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 ...

So you're interested in buying school supplies, or possibly guns, but you want to make sure you get the best possible deal — you're in luck! Thanks to back-to-school tax holidays, many states will make that shopping cheaper for you. And later in the year, one state is even having a tax holiday for guns! But first, how about some free money? The Wandering Tax Pro finds out how easy it is to get free money from the Feds — but not in the way you'd expect! It's a good point about how little fact-checking there is behind the homebuyer's rebate (and might explain why the homebuyer's tax credit is taking so long. The Digerati Life discusses the historical minimum wage (see also the Taxrascal entry about the minimum wage). Digerati cites a study adding fuel to the anti minimum-wage fire: when minimum wages increase, more high school students drop out — because they think they'll make more money! Kay Bell of Don't Mess With Taxes discusses back-to-school tax holidays, with a handy calendar. Is your state on it? Roth & Company adds to the discussion: there's a gun sales tax holiday, too! Which seems not so much "good" or "bad" as "bizarre," especially ...

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 ...

I don't want to make any promises, but if this tax blog is to be believed, California's treasurer is doing exactly what this site suggested: paying the bills with IOUs! As predicted, these IOUs aren't exactly like that time your brother-in-law promised he'd totally pay back that $20. Dozens of banks accept these IOUs, and people are already trying to buy and sell them online. Sure, it's less convenient than just having cash, but it's also a great way for California to advertise what a disaster area they are. It's one thing to see on the news that they can't figure out how to balance their budget. It's another thing entirely to open up an envelope marked "State Tax Refund," and find out that it's full of what looks like monopoly money. So thanks, Bill Lockyer! Glad you're enjoying the Rascal. While you're here, check out this list of the top tax blogs for more fine folks worth reading.

Your typical leveraged buyout kingpin lives in a swanky Park Avenue apartment, or maybe a hollowed-out volcano in the South Pacific. But that doesn't mean you can't get some good old-fashioned tax dodging and company buying-out, right in the middle of Utah. Husband and wife team Lester and Jeanette Mower liked the idea of trading companies for fun. The weird thing is that the confusing part is the legal part: they would create new businesses, merge them with existing public companies, and sell the stock. That meant a blizzard of paperwork, lots of legal fees, and transactions with dozens of banks and brokers. That's the complicated part. Next comes the simple part: once they sold their shares — they never paid taxes. Oops. The strangest part? their take from the scheme was $30 million. They were dodging the capital gains tax. Which means that, had they not cheated the IRS, they would be forced to make do with a mere... $24 million. So why did they do it? It's exactly hard to have a nice life with $24 million, especially in a low-cost state like Utah. So what's really going on? Two possibilities: They had a legitimate business and a serious gambling problem. Some of the ...

South Carolina governor Mark Sanford got into the headlines (and some hot water) for trying to turn down Federal stimulus payments earlier this month. Now, he's famous for a different reason: in a rambling press statement, he admitted to having an affair with a woman in Argentina. Could this be a serious blow to stimulus opponents? One commentator, Jeff Seemann, thinks so. Seemann claims that Sanford used stimulus money to pay for the affair: The state of South Carolina is granted 2.8 billion dollars in federal stimulus money. After originally rejecting the money, the SC Supremes smack Sanford down and force the state to accept the money. Sanford later announces that he will use several hundred million dollars of the stimulus to pay down the state's budget deficit. Sanford's salary is paid for from the South Carolina budget. Sanford went to Argentina to see his mistress on the dime of the South Carolina taxpayer. Which, if true, means that all money spent by anyone paid by the government counts as stimulus money. In other words, Jeff Seemann is also claiming that President Obama spent the stimulus on cigarettes. This, by the way, is not the first time Seemann has had any run-ins ...

You know what's sane and normal? Having trouble letting go when a loved one dies. You know what's not so sane or normal? Dressing up as a deceased parent for years in order to collect social security benefits and rent subsidies. Irene Prusik passed away in 2003. But Thomas Prusik-Parkin kept on collecting her benefits for years. This had to take some planning: he started by fudging the numbers on her death certificate so she wouldn't be listed as dead. After that, it was just a simple matter of, um: donning a wig, nail polish and dresses to impersonate his dead mom and collect $115,000 in Social Security and rent subsidies. Prusik-Parkin really exemplifies the idea of giving people a "hand up, rather than a handout." He had to work hard to earn the government benefits of two people. In addition to the creepy cross-dressing disguises, he sued himself for selling his house to himself, and filed a fake affadavit from a fake relative to support the claim. All that, and he still got evicted! The New York Daily News has the whole bizarre story. Oh, and one other thing: today, it came out that he kept the casket in his living room. Which you'd ...

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 ...

Think back to the summer of 2000. The NASDAQ had, well, NASDAQ'd, all of Silicon Valley was nursing a collective hangover, and the rest of the country was getting back to normal. Imagine if, in the midst of all that, someone had gotten a clever policy idea: now that nobody is starting new startups, we could just gather together smart 22-year-olds, give them thousand-dollar office chairs, five thousand-dollar computers, and million-dollar stock options packages, and we could pay for it all with taxpayer money! Okay, that's crazy & but it's less crazy than using tax credits as down payments on a new house (first mentioned on Taxrascal in this real estate crisis, redux, post). At least during the dot-com bubble, people were excited about starting new companies. The real estate bubble involved people excited about other people paying too much for dirt. What's worse is that this has some support, from people who should know better: "It is a very attractive offering, and basically it addresses one of the hurdles that keeps more people from buying a home - getting help with the down payment or paying closing costs," says Bob Meighan, a vice ...