Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Taxation

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Contents 1 WikiProject 2 Countering systemic bias 3 Assessment 4 What about articles on individuals? 5 Wikipedia Day Awards 6 Taxation portal? 7 Hello 8 Taxation articles 9 Taxation Collaboration of the Month. 10 Pictures 11 FAR for London congestion charge 12 FA Drive 13 United Kingdom corporation tax FAR 14 Service_tax_in_India 15 Excise Tax (India) 16 Template for Taxation in the US & UK 16.1 Wider Taxation Template 17 UK budget / spending 18 Watchlist for WikiProject Taxation 19 Request for assistance 20 Commercial sales tax entries 21 Help 22 FairTax 23 Globalize requests 24 AfD for Income tax and compensation for services 25 Contest 26 Home mortgage interest deduction 27 Peer-review notice 28 Impact Fees 29 Tax protester constitutional arguments FAC 30 Impact fees Page 31 Impact Fees

[edit] WikiProject

I've been wanting to create a Taxation WikiProject for a while now and here it is! I see many of the same usernames on most of the tax articles, so I figured this would be a good way to focus and discuss our efforts. I've added some tags out there so hopefully it will be enough to grow the group. Some things that I'd like to work on for the WikiProject.

• Peer Reviews
• Article Assessments
• GA & FA drives
• Standards

For those wishing to work on the WikiProject itself - see the WikiProject Council Guide for suggestions. Glad to have you in the Project and I look forward to improving some articles.  :-) Morphh ^(talk) 20:09, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. Let's pick an article and get it moving towards FA status. We might as well throw out suggestions and go with one we agree on. Subtopics are a little easier to start out with, so how about Individual Retirement Account? As we go, I'm sure the project will develop. - Taxman ^Talk 22:19, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

This one could certainly use some attention. Though I think a push to get it to GA would be better suited for this article. I suggest we reserve FA pushes for articles that have already achieved GA. Our initial focus might be to get several articles to GA and then push to FA. Morphh ^(talk) 22:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Whether it's GA or FA for the target isn't critical, but FA isn't an unreasonable target given a few motivated and able participants. I have a fair amount of experience with them. I'm certainly open to another topic if there are any other suggestions people are more familiar with. - Taxman ^Talk 23:59, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Countering systemic bias

Kudos on starting this WikiProject. Seeing as most people are only familiar with the tax laws of their home country, myself included, one of the biggest challenges will be writing articles that reflect a worldwide view. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-19 22:29Z

Indeed. And I'm not even sure how to combat that effectively. It's not like there are many books comparing and contrasting various national tax laws. The vast majority of tax material is country specific. - Taxman ^Talk 23:59, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the Kudos! We may have some issues with systemic bias but in many cases the articles are about tax systems or tax theory/terms that are applicable to all. As a project with a worldwide view (english speaking world), I expect we will put a higher priority on articles that have the largest impact and importance to all, such as Taxation, Income tax, Sales tax, VAT, Progressive tax, Regressive tax, etc. These articles will have examples and sources that become more specific as the articles become more detailed. However, expanding articles is only part of the group's purpose - standards, copyediting, organizing, improving formating/wiki-standards, peer review, assessment, and discussion are other areas where articles can be improved across national lines without detailed knowledge of their tax law. I expect that groups may organize on country specific articles and pull overall support from the project when needed. I can only see articles benefiting from such organization (including systemic bias), even if we run into some issues. This is certainly something we'll have to keep in mind. Thanks Morphh ^(talk) 02:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Assessment

I was considering adding the project template to lots of talk pages in Category:Taxation and subcategories using AWB, but thought that it would be better to include the assessment material in the template first. I'd rather make an assessment of each article I added the template too. I'm not really good with the template code, but what do you think of adding the assessment variables to it so we can use those? There's suggested code on Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide of course. - Taxman ^Talk 03:49, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Working on it as you typed this... see Assessment. Morphh ^(talk) 03:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

OK - this should be working now... Go for it! I would only assess up to B-Class, leave GA for the GA process (if you believe it to be GA or better - put in the comments that you recommend they submit for GA). If the article is a GA, A-Class should have multiple project reviewers. FA should be left to the FA process.  :-) Priority should work too. We need to modify our examples so they reflect something more relevant. Morphh ^(talk) 05:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Yep, that's great. I assessed Tax because I think that one was pretty straightforward on both parameters, and wanted to do a test. Is it possible to suppress the parameters when they are absent rather than the large text saying they haven't been assessed? And yes GA and FA should certainly only be those that have run those processes. Also you're right we need to replace examples with topic appropriate ones and descriptions. We'll get there. - Taxman ^Talk 06:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Excellent - I'll see what I can do to make the text appear only when the variables are present. Morphh ^(talk) 13:49, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Alrighty - The assessment information should now be hidden until the variable is added to the tag. Other information should be hidden until the appropriate variable is added. For example, the line about "Comments" after review will only show up after the "class=" attribute is added. The comment and dotted line will show up if either variable is added. Morphh ^(talk) 17:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Peer Review should be working now. I still need to create a few categories but everything else should be set. I'm going to talk to the WP:1.0 group about the dynamic generation of statistics and such for assessment. Morphh ^(talk) 04:35, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What about articles on individuals?

Dear fellow editors: Should articles on tax protesters like Irwin Schiff be included in the project (even though they might also be listed as part of some other Wikipedia project)? Famspear 14:35, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

It is fine for articles to be part of multiple projects and each project can have their own priority. I guess the question is if we want them to be within the scope of this project. I would say that if the main reason the person has a biography on Wikipedia is for tax related reasons, then yes. For example, I would say yes to "Irwin Schiff" but no to "Wesly Snipes". Morphh ^(talk) 20:53, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 23:24, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Taxation portal?

One aspect of WikiProjects is the creation of a portal. However, I'm not sure we have enough content to showcase tax articles on their own. I was thinking we might be able to request a small space on another portal such as Portal:Law. Other portal options might be Portal:Politics, Portal:Business and economics, or Portal:Society. Thoughts.. Should we create our own, work with the Law portal (or other), or maybe try to have space on all these portals...? Morphh ^(talk) 15:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I've never figured out the benefit of portals that are worth the overhead. It just seems like a lot of work that doesn't go into articles. That said if someone really wants to keep it maintained that's fine, but you're right, we don't have much to go on yet. If we get some of the higher priority articles in decent shape then we'd be in a better position to showcase our material. - Taxman ^Talk 20:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hello

I've just added my name on the members list. My main interest is UK corporation tax (indeed it was me who wrote United Kingdom corporation tax and got it up to FA status). I'm also, as of 7.30pm today, responsible for a good article, Accounting period and I'm (slowly) developing a Wikibook, b:Taxation in the United Kingdom.

It would be interesting to know what areas of taxation others are interested in. Could we expand the members list so that we can note these next to our names? Also, it would be nice to know of anyone else looking to develop Wikipedia or Wikibooks content on UK tax. jguk 19:42, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Welcome, of course. Personally I only know the US laws and a tiny bit of Canadian tax. But I'm more than happy to peer review articles from other jurisdictions to offer an outside view. - Taxman ^Talk 20:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I had considered putting flag icons in front of the names such as Morphh (t c). I thought this might help us in directing focus to articles with other like editors but then I thought it could also divide us and add to bias. I'd also be happy to peer review articles from other jurisdictions. I'm fine with putting short comments next to the name to specify interest. Though you might be more likely to find like editors by looking at the history page of the topic. Morphh ^(talk) 13:58, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be useful to know who's writing on what as I think that would help with collaboration. Whether that is done by flags or by other device, I don't know.

Nor do I see that as divisive or likely to add bias. My knowledge only allows me to write about UK tax, and also allows me to write much more about corporation tax than any other type of tax. I'm not ever going to start writing about Zimbabwean taxes, say, in order to try to neutralise a systemic bias because I simply don't have the ability to do so.

Might I suggest a two column approach to the participants list, the first column being our names, the second allowing us to say what our interests are? jguk 13:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok - I've made some changes to the members list to better identify members interests as suggested. Morphh ^(talk) 19:33, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I've added my details already. As the project expands, it should make it easier to identify people to collaborate with on country- and tax- specific issues.

I do tend to agree with Taxman that nationality is irrelevant, it is people's area of interest that is the important bit. It wouldn't bother me in the slightest if I was collaborating with an Australian or New Zealander, say, on UK corporation tax articles as long as they know what they are talking about and/or are genuinely interested in the subject. jguk 10:44, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I added the nationality section after seeing it on another WikiProject (Law I think). We can do it however - whatever the consensus is... I'm not sure how much additional value it adds either if people define their interests. However, it can provide a sense of background. Interests can be specific where Nationality may give a larger scope. I didn't see it as limiting interest but expanding background and interest. Users can choose to include it or not. Either way, I'm not attached to it - we can remove it if others prefer so. Morphh ^(talk) 14:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm doing a little bit of work on the only bit of UK taxation I know about - Business rates. Any corrections/advice on wikipedia style much appreciated. I intend to do a little to Rates (tax) and add a short article for rateable value as it's too long-winded a concept to do justice to in the more general articles. Any other business rate articles I haven't noted? Winklethorpe 00:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll take a look at them for style. Morphh ^(talk) 01:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Taxation articles

Ok, I finished adding the tags to the list I was working on. For the most part I only added to articles that I didn't have any doubt about, so there may be some other's that should be tagged. Here's the list for review of the articles that are in almost any subcategory of Category:Taxation except the tax protesters and resistors. I didn't know which of those would have enough importance to their protesting activities to make them includable. I can make a full list of all articles in subcategories of Category:Taxation if anyone wants to see it. Also, while pension schemes in general have a significant tax character, I tried to avoid including articles on individual systems such as CalPERS. One thing I did notice is a lot of articles are mis-categorized.

I couldn't find an easy way to pull a list for review of just the articles I tagged, but I did make a list of all talk pages I've edited that have the project tag. The majority of these I edited to add the tag. Let me know if you think I've tagged any you don't think we should be including. There's no need to include articles we don't want to work on. - Taxman ^Talk 10:16, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Excellent! Morphh ^(talk) 14:38, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Taxation Collaboration of the Month.

The banner for this should not be on the main article but on the talk page. I have moved the current one on Income Tax. GameKeeper 16:38, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Other COTW such as WP:USCOTW put this on the main article. Is this policy or something you are just assuming??? Morphh ^(talk) 23:24, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

It is a WP:SELF reference which are generally to be avoided. My experience had been that projects put these into the talk page ie the current Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history COTM Talk:Operation_Praying_Mantis but I see from your example many do not. In my opinon it would be better practice to avoid adding them to the main article space. GameKeeper 23:36, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Selecting at random some others... WP:ACOTF, Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Congress/COTW, WP:AngCOTM, WP:GCOTW, Wikipedia:WikiProject Rugby union/Collaboration of the fortnight, WP:HOSCOTM - The point is to get the attention, like any banner on the main page. More users are likely to see it on the main page and participate. They are normally also added in the talk page under the project or something. Since only one article receives it at a time and it is very small - it does not intrude on the articles much. Since it is not a policy and other projects do it, I prefer we keep it on the main article. If other project members disagree, we can reconsider the placement. Morphh ^(talk) 23:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

For the record I disagree , but will happily go along with concensus. Note that the WP:COTM which is probably the most well established collaberation does not add it's banner to the main article space. If I get time I may take this up as a general point as you have pointed out this effects other Wikiprojects too. If I do I will add a link from here so people here can register their opinion. GameKeeper 23:58, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:SELF notes templates in the article namespace that self-reference because they link to articles in the user, talk, or Wikipedia namespace or that are special articles. The COTM banner links to the Wikipedia namespace, which may reduce / remove the suggestion under this manual of style. Morphh ^(talk) 04:27, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I have brough this up as a general point here Wikipedia talk:Avoid self-references#Wikiproject's Collaberation of the Month/Week. GameKeeper 22:34, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification. I've let the WikiProject Council know about the post so they could weight in. Morphh ^(talk) 01:24, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

It's that time - please vote for the next COTM. Morphh ^(talk) 02:03, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures

Tax doesn't really lend itself to pictures in general, and unfortunately they seem to influence people's judgement of an article. One solution might be the use of editorial cartoons, of the old fashioned political satire type, such as the 19th century Punch cartoons. A quick poke around threw up this collection of British cartoons at the library of congress (and a wider search showed a large number of american cartoons, and photos of tax-related scenes): http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/cpbrquery.html

A search for tax got 56 results, two thirds of which were digitised, and at 200 years old they're certainly out of copyright.

They may well not be to everyones taste, however. Any opinions or further ideas? Winklethorpe 00:12, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea. I haven't heard of any wikipedia policy that would prevent this as long as it fits within WP:NPOV for placement (meaning maybe add the picture to the criticism section or appropriate areas for the content) and image copyright. Morphh ^(talk) 01:09, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

In terms of images, I would like to see a few more graphs on economics pages in general. I have found OpenOffice.org's calc and Inkscape (both free) to be a good combination for generating graphs (examples Image:UK taxes.svg and Image:Income Taxes By Country.svg). But these would be unsuitable as a infobox image. I like the suggestion of cartoons, but it may be quite difficult to find ones that are suitably NPOV as Morph suggests. Tax is a very emotive issue for some people, as can be seen from the types of vandalism that occurs. An inappropriate cartoon may provoke even more. Some of those cartoons would probably go well in a history section or under a criticism section, where the context could take care of NPOV issues. GameKeeper 12:19, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I have to admit, I didn't think about POV for the cartoons - to me they're just a historical curiosity. But of course you're right - the ones I'm referencing are actually quite savage criticisms of taxes in their time. Still, they'll be useful for the sections you mention.

I have found some photos on the same site (of tax offices, tax bills being signed etc), but they’re likely still in copyright and aren’t specific enough (unless we’re mentioning the tax bill in question) to meet fair use. Any further angles to try would be appreciated. Winklethorpe 21:24, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FAR for London congestion charge

London congestion charge has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Gzkn 02:28, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FA Drive

I'm intend to put our FA drive article FairTax up for FAC this month. Please review - your welcome to leave comments here, on my talk, or the article talk. Morphh ^(talk) 1:07, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you all for the FA drive and Pre-FAC contributions. The FairTax artilce has been put up as a candidate. Please vote on the WikiProject's first FA drive article! Morphh ^(talk) 16:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The FairTax was promoted to a featured article - I've put it up for Today's featured article for April 15th. Please vote Morphh ^(talk) 17:43, 01 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] United Kingdom corporation tax FAR

United Kingdom corporation tax has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Nssdfdsfds 08:52, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

If anyone could help out on this, it would be appreciated. The article lacks in-line refs. For example, just reading through and marking up where you think refs are needed would be a help. Ditto proof-reading. Winklethorpe 20:42, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Service_tax_in_India

Colleagues Please visit . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Service_tax_in_India All comments welcome, and I hope to get it into better shape soon. Sanjiv swarup 08:15, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Sanjiv, I'm a little confused by this. It seems to be a talk page with no article. It looks like you have some source material. Create an article and go for it - Be Bold. Morphh ^(talk) 12:17, 06 April 2007 (UTC)

I have created the article by doing some research and using the notes put up on the talk page. Please have a look and comment. Lets improve this article further. Dhshah 19:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Sanjiv, if you're interested in editing articles on Indian tax, take a look at VAT in India. It's in particular need of references and having the last paragraph rewritten in Wikipedia style and with a neutral point of view. I've had a go at it myself, but someone with greater knowledge may do a better job. Winklethorpe 22:44, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Winklethorpe, I propose the following changes to VAT in India. The article has too much data on the Andhra Pradesh experience. This does not give a complete picture of the current scenario in India. Hence, a reduction in the size of this section is required. Add other sections which speak about History of implementation of VAT in India, CST-phase out and its implications, Set off (Input Credit), Exempted Goods, etc. If everyone is fine with the proposed changes, I can go ahead and give it a shot.

Reference Material: Value Added Tax (VAT), 2007 (India) Dhshah 09:13, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. You may want to find further reference material - official government material may be considered more reliable than commercially provided advice. The actual text of legislation, such as http://www.pdicai.org/vatap/APVATACT_2005.pdf, can also be very helpful for references. Winklethorpe 13:53, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Reference Material (Govt. site): VAT - Karnataka --Dhshah 14:13, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Excise Tax (India)

Suggest creation of this article. If anyone has any material or inputs, please provide. Reference Material (Official Govt. site): Central Excise Manual --Dhshah 15:21, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I have created the article Central Excise (India) and marked it a stub. Please help me in improving the article. Also suggest adding this article to WikiProject Taxation. --Dhshah 15:26, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template for Taxation in the US & UK

Taxation in the United States
This article is part of a series on Taxation
Federal taxation
Authority · History Internal Revenue Service Court · Forms · Code · Revenue
Income tax · Payroll tax Alternative Minimum Tax Estate tax · Excise tax Gift tax · Corporate tax Capital gains tax
State & local taxation
State income tax · State tax levels Sales tax · Use tax · Property tax
Federal tax reform Competitive Tax Plan Efficient Taxation of Income Real Property Use Tax Taxpayer Choice Act USA Tax · Value Added Tax FairTax · Flat tax
Tax protesting History America: Freedom to Fascism The Law that Never Was Cheek v. United States Notable tax protesters Irwin Schiff Richard Michael Simkanin Robert Clarkson · Tom Cryer Vivien Kellems Wayne C. Bentson Wesley Snipes
Tax protester arguments Constitutional Statutory · Conspiracy
Taxation by country Australia • British Virgin Islands Canada • China • Colombia France • Germany • Hong Kong India • Indonesia • Ireland Netherlands • New Zealand Peru • Russia • Singapore Tanzania • United Kingdom United States • European Union  v • d • e  Tax rates around the world Tax revenue as % of GDP
view • talk • edit

I created this template for U.S. tax articles. Comments please... Morphh ^(talk) 18:00, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I liked the top of the box. The US graphic is iconic and recognisable, whereas that IRS logo means nothing to me (and now you agree!). Rest of the box - the distinction between federal and state is a good way to organise it, but it wasn't obvious to me at first glance - the bottom was below my screen, so I didn't see the blue shaded State heading, and didn't get the idea that there were 2 main sections. Could be solved by bring state upwards, so it goes Federal, State, then the rest (i know the rest is federal specific, but I would have thought casual browsers would be more likely to be looking for actual taxes, and so they should be featured first?). It may be a little long, overall, but I've not much to compare it to - how does it compare to other templates?

Further thought - I like the idea of having templates linking the tax articles, so should this one have at least a tax link? Winklethorpe (talk) 19:02, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I based it on this template - for size comparison. I figured if this goes over well we can create others for other countries that are interested. I added a link at the bottom to other countries (currently linked to the Category) and a link to tax. I reordered it so the state stuff was higher. If we have enough countries, we could change it to a taxation series. Morphh ^(talk) 19:54, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I can see the State header immediately, now. Potentially you could shorten it by doubling up some of the contents (like the congress section in the US template), but having browsed a few more templates, it's not overlong. I think it would be good to have templates with a common theme across the topic. To tie it in, what if you made the bottom "other countries*Taxation" into a "Taxation" on 1 line, and a little larger, and below it "Taxation in other countries", both blue-backed? Winklethorpe (talk) 20:34, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I tried to make some quick changes to reduce the size with doubling up on some entries and making some small. I tried to do the "Taxation in other countries" and "Taxation" as you described and it just looked wierd. I'll have to give it another go later.. heading out the door. Morphh ^(talk) 20:58, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Had a go for myself, mocking up a UK version. The bit at the bottom went wrong several times. Now that I see it, I don't like it too much. It looks like just another heading in the box. Perhaps another colour, or a heading? On your template, I think doubling up the taxes into a list is fine - people will expect to scan a list - but the Federal ones aren't as cohesive a set, so maybe put them back to a long list? (and you should probably stop paying attention to me - I'm just avoiding some real work that I should be doing!) Winklethorpe (talk) 21:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Great!!! I removed one of the entries on the Federal area so it is back to a list. I set up the "Taxation" and "In other countries" as you described and used a gray background and I think it looks good. Just enough to make it stand out but not enough that it distracts from the rest of the template. Morphh ^(talk) 0:30, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Dear editors: Wow. It looks impressive.

In the section under Federal government, you could delete the reference to the Sixteenth Amendment. The Amendment gets lots of attention here in Wikipedia because of tax protester arguments, but it’s actually not as important in the real world. (But there’s nothing really wrong with leaving it “as is,” either.)

Under U.S. taxation next to estate tax you could add “gift tax”.

If the blue backing on some of the headings denotes a hierarchy of sorts, I would add blue on Tax protester arguments, just to make it separate from “Federal tax reform” – as I would argue that much of the tax protester stuff isn’t about tax reform at all.

Overall it looks great. Yours, Famspear 02:13, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I made the changes that you suggested. Morphh ^(talk) 2:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Yep, like it. The addition of the project link is a very good idea. What do you think of adding the grey Taxation box to the templates on the wider tax pages, like Tax? I like the idea of unifying tax-related articles discretely, even though they're part of different topics. I may have to learn to write templates - they seem quite funky :) Can you stick a template within a template? Winklethorpe (talk) 08:02, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you can put a template in a template. We may want to create an list article instead of linking to the category as well. Morphh ^(talk) 13:29, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

It looks good, but the header being US Government and then two links and a grey line, then US taxation seems a little strange. The whole template is about US taxation, so put that in the Blue box as 'Federal Taxation' perhaps, and eliminate the grey line and just put all those links in the same section. And if we're going to put gift tax, we might as well link GSTT. Overall it's great to have these organized nicely. - Taxman ^Talk 12:24, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm thinking about these changes. I'm a little reserved as it has Taxation in the U.S. at the top of the template and the other link seems to go well with the state and local government category. If we changed it, then we would have one that says federal taxation and then the other would say state and local government. Also the link to U.S. taxation is not limited to Federal (although I have it under the Federal category for readability). Should both the titles be changed to Federal taxation and then State & Local Taxation with both linking to "Taxation in the United States" (that would be three links to the same article)? I added the devider to try and separate government related tax articles from the tax articles themselves. I'll play with it and see what looks good. Morphh ^(talk) 13:29, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I made an example of what I was thinking, but you're right, those aren't exclusively federal. Then again, that's not a change from what it was before and I don't see a way around it. Also we could use an article summarizing and discussing the different forms of local taxation so I added that for now, but then again that may be too redundant. - Taxman ^Talk 14:32, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok.. made some small changes. Linked State and Local taxation to the related sections in the U.S. tax article. Removed the local tax link since I linked it above. Looking pretty good.  :-) For some reason the gray background on the last two links is not visible on this computer (using IE with my other using Firefox). So we may need to pick a different color gray that shows up on both browsers. Morphh ^(talk) 14:56, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

After testing.. it must be the video card or monitor or something as it does it on both browsers on this computer - odd. Ok... well I'm going to add it to a few articles and see how it goes. Morphh ^(talk) 16:21, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Should the Federal Taxation head link to Taxation_in_the_United_States#Federal_taxation, so there's consistancy with the later State/local link (the main article being linked at the top, already)? (In fact, for the long term, should they link to separate articles that redirect to those points in the main article for now?) And I like not having the line between Tax forms and the taxes, just the blank line. Winklethorpe (talk) 21:50, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Good thought on the Federal taxation link — This made me also think of the structure of the tax article and I think I'll probably reorganize it to reflect a federal / state & local structure. I'll think of a good title for the redirect links - this sounds like a good idea if it will redirect correctly (although it may confuse people that are watching the hyperlink location in the status bar and make them think it is a separate article). Morphh ^(talk) 0:17, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

UK template - Perhaps a link to Rates (tax) and United Kingdom corporation tax. Morphh ^(talk) 17:06, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah yes - was just populating it really quickly as an example (some of the other links are crocked!). I'll make it a bit more legitimate. On the Taxation link, the reason I was asking about putting templates in other templates (and I've had a read of the template documentation now) was that I was going to suggest making it a mini-template within these templates, so it can be easily and consistantly added. I was wondering if it would benefit from some wording, like "part of the Taxation topic" or "see also:Taxation". I've put a couple of versions on the UK template. (If anyone wishes to mess with the template as an example, feel free.) Winklethorpe (talk) 18:38, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I like the change to the bottom links - I think I like the top one best. A mini-template would be good if we have a few templates to put it on. I'm not sure it would be justified with just two templates using it but I guess it would make it easier in the future as we add more. Morphh ^(talk) 0:17, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah good, I liked the top one better as well. I'll the two up for a bit longer to see if anyone disagrees. On the mini-template, I was indeed thinking of the future. Winklethorpe (talk) 06:21, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Getting some odd center formating on "Central government taxation". I think it might be caused by the width=192px. Morphh ^(talk) 1:35, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

What are you seeing? I've tried to replicate the problem with a few browsers and resolutions, but can't get it to go wrong.Winklethorpe (talk) 22:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I made the formating change that fixed it for me. I added a break between in the link as this is how it had originally appeared to me but it has no effect on the centering. Removing the width=192px corrected the issue and put the link on one line. Morphh ^(talk) 23:26, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wider Taxation Template

Public finance
This article is part of the series: Finance and Taxation
Taxation
Direct tax  ·   Indirect tax Income tax  ·   Payroll tax Sales tax  ·   VAT  ·   Flat tax Tax, tariff and trade
Tax incidence
Tax rate  ·   Proportional tax Progressive tax  ·   Regressive tax Tax advantage
Taxation by country Australia • British Virgin Islands Canada • China • Colombia France • Germany • Hong Kong India • Indonesia • Ireland Netherlands • New Zealand Peru • Russia • Singapore Tanzania • United Kingdom United States • European Union  v • d • e  Tax rates around the world Tax revenue as % of GDP
Economic policy
Monetary policy Central bank  ·   Money supply
Fiscal policy Spending  ·   Deficit  ·   Debt
Trade policy Tariff  ·   Trade agreement
Finance
Financial market Financial market participants Corporate  ·   Personal Public  ·   Banking  ·   Regulation
view • talk • edit • project

Just to open a can of worms, I've copied Template:Public_finance into a sandbox (feel free to edit), and added the Taxation topic box at the bottom. I feel that we ought to provide a template to unify the core taxation topics, but not disturb their place in Finance. My first suggestion would be to reduce the Finance list at the bottom, and expand the tax list at the top with the core tax topics. Which begs the question, what are the core tax topics? Tax, Tax rate, Direct tax, Indirect tax, Proportional tax, Flat tax, Progressive tax, Regressive tax, Tax incidence are all broad theoretical articles (but very stubby, in some cases). They can't all go in, though. I'm not convinced by Tax advantage and Tax, tariff and trade from the current template.

Then there's the obvious list of tax types - income, sales, etc. And then taxation by country - is this served by the entry in the grey box? Thinking about that, could we make a list of countries and taxes to serve there? Winklethorpe (talk) 22:09, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I added in some changes. I'm almost thinking we should create a list article such as List of taxation by country instead of listing them all here. I think we're up to about 14 or so main taxation articles by country - this may be a bit much to include in a template like this but we could give it a shot. We could add a "show" link in the template that would expand all the countries - not sure what the precidence is on such in the mainspace. I'm also not convinced that tax advantage or tax, tariff & trade are suitable for the template as they're minor articles. Also the dead Federal banking link - doesn't seem appropriate to have a red link in a template. What is Federal banking anyway? Central bank seems to cover my only thought on the subject (though my thought is relatively limited.. haha). Morphh ^(talk) 1:28, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I attempted to make a "Taxation by country" collapsible section. Thoughts... Needs a tweak to get the background to the entire width of the template or make it transparent or something. Having trouble figuring it out. Morphh ^(talk) 3:53, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah, nice idea. I'm in agreement on the List idea. Will be away for a few days, so will comment more later. Winklethorpe (talk) 07:18, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Now that I think about this a little more (over some sleep), I think that the public finance template should probably be one that would be better at the bottom of the article as oppose to the top right. Top right templates can disrupt the formating, images, and such of an article, where the bottom template can be applied to any. I still think the top right template is best for the Country related templates (and the addition of the show/hide for the countries might be good for them) but I'm wondering if the public finance template would be better at the bottom of the articles where we have the page width and a lot more room to expanded it. I'll try to create one this weekend for comparison. Morphh ^(talk) 12:22, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Example template that would go at the bottom of the articles. Morphh ^(talk) 15:07, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

In many ways I agree with you, but the public finance template is part of a series (you can see them at Template_talk:Public_finance), so moving it to a bottom template would disrupt the series. Also, finding a picture to go top right in a tax article is kinda tricky, and having a template there hides the problem :) I very much like the collapsable section you've done; it's the best solution. I also like the list article idea (perhaps one for the future?). Winklethorpe (talk) 08:55, 29 May 2007 (UTC) (Still on restricted access)

I created the {{Taxbycountry}} template and added it to the U.S. and Public Finance template. I left it as a single line but we could also do it with the "Part of the Taxation topic" comment above it. I was thinking we might be able to combine the two public finance templates if we wanted. By adding the "bottom" attribute, it would format it horizontally. Then the same template could be used in either situation as I think we could add this template to a wide scope of tax articles, though I would generally think the upper right template would be used on the articles listed in the template. Morphh ^(talk) 12:36, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I think a combined "part of the taxation topic" and "tax by country" box would be the best way forward. I like the idea of being able to add it to the bottom of any template. The idea of a combined public finance template sounds good. Going to look at the hide/show template and find out how you do it :) Winklethorpe (talk) 21:53, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I just broke it about 5 times in a row trying to integrate the tax topic header...might leave it to you. Winklethorpe (talk) 22:32, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Harking back to the comment on the Federal banking redlink - should it be Federal Reserve System? Winklethorpe (talk) 22:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Made the change to the template to have the "Part of the taxation topic". I'll work on combining the two public finance templates next. The Federal Reserve would be a U.S. topic. Central Bank covers this in a global way along with the Bank of England. I'm for removing "Federal banking" and replacing it with "Central bank". I'm sure we could think of a couple other things to put under this topic such as Gold standard or Money supply. Morphh ^(talk) 22:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Not having much luck with applying the If statement and getting the same template to do both. I know it can be done... but then I was just thinking... what is the big deal in having two templates {{Public finance2}}. So maybe that would be the way to go... Morphh ^(talk) 1:42, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Impressed by the single tax topic template. Not impressed that I couldn't work out how to do it :) You're right about using central bank. Looking at the Public finance article, there's a couple of other topics - Government spending and Government debt - that are relevant, whereas Bank for International Settlements seems a bit specialist. I ownder if it would be better to have a section with Central bank, Monetary policy, Government spending, and Government debt only? Do you think the economics wikiproject will mind us completely rewriting their template?

If the single template isn't feasible, then there's no harm in having two, as you say. J.Winklethorpe ^talk 13:56, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I posted to the Finance Wikiproject and on the Public finance template talk as to this ongoing discussion. I'm not going to worry too much about changing it.. Be Bold as they say! I'll still try to work on a single template - we could always try to pull resources from other places to help us out. Morphh ^(talk) 14:44, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Bold it is then! Is the plan to create a modified public finance template that will go on the tax articles, leaving the main one to go on non-tax articles (like central bank - we don't need to declare that to be a taxation topic)? That would be my thought. J.Winklethorpe ^talk 18:23, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd say we modify the main template. Since it is a public finance template, it would seem to be expected that the body of the template relate to taxation. We may want to consider rewording the aspect of "Part of the Taxation topic", perhaps "Part of the Taxation series". Although, I don't know that it would be much of a problem since I would think the statement refers to the template and not necessarily the article. Morphh ^(talk) 19:40, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Reworked the Taxation by country template a little bit... Morphh ^(talk) 22:23, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Reworked them all a bit more... Morphh ^(talk) 1:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and applied the new public finance template. We'll see how it goes. Morphh ^(talk) 13:19, 07 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't notice your last changes. It all looks very classy now. I need to sort out the content in the UK template at some point, I think. J.Winklethorpe ^talk 19:23, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Any thoughts on a different image for the public finance template. Perhaps we can find something more global then the U.S. dollar. Morphh ^(talk) 13:35, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] UK budget / spending

Might someone be able to add something for the UK under Government spending. Thanks Morphh ^(talk) 13:28, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Watchlist for WikiProject Taxation

Found this link usefull Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Taxation/TaxCount. It is not complete but has most of our articles watched. Morphh ^(talk) 17:56, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for assistance

I'm involved in a discussion on the Flat tax article regarding the lead and the proper definition of a flat tax. My knowledge on flat taxes is limited so I'd like for others to review the discussion and the lead and comment. Thanks Morphh ^(talk) 14:59, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Commercial sales tax entries

A new article was recently created titled Sales Tax Audits as well as an addition to the Sales tax article titled Sales Tax Planning. These new additions look very commercial and reference a company Olivier & Associates placed by Olivierandassociates (talk · contribs) and IP address 216.223.201.145 (talk · contribs) that trace back to NY (where O&A are located). Thoughts, should we delete or try and clean it up? Is this useful for an encyclopedia? Morphh ^(talk) 13:38, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help

Hello all, I need your help. The FA article FairTax has charged as being POV for not having a criticism section, although this is against Wikipedia policy if it can be woven into the article like we have done. No specific details as to what is POV has been presented for correction by they have applied a POV tag and seem to want to nominate it for FAR (claiming the FAC was BS). Please take some time to assist in keeping this article under control. Like our tax protester articles, we tend to get a lot of visitors to this controversal topic and I'm the only main tax editor that watches it. Thanks Morphh ^(talk) 0:55, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FairTax

FairTax has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.

[edit] Globalize requests

I added a globalize request subsection under the announcement section because I noticed that some articles had that globalize banner stuck them. To facilitate a globalized article I thought to add this subsection because then such needs are aired out particularly among the community in this tax group who have the knowledge to fulfill the globalize requests.EECavazos 04:09, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Added all the tax related articles with the globalize tag that I could find.EECavazos 02:59, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I expect this list could get pretty long... if it does, we may want to consider making it a Department (like Translation). Thinking of... translation may be a good way to help globalize articles. Google does a half decent job at translating. Morphh ^(talk) 20:01, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Brilliant idea. I only thought of putting up the articles that have had globalize banners put on them, which were few. In addition to that I added the Partnership taxation because I made major organizational edits. I agree that if it does get pretty long a department idea would work pretty well. As for translation, I want to get a look at that because I would much prefer than relying on my medicore spanish and also for all the other languages.EECavazos 20:08, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AfD for Income tax and compensation for services

Expert opinion required at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Income tax and compensation for services. --Gavin Collins 08:12, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, for the notification. I didn't have this article in my watch list. Morphh ^(talk) 10:44, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Contest

FYI - The Tax article is one of the core articles eligible for the Contest offering $100 prizes for the winners. Morphh ^(talk) 14:23, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Home mortgage interest deduction

It seems like there should be an article on the Home mortgage interest deduction, which exists in various forms in several countries, but I cannot find one. I'm happy to start one, but I wanted to check and make sure I didn't miss it under a different name. Fireplace (talk) 00:38, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks like this was created less than an hour after your post by User:Hammer of the year‎. Talk about service. :-) Morphh ^(talk) 17:19, 02 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Peer-review notice

I think we're close to submitting Tax protester constitutional arguments for Featured Article status. Please help in the peer-review of this article to get it ready for submission. Thanks Morphh ^(talk) 19:24, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Impact Fees

I want to make some updates to the impact fees page and was wondering if anybody has any ideas or suggections for me. Also, if there is anything that people want more information on or they may want to see, please let me know. For now I am thinking about writing about different types of impact fees and give examples. I am also working to go more in depth into the description of what it is including how cities use them. (Aem0301 (talk) 21:36, 19 February 2008 (UTC))

Sounds good :-) The article does need a good bit of expanding. I don't have anything really to suggest at this point but as you get started I might pop in an offer suggestions. Morphh ^(talk) 14:43, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tax protester constitutional arguments FAC

I have nominated Tax protester constitutional arguments as a feature article candidate. If you're interested in responding to comments and addressing any issues that arise, please add the above FAC page to your watchlist. Also consider voting on the article. Thanks Morphh ^(talk) 17:55, 03 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Impact fees Page

I have taken the time and updated the impact fee article's history and definition. I still want to add more information, but I would like to know what others would like to see. I am thinking about adding more information about court cases and how they have dealt with impact fees over time. Plus, I am thinking about discussing the development of linkage and mitigation fees along with how impact fees haave helped them develop over time. Does that sound like information that is necessary and should be included? And what else should be included? (Aem0301 (talk) 19:46, 5 March 2008 (UTC))

I'm not that familar with them so I can't offer any thoughts regarding expanding, but I added the UStaxation tag. If this can be made into a global article, then we should consider changing it to a public finance template and putting less focus on the U.S. I'll also make some changes for some manual of style points. Perhaps you could add some See also links. Also link the article where appropriate in other articles, such as Taxation in the United States. Morphh ^(talk) 15:28, 06 March 2008 (UTC)

I am working on making changes and improvements from your suggestions. The only information I have is for the US so if you have any information or sources for me to make this a global article that would be great, otherwise I will have to just keep it focused on the US. Also, I am unsure as to why you added the UStaxation tag since impact fees are not a tax and they are not considered a tax. They were developed so that way areas and citizens would not be taxed, so having it linked to theUStaxation tag makes it seem like it is a actual tax ([[User:Aem0301|Aem0301](talk) 23:37, 8 March 2008 (UTC)).

A tax "is not a voluntary payment or donation, but an enforced contribution, exacted pursuant to legislative authority" and is "any contribution imposed by government […] whether under the name of toll, tribute, tallage, gabel, impost, duty, custom, excise, subsidy, aid, supply, or other name." A fee imposed by a local government is a tax in my view unless you can describe how it is otherwise. The purpose of the fee may be to reduce the tax incidence on the juristiction, but it does so by shifting the incidence to the development. It raises revenue (taxes) in one area to reduce the tax burden in another area. I don't understand why it would not be considered a tax - is it voluentary? I don't have any information outside the U.S. and I'm not sure if such applies. Morphh ^(talk) 3:29, 09 March 2008 (UTC)

It is not a tax based upon your own definition, “exacted pursuant to legislative authority.” In order for cities to impose a tax it must have the authorization of the state government under statute. Since no such statute exists in any state that allows cities to tax developers for new developments, it thus cannot be appropriately labeled as such. In fact, many state courts have found that using the term tax to describe an impact fee invalidates the usage of the fee. According to Julian Juergensmeyer in a land use regulation law book published by West Law, “If the tax label is adopted, the impact fee will be invalidated unless express and specific statutory authorization for the tax exists.” This is simply because local governments have no rights to wage a tax without state authorization. However, courts have found that when impact fees are enacted as a fee under the powers to regulate land use specifically given to local governments, impact fees are legal. There is quite a distinction between the two in the opinion of countless state courts and the US Supreme Court and we should not be portraying the Fee as something it is not, a tax. Although an Impact Fee may appear to be a tax, it is not recognized as one in a legal sense and we should not be portraying it likewise.(Aem0301 (talk) 22:29, 9 March 2008 (UTC))

Very odd... Seems the recent case in Virginia Supreme Court would disagree though (Virginia Supreme Court Rules that Giving Power to Tax to an Unelected Body is Unconstitutional). "We consistently have held that when the primary purpose of an enactment is to raise revenue, the enactment will be considered a tax, regardless of the name attached to the act.... [W]e conclude that each of the regional taxes and fees provided in Chapter 896 constitutes a tax, because they all are designed to produce revenue to be used for the purpose of financing bonds and supplying revenue for transportation purposes in the Northern Virginia localities." So a similar situation regarding the "label" of revenue. Anyway... no big deal to me. I guess it could still fall under public finance if you want to add that tax {{public finance}}. Morphh ^(talk) 14:37, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Impact Fees

I have added a lot of information onto to the impact fee article. I want to add more and was wondering if anyone had suggestions or if there was information that anyone would really like to see in the article. (Aem0301 (talk) 00:13, 27 March 2008 (UTC))

I'll add my reply to this on the talk page of the article. Morphh ^(talk) 13:32, 27 March 2008 (UTC)