PricewaterhouseCoopers Guide to the New Tax Rules: Includes the Latest 2004 Income Tax Numbers! (Pricewaterhousecoopers Guide to Tax and Financial Planning: How the Tax Law Changes Affect You)

Book Description

What do the new tax laws mean to you?

Keeping up with ever-changing tax rules is like trying to hit a moving target that keeps getting smaller and moving faster. Big new laws like the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 have cut taxes in many ways–none of them simple. Their tax savings–including across-the-board rate cuts, reduced capital gain and dividend taxes, larger retirement plan deductions, "marriage penalty" help, more tax-favored education-savings options, expanded alternative minimum tax relief, and estate tax reduction, to name just a few–all come at a cost of tremendously increased complexity. The rules change from year to year, phasing in and phasing out, and in most cases "sunsetting" completely after 2010. Ignoring these changes is not an option; there’s too much to lose.

How can one make sense of it all?

PricewaterhouseCoopers Guide to the New Tax Rules answers your most frequent questions about the tricky new tax laws. Using plain language everyone can understand, the trusted tax professionals at PricewaterhouseCoopers explain how the new rules affect your personal finances and how you can benefit from newly available opportunities. They outline the best ways to handle your investments, plan for your retirement, pay for your children’s education, maximize tax savings, and much more.

Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, this comprehensive guide will:

Give you proven tips, techniques, and methods for taking advantage of new tax rules
Help you plan for new rules that don’t take effect until 2004 or later
Arm you with unique insights, savvy suggestions, and vivid examples for dealing with this year’s tax provisions
And much more

Customer Reviews:

Awful, awful book.......2003-01-27

This is a very, very bad book. The author is given to hyperbole and fixates on the "get rich quick" attitude that characterized the bubble period (the book was published in 1998). The syllogisms are relentless. Whole paragraphs are repeated every several pages, as if the book has never been edited, or perhaps was edited by an orange peel. As far as I can tell, this piece of garbage contains no insight into the markets, trading discipline, or anything else. The author comes across as exactly the kind of person that one would expect to consistently lose in the markets; and the writer of the foreword (David Caplan) writes and thinks like a child. Shame on everyone involved in the publication of this thing.

Leave the trading of individual stocks to professional money managers (most of whom lose money themselves); hire competent money managers to allocate your liquid wealth (not stock brokers!); and if you want to trade with "mad money," choose a book that stresses DISCIPLINE - such as "Trading for a Living."

This is pure dishonesty.......2000-03-27

The last reviewer is right on. This is a good book if you want to be a better poker player. Or if you want to understand people and their actions better (including your own.) I would have given it 5 stars as well if the author hadn't been so dishonest.

I don't know why this isn't called 'Poker Sex and Dying.' Instead, they have 'Poker' crossed off, and 'Trading' written on top of it. As such, I expected that there was a previous book written by Mr. Anderson entitled 'Poker Sex and Dying,' which was now being altered to fit the trading arena. There wasn't. So why wasn't it entitled 'Poker Sex and Dying?' I don't know.

For the most part, this book goes over each of the 13 personality types, lists the positives and negatives, and then explains how to deal with these personality types if you're playing poker with them or selling products or services to them. (Mr. Anderson's experience has been in professional gambling and in selling.)

On the back of the book, claims are made that you will learn to boost trading profits by varying your bet (position size), trading only when the markets give you a good hand, evaluating your hand, considering the risk/reward on each trade, and writing options like a bookie. Aside from Mr. Caplan's foreward, which just briefly touches on these subjects, there is nothing in this book as so described.

Trading and poker are similar--but the similarity has nothing to do with the contents of this book. But trading is hot right now, and poker isn't. So maybe the author thought he might sell more books if it were supposed to be about trading.

In sum, this was a very good book that deserves 4 or 5 stars, but only gets 2 from me because of the dishonesty of the author and the lack of correspondence to the title and supposed subject.

This is NOT a very good book for traders..........1999-06-28

unless, perhaps, you're a floor trader on one of the exchanges, where you're competing with people, face to face, and trying to use their strengths and weaknesses to your own advantage. I'm a bit annoyed with David Caplan, the remarkable options man, for publishing it as if it was "gambling theory for traders." It certainly is not. Don't get me wrong: This fellow, Juel Anderson, is an astonishing fellow: Almost alarmingly bright and insightful, he could use the material in this book to start a quasi-relegion based upon gambling and sales insights. The book is a wonderful read, with descriptions of categories of human nature/behavior that would be very difficult to find anywhere else. However, there is actually very little discussion of gambling / trading as such... not much to apply to your trading unless you're in the pits. This book would be better placed in the psychology or psych / personal philosophy section than anywhere else... in which section, it deserves five stars.

Book Description

We live in a time of human paradoxes. Scientific knowledge has reached a level of sophistication that permits understanding of the most arcane phenomena and yet religious fundamentalism dominates in many parts of the world. We witness the emergence of a civil, liberal constitutionalism in many regions of the world and yet ethnic violence threatens the lives and dignity of millions. And we live in a time of rapid economic and technological advance and yet several billions of people live in persistent debilitating poverty. In this book, Daniel Little dissects these paradoxes offering the clearest perspective on how best to approach international development. Using both empirical and philosophical approaches, Little provides a schematic acquaintance with the most important facts about global development at the turn of the twentieth century. In doing so, he explores what appear to be the most relevant moral principles and insights that ought to be invoked as we consider these facts and then draws conclusions about what sorts of values and goals ought to guide economic development in the twenty-first century. Reviews

Customer Reviews:

Comprehensive & easy read on Development Ethics.......2004-01-14

Synopsis:

This monograph may be aptly called an introductory insight into the issues pertaining to development and its foundational ethics. In an effort to map the ethical dilemmas of global development, Daniel Little, starts with conceptualising the model of the person. The intrinsic importance of human well-being is asserted and eventually he identifies the basic needs and a normative set of requirements for substantial human capacity realization. Economic development is defined comprehensively along with a positive and normative focus on goals and strategies of development. Development is discussed within the realms of justice and human rights and the consequential importance of global economic development is highlighted as a means to achieve justice and foster human rights at a global level. Global trade, development aid and globalisation is examined to analyse the historic and current trends in dealing with the issue of international development and suggestions have been made to tailor these instruments to foster sustainable development for less developed countries. Little also focuses on the concern of environmental sustainability and compares the ethical issues at stake when the well being of future generations have to be factored into the calculus of economic development. Democracy and its institutional parameters are explored to elucidate the importance of political and social freedoms and its direct relevance to the issue of development. In conclusion, the idea of a global civil society is proposed to further Little's aspiration of practical utopia, which I assume is a hope that most of us would cherish.

Critique:

The importance of human well-being and the inherent significance of the person has been highlighted throughout the book and this recurring theme has been repeatedly used to further arguments. The average reader will recall Little's moral justification of the person as perhaps the most prominent theme of this monograph. Although the array of topics covered in this book are diverse ranging from justice to global trade and from environment to democracy, the author makes a genuine effort to focus on the context of global development and relate each issue discussed to the moral foreground of development ethics.

The lucidity and simplicity of Little's writing style is perhaps the most focal forte of the book. This book may be deemed as a perfect read for an audience who may not be well versed with the development economics literature, as most technical terms or concepts used in the book have been defined before they are used in the analysis of the issue at hand. Applicable topics have been discussed with an optimal amount of depth in accordance with the scope of the readership. Little has aptly identified and illustrated the core issues that have significant relevance to the issue of development. On the other hand, at times certain arguments seem quite repetitive and as Little makes an effort to further his arguments in each chapter he tends to reiterate particular points. Perhaps this kind of repetition occurs due to his caution to keep the average intended reader in mind, who is not very familiar with development economics. Although a comprehensive read with persistent themes like human well-being, global justice and democracy, the paradox of wealth and poverty as suggested in the title of the book is not quite addressed in the conclusion. The so called paradox seems to be lingering in the distinct issues brought forth by the author and very appropriately the book concludes on a positive futuristic note with a clear suggestion of the almost unattainable yet possible hope of global utopia.

In a nutshell, "The Paradox of Wealth and Poverty: Mapping the Ethical Dilemmas of Global Development", is a great read for an overview of the issue of development and the related ethical concerns. For novice readers of the subject it is a comprehensive guide to understand the panorama of development ethics and for the reader who is already well versed in the subject matter this book serves as a snapshot of the core development issues. Anyone interested in global justice and a better future for the world at large should definitely read this book!

Average customer rating:

Tax Equalization for school funding does not work

Government Has No Money That It Doesn't Confiscate

Silly stuff from someone who likes unemployment

On the Cost of Paying More and More

Simplistic Nonsense

The Greedy Hand: How Taxes Drive Americans Crazy and What to Do About It
Amity Shlaes
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0375501320
Release Date: 1999-02-16

Amazon.com

Americans are being taxed to death--literally, says author Amity Shlaes in The Greedy Hand. At work or out shopping, upon marriage or even after death, we are paying more in taxes than ever before, according to Shlaes, a Wall Street Journal editorial writer. The average family with two wage-earners is now seeing almost 40 percent of its money go to local, state, and federal taxes. "The greedy hand of government"--first described by American revolutionary Thomas Paine--is greedier than ever, creating a situation ripe for tax reform, if not revolt, Shlaes writes. "We think of our forefathers who felt compelled to rebel against the Crown for 'imposing Taxes on us without our consent.' We know we live in a democracy, and so must have chosen this arrangement. Yet nowadays we find ourselves feeling that taxes are imposed on us 'without our consent'," she writes.

Chapter by chapter, and in great detail, Shlaes analyzes the tremendous burdens imposed by a wide range of taxes. She assails the marriage penalty, for example, and exposes problems with Social Security and the estate tax. And she documents how Americans feel increasingly unhappy with what government does with their money and shows how people go to great lengths to avoid taxes--driving across state lines to escape a sales tax, for instance. Shlaes calls for political leaders to overhaul the nation's tax code and suggests starting with guiding principles like the following: "Taxes have to be simple;" "Taxes have to be lower;" and "It's time to privatize Social Security." The Greedy Hand warns that the tax system damages the economy and hurts working people, and is a good read for anyone who wants to rail intelligently about taxes. --Dan Ring

Book Description

The Greedy Hand is an illuminating examination of the culture of tax and a persuasive call for reform, written by one of the nation's leading policy makers, Amity Shlaes of The Wall Street Journal.

The father of the modern American state was an obscure Macy's department store executive named Beardsley Ruml.  During World War II, he devised the plan for withholding taxes from your paycheck, thereby laying in place a system that allows the hand of government to reach into your wallet and take what it wants.

Today, taxes make up more than a third of our economy, the highest level in history outside war.  We live in the nation revolutionary father Thomas Paine foresaw when he wrote of "the Greedy Hand of government thrusting itself into every corner of industry." This book is a cultural examination of the way taxes influence our behavior, how they force us into an arbitrary system that punishes families and individual enterprise.

Amity Shlaes unveils the hidden perversities of our lifelong tax experience:  how family tax breaks do little to help the family, and can even hurt it.  She demonstrates how married women pay a special women's tax rate, higher than anybody else's.  She shows how problems that engage and enrage us--Social Security problems, or the things we don't like about schools--are, at heart, tax problems.  And she explains why the solutions Washington offers merely accelerate a vicious cycle.

Finally, Amity Shlaes shows us a way out of this madness, endorsing a number of common-sense reforms that will give all Americans a fairer and simpler tax system. Written with eloquent compassion for working Americans and their families, The Greedy Hand makes the best case yet for rethinking our tax code. It is a book no tax-paying citizen can afford to ignore.

Customer Reviews:

Tax Equalization for school funding does not work.......2004-09-06

Equalization tax policies directly forcing tax payers redistribute educational monies equally on education. Equalization does not work. It's a socialistic virus starting in Wilmington, Delaware and moved to Maine in 1970 and eventually hit Texas. The most important question facing tax payers is can equality of education spending buy equal performance? The truth suggests the more money pumped into a school has no direct correlation in producing better students. Equalization did not improve test scores. Force distribution of wealth never works.

The Vermont Supreme Court declared local tax policy paying for local school funding as unconstitutional. The court ruled it is not alright to spend more money for one student than another. The racial discrimination protection provided in Brown verse the Board of Education was wrongly applied to economic equality for education. It is wrong because education equality is not a constitutional protected right. The old system made available local taxes paying for ¾ of the cost of school. Money was collected locally and sent to the state and $5,000 returned for each student. Forced equal spending was supported by the Democrats and opposed by the Republicans with Governor Howard Dean supporting equalization.

In 1997, Vermont passed Act 60 generating tax policy effecting 251 towns, splitting the town into two groups: receiving towns (receivers of tax benefits) and senders (receivers of tax cuts). The impact was immediately felt; Dorset received a double property tax portion, Montpelier exposed $680 million dollars in property tax to change, Stratton and Winhall were hit the hardest with a seven fold increase in property tax.

In Serrano verses Priest the court ruled that parts of California must spend about the same amount per pupil. The court case ended local property tax and started plans to force richer neighborhoods to support poorer neighborhoods. Proposition 13 was a defensive measure by citizens too put a tax cap against rising property taxes and set off a national tax cutting effort leading to the Tax Reform Act of 1986 by Ronald Reagan.

Serrano went against traditional school funding structure. Historically, most State Constitutions defined school funding to be provided by local taxes. Here is an excerpt: "A school or schools shall be established in each town by the legislature, for the convenient instruction of youth, with such salaries to the masters to be paid by the town, making proper use of school lands in each town, thereby to enable them to instruct youth a low price." Bottom line, local taxes spent locally is acceptable. It is acceptable because the individual can see what their money has bought and if people don't like what they see, a tax cut will occur. The PTA attempts to reconnect parents to the value added for their child's education. In 1990, $30 million in charitable gifts were funneled through the PTA. If reconnection fails forced tax equalization will have devastating impact on the public system. If money can't buy performance and if complex qualification terms for school monies drive administers into a rat maze, parent will start to examine methods to take back control. Small towns will replace public schools with private schools. Towns are competing for families through their schools, parks, and safety assurances. People will pay money, if they believe their children are getting a desired quality of education, if they don't get the expected education value, they will move to towns were they can get a quality education. People vote with their feet, the Tiebout theory advocated by Charles Tiebout, in 1950.

Government Has No Money That It Doesn't Confiscate.......2004-05-06

I just don't understand how it's considered "greedy" for me to want to keep all of the money I have worked to earn -- but it's somehow NOT greedy and/or lazy and/or selfish for someone to want the government to provide his health care (or pay him when he is unemployed) with money that has simply been confiscated from some other person who performed the work to earn that money. Can somebody explain that to me, please?

Silly stuff from someone who likes unemployment.......2002-09-30

As the title says this is silly, political posturing by
someone who has hers and doesn't particularly care if people
are out of work. Maybe she doesn't care if you're on the dole.

On the Cost of Paying More and More.......2001-02-12

When George Washington was president, taxes were few. Since then, times have really gotten expensive. The 20th century especially was an arms race between the governments in the United States and its citizens to determine who would control the citizens' income. Government was on the offense and the citizens were on the defense. The citizens lost to date. Taxes went from less than 5 percent of income to 40 percent over that time. Most would agree that we cannot afford another century like that one.

This book nicely lays out the history of taxes that take more income and waste a lot of time and effort in the process. The author looks at sales taxes, withholding taxes at work, the marriage penalty in the income tax, whether the housing deduction for interest and taxes is a good thing or not, the problems with taxes on domestic help, property taxes and school support, the social security system, and estate taxes.

She doesn't like much of what she sees, and is concerned that reform could simply lead to adding new types of taxes (like a national sales tax while keeping all of the old taxes).

The newer the tax or tax idea, it seems like the worse it is working.

Her solutions are basically principles to be followed in reforming taxes. I doubt if they will be followed anytime soon. Recent polls show that most Americans are concerned about paying off the national debt and fixing social security before doing anything about cutting taxes.

Although most of her observations were good ones, I was a little doubtful about her automatic focus on the high income people being taken to the cleaners unfairly. There was not as much attention paid to benefits that lower income people may be receiving.

If you spend time thinking about how to keep your tax bill down, there's not much new in this book. If you are new to all of the ways that government helps you spend your money, this is a good introduction to the subject.

The book is well written and pleasant to read. The only drawback I found was that it was a little depressing to be reminded of how much I actually pay to all of the various governments. Every year, I find April 15 more and more depressing.

Simplistic Nonsense.......2000-11-03

This book has so many historical distortions, simplistic arguments, and blind-passion its tough to know where to start. So I'll confine my review to some of the obvious problems she either ignores or skates over...

To begin with, Shlaes completely ignores the international picture. Amazingly, America is the LEAST taxed developed nation in the world, yet has the largest military forces (bigger than the next 10 nations COMBINED), the largest road network, the largest criminal justice system, the largest education system, the largest number of public funded colleges, the largest (combined) police force, the largest number of professional fire-fighters and so on and so on. All these huge organisations cost huge amounts of money; a simple yet devastating fact Shales prefers to ignore. Instead she talks of waste and corruption. Well, those are probably inevitable, given the mind-blowing size and complexity of the organisations the US has.

Then there's the whining and angry (although passive and prosperous) American middle class, provided with free education, subsidised housing (tax cuts for home buyers), subsidised gasoline, subsidised roads, and so on. In fact this class has some claim to be the most subsidised group in the country.

Shales may well be aware of the major paradoxes I've outlined above; how else to explain her hopelessly weak suggestions (worthy of a High School debate) on reforming and and streamlining the system?

Ultimately, like every other commentator and politician, Shales cannot escape the contradiction that American citizens have grown to demand and expect the best from their government, yet (unlike any other aspect of national and private life) they expect the best to be provided for almost nothing, as if by magic, by a mysterious entity called "Washington."

Without a major rethink of American citizen's expectations and the country's world role, any talk of significant tax cuts will remain limited to misty-eyed dreamers like Shales and her followers.

Average customer rating:
The Greedy Hand: How Taxes Drive Americans Crazy and What to Do About It
Amity Shlaes
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OJDHSY

Customer Reviews:

New valuable information on Francis Poulenc.......2000-01-29

The book 'Francis Poulenc. Music, Art and Literature' is a must for everybody who wants to get closer to the great French composer Francis Poulenc. Although there are already a great many biographies available, this book gives a wealth of new information about Poulenc's likes and loves, his tastes and distastes, his ambitions and motives. All the authors of this well edited book, with many new pictures and facimiles, (Sindney Buckland and Myriam Chimenes) have done there research well and with love for details. They present their new facts with great taste and distiction. A couple of the subjects dealt with are: Poulenc's 58 lessons from Charles Koechlin, Poulenc's Choral Works, Raymonde Linossier (how important she really was!), Nogent Music, Poulenc and Dufy, Poulenc and Matisse, 'In search of a libretto', "A Baton Rompu", Poulenc as Disc Jockey. Recommended with five stars.

Francis Poulenc: Music, Art and Literature.(Review) (book review): An article from: Notes

Average customer rating:

Francis Poulenc: Music, Art and Literature.(Review) (book review): An article from: Notes
James William Sobaskie
Manufacturer: Music Library Association, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on December 1, 2000. The length of the article is 1232 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Francis Poulenc: Music, Art and Literature.(Review) (book review)
Author: James William Sobaskie
Publication: Notes (Refereed)
Date: December 1, 2000
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: 57 Issue: 2 Page: 406

Article Type: Book Review

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