5 Best Tax Nerd Blogs: The Second Annual Rick Moranis Awards

The Internet is an egalitarian’s paradise. 

It has leveled the playing field for professionals of all stripes by allowing the little guy to compete on an equal footing with the big boys.

Mostly this is accomplished through blogging. 

I have been tracking tax blogs for several years and have discovered for myself that there is nothing equal about them.

Many suck, most are mediocre, only a select few are excellent.

Here in no particular order are this year’s Moranis winners each of whom will receive an autographed DVD version of the movie Ghostbusters featuring the line “who does your taxes” spoken by gatekeeper/accountant Louis Tully (played by Rick Moranis):

Joe Kristan’s Tax Updates Blog 

The only repeat winner from last year.

Frankly, this is my favorite tax blog. 

Joe, an Iowa CPA, covers current issues in tax with a wonderful sense of humor and a keen feel for irony.

Joe regularly provides detailed, well written posts on substantive tax issues that are helpful to tax professionals and comprehensible to laymen.

Here is my favorite excerpt from Joe’s blog:

Excellent tax blogger Peter Pappas responded to my opposition to preparer licensing . . . . (Emphasis Added)

Did I forget to mention that he also has excellent judgment?

Subscribe to Joe or lose your mojo.

Russ Fox’s Taxable Talk

I found Russ’s blog through Joe Kristan.

Russ is an IRS Enrolled Agent practicing out of Irvine, California.

He publishes a series called Bozo Tax Tips that is informative, amusing and sometimes mind-boggling.

Here’s an example:

Bozo Tax Tip #10: Use Consecutive SSNs When Cheating the IRS

It’s time for our annual rundown of Bozo Tax Tips, strategies that you really, really, really shouldn’t try. But somewhere, somehow, someone will try these. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Here’s a repeat for the third year:

Let’s thank Michael Graham of Queens, New York for coming up with this gem. Mr. Graham decided to file phony tax returns with the IRS. He used consecutive social security numbers on his tax returns.

He did get one tax refund through the system and collected $900. However, the other 1,799 returns were caught by the IRS and he didn’t get the $1.6 million he attempted to collect. He did find his way to court, though . . . .

Be one of us, subscribe to Russ.

Kelly Phillip-Erb’s TaxGirl Blog

I don’t know how I missed Kelly last year. It must have been my rookiness.

Her blog, in addition to being dynamitely designed, is one of the most thorough tax blogs in the taxosphere.

I particularly like the personal touch Kelly often adds to her posts.

Here’s an example:

“Fat Tax” On the Scene Again – This Time, In the Senate

And I’ll come clean: I don’t drink sugary drinks. I’m a coffee (black, no cream, what are you – nuts?) and Diet Coke kind of girl. My kids do not drink soft drinks of any kind or Kool Aid. They drink milk, water and juice (yes, sugary but not added sugar). So such a tax wouldn’t affect me. But man, is it a slippery slope. When does the Senate decide that taxing sugary soft drinks aren’t enough? When do we slap a national tax on coffee or orange juice? Or milk?

Subscribe to Erb or hit the curb.

P.S. Kelly is also a T.V. star of sorts. Check it out.

Linda Beale’s ataxingmatter

Linda is a tax law professor at Wayne State University Law School and if you don’t have your logical ducks in a row don’t go wandering into her site to argue with her.

I promise you, you’ll spend the next month trying to repair your ego.

Linda’s site is more policy than practice oriented and she is decidely left wing.

But if you’re a right winger, don’t let that scare you.

Linda is fair and respectful to those who disagree with her and takes the time to respond, in detail, to all well-reasoned comments.

I really dig that about her.

Here’s a little touch of Linda in the night:

If (When, I hope) Obama Wins

As I acknowledged in my post yesterday, I support Barack Obama for president.  We have had four decades of Republican presidents or Republican control of Congress, during which the politics of corporatism have reigned with deregulation, privatization, tax cuts (especially for the wealthy–increases in payroll taxes primarily paid by ordinary taxpayers aren’t a problem for corporatists), and military expansion.  That agenda has been supported by an all-out effort by the Olin Foundation, George Mason Law School, acolytes of Milt Friedman, and lobbying groups and think-tanks from Grover Norquist’s [Wealthy] Americans for Tax Reform to the Cato Institute’s Dan Mitchell and the Tax Foundation (just to name a few) to sell ordinary Americans on an economics of greed. 

Did I mention she leans a tad to the left?

Seal the deal subscribe to Beale.

James Maule’s MauledAgain

Another law professor blog and a doggone good one.

Professor Maule also comes at things from the left side of the ideological aisle, but, like Professor Beale he never does so with hostility or disdain for those on the right.

We need more of this kind of disagreement and less of the kind that labels those with a different weltanschauung racists, homophobes, un-American and stupid.

A smattering of Maule:

The Total Happiness of Taxlessness

Ironically, these free-enterprise folks gladly stand in line, or pay lobbyists to stand in line, seeking tax dollars in the forms of direct subsidies, tax credits, or government contracts to fund their private enterprises.

What’s their argument? The argument is that the private sector is more efficient at doing these things than is the government. The argument was successfully advanced almost thirty years ago, and with a few interruptions, we’ve had almost a generation of experimenting to see how well things go when the private sector runs the show. After some seemingly resounding success, masked by increases in debt far more so than by innovation and productivity, and costing much in terms of environmental and social costs, the outcome has overwhelmed the national and global economies. The house of cards came down.

I wonder how many people who were happy that their taxes were being cut and cut and cut, are happy now?

Oh, by the way, he doesn’t accept comments on his site. 

Until he does I am going to assume its because he’s afraid of me.

Don’t stall, subscribe to Maule.