Taxes | featured news

The owner of the Mystic Pizza restaurant made famous in a 1988 movie has pleaded guilty to federal tax charges.

If marijuana is legalized and properly regulated, its proponents have long said, it could generate millions of dollars in state tax revenue. But how the drug should be taxed has proved to be a thorny question.

The days of tax-free online shopping could finally be numbered. The Senate is planning to vote on a bill as soon as Monday that would give states the authority to collect sales taxes on all Internet purchases, handing local governments as much as $11 billion per year in added revenue that they are legally owed — but that hasn’t been paid to them for years.

Worried the Internal Revenue Service might target you for an audit? You probably should be if you own a small business in one of the wealthy suburbs of Los Angeles. You might also be wary if you're a small-business owner in one of dozens of communities near San Francisco, Houston, Atlanta or the District of Columbia.

President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama paid more than $112,000 in taxes in 2012, an effective federal income tax rate of more than 18% for 2012, according to the White House. The Obamas and Vice President Biden and his wife released their tax returns Friday, three days before the April 15 tax filing deadline. The Obamas' adjusted gross income for the year was $608,611. The president earned more than $394,000 in salary, and the Obamas took in $258,000 in book royalties.

Although taxes are one of life’s certainties, they can still surprise you. Consider the iconic New York bagel: decide to have yours toasted, and it’ll come with a tax. The rationale is that sliced bagels are usually consumed on a café or store’s premises—and restaurant meals are taxed, whereas groceries (like a dozen unsliced bagels) are not.

Luxembourg says it will exchange information with the rest of Europe to help fight tax evasion. The initiative, which is to start in 2015, follows international pressure on Luxembourg to end its policy of banking secrecy that critics say has helped people hide money from tax authorities. Luxembourg, a tiny country of half a million people, boasts a huge financial industry with more than 3 trillion euros ($4 trillion) in assets.

Actor Wesley Snipes has been released from a federal prison where he was serving a three-year sentence after being convicted on tax charges in February 2010.

It's a data leak involving tens of thousands of offshore bank accounts, naming dozens of prominent figures around the world. And new details are being released by the day — raising the prospect that accounts based on promises of secrecy and tax shelter could someday offer neither.

Facebook's stock market debut left founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg with a paper fortune currently valued at $13 billion -- and a 2012 tax bill of around $1.1 billion.vZuckerberg's whopping tax hit stems from his move last May to increase his stake in Facebook. On the day of Facebook's initial public offering, Zuckerberg exercised a stock option and purchased 60 million Facebook shares at a "strike price" of 6 cents each.