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For most of his life, Merced's Jim Stofle has been interested in coins. His knowledge and appreciation of coins have led to a much-heralded ability to evaluate rare examples.

When Stofle was about 8 or 9 years old, his baby sitter brought along a shoe box full of coins to entertain her new charge. Stofle, now 56, still has one of those coins, known as a Fugio cent, which today is worth about $5,000 on the collector's market.

A life member of the American Numismatic Association, Stofle entered his first-ever grading contest last month at the Long Beach Coin Expo. He correctly judged 12 out of 20 coins and missed six others by only one point. His prize was a Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle $20 gold piece valued at $2,500, along with considerable bragging rights.

Stofle said he had 20 minutes to judge 20 coins; it only took him only five minutes to get the job done, but about a minute of that time was spent analyzing one tarnished coin. He got that one right, too; three other contestants got nine right out of 20 samples.

Stofle's friend Bill Shamhart of Morris County, N.J., said Stofle is a natural at grading coins. Shamhart teaches advanced grading classes and says not everyone knows how to grade coins. Some students eventually will learn grading skills, but Stofle's talents will only get sharper as he practices, his friend said.

Stofle modestly says professional coin graders regularly get 18 out of 20 coins right. Some of the more brilliant younger collectors who have an eye for grading coins have been recruited by professional grading companies to grade coins rather than deal in them. Shamhart said that if Stofle graded coins every day, he also would get almost all coins right quickly.

Coincidentally, Stofle discovered that Shamhart's father, a B-52 instructor pilot at Castle Air Force Base, was stationed here in the late 1960s and early 1970s and Shamhart lived in Merced during that time. Stofle and Shamhart have met numerous times at the annual collectors' conventions.

"Most coins are pretty easy for me to grade," Stofle said. "I can't explain it, but I just look at the coin and know what the grade is. Due to the recession, coins have decreased 20 to 30 percent in value, except for extremely rare ones."

Coins are graded between one and 70 points, with points subtracted for flaws. Stofle uses three magnifiers to spot the scuffs and nicks that coins accumulate over time. When they are lumped together in sacks, coins get marks as they rub together, and that detracts from their value.

Stofle, a certified public accountant who's lived in Merced for 46 years, said he is more driven by the history of a certain coin than the fact it's rare. He said there's quite a bit of speculation in collector coins but the average old coin, like houses, is down about a third in value today.

See original here:
Merced coin collector has national reputation as assessor

by Olivia Rawlinson

Team Microgaming Isle of Man rider Jake Kelly finished 13th in Sunday, 25th March's Cadence junior road race in Powys, Wales. Four riders went away immediately after the start and several small breakaways chased. The small breaks came back together as they were joined by the favourites from the bunch. Shortly after, with two of the seven laps remaining, Kelly and another rider joined the group of 20 at the head of the race.

Three riders, including last year's winner John Dibben, broke away from this small group and these three also split on the last lap with Tao Geoghegan-Hart taking the win from Dibben. The rest of the small group fought it out on the last climb to the hill top finish where Jake took a well-deserved 13th place. His result was very good in view of the fact he had a broken spoke in his front wheel for the last four laps. He decided not the get it replaced as the race pace was so high.

Alex Haddock came home off the back of the main bunch after assisting Jake in the first part of the race, then aggravating an injury later on. The next race in the British Junior Road Race series is the Junior Tour of the Mendips, Bristol, on April 15. The other seven events in the 2012 British junior road race series are:

May 4-6: Sleepwell Hotels Isle of Man International Youth Tour. June 17: Tom Simpson Memorial Junior RR, Doncaster. June 23: CC Giro Junior Criteriums, Lichfield. July 8: Hatherleigh Junior RR, Exeter. July 22: Bath RC Junior RR, Milton Keynes. August 25-27: Junior Tour of Wales.

The eight race series is still popularly known as the Pete Buckley series as for many years it was named in memory of the Manx rider who won the Commonwealth Games gold in Jamaica in 1966. Over the years the junior series has been a proving ground for many Manx and British pro riders. The last Manxman to win the series was Team Sky professional Peter Kennaugh. Manxmen Steve Joughin and Mike Doyle also won the series before going on to pro careers in the 1980s.

- Ends

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Excerpt from:
Team Microgaming - Jake Kelly 13th in British Junior Series Opener

WASHINGTON Faced with determining whether the central provision of President Obamas health care law will stand, the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court seem to not want to let an archaic tax law get in the way of their decision.

As a cacophonous crowd of on both sides of the health reform issue rallied outside, the justices Monday heard highly technical arguments over whether the time was legally right for them to take up the health care issue.

Conservative justices and liberals were equally critical of the contention that a 19th century law which bars most lawsuits against federal taxes until after theyre collected ought to prevent them from deciding the health care laws fate at this time.

The key issue in this weeks cases the constitutionality of the laws requirement that everyone buy health insurance or pay a penaltywas not at stake as the court began three days of oral arguments. Justices will hear arguments on the laws constitutionality this morning.

At issue Monday were the penalties the law is set to charge starting in 2014 on people who dont

have health insurance.

If those penalties are a tax, the Anti-Injunction Act of 1867 could block the justices from deciding the constitutionality of the health care law until at least 2015, after the first such penalties have been charged.

Based on Mondays arguments, the justices seem to doubt those penalties are taxes.

Congress has nowhere used the word tax in writing the penalty provision, Justice Stephen Breyer said. What it says is penalty.

Justice Sonya Sotomayor agreed, saying: Congress is not denominating it as a tax; its denominating it as a penalty.

Originally posted here:
High court is skeptical of ‘tax’ in health care law

On 18 February 2012, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) established a High Level Panel to examine what it referred to as 'the debilitating problem of illicit financial outflows from Africa'.

In a statement issued a day ahead of the launch of the panel, UNECA asserted that:

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki chairs the panel. The concern with a net leakage of resources from Africa is as old as the anti-colonial politics of liberation. It has, however been given new impetus, generally as part of anti-corruption initiatives but specifically in the wake of declining levels of aid from developed countries.

There is a growing perception that the gap between the available finance and what is required can perhaps be filled by the closure of the most significant avenues of resources drainage. The extent of such drainage remains a matter of speculation, with the figures pertinent to Africa ranging between $50 billion and $80 billion per year. Various sources have attempted to quantify the scale of the problem, including Transparency International (2004), financial research group Global Financial Integrity (2005), Christian Aid (2007) and the Tax Justice Network (2007).

The absence of unanimity on this score is probably attributable to the fact that the terrain concerned is quite broad, and each organisation can only be exposed to part of it at any given point in time. It is less important to achieve consensus on scale than it is to achieve it on the measures to be taken to stem illicit financial outflows from Africa.

Several months ago, I lamented the absence of concerted efforts by the relevant authorities against abusive transfer pricing transactions, despite their suspected prevalence in African countries. The UNECA initiative offers some hope of a consensual and systematic approach to such transactions.

The UNECA Panel has undertaken to study the nature, pattern, scope and channels of illicit financial outflows from Africa. It will use the data gathered to sensitize governments, citizens, policy makers, and political leaders in Africa. It pledged to mobilise the support of development partners for effective measures to curb such outflows to be adopted. It is ultimately its goal to influence policies at national, regional and international levels to 'neutralize' illicit financial outflows from Africa.

It goes without saying that tackling this age-old problem will not be a walk in the park. The Panel will probably be aware of some of the thorniest challenges that have impeded previous initiatives. It is somewhat odd that the unavailability of good quality, comprehensive and up to date information is among the most critical. Researchers who have done substantial work in this area, such as Raymond Baker, have found this an insurmountable challenge.

Part of the blame for this may be laid on the absence of consensus among countries that are linked together through trade of what information is tax-relevant to them. An agreement on this should be followed by the extraction, from the sectors concerned, of as much of that information as is available, so that it can be shared.

As Mr Mbeki observed, sometimes there are glaring disparities between exporting and importing countries on the quantity or quality of commodities exchanged between them. Since intra-African trade is relatively low compared to that between African and non-African countries, much of the tax-relevant information will be located beyond the continent. How much of it is accessible to African countries?

See the rest here:
Africa: Illicit Outflows From Africa Exceed 'Normal' Corruption

By David Voreacos - Tue Mar 27 04:00:01 GMT 2012

The transfers came amid criminal probes of at least 11 Swiss financial institutions, including Credit Suisse Group AG, with the tax division leading or assisting each prosecution.

The transfers came amid criminal probes of at least 11 Swiss financial institutions, including Credit Suisse Group AG, with the tax division leading or assisting each prosecution. Photographer: Gianluca Colla/Bloomberg

The U.S. Justice Department has lost almost 30 percent of its tax prosecutors in the past month, slowing a U.S. crackdown on offshore banks that enabled tax evasion, according to four people familiar with the matter.

Twenty-five of the 95 prosecutors in the tax division left headquarters in Washington for six-month details with U.S. attorneys around the country, and another three took permanent assignments, according to the four people, who declined to be identified because they arent authorized to speak publicly.

Many of the lawyers handled cases involving foreign banks or financial advisers suspected of helping U.S. clients cheat on taxes, the people said. The transfers came amid criminal probes of at least 11 Swiss financial institutions, including Credit Suisse (CSGN) Group AG, with the tax division leading or assisting each prosecution.

To move one-third of these people from that effort will significantly compromise such enforcement at the very time it is needed to deal with the huge amounts of offshore cases coming to the tax division, said Nathan Hochman, a former assistant attorney general who oversaw the tax division under President George W. Bush.

The prosecutors have significant experience, training and knowledge when it comes to the enforcement of tax laws pertaining to overseas accounts, said Hochman, now a partner at Bingham McCutchen LLP in Santa Monica, California.

The division also investigates identify theft, illegal tax shelters and other crimes, while approving every tax case filed by the 94 presidentially appointed U.S. attorneys serving the Justice Department around the country.

Offshore non-compliance by U.S. taxpayers remains a top priority for the Justice Departments Tax Division, said Charles Miller, a Justice Department spokesman. We will continue to pursue those cases vigorously.

The rest is here:
U.S. Tax-Evasion Probes Said to Slow as Prosecutors Transfer