Questões de Concurso

Atenção: Para responder às questões de números 61 a 65, considere o texto a seguir:
For taxpayer advocate, a familiar refrain
By Michelle Singletary, Published: January 15, 2013

    It’s not nice to tell people “I told you so.” But if anybody has the right to say that, it’s Nina E. Olson, the national taxpayer advocate.
    Olson recently submitted her annual report to Congress and top on her list of things that need to be fixed is the complexity of the tax
code, which she called the most serious problem facing taxpayers.
    Let’s just look at the most recent evidence of complexity run amok. The Internal Revenue Service had to delay the tax-filing season so it could update forms and its programming to accommodate recent changes made under the American Taxpayer Relief Act. The IRS won’t start processing individual income tax returns until Jan. 30. Yet one thing remains unchanged − the April 15 tax deadline.
    Because of the new tax laws, the IRS also had to release updated income-tax withholding tables for 2013. These replace the tables issued Dec. 31. Yes, let’s just keep making more work for the agency that is already overburdened. Not to mention the extra work for employers, who have to use the revised information to correct the amount of Social Security tax withheld in 2013. And they have to make that correction in order to withhold a larger Social Security tax of 6.2 percent on wages, following the expiration of the payroll tax cut in effect for 2011 and 2012.
    Oh, and there was the near miss with the alternative minimum tax that could have delayed the tax filing season to late March. The AMT was created to target high-income taxpayers who were claiming so many deductions that they owed little or no income tax. Olson and many others have complained for years that the AMT wasn’t indexed for inflation.
    “Many middle- and upper-middle-class taxpayers pay the AMT, while most wealthy taxpayers do not, and thousands of millionaires pay
...A.... income tax at all,” Olson said.
    As part of the recent “fiscal cliff” deal, the AMT is now fixed, a move that the IRS was anticipating. It had already decided to program its systems on the assumption that an AMT patch would be passed, Olson said. Had the agency not taken the risk, the time it would have taken to update the systems “would have brought about the most chaotic filing season in memory,” she said in her report.
    The tax code contains almost 4 million words. Since 2001, there have been about 4,680 changes, or an average of more than one change a day. What else troubles Olson? Here’s what:
    − Nearly 60 percent of taxpayers hire paid preparers, and another 30 percent rely on commercial software to prepare their returns.
    − Many taxpayers don’t really know how their taxes are computed and what rate of tax they pay.
    − The complex code makes tax fraud ...B... to detect.
    − Because the code is so complicated, it creates an impression that many taxpayers are not paying their fair share. This reduces trust in the system and perhaps leads some people to cheat. Who wants to be the sucker in this game? So someone might not declare all of his income, rationalizing that millionaires get to use the convoluted code to greatly reduce their tax liability.
    − In fiscal year 2012, the IRS received around 125 million calls. But the agency answered only about two out of three calls from people trying to reach a live person, and those taxpayers had to wait, on average, about 17 minutes to get through.
    “I hope 2013 brings about fundamental tax simplification,” Olson pleaded in her report. She urged Congress to reassess the need for the tax breaks we know as income exclusions, exemptions, deductions and credits. It’s all these tax advantage breaks that complicate the code. If done right, and without reducing revenue, tax rates could be substantially lowered in exchange for ending tax breaks, she said.

(Adapted from http://js.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/for-taxpayer-advocate-a-familiar-refrain/2013/01/15/a10327ce-5f59-11e2-b05a-605528f6b712_story.html)

Why Is Spain Really Taking Lionel Messi to Tax Court?
By Jonathan Mahler Sep 27, 2013

So Spain has decided to haul Lionel Messi into court for tax evasion, which strikes me as completely insane on pretty much every level. You may remember the story from a few months back: The greatest soccer player in the world and his father were accused of setting up  a bunch of shell companies in Belize and Uruguay to avoid paying taxes on royalties and other licensing income.

Messi - who makes an estimated $41 million a year, about half from sponsors - reached a settlement with Spain’s tax authorities earlier this summer, agreeing to pay the amount he apparently owed, plus interest. The matter was settled, or so it seemed. Messi could go back to dazzling the world with his athleticism and creativity.
Only it turns out that Spain wasn’t quite done with Messi. His adopted country - Messi is Argentine but became a Spanish citizen in 2005 - is now considering pressing criminal charges against him.
Cracking down on tax-evading footballers has become something of a trend in Europe, where players and clubs have been known to launder money through “image-rights companies” often set up in tax havens. When you need money - and Europe needs money - go to the people who have it, or something like that. Over the summer, dozens of Italian soccer clubs were raided as part of an investigation into a tax-fraud conspiracy. A number of English Premier League clubs were forced last year to pay millions of pounds in back taxes. No one likes a tax cheat, and there’s little doubt that widespread tax fraud has helped eat away at the social safety net in Spain and elsewhere, depriving schools, hospitals and other institutions of badly needed funds. But Europe is not going to find the answers to its financial problems in the pockets of some professional soccer players and clubs. Messi’s defense, delivered by his father, seems credible enough to me. “He is a footballer and that’s it, ” Messi’s father Jorge said of his soccer-prodigy son. “If there was an error, it was by our financial adviser. He created the company. My mistake was to have trusted the adviser.” Even if Messi is legally responsible for the intricate tax dodge he is accused of having participated in, it’s pretty hard to believe that he knew much about it.
More to the point, Lionel Messi is probably Spain’s most valuable global asset. What could possibly motivate the Spanish government to want to tarnish his reputation, especially after he’s paid off his alleged debt? After four years of Great-Depression level unemployment, have anxiety and despair curdled into vindictiveness?
Here’s another explanation: Maybe this whole case has less to do with money than it does with history. Maybe it’s no coincidence that the target of the Spanish government’s weird wrath happens to play for FC Barcelona, which is, after all, "mes que un club." It's a symbol of Catalan nationalism - and a bitter, longtime rival of Spain’s establishment team, Real Madrid.
Too conspiratorial? Prove it, Spain. Release Cristiano Ronaldo’s tax return.

(Adapted form http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-27/why-is-spain-really-taking-lionel-messi-to-tax-court-.html)

Why Is Spain Really Taking Lionel Messi to Tax Court?
By Jonathan Mahler Sep 27, 2013

So Spain has decided to haul Lionel Messi into court for tax evasion, which strikes me as completely insane on pretty much every level. You may remember the story from a few months back: The greatest soccer player in the world and his father were accused of setting up  a bunch of shell companies in Belize and Uruguay to avoid paying taxes on royalties and other licensing income.

Messi - who makes an estimated $41 million a year, about half from sponsors - reached a settlement with Spain’s tax authorities earlier this summer, agreeing to pay the amount he apparently owed, plus interest. The matter was settled, or so it seemed. Messi could go back to dazzling the world with his athleticism and creativity.
Only it turns out that Spain wasn’t quite done with Messi. His adopted country - Messi is Argentine but became a Spanish citizen in 2005 - is now considering pressing criminal charges against him.
Cracking down on tax-evading footballers has become something of a trend in Europe, where players and clubs have been known to launder money through “image-rights companies” often set up in tax havens. When you need money - and Europe needs money - go to the people who have it, or something like that. Over the summer, dozens of Italian soccer clubs were raided as part of an investigation into a tax-fraud conspiracy. A number of English Premier League clubs were forced last year to pay millions of pounds in back taxes. No one likes a tax cheat, and there’s little doubt that widespread tax fraud has helped eat away at the social safety net in Spain and elsewhere, depriving schools, hospitals and other institutions of badly needed funds. But Europe is not going to find the answers to its financial problems in the pockets of some professional soccer players and clubs. Messi’s defense, delivered by his father, seems credible enough to me. “He is a footballer and that’s it, ” Messi’s father Jorge said of his soccer-prodigy son. “If there was an error, it was by our financial adviser. He created the company. My mistake was to have trusted the adviser.” Even if Messi is legally responsible for the intricate tax dodge he is accused of having participated in, it’s pretty hard to believe that he knew much about it.
More to the point, Lionel Messi is probably Spain’s most valuable global asset. What could possibly motivate the Spanish government to want to tarnish his reputation, especially after he’s paid off his alleged debt? After four years of Great-Depression level unemployment, have anxiety and despair curdled into vindictiveness?
Here’s another explanation: Maybe this whole case has less to do with money than it does with history. Maybe it’s no coincidence that the target of the Spanish government’s weird wrath happens to play for FC Barcelona, which is, after all, "mes que un club." It's a symbol of Catalan nationalism - and a bitter, longtime rival of Spain’s establishment team, Real Madrid.
Too conspiratorial? Prove it, Spain. Release Cristiano Ronaldo’s tax return.

(Adapted form http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-27/why-is-spain-really-taking-lionel-messi-to-tax-court-.html)

Why Is Spain Really Taking Lionel Messi to Tax Court?
By Jonathan Mahler Sep 27, 2013

So Spain has decided to haul Lionel Messi into court for tax evasion, which strikes me as completely insane on pretty much every level. You may remember the story from a few months back: The greatest soccer player in the world and his father were accused of setting up  a bunch of shell companies in Belize and Uruguay to avoid paying taxes on royalties and other licensing income.

Messi - who makes an estimated $41 million a year, about half from sponsors - reached a settlement with Spain’s tax authorities earlier this summer, agreeing to pay the amount he apparently owed, plus interest. The matter was settled, or so it seemed. Messi could go back to dazzling the world with his athleticism and creativity.
Only it turns out that Spain wasn’t quite done with Messi. His adopted country - Messi is Argentine but became a Spanish citizen in 2005 - is now considering pressing criminal charges against him.
Cracking down on tax-evading footballers has become something of a trend in Europe, where players and clubs have been known to launder money through “image-rights companies” often set up in tax havens. When you need money - and Europe needs money - go to the people who have it, or something like that. Over the summer, dozens of Italian soccer clubs were raided as part of an investigation into a tax-fraud conspiracy. A number of English Premier League clubs were forced last year to pay millions of pounds in back taxes. No one likes a tax cheat, and there’s little doubt that widespread tax fraud has helped eat away at the social safety net in Spain and elsewhere, depriving schools, hospitals and other institutions of badly needed funds. But Europe is not going to find the answers to its financial problems in the pockets of some professional soccer players and clubs. Messi’s defense, delivered by his father, seems credible enough to me. “He is a footballer and that’s it, ” Messi’s father Jorge said of his soccer-prodigy son. “If there was an error, it was by our financial adviser. He created the company. My mistake was to have trusted the adviser.” Even if Messi is legally responsible for the intricate tax dodge he is accused of having participated in, it’s pretty hard to believe that he knew much about it.
More to the point, Lionel Messi is probably Spain’s most valuable global asset. What could possibly motivate the Spanish government to want to tarnish his reputation, especially after he’s paid off his alleged debt? After four years of Great-Depression level unemployment, have anxiety and despair curdled into vindictiveness?
Here’s another explanation: Maybe this whole case has less to do with money than it does with history. Maybe it’s no coincidence that the target of the Spanish government’s weird wrath happens to play for FC Barcelona, which is, after all, "mes que un club." It's a symbol of Catalan nationalism - and a bitter, longtime rival of Spain’s establishment team, Real Madrid.
Too conspiratorial? Prove it, Spain. Release Cristiano Ronaldo’s tax return.

(Adapted form http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-27/why-is-spain-really-taking-lionel-messi-to-tax-court-.html)

Why Is Spain Really Taking Lionel Messi to Tax Court?
By Jonathan Mahler Sep 27, 2013

So Spain has decided to haul Lionel Messi into court for tax evasion, which strikes me as completely insane on pretty much every level. You may remember the story from a few months back: The greatest soccer player in the world and his father were accused of setting up  a bunch of shell companies in Belize and Uruguay to avoid paying taxes on royalties and other licensing income.

Messi - who makes an estimated $41 million a year, about half from sponsors - reached a settlement with Spain’s tax authorities earlier this summer, agreeing to pay the amount he apparently owed, plus interest. The matter was settled, or so it seemed. Messi could go back to dazzling the world with his athleticism and creativity.
Only it turns out that Spain wasn’t quite done with Messi. His adopted country - Messi is Argentine but became a Spanish citizen in 2005 - is now considering pressing criminal charges against him.
Cracking down on tax-evading footballers has become something of a trend in Europe, where players and clubs have been known to launder money through “image-rights companies” often set up in tax havens. When you need money - and Europe needs money - go to the people who have it, or something like that. Over the summer, dozens of Italian soccer clubs were raided as part of an investigation into a tax-fraud conspiracy. A number of English Premier League clubs were forced last year to pay millions of pounds in back taxes. No one likes a tax cheat, and there’s little doubt that widespread tax fraud has helped eat away at the social safety net in Spain and elsewhere, depriving schools, hospitals and other institutions of badly needed funds. But Europe is not going to find the answers to its financial problems in the pockets of some professional soccer players and clubs. Messi’s defense, delivered by his father, seems credible enough to me. “He is a footballer and that’s it, ” Messi’s father Jorge said of his soccer-prodigy son. “If there was an error, it was by our financial adviser. He created the company. My mistake was to have trusted the adviser.” Even if Messi is legally responsible for the intricate tax dodge he is accused of having participated in, it’s pretty hard to believe that he knew much about it.
More to the point, Lionel Messi is probably Spain’s most valuable global asset. What could possibly motivate the Spanish government to want to tarnish his reputation, especially after he’s paid off his alleged debt? After four years of Great-Depression level unemployment, have anxiety and despair curdled into vindictiveness?
Here’s another explanation: Maybe this whole case has less to do with money than it does with history. Maybe it’s no coincidence that the target of the Spanish government’s weird wrath happens to play for FC Barcelona, which is, after all, "mes que un club." It's a symbol of Catalan nationalism - and a bitter, longtime rival of Spain’s establishment team, Real Madrid.
Too conspiratorial? Prove it, Spain. Release Cristiano Ronaldo’s tax return.

(Adapted form http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-27/why-is-spain-really-taking-lionel-messi-to-tax-court-.html)