May 15th, Tax Notes

Chair of the Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp repurposes mark to market for derivatives in a much-improved form in his second iteration of tax reform and Viva Hammer discusses the merits of the proposal Making Camp a Marking Man

The income tax has made a problem for itself. It wants you to measure your tax obligation every year at the gong of a bell that rings at the same time each year. But some things the tax law calls income don’t answer to the gong of a bell. They happen whenever, and the tax law must decide what to do with income that behaves in a whenever kind of way.

Since I left the Joint Committee on Taxation to take care of my parents in Australia, people have sent me messages to say how lucky I am to be here in Sydney. It is true I am missing working on mark to market and that I am glad it hasn’t come into law because then there will be something to do when I come back.

But I didn’t want to write to you about that. I wanted to talk to you about America, now that I am far away. My great grandmother Mali was born in New York in the 1880s and she was gassed and incinerated at Auschwitz in 1944.