Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else - Hardcover

Johnston, David Cay

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1591840198 ISBN 13: 9781591840190

Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover, 2003

Synopsis

Identifies practices of discreet lobbying and tax policy manipulation that have been occurring since the mid 1970s and how they have resulted in benefits for the wealthiest people in American society, identifying ways in which the working class is being made to pay the majority of the nation's income taxes. 35,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

David Cay Johnston won a Pulitzer Prize and shared in another for his investigative reporting in The New York Times, for which he has written since 1995. Prior to that he wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Los Angeles Times, the Detroit Free Press, and the San Jose Mercury News. Johnston is a frequent guest on NPR's Fresh Air.

Reviews

Since he began writing about taxes for the New York Times in 1995, Johnston's investigative reporting has earned two Pulitzers. The journalistic legwork informs every page of this expos‚ of the ways in which, he says, America's taxation system is stacked in favor of the wealthy. Johnston evades the imposing abstractness of the tax code by keeping the story focused on individuals, from working-class parents facing audits to Internal Revenue Service officials desperate for the resources to revamp their procedures. Chapters addressing the inability of the IRS to go after the worst tax cheats, thanks in part to opposition from grandstanding members of Congress, are particularly effective in putting a spotlight on the problem, but there's plenty of space given to revealing how canny tax attorneys come up with legal (and barely legal) ways to get around the system. And for those who can afford it, he reports, there's always a new dodge available once the law has caught up to the latest tricks. At some points, dealing with numbers becomes unavoidable, but even here Johnston displays a knack for breaking the story down into easily grasped components. Though the tax cuts engineered by Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush receive most of the criticism, Democrats come in for their fair share of opprobrium. Genuine reform, he suggests, will require serious and sustained attention from the public, not just reflexive griping. His book is a thoughtful overview for any citizens willing to educate themselves on the issue.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1591840198
• ISBN 13: 9781591840190
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352