KUOW (94.9 FM Seattle) recently aired an interview with Dean Baker, economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. They were discussing the effect of higher tax rates on the wealthy that will be in effect for those filing tax returns for 2013.
In it Baker says, "There's a lot of very clever accountants who have as their job finding ways to evade taxes."
The interview, How Rising Taxes For Wealthy Americans Will Impact Economic Inequality is just over six minutes long and he makes this statement at 5:31. He uses the word "avoid" at 5:48 but uses "evading" at 6:03. The word avoid was associated with "these people" - presumably, wealthy people. But he refers to accountants both times when he used the words evade and evading.
Perhaps I heard him incorrectly but, just to be clear, these terms are not interchangeable and, while I know a lot of clever accountants, I don't know ANY whose job it is to evade taxes.
Avoiding taxes is legal; evading them is not. When you take a mortgage interest deduction, for example, you are avoiding paying higher taxes. Some might consider this a loophole; others consider it a god-given right. In either case, it's perfectly legal.
People go to jail for a long time for tax evasion. Anyone remember a guy named Al Capone?
The other five and a half minutes of the interview are pretty interesting. Worth a listen, even. But I take exception to the idea that accountants are all about evading taxes. Some, maybe, but let's not put all accountants in the same category, okay?
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