The Ten Best Tax Blog Posts: 2008

It’s been an amazing year for political and economic commentators. We’ve had an historic election, an even more historic financial crisis, and an unprecedented spending plan that’s sure to lead to some new taxes down the road. At the forefront of describing, predicting, and explaining the events have been bloggers. I’d like to present a list — once again, highly subjective and far from complete, and this time in no particular order — of the ten best tax-related blog posts of 2008.

• Shanghai’s stock market went up about as high as it was legally able to because of — good news on the export front? An exciting new company going public? An optimism-fueled merger? No. — a reduction in the stamp tax assessed on each financial transaction. Small tax changes can have huge, unpredictable effects.
• If you’d ever wondered who cheats the most on their taxes, Don’t Mess With Taxes has the answer: the rich cheat more than anyone. Although it’s a little more complicated — the rich have an easier time cheating, and get ‘paid’ better for it.
• There’s more to the story than just how much money gets take out of your paycheck. Greg Mankiw explains exactly how taxes affect his willingness to work.
• Barry Ritholz was ahead of the headlines when he penned this piece about how the financial crisis cut into state income tax receipts, making it hard for them to balance their budgets. That part of his prediction came true, so you might want to pay attention to the second half: “Thanks to the credit crunch, the tax burden on non-financial firms 3 years from now will be appreciably higher than they are today — regardless of the November 2008 election outcome.”
• Phil for Humanity has a broad mandate (”A Guide for the Survival of Humankind, and Improving the World, Society, and Yourself!”) but gets very specific in this post about why the tax rebate won’t stimulate the economy. So far, he’s right on five out of six points (the one wrong prediction was that this would raise gas prices — as it turns out, the bursting of speculative bubbles remains a more powerful force than common sense).
• January 2008 — in retrospect, a time when we were just a month into a recession — saw this Free Money Finance post on how to pay a large tax bill when you don’t have the money on hand.
• Back in August, this Angry Bear post made the cast for windfall taxes. It’s fun to think about how, just a few months ago, we were still arguing about how we would spend unexpectedly huge amounts of money, instead of wondering where new money would come from. Of course, the flip-side of this is how easy it is to switch back to the status quo.
• Tax Day brought its fair share of posts. My personal favorite: this Baltimore Sun blog’s list of the top tax procrastination cities. This is the kind of story that blogs can provide great coverage of — it’s interesting, but bite-sized.
• One perennial tax topic — at least online — is whether or not we’re legally required to pay taxes at all. Ask the Tax Wizard answers the question with a resounding “Yes!”, which should settle it. (I’ve talked the question of whether or not we have to pay income taxes, too).
• And finally, a presentation that combines the best of tax advice with the best of blogging, The Digerati Life’s photo essay on overlooked tax deductions. Not only is this useful information, but it’s a kind of presentation that just wouldn’t make sense outside of the blogging medium.

Tax blogging is still just scratching the surface. There’s a lot to learn, and a lot to talk about, and it looks like blogs might be the right way to do both. What I look forward to in the next year:

• Less of a barrier between bloggers and communities: right now, there is a fairly strict separation between Q&A sites and blogs. That won’t last — people like the chance to ask questions of someone they know can provide the answers.
• More overseas coverage: most of the world’s taxpayers live outside of the US, but most of the tax writing I’ve seen online assumes an American audience. We have a lot to learn from how other countries collect their taxes (and how they spend their money!).
• More multimedia presentations: although most tax documents require careful rereading and consideration, many discussions about taxes might be re-conceived as videoblogs or podcasts. The more we push the boundaries of the medium, the more likely we are to learn something new.