User talk:Oldtaxguy

Tax deduction article has been posted. Corporate tax article has been posted. Oldtaxguy (talk) 19:54, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Corporate tax in the United States article enhancements posted.Oldtaxguy (talk) 19:36, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Tax credit article posted June 6.Oldtaxguy (talk) 02:59, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Robin Hood Tax

Hello Oldtaxguy and welcome to Wikipedia. As a new editor its fair enough if youre not aware of this, but when you canvassed Arthur Rubin and Framspear for support you were going against several guidelines we have here, specifically WP:AGF , WP:Battle and WP:Canvassing. Here on Wikipedia we're supposed to be non adversarial where possible. A good way to collaborate with others is to always assume good faith, as least as your initial default position. Some editors are atheists while some are evangelical Christians, some are libertarians while some are socialists, but most are united in wanting to build a quality encyclopaedia. Our WP:NPOV policy helps us all work together to create fair and accurate articles, essentially by ensuring different points of view on a topic are presented in accordance with their weighting in quality sources. So much as I respect someone who is willing to fight for what they believe in , in future please avoid assumeing editors with a different POV are lobbyists and please avoid asking editors for help in "battleing" others - at least untill youre sure they really are up for a battle. That said, I hope you continue to contribute and enjoy editing! FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:33, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi, you have answers

Hi Oldtaxguy, you have answers waiting for you at the help desk. Cheers. ♪ ♫ Wifione ♫ ♪ _―Œ ^{♣Łeave Ξ мessage♣} 04:03, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Robin Hood tax & Oxfam: chronology

I would like to publicly apologize to FeydHuxtable if he is not actively connected with Oxfam or the RHT publicity campaign. In such case, my comments were inappropriately directed to him, for which I am genuinely sorry. Please forgive my over enthusiasm for a cause (Wikipedia integrity) in which I believe.

I have no opinion on the RHT or similar taxes. I do have a strong opinion that Wikipedia should not be used as an advertising platform, and believe it has been with respect to this article and others indicated below. There surely have been those who, thru their own enthusiasm, have unwittingly participated in this advertising in good faith attempts to enhance Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. I do not intend to cast aspersions on any of them.

A brief history of this article and 3 related articles should help illustrate the advertising problem. It appears that the RHT and 3 other articles were created by Oxfam and its affiliates to promote its advertising campaign. The following, where there are not in-line references, is culled from contribution and article histories on Wikipedia itself. The history before 9 Feb 10 is, I think, very relevant to the trail.

2001: War On Want and New Economics Foundation publish a position paper entitled "The Robin Hood Tax" advocating that a Tobin tax be levied by a new international "Global Development Commission" with authority to require nations to levy the tax, which would be remitted to such commission for global "development" projects.

4 Sep 09: Oxfam issues "Oxfam International G20 Media Briefing" calling for "a Currency Transaction Tax (CTT) of at least 0.005% on international currency transactions".

27 Oct 09: user:389melanie account is created. This user creates & re-edits Wiki article [Ox-Tales] on books released by Oxfam in July 09. The article is first created on the userpage and then posted as a Wiki article. User:389melanie edits this and several Oxfam related articles (and nothing else) through 1 Dec. In her blog in a post titled Ox Tales on 28 Oct she states " I’ve now been interning for Oxfam for 3 weeks … The other completely awesome thing I’m doing is learning to use Wikipedia, so that I can write articles and edit the Oxfam related pages." On 14 Oct she stated " Just got back from Oxford, having spend 3 days there starting my new job and meeting the lady I’ll be staying with while I’m there." (Note: the web site hosting her blog describes themselves this way: " The Usual Company is a small firm located in Toronto Canada servicing businesses in the GTA with some recent interest in the UK. Projects are well planned, scheduled to your fast paced needs, and closely monitored through the life of the contract. We pride ourselves on client relations and open communication.")

5 Nov 09: head of Oxfam UK makes a statement to some number of members of the press proposing a financial transaction tax, first using the key phrase "a tiny tax on banks". Note: this phrase is repeated throughout the RHT publicity campaign and on the RHT web site.

7 Dec 09: user:389melanie posts a request on Wiki Helpdesk "Hi there, I'm trying to get together a small group of people to try and improve the information about Oxfam on Wikipedia…"

19 Dec 09: 389melanie arrives in Toronto per her blog

21 Dec 09: user:Boyd Reimer begins series of edits to article Tobin tax. This is this editor's first edit to any tax article. Edits occur every few minutes from 15:57 to 18:03. More edits to this article on 21, 24, 25 and 29 Dec. On 30 Dec 09 through 4 Jan 10, user edits article numerous times fairly continuously throughout each day. From 21 Dec to 4 Jan, the article is expanded from 18k to 110k. Note: an anonymous user in Poland removed 7 blatant advertisements for Halifax Initiative, a group closely associated with Oxfam.

Note: a real person named Boyd M L Reimer is a freelance web designer and developer in Toronto. His Flikr slogan is "Results online don't just happen. They're planned." Also Note: of the 17 listed members of Halifax Initiative (an organization purportedly in Canada) members except Oxfam, 3 labor unions, and 1 other (i.e., 12 of 17) have anonymously hosted websites. The initiative's website is also anonymously hosted.

23-24 Dec 09: user:Benwm edits Tobin tax article. This editor then and subsequently provided about 125 edits of Tobin tax and Financial transaction tax (see below), 14 other edits of related articles, and no other activity. All this editors edits were shortly following Boyd Reimer edits of those articles.

1 Jan 10: user:WWWords created. This user edited only the Tobin tax article. Last edit 4 March 10.

3 Jan 10: anonymous user:78.33.152.244 in UK adds German text from an interview of Tobin from Die Spiegel and makes certain other minor edits over 10 minutes. Reimer edits pause during this, and 15 minutes later he edits around the newly added German text with description "I created a new section and moved existing material to the new section without changing it."

4 Jan 10: user:Boyd Reimer creates article Financial transaction tax and does multiple edits through

4 Jan 10 through 10 March 10: users Boyd Reimer, Benwm, Cosmic Cube, and WWWords perform multiple, frequent edits to Tobin tax article, with almost no participation by other users. (1 anonymous user complained of NPOV and OR)

13 Jan 10: user:Boyd Reimer creates article Currency transaction tax. This article was edited by him alone through 27 Jan, then by him and Cosmic Cube, with 6 other edits through 26 Feb by 2 anonymous users, one of whom resolves to a privacy service in Romania and the other is the same one who complained in Tobin tax about NPOV, and a minor edit by another user.

13 Jan 10: user:Boyd Reimer creates article Spahn tax. This article was edited by him alone through 27 Jan, then by him and Cosmic Cube as only editors changing more than 20 characters.

22 Jan 10: BBC item on RHT states that "Some of the world's top A-listers are to call for a new tax on banks only days after announcing near record profits and bonuses. The celebrities - none of whom have yet been formally confirmed - are set to front a worldwide campaign…" and "Film-maker Richard Curtis is the man behind the celebrity campaign"

27 Jan 10: user:Cosmic Cube created. This user edited only the Tobin tax, Currency transaction tax and Spahn tax articles (see below).

06 Feb 10: YouTube user Robin Hood Tax created by robinhoodtax.org

09 Feb 10, : Robin Hood Tax campaign launched. YouTube video html uses phrase "tiny tax on bank transactions …"

09 Feb 10, 09:46: User:TomQTom posts redirect from RHT to Tobin tax. This user has no other edits before or since.

09 Feb 10, 09:30 (04:30 Toronto time): Toronto Star posts article by Linda McQuaig (an opinion columnist) on Robin Hood Tax, which omits any reference to Oxfam or any other sponsors. McQuaig in the article strongly supports the tax. Note: McQuaig's articles appear biweekly, and this was the biweekly article.

13 Feb 10: User:Boyd Reimer changes redirect on RHT to Financial transaction tax

14 Feb 10: User:Boyd Reimer creates article Volker Rule

27 Feb 10: user:Boyd Reimer creates article Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act. Article moved to Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Bill within 20 minutes by user:Ironholds (a non-admin who sometimes works amazingly fast: over 5 edits per minute!), stating "Bill, not Act, it hasn't been passed." User:Boyd Reimer made conforming changes within 30 minutes. Benwm later edits.

9 Feb 10: RHT publicity campaign launched with release of video advertisement produced by a major film producer and staring a major UK television star. Within 24 hours there are links on all major web based advertising media. Google search for articles with catch phrase "tiny tax on banks" for the 4 day range 9 Feb to 12 Feb hits on Business Week, The Times, others, who ran articles on RHT quoting the same language as on RHT website.

11 Feb 10: RHT website launches a "vote" on the tax. Within hours, the vote starts to skew sharply against for about an hour. Then within a very short time frame (barely hours) news reports appear that RHT campaign has traced the "attack" to Goldman Sachs. (This claim was made by RHT organization) The vote then skews sharply in favor of RHT.

09 Feb 10 to 28 Feb 10: RHT article (just a redirect) is viewed 1247 times

1 Mar 10 to 17 Mar 10: RHT article is viewed 198 times (avg. 11/day)

18 Mar 10, 11:23-15:29: user:389melanie creates first draft of RHT article on user:talk page [user:389melanie/Robin Hood tax]. The article includes references to Financial transaction tax and Currency transaction tax while still on talk page. At 16:10, posts this as change to article. This is article's first non-redirect since creation. User:389melanie also adds cross reference to RHT article in article Financial transaction tax at 16:12, and continues edits of RHT until 17:09. Only one activity of this user thereafter, changing a date in an unrelated article. User:389melanie has no contributions after 18 March other than this one item. Original article as left by 389melanie was 5.1k. Article is viewed 74 times this day. (Note: per her blog she was at Oxfam Live in Nottingham on 14 Mar 10.)

19 Mar 10, 13:56: user:FeydHuxtable expands article to 10.7k. Expansion includes citations to The Guardian, Reuters, The Financial Times. Two Guardian pieces are editorials, openly advocating for the RHT organization. The Financial Times cite does not refer to the tax, a Tobin tax, or the campaign, and predates the launch. The Reuters piece merely reports the publicity campaign launch, clearly quoting from a press release. The later Guardian pieces cover a U.S. Chamber of Commerce press release and the purported Goldman attack above. Article is viewed 75 times this day, and only 32 times the next day.

19 Mar 10, 14:52: user:Boyd Reimer creates article Halifax Initiative which includes the statement " On March 23, 1999, thanks to the Halifax Initiative work with Members of Parliament, members from all five political parties contributed to a vote which passed a private member motion on the Tobin tax." It lists as citation for support of the statement one sentence in the Canadian Parliament session report for 23 March 1999 (a 360 page document comprising 800k).

19 Mar 10, 16:19: user:Boyd Reimer starts a discussion on Halifax Initiative and Tobin tax on whether Halifax Initiative or New Internationalist are reliable sources. This is joined within one hour by user:Arthur Rubin, an administrator.

22 Mar 10: Anonymous user:193.133.69.201, which resolves to Oxfam UK, makes minor changes to RHT aggregating under 50 characters, and deletes one sentence. Article is viewed 75 times this day and 44-45 times each of next 2 days.

25 Mar 10: user:Beganlocal significantly expands article. Article is viewed 88 times this day, and under 55 times each of next 3 days.

29 Mar 10, 11:25-14:21: user:Boyd Reimer edits article for style & organization. Article is viewed 177 times this day and 56 the next.

29 Mar 10, 16:00-17:56: user:FeydHuxtable significantly expands article with materials primarily from the RHT website, including reports of the purported "attack".

9 subsequent non-minor edits until my tagging on 10 Jun 10. Article is viewed 1324 times in April.

It is clear that the 4 Boyd Reimer articles and Robin Hood tax article are part of an orchestrated, paid publicity campaign. I suggest the following articles & users be referred to administrators for investigation, with possible article reversions/deletions as appropriate.

• Tobin tax
• Financial transaction tax
• Robin Hood tax
• Spahn tax
• Ox-Tales
• User:Boyd Reimer
• Now inactive users 389melanie, WWWords, Cosmic Cube

My apologies to all for this lengthy bit of sleuthing, but I felt it was needed to document this apparent violation of Wiki policies.

If you like sleuthing you may be interested in the WikiScanner. I haven't used it myself but others have found it illuminating. I have added the COI tag to the article until some resolution has been reached. There is nothing to stop you as a non-admin from queering this article on the Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard. Many (most?) of the pharmaceutical drugs here on WP appear to be straight adverts as well.--Aspro (talk) 10:47, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Hello Oldtaxguy,

That is some impressive sleuthing. Thanks for your contribution. However, your sleuthing did not go far enough so I feel I should point out a few things:

1. I am not an inactive user.

2. I am not a representative of Oxfam or any other activist group.

3. The bulk of my contributions have been to improve articles through judicious editing and reorganization, eliminating unreliable sources, and counteracting blatant attempts to use Wikipedia as an advertising platform (my last edit on the Tobin tax article was to enforce Wikipedia policies regarding this). Please read the archived discussion page from the Tobin tax article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tobin_tax/Archive_4) for some further insight into my efforts.

In short, I have gone out of my way in attempting to bring the articles I have worked on up to encyclopedic standards (although the Tobin tax article, admittedly, still needs a lot of work) while respecting and enforcing Wikipedia policies. I do not appreciate having my efforts disparaged by your insinuations.

In the future, please carry out your sleuthing to its logical end before making conclusions regarding the motivations of any other editor. Even then you should be really careful: WP:NPA. In particular, make note of "Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence. Serious accusations require serious evidence."

Incidentally, if you want to see a real example of collusion among activists / supporters then look at the comment from FeydHuxtable to 389melanie on the latter's talk page:

"Hi, just wanted to apologise in case youre still watching the Robin Hood Tax article you created and feel Ive gone overboard in compromising with the objectors. Your original article was very well written and informative, but it didnt meet all our guidelines, mainly as it was sourced largely to the robin hood site itself rather than secondary sources like independent news papers. The campaign has lost much of its high level support for now, and it looks like opinion among decision makers has generally swung in a deflationary direction. But this cannot possibly last for more than 3 – 4 years considering the massive levels of public debt and the increasing ineffectiveness of anti progressive propaganda. When events swing back in a pleasing direction they'll move with some force. Keep the faith! FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:38, 14 June 2010 (UTC)"

Cosmic Cube (talk) 02:02, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

AMT collaboration

Thanks for the excellent suggestions. I've been too busy lately with life outside of Wikipedia to take on that article. I think your outline is right on with some allowance for going into more detail than one might see in a traditional media article on the topic. Wikipedia can permit more elaboration since it's not constrained by fixed pages (unlike traditional encyclopedias).

I will hazard a guess that you know a lot more about tax issue than I do. In addition to helping make things more english, I can work on the wiki-markup around citation etc.

We could collaborate using a sub-page on your or my user name. I've seen that you've used your talk page for exactly that, but it's easy to create another page under a user name that's not for discussion topics.

If you like, i can create one under my name and we can go to town on improving this important, but currently impenetrable article.Mattnad (talk) 21:24, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Yep, the subsection looks good. One other thought, high level, is renaming the article to "Alternative Minimum Tax (Individual)" so we can focus the article, without apology, on the personal income tax.Mattnad (talk) 15:13, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

If you haven't come across this recent tool created by the tax foundation, it will be a very useful EL. I'll add it now to the article: [1]. It's the first time I've seen such a straight forward way of helping people see if they are hit by the AMT, both in the current tax law and guesses about the future.

Caution with that site: it's a long time lobbying site that has no problems misrepresenting things to support their agenda. Better tools for seeing what your tax is at present are at H&R Block, TurboTax, dinkytown.net, and a few others. H&R & TT are both tax software providers with excellent software and online programs. I use a more complex one from CCH (VERY not recommended for average user). I know Tax Foundation has a lot of supporters on Wikipedia, but I've found them to be highly biased and unreliable.

Tax

Thanks for your help at Tax, it's very much needed. (Your rewrite to the corporate tax section was good; unfortunately most sections need just as much work!)

As for the expatriation tax, I don't think your reference suffices for the section as written. It says

The most significant Expatriation Tax is one found in the USA.

and your reference gives details of the US expatriation tax, but no comparisons to other such taxes.

Do you think this sentence should stay? If so, any ideas for properly referencing it?

CRGreathouse (t | c) 14:47, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I don't have enough experience in expatriation in other than the U.S. to comment on the sentence. So I left it as I found it. I think Canada at one time (maybe still) had a deemed sale provision, but I can't remember the details. I don't have a problem with deleting the "most significant" clause and merely using the U.S. as an example. I also think using the reference to a particular modifying act is really appropriate, especially since it has since been further changed (and the later changes were more significant). Perhaps the sentences would be better as "For example, under the United States provision, any individual who ..." Always happy to hear ideas of others. Note that I'm slowly working on various enhancements in the tax area, especially U.S. Oldtaxguy (talk) 03:05, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, I think I'll make those changes. Good luck with the other tax articles -- many that I've seen are in sad shape, so you'll have your work cut out for you.

CRGreathouse (t | c) 18:12, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Overlinking in introductions

I think you're right, I've moved the links that I added to Alternative Minimum Tax out of the introduction. Edward (talk) 05:01, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

removed after action Oldtaxguy (talk) 20:56, 4 December 2010 (UTC) SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Taxation article

I really, really like the layout you suggested. Nicely lays things out and suggests good areas for helpful sub-articles to keep the length somewhat reasonable. I can't really offer to help as my time sucks, but where I can, I'll help. Bad thing to say, but would rather say something than compliment without saying anything about helping one way or the other.  :( Ravensfire (talk) 21:36, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

While my time is limited nowadays on Wikipedia, I'll do what I can to help out if we're going to focus on a particular article. Your layout on Taxation in the United States looks like a good structure to me. We may need to adjust the headings a bit to better line up with WP:HEAD, as Headings should not explicitly refer to the subject of the article, or to higher-level headings, unless doing so is shorter or clearer. This may be a case where such is clearer, but we'll need to consider that since it has a bit of duplication. Morphh ^(talk) 16:49, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Prod of Federal taxation in the United States

I agree with the redirect/merge of Federal taxation in the United States but don't think Proposed deletion is the right way to handle it. If you're only redirecting, I think the talk page discussion is sufficient. If you want to discuss it as a potentially controversial deletion, it would be better to use Articles for deletion instead. --Pnm (talk) 05:44, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Taxation in the US rewrite

I've created stubs for all redlinks on the main article in my userspace. Thanks for your response on the idea behind the rewrite, btw. It's enough of a shift that I'm still having some issues getting my head totally around it. It will get there though. I'm going to try to get some more done this week - kinda depends on how crazy work gets. Ravensfire (talk) 17:44, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip

Thank you for pointing out your objection with my marking of a minor edit. I really did need to review the guidelines.

Teimu.tm (talk) 05:46, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Re: Use of minor edit flag

According to the history, I have never edited the article Tax Day. Could you please link me to the actual edit diff? —Keenan Pepper 16:56, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Wow, I must be going crazy. I was sure I got a message about it, but you must be right because you never edited my talk page. Sorry for the confusion! —Keenan Pepper 07:42, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Importer of record

The article Importer of record has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

A dictionary definition per WP:NOT#DICT. Suggest transwiki to wikitionary unless someone has a suitable merge/redirect target.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Zachlipton (talk) 04:22, 22 February 2011 (UTC)