It was bound to happen. With all the talk of the need for drastic reform of the tax system, it was only a matter of time until someone came up with a proposal to ditch the corporate income tax altogether. And of course it would be in the pages of The Wall Street Journal, where Stanford professor Michael J. Boskin makes the case today, with scant regard for the employment implications for legions of corporate tax folks. more

I recently interviewed Jason Rinsky, SVP of corporate taxation with DRS Technologies, a Parsippany, New Jersey-based company that supplies integrated products, services, and support to military forces and intelligence agencies worldwide. Rinsky steered a major strategic tax tech initiative at the defense giant starting in 2006.

Cummings: What did you bring to DRS Technologies from your Big Four days?

Rinsky: You always have a bunch of ideas and thoughts in terms of how you’d like to see a tax department run, and how well you can utilize tax technology in an innovative fashion and add efficiencies to the process. But one of the frustrations that consultants typically face is that a lot of times you come up with ideas, but it’s very difficult to convince a company to go forth and implement them. more

Greece’s financial crisis sure hasn’t done supporters of a U.S. VAT any favors. Critics of the tax can barely contain their glee at the spectacle of a nation with high rates of both income tax and value-added tax being pulled to the brink of fiscal collapse. (At the same time, the Greeks seem to have developed tax dodging to the level of a fine art, as a New York Times reports here.)

With opposition rising, it’s looking increasingly likely that the United States will remain, at least in the short term, the only country in the OECD without a national goods and services tax of some kind. In the worldwide view, though, VAT is not exactly on the defensive. Far from it. more

Earlier this week, I looked at an RSM McGladrey poll of manufacturers and distributors that showed how deeply nervous these firms are about the sunset of the Bush tax cuts. A possible rise in the dividend tax rate, though not as big a worry as the individual and capital gains outlook, is a concern for 71 percent of survey respondents (who work mostly for private companies and pass-through entities). And for good reason: It’s looking more and more likely that the dividend tax will end up being hitched to the individual income tax rates. more