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Should overweight passengers pay more for their flights than skinny fliers? One Norwegian economist thinks so. In an article in this month's Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Bharat P. Bhatta writes that "All passengers are not alike in terms of their weight and the space they take in a plane." Weight and space, he said, are the major concerns on board an aircraft."

A Berkeley city councilman has proposed a tiny levy on senders of large batches of unwanted time-wasters. The most courageous politician in California — probably the nation — is a Berkeley city councilman, Gordon Wozniak.

The wrangling of President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans over the federal budget underscores a clash of core philosophies about how the economy works that supersedes any skirmish on taxes or spending cuts.

The Internal Revenue Service says 660,000 taxpayers will have their refunds delayed by up to six weeks because of a problem with the software they used to file their tax returns.

You can tell a lot by a country by how it deals with a new world of a plutocratic elite for whom national boundaries are but arbitrary lines on a map. And you can tell a lot about individual members of that elite by how they choose to deal with a world in which countries compete for their affections with low taxes.

Citing "multiple issues with the products", the Minnesota Department of Revenue issued a crisp statement today urging tax filers to avoid using Intuit products to prepare or file their state income taxes. The products include TurboTax, Lacerte, Intuit online and ProSeries.

U.S. employers ramped up hiring in February, adding 236,000 jobs and pushing the unemployment rate down to 7.7 percent from 7.9 percent in January. Stronger hiring shows businesses are confident about the economy, despite higher taxes and government spending cuts.

According to the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, since the passage of Prop 30 in the November election, California-based company relocation inquiries have doubled, possibly tripled, in Central Texas. West Coast entrepreneurs feeling the personal financial stress of an out-of-control state budget and tax policy have heard Texas’ message, and they’re responding.

Last year, about $450 million belonging to top executives at billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson’s New York firm took a quick round trip to Bermuda. In April, the executives sent the money to a reinsurance company that they’d set up on the island 650 miles off the North Carolina coast. By June, the Bermuda company, which has no employees and sells far less reinsurance than the industry norm, had sent all the cash back to New York, to be invested in Paulson & Co. funds.

Former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. has been charged with spending $750,000 in campaign funds on personal expenses. His wife was charged with filing false income tax forms....