Rating: 
Summary: If you pay taxes, READ THIS BOOK!
Review: The best single book I have read on the great American tax swindle. You will want to call, write and collar your congressman after you read this book. Most people have a vague sense that the nation's tax code is confusing and probably unfair, but this book lays it out in clear interesting, understandable detail.
A must-read for people who are interested in better understanding our tax system, and how it might be improved.
Rating: 
Summary: Could touch off a new Tea Party
Review: The Boston Tea Party happened because of taxation without representation. That's what we have in America today, as "Perfectly Legal" makes perfectly clear. The wealthy elite have bought their way into the hearts and souls of our politicians over the years, and as a result the forgotten rest of us increasingly take on their burden.The whole time I read this book I was at turns incredulous and disgusted. Using anecdotal examples and cold hard facts, Mr. Johnston lays out the fetid truth of what's happened to the US tax system. After I finished, I didn't know whether to feel hopeless or angry. I guess I ended up a bit of both. How can We The People get our tax system back, let alone our country? Unfortunately, I had to deduct one star from my rating because the editing of this book was rather poor. Maybe the book was rushed, but the amount of errors - obvious errors - in such a serious book as this is unacceptable. Let's keep our fingers crossed for the paperback edition. I'd hope that if every American read "Perfectly Legal" it'd touch off a modern day Boston Tea Party. Perhaps Mr. Johnston's book can be the opening salvo toward such a event.
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Summary: This book will elevate your blood pressure...
Review: This is the best book I've read in a long time, and possibly the best non-fiction book I've ever read. It was no surprise to me that our elected representatives (of both parties) are at the beck and call of the "political donor class," but the extent to which this is taken is astounding. I did not realize that tax bills can be written with no outside input or review, and that many legislators vote on tax bills without even reading them (or understanding them). I did not realize that tax cheats can come out in public and tell the world they stole millions and still not get prosecuted. I did not realize how ill-prepared the IRS is to detect and prosecute tax cheats. I did not realize the extent to which so-called "American" corporations will go to avoid paying taxes. And finally, I did not realize how little our elected representatives care that the tax system is rigged in favor of the super-rich, on the backs of the middle class. I personally got snared by the alternative minimum tax in a big way back in 2000, and I was never able to understand why all my elected legislators felt that nothing could be done about a tax law that was so clearly broken. This book clearly explains why neither party wants to talk about it or fix it. I am especially pleased that this book makes a point to be non-partisan, so neither party can dismiss it easily. This book is a nice filter through which to digest the partisan rhetoric coming from both sides prior to the upcoming election. I agree with the other reviewers; do not read this book before bed-time, because you will be too angry to sleep. When this book comes out in paperback, I plan to buy many copies to give to friends and family. And I am already recommending it to everybody I know. As Johnston concludes, reform does start with us.
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Summary: The Author is right!
Review: I've read this .... which is something more than some of the reviewing attack dogs seem to have done. I've also read Mr. Johnston's review of his own book, which cautions against political attack dogs from either side making of this book something that it's not. We have a tax system that is what it is. And what Mr. Johnston has done is to indicate where the tilts are and how they came to be. If you're among the super-rich, this is great. On the other hand, if you're one of the suckers who believes what's being said about our tax system, then shame on you. Inevitably, Bush critics will find supporting evidence here. But so too will critics of any administration who seriously look at the way our tax system has been and will be administered. Republicans and Democrats alike should both be given pause in their partisan bickering and consider these issues -- rather than blindly lashing out.
Rating: 
Summary: More to this Author than Meets the eye
Review: New York Times Reporter A Government Informant By Robert R. Raymond
March 26, 2004
Imagine: an American journalist using his cover for the most prominent paper in the country to inform on and demonize select political critics of the government! The Godfather had his "newspaper friends" on the payroll, and the IRS has theirs: David Cay Johnston. David Cay Johnston, a celebrated New York Times reporter, reveals in his recent book, Perfectly Legal, his history of acting as a government informant against political dissenters on behalf of his best government sources. Criticized by many for his lack of journalistic integrity, Johnston's revelations in his book still shock the conscience. Johnston's informing and propaganda at the behest of favored insiders induced audits, secret surveillance, and criminal prosecutions of select political targets... Johnston details case after case where he used his cover as a New York Times reporter to elicit information from political dissenters, then disclosed that information to others. How many people would know this friendly reporter was really there as a federal agent? Johnston gathered information on the names of the people in protest movements, uncovered the locations of their meetings, elicited the intentions of movement leaders, and even tried to induce some of them to incriminate themselves. Johnston's informing has now allowed the agency to blacklist select political targets. Johnston's disclosures dovetail with his role as a public relations agent of the government -- propagandizing from the front pages of the Times whenever the hardliners need publicity to prosecute disfavored political groups. (Not surprisingly, Johnston rose to fame during the Jayson Blair "see no evil, hear no evil" editorial leadership at the Times, when the Times licensed all kinds of licentious conduct.) Johnston goes even further in his book than the Times could allow -- invading the privacy of taxpayers and whispering confidential information about politically prominent critics in his book, especially those who raised questions about governmental fraud in the agency, even though this information is illegal for the government to disclose. The second startling revelation comes from Johnston's open propagandizing. Johnston often cited mysterious "tax experts" in his past articles for legal criticisms of political dissenters. We now know who those mysterious "experts" are -- Johnston himself and the hardliners within the government. Sort of like citing a CIA employee as an "international law expert," without disclosing who he works for, to give an opinion on why it's okay for the government to assassinate foreign leaders. Masquerading as a muckraking journalist, Johnston masks his true constituency: the hardliners within the tax police state who use him as their personal spokesperson, unbeknownst to his editors at the Times. Never known for his intellectual prowess, Johnston may be a cheap mouth piece, but a mouth piece with a big speakerphone. Johnston, who rode his coverage of the truth in taxation movement to a Pulitzer Prize, never even mentions the millions of Americans questioning the suspect status of many tax laws and the deliberate shroud of obscurity covering those laws, the IRS banning the selling of books critical of the agency, the IRS prohibiting web sites critical of them, or the Silence Advocacy Project revealed in the recent prosecution of former whistleblower, Joe Banister. Instead, Johnston offers only one solution to the corrupt, abusive tax police state -- more money and more power to that tax police state. Johnston dips even lower, suggesting those who believe in financial privacy are Al-Queda sympathizers with blood on their hands from 9/11. Those who challenge imprisoning people for tax debts under the 13th Amendment secretly support "white racist" organizations. Finally, anyone who questions the tax police state is likely an anarchist bent on attacking the "commonwealth" of society itself. Even McCarthy made more sense than Johnston. In sum, Johnston's book discloses the depths of a tax police state worthy only of Dante's Ninth circle of Hell -- the one reserved for those practiced in the sedition of sacred principles. Do they give out any special journalist prizes for the best government informant? (No IRS audits?) How about acting as an in-house public relations specialist for the state? (The Pravda award?) What about deceptive state propaganda? (The Goebbels prize?) I can think of at least one worthy nominee.
Rating:
Summary: So What's Wrong with a Flat Tax
Review: I had no idea what to expect prior to reading this book. I half expected the book to be similar to a Michael Moore (albeit, not as funny) or an Ann Coulter rant. Not so. I was pleasantly surprised to find a well thought out argument in each chapter. The author seems slightly left but finds plenty of opportunity to bash both Democrats and Republicans. So if your looking for something to get your partisan juices flowing, this ain't it. If you have the slightest interest, go to the book store and read Chapter 7 Stealth Tax. This chapter gives a history of the Alternative Minimum Tax. It describes how the Bush Tax Cuts will affect families with incomes from 75,000 to 500,000 by having them fall into AMT. To be fair, this unfortunate proposition was accelerated by the Bush Tax Cuts and not exclusively caused by them. I have been there before, it's not a good place to be. Very Broadly, you lose all your itemized deductions and get taxed on Net Income. Now that will make you rethink your W-4's. Don't read it before bed though, you'll just get aggravated.
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Summary: Perfectly Legal Should be Required Reading in Every School
Review: Johnston reports on taxes for The New York Times. In Perfectly Legal he lays out, in clear and easy to read prose, how the tax code has been used to shift to the wealthy the vast benefits which have flown from technology-enhanced productivity. Johnston, a registered republican, lays the blame on politicians from both parties who over the last 30 years have paid more attention to the wants of the wealthy than the hopes and desires of the vast majority of American tax payers. Reading this book will make you angry, because Johnston establishes very clearly that the wealthy are getting much wealthier at the expense of the rest of us. We have been the victims of a perfectly-legal massive theft of unprecedented proportions. If we put up with this then we are giving up much more than our hard-earned share of newly created wealth, we may be giving up our democracy.
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Summary: I apologize
Review: I apologize for the person that used my name for a review of Mr. Johnston's book. It was not me and what I have read from the book, I believe is very informative and truthful. Mr. Johnston has since contacted me and I have communicated with him several times, he is a very helpful person and should not be ridiculed like he was.
Rating:
Summary: Great, but a key part is missing
Review: This is a very informative and readable book on a subject matter that must be understood more broadly to keep our golden goose from being driven off the edge of a cliff by the greediest members of our society. Since I agree with most of the complements written about this book by others, I will focus my remarks on some important deficits.
The generally missing part of any discussion of taxes, and missing from this book, is the clarification of the equitable basis for taxation. Often, someone will propose some scheme of taxation and simply claim that it is equitable. Many, like Steve Forbes, think that it is equitable for someone else to pay more of their taxes. In an equitable tax scheme each taxable entity should pay taxes in a share that is proportionate to the benefits that entity derives, directly and indirectly, from the tax supported infrastructure. It is similar to paying a proportionate share of the rent of a building based upon the value of one's beneficial occupancy. Neither gross income, taxable income nor any form of consumption based taxes comes close to being equitable. Many among the wealthiest citizens could be taxed at 100% of gross income and they still wouldn't come close to paying a share proportionate to the benefits that they derive. They are amused to see how easily the public is taken in by comparisons based upon income. They know that they can manipulate income to any level they wish. Most of their annual increase in wealth does not show up as income. In addition, their unrealized capital gains are readily made accessible to them by their ability to borrow and by other means not available to those less fortunate.
The author mentions "supply-side economics," but fails to explain how the simple, and reasonably correct, supply-side theory has been transmogrified into a tax theft scheme. The theory states that if a supply is introduced into the market, the market will eventually recognize it and, at some price, remove it from the market. The theory does not at all suggest that this is good business practice. Under conditions of a lack of demand, an increase in supply is not a stimulant. The best price at which to buy it is sufficiently below scrap value such that a subsequent sale as low as scrap value will provide a profit. The highest price that should be paid is sufficiently below the cost of production of any current producers such that they will be unable to compete with a profitable sale.
The supply-siders suggest that they can stimulate the market by using the tax system to take money from consumers and transfer it to producers in the hope that they will increase supply and the presence of supply will stimulate demand. They would have you believe that, under conditions of a current lack of demand, producers will be so foolish that they will increase the dead load in the supply chain in the hope of selling more goods to those who will have even less money with which to purchase it. I don't think that I have to explain why it has never worked.
Neither is there the slightest evidence that there is any lack of capital available to producers when there is even a faint hope of money in the marketplace. Certainly, the recent Internet bubble amply illustrated that there is a flood of capital even when that hope is just an illusion. That has been the case at least since the Tulip Mania of 1635. There is always more capital available than there good applications. No one need use taxation to stuff the pockets of the rich at the expense of consumers.
In addition to tax code tricks, the author might have mentioned how your taxes are bloated with contract games. How about building a Maginot Line in space? It is called an anti-missile defense system. Like the Maginot Line, it might work if you can find an enemy dumb enough to attack it in precisely the manner in which it was designed to defend. There are dozens of ways to get around it and every one of them works better and costs less than an anti-missile defense system. Even advancing technologies make the means of skirting it work better than their enhancement of the system. Of course, the administration knows it is a losing strategy, but it is a great means of pouring hundreds of billions of your tax dollars into their patrons pockets.
Taxation cannot be considered without consideration of the economic productivity of our political parties. As all studies have shown, one of our political parties produces all of the wealth for our society. The other party destroys national wealth faster than communism stripped away the wealth of the old Soviet Union. You can easily look up two of the best studies.
http://www.biblio.liuc.it:8080/biblio/toc/jpmfall993.htm for the Journal of Portfolio Mgt. article.
http://econpapers.hhs.se/paper/cdlanderf/11074.htm (indirect) or for direct access to the UCLA study:
http://econpapers.hhs.se/scripts/redir.pl?u=http%3A%2F%2Frepositories.cdlib.org%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1074%26context%3Danderson%2Ffin&h=repec:cdl:anderf:11074
The Republican Party claims that it is good for business, but every study shows that it has been a dismal failure for more than seventy years. Have the courage to look up as many studies as you like and then see if you can deal with what is real. Then, if you can tolerate another nasty bit of truth, see if, by real metrics, you can prove that the Republican Party is more conservative than the Democratic Party. Although both parties steal our money to pay off the special interests that finance their campaigns, one party is nothing more than a tax scam.
Rating:
Summary: Perfectly Legal, by David Cay Johnston
Review: The taxation system was previously of little to no interest to me. You pay and they leave you alone. But this book was a complete suprise. I understood every word because it is so perfectly written - like a newspaper article that you spend all Sunday reading. Wow! This is a must read book for anyone who wonders how things in goverment really run. I was so surprised on every page. Opinions I once had were completely reversed, and that is not something I do easily. David Cay Johnston is one smart guy. I used to work with him at the LA Times and just picked up this book because it was someone I knew way back when. He has not changed. Diligent, interesting, energetic and right on! Wish I could sit down with him today and have one of those Mannings brownies in the LA Times employee cafeteria and just talk endlessly about this book. I gave a copy to my attorney and my CPA and they enjoyed it as well. I bought 12 copies, so I have run up the numbers by myself, and everyone has thanked me - before AND after they have read this very informative book.If you do nothing else to prepare yourself for the upcoming presidential election, read this book!
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