Bernie Becker

<b>&nbsp;</b>If you decided to essentially check out on tax news a couple days before Christmas — well, you missed a lot.

State legislative season is back.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development announced that its new tax policy director would be Manal Corwin, a former top Treasury official.

More mainstream organizations on the right have been disdainful about the Fair Tax — the plan for a national sales tax — for years now.

Why then hasn’t cutting grocery taxes been more of a priority in the various state legislative sessions happening around the country?

The Pillar One agreement would affect big multinational corporations from a broader array of industries, and essentially seeks to better align where a company pays taxes with where its customers and business are located.

The colleges’ actions, Smith wrote, “raise several questions, including whether your institutions are fulfilling their educational purposes as required to receive 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.”

Deficit hawks, tax wonks blanch at the unintended consequences of the politically popular idea.

With a huge swath of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts set to expire at the end of next year, the presidential candidates are putting down markers on the issue.

Over the weekend, Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith said that IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel sent a memo to employees on Friday informing them of their legal right to make protected disclosures to Congress.