Taxes on Visiting Professional Athletes and Entertainers

Professional athletes must pay taxes in many of the cities and states in which they play road games, which can create a tax preparation nightmare.  Article – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

…nonresident athlete taxes — seldom collected 20 years ago — are now significant sources of revenue for municipalities and states and can cause serious headaches for entertainers, athletes and accountants at tax time.

Any employee who travels with the team, which includes coaches, broadcasters, equipment managers and scouts, is subject to the same tax requirements.

Of the 24 states that house professional sports teams, 20 collect income tax on their home and visiting teams. And nearly a dozen cities, including Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Cincinnati, impose “jock taxes” and fees on teams and players to address budget shortfalls and to help pay for arenas and stadiums built with the taxpayers’ wallet.

Athletes, entertainers and support staff receive dozens of W-2s in the mail each year, and the stack of tax returns for dozens of states is as thick as a phone book.

The Great Gatsby Curve

The Great Gatsby is one of those stories everyone can relate to in some way.  These economic and cultural times offer up even more correlations and connections than in past decades.

“The Great Gatsby,” is a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald and now a movie (again) that highlights the inequality and class distinctions in America during the Roaring 20s.

It is hard to look at these figures and not be concerned that rising inequality is jeopardizing our tradition of equality of opportunity. The fortunes of one’s parents seem to matter increasingly in American society.

The Great Gatsby Curve was introduced in a speech last year (Jan 2012) by Alan Krueger, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. It illustrates the connection between concentration of wealth in one generation and the ability of those in the next generation to move up the economic ladder compared to their parents. Krueger’s speech

The curve shows that children from poor families are less likely to improve their economic status as adults in countries where income inequality was higher – meaning wealth was concentrated in fewer hands – around the time those children were growing up.

So why does this matter for the United States? The U.S. has had a sharp rise in inequality since the 1980s. In fact, on the eve of the Great Recession, income inequality in the U.S. was as sharp as it had been at any period since the time of “The Great Gatsby.”

It is hard to look at these figures and not be concerned that rising inequality is jeopardizing our tradition of equality of opportunity. The fortunes of one’s parents seem to matter increasingly in American society.  Whitehouse.gov Article

Future? Sight

Sight is a short futuristic film, which may not be that far-fetched.

In fact, Google Glass has many similarities to what is shown in Sight.

• Google Glass:http://www.google.com/glass/start/
• What it does:  http://www.google.com/glass/start/what-it-does/
• Take Google Glass for a spin:  http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-it-feels/

The Redesigned $100 Note

Front view of the new $100 bill, which will begin circulation in October, 2013

The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday announced that the redesigned $100 note will begin circulating on October 8, 2013. This note, which incorporates new security features such as a blue, 3-D security ribbon, will be easier for the public to authenticate but more difficult for counterfeiters to replicate.  Full press release: http://www.newmoney.gov/stakeholder/journalist/release_04242013.htm

The Redesigned $100 Note
The new $100 note is the latest denomination of U.S. currency to be redesigned. Over a decade of research and development went into its new security features.  Read more:  http://www.newmoney.gov/newmoney/default.aspx

New Security Features
The advanced security features offer a simple and subtle way to verify that a new $100 note is real.

• 3-D Security Ribbon-  Look for a blue ribbon on the front of the note. Tilt the note back and forth while focusing on the blue ribbon. You will see the bells change to 100s as they move. 
• Bell in the Inkwell- Look for an image of a color-shifting bell, inside a copper-colored inkwell, on the front of the new $100 note.

Additional Design and Security Features

•  Portrait Watermark- Hold the note to light and look for a faint image of Benjamin Franklin in the blank space to the right of the portrait. The image is visible from either side of the note.
• Also:  security thread, a color-shifting “100” on bill, raised printing, and more.

Security Features:  http://www.newmoney.gov/uscurrency/redesigned100.htm

Many additional features are included in the redesigned bill for added security

Tax Day!

“The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.” Albert Einstein

It’s April 15! What does that mean? It means that this is the final day Americans have to file their taxes for 2012.  Here are 10  interesting facts to know about tax day while you file those last-minute income returns. Source: http://newsone.com/2384605/tax-day-2013/?omcamp=EMC-CVNL

55% of Americans felt their taxes were fair this year: http://www.parade.com/5180/viannguyen/were-your-taxes-fair-this-year/

What have taxes ever done for me?  Public education probably helped you learn to read. And when you anything on the Internet, you’re using technology invented with tax dollars. Taxes bring other benefits too, too numerous to mention, including the greatest one of all:

You’re alive. You haven’t died of smallpox or any of the other diseases which are restrained by tax-funded public health programs. You haven’t been crushed inside a collapsing building, mangled by a grain solo, or met any of the other grisly deaths prevented by tax-funded safety programs.

You didn’t burn to death in a home that was never inspected for fire hazards, trapped helplessly as the flames rose and knowing there were no firefighters available to answer your call. You and your significant other weren’t shot down like Batman’s parents on the streets of an under-policed and lawless metropolis.

Taxes provide us with many important services, often far more cheaply and efficiently than the private sector. It wouldn’t be painful to pay taxes in a well-managed economy where everyone prospered. The thriving America of the 1950s and 1960s had top tax rates as high as 91 percent, and those taxes helped create the prosperity that’s so sorely lacking today.  

The payroll tax “holiday” wasn’t the best way to give middle-class and lower-income Americans a much-deserved break, but at least it helped. Now that it’s gone they’re struggling even more, and a new (and better-designed) tax break for working Americans isn’t even “on the table” in budget talks.  But the Bush tax cuts are still in place for income of up to $400,000. So are the tax breaks that let some of the ultra-wealthy pay little or no taxes.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/the-upside-of-taxes_b_3082295.html

Where do your taxes go? For the third consecutive year, the Obama administration is offering taxpayers an online tool to “understand how and where” their federal tax dollars are being spent. The gadget, called “Your 2012 Federal Taxpayer Receipt,” allows users to enter how much they paid in Social Security, Medicare, and income taxes in 2012, then calculates a personalized breakdown of what money went where.  http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/04/15/where-do-your-tax-dollars-go-the-wh-has-an-app-for-that/

Your 2012 Federal Taxpayer Receipt: http://www.whitehouse.gov/2012-taxreceipt

Congressional Budget Office statement on taxes: Over the past 40 years, federal revenues have ranged from nearly 21 percent of GDP in fiscal year 2000 to just over 15 percent in fiscal years 2009, 2010, and 2011, averaging roughly 18 percent of GDP over that span. Under current law, revenues will rise significantly from their recent low relative to GDP over the next few years as the economy recovers from the recession and the tax reductions originally enacted in 2001, 2003, and 2009 expire. CBO analyzes the budgetary and economic effects of various features of the current tax code and proposals for changes in the tax code. http://www.cbo.gov/topics/taxes

CBO on Economic Policy:  Economic Effects of Policies Contributing to Fiscal Tightening in 2013-  Significant tax increases and spending cuts (took effect in January 2013), sharply reducing the federal budget deficit and causing, by CBO’s estimates, a decline in economic output and an increase in unemployment. http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43694