On this Veterans Day, as I read through the draft proposals issued by the President’s deficit commission, I was struck by the somber resonance of these words:

“Throughout our history, Americans have always been willing to sacrifice to make our nation stronger over the long haul. That’s the promise of America: to give our children and grandchildren a better life.”

The challenge confronting that promise today, write co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, is the urgent need for “a plan to get this crushing debt burden off our back.”

Powerful words, and the plan unveiled in the draft does justice to them. From the point of view of the business community, there’s much to applaud, though the blessings are mixed. more

I don’t know if it’s the influence of the fast-approaching holiday season, or more prosaically the end of the tax year, but for whatever reason tax technology providers have been lining up in the last few weeks to announce some tempting new product releases aimed at tax directors’ wish lists. Here’s a roundup of the latest software goodies: more

Noted tax exile Keith Richards on the Rolling Stones’ corporate tax strategies:

“The whole business thing is predicated a lot on the tax laws. It’s why we rehearse in Canada and not in the U.S. A lot of our astute moves have been basically keeping up with tax laws, where to go, where not to put it. Whether to sit on it or not. We left England because we’d be paying 98 cents on the dollar. We left, and they lost out. No taxes at all.”

So now you know, all you British Stones fans.

Quoted in Greg Mankiw’s blog. ###

One of the consequences of relegating the Bush tax cuts to a postelection limbo is widespread confusion about what exactly is supposed to happen about paycheck withholding. The confusion isn’t limited to employers wondering what to tell their worried workers. Last week, BusinessWeek published an article on “paycheck anxiety” together with a calculator showing the effect of a reversion to 2000 rates and was promptly taken to task by the Tax Foundation in a blog post that described the magazine’s estimates as “way too high” — more than four times the actual increases, in some cases. more

With the elections just hours away, corporate tax expert Robert M. Gordon offers his take on the outlook for business taxation in this guest blog. Gordon is a managing partner with tax and business advisory firm True Partners Consulting. more