Imagine, for a second, that you’re a smoker, which, if you’re a smoker, should be easy. You’ve triumphed over brownish teeth and the lingering stench of stale smoke. You’ve bravely ignored the highly increased risk of lung cancer in the noble pursuit of having something to do with hands while you drink.

Do you like to pair your quintuple-cheeseburger (The High Five!) with a soft drink big enough to swim in and loaded with enough fizzy additives to clean limestone? Are you a lobbyist for a large soda company that long ago traded your chance for any sort of spiritual salvation for piles of stress and increasingly redundant money?

California is dealing with the most intense budget crunch in the country. One proposal for dealing with the financial hardship is one quite familiar to glassy-eyed freshman on 3 a.m. Taco Bell runs everywhere: marijuana. Who says money can't grow on trees?

Uncle Sam went to the WTO loaded for… well, it looks like Sam just wanted to go get loaded. On good ol’ US-brand firewater, that is! According to Reuters.com, the US is pissed at the Philippine government. Why? Well, Obama’s tax lieutenants have a problem with the Philippine’s distaste of Jack Daniels. The miniature nation of islands has an excise tax on America’s Whiskey and gin. No big deal, except the tax on American spirits is anywhere between 10-40 percent more than those from within its own borders. Listen, Philippines. America will look the other way if you kick around your second-class citizens or engage in some illegal arms dealing. The government could even deal with your tiny country having the temerity to provide its citizens with nationalized health care. But if you screw with US expatriates’ right to get drunk on old fashioned Maker’s Mark – at a reasonable price! – well then, you’re gonna be looking at the wrong side of a sternly-worded letter to the WTO. Incidentally, it turns out America’s not the only country suffering from unreasonable excise taxes from the draconian Philippine policy of petty taxation schemes. The EU filed their own grievance against the taxes to the ...

Investors have long known that December and January are among the best months for stocks. Most investors know why, too: late in the year, it's possible to sell losing stocks in order to shelter profits from the rest of the year. For example, if you've lost $1000 on GE, and made $1000 on IBM, you can sell both, take both losses—and pay not capital gains taxes on your profit. Because of this, it makes sense to sell at the end of the year. (The IRS will let you buy the stocks back after 30 days and still give you the tax penalty.) And if people are selling stocks they still like, they're going to buy them back later. All this trading gets other traders excited; it's fun to try to guess which hammered stocks will be sold for the tax loss—and then to chase them back up when their owners buy them back. This year, the S&P 500 was up 3% during December. But if you're expecting Santa to swing by again in January, you might be in for some disappointment. Compared to previous years, this stock market is a lot less interesting. In the late 90's, you could pick tech stocks or ...

A few years ago, PBS put together a special called "Tax Me if you Can". And, regardless of how you feel about paying taxes, it's clearly a big issue: they estimate that companies avoid up to $50 billion in taxes every year through tax shelters. The number may be high, but the idea is spot on: there is a lot of money sloshing into corporate treasuries that could be sloshing into the US treasury, instead. But that's a superficial way to look at it. There are some important questions that tax shelters bring up, and not all of them can be answered by soaking the rich: Should people be penalized for following the rules? The tax code is designed to make good behavior more rewarding, and bad behavior less rewarding. But laws can't just argue about "good" and "bad"—they have to allow specific things. If tax rules are designed to encourage companies to invest in new equipment, they can't just ask nicely—they have to give companies a tax break based on the depreciating assets they own. And if companies use that depreciation to reduce their tax burden, is it really their moral problem? They just exist to make as much money as ...

Remember when you didn't know a new political scheme was unpopular until someone published a letter to the editor? Or until you stumbled on a blog? Now, thanks to Twitter, you can get opinions on Obamacare faster than ever!

Let's say you've got a steady job, a good income, people have to trust you (whether they like it or not), and you're handling lots of other people's money. What do you do? If you're Mark Claybrooks, you start a sleazy scheme for defrauding people and taking bribes. Usually when you take bribes, you'll get nailed by the government; they usually catch you by checking up on your taxes. Mark was safe from the IRS, for one simple reason — he worked there. According to one source, Claybrooks made $20,000 on the scheme — at least, that's how much they caught him for. But the scheme lasted for several years, and those numbers are for just two people who got taken in. The way it worked was simple: Claybrooks would contact people who owed the IRS money, and would kindly suggest that they refinance their mortgages to get better treatment. He also suggested that they use a company called Faith Mortgage, which — in a show of good faith, perhaps? — was giving Claybrooks a referral fee on every new customer he got them. Prior to joining the IRS, he happened to work for Faith Mortgage directly. This story comes via Kay Bell's ...

Today, new minimum wage rules go into effect, meaning that millions of people earning between $6.55 and $7.25 per hour will get either extra green or a pink slip. It all depends on a big bet by Congress — a bet they're happy to make, but that they never have to pay on. The bet works like this: if most minimum wage workers are underpaid, they win! They all get raises, and the money they make is closer to what they're worth. They spend more money, the economy gets a boost, and everyone gets to thank Congress for making sure they're paid the right amount. And if they aren't worth it — or they are worth the money, but it's money their employers don't have? In that case, they get laid off. But, of course, it's harder to measure when that happens, or what really caused it. In the end, the easiest person to blame is the employer. It's a simple case of heads, Congress wins, tails, employers and employees both lose. But what makes it worse is who is affected: minimum wage workers are generally young, and generally women. In other words, they're often economically vulnerable (and, in the case of young ...

Californians pay the highest sales tax in the nation. Their top-bracket earners have the second-highest income tax rate in the country. The middle class to upper class — those making $48,000 to $1 million — are right up there among the most highly taxed, too. California's gas tax, at 35.3 cents per gallon, is third-highest in the nation. Corporations face the highest tax rates in the West. California is famous for having high taxes, but they're still a subject of perennial debate. Outside of California, the facts are pretty stark: state residents take home less of their paychecks than almost anyone else, and more gets taken out of the after-tax money they spend. Add that to the generally high cost of living, and the situation looks pretty awful. But one of the reasons Californians can stand it is that their state is not too shabby in the spending department. Great schools like Caltech, Berkeley, and Stanford mean that the state has a well-educated population with an emphasis on technology. Add that to the state's formerly red-hot property market, and you can see why they were spending so much: they were making lots of money, too! As with all high-tax situations, the real question ...