks and hinder the creation of a wireless public safety network for first respond- ers, public advocacy groups say. That underscores the need for the FCC to assert its authority over broadband services, accord- ing to consumer groups, which doubt Congress will grant that power because such a move would face fierce industry oppo- sition. “They don’t have any other choice but to reclassify,” said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowl- edge. “For everything they want to do with broadband, they can choose to roll the dice and see if they get a good panel on the D.C. Circuit court, or go back to the drawing board and take care of this once and for all.” The FCC did not specify how it plans to respond to the court’s decision. Agency spokeswoman Jen Howard said Tuesday it is im- portant that the FCC’s broad- band agenda rests on a “solid le- gal foundation.” Michael J. Copps, a Democrat- ic FCC commissioner, said in a statement: “It is time we stop do- ing the ‘ancillary authority’ dance and instead rely on the statute Congress gave us to stand on solid legal ground in safe- guarding the benefits of the Internet for American con- sumers. We should straighten this broadband classification mess out before the first day of summer.”
kangc@washpost.com
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7, 2010
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