Finance Matters

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Coach's Challenge

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December is here, and for millions of college football fans, that means following their favorite coach to a New Year's bowl game. In Birmingham, Alabama's Nick Saban is reeling from the Crimson Tide's last-second loss to archrival Auburn in this year's "Iron Bowl." In Columbus, Ohio State's Urban Meyer is celebrating 24 straight victories after his Buckeyes beat Michigan by just one point in "The Game." And further west, Washington's Steve Sarkisian is celebrating his Huskies win over the Washington State Cougars in the 106th "Apple Cup."

As always, these coaches and dozens more will be paying attention to the latest Bowl Championship Series standings. But this year, they'll also be paying attention to the IRS. That's because a new strategy might help them block taxes when they switch jobs.

College football coaches can make a lot of money. Alabama's Saban will make at least$5.65 million this year, and 51 coaches make more than the average pro player ($1.9 million). In 27 states, the highest-paid public employee is a

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Hotties and Notties

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Junior high school is a difficult time for parents as well as students. It's a time when boys start to discover girls, and girls start to discover boys. (Reports differ on exactly which group discovers the other first, but it's equally terrifying for most parents.) One of the very first things junior high boys and girls start doing when they discover each other is rating each other — usually on a scale of 1-10. The 9s and 10s form cliques to congratulate each other on their good fortune, while the 3s and 4s learn to tell jokes, plan on making money, or learn to get by with a "great personality." (In case you've forgotten, junior high school can be really cruel.)

It turns out, though, that junior high kids aren't the only ones rating the world around them. Now comes news that two German economics professors

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Bada-Ching!

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The acting world lost one of its brightest lights when Sopranos star James Gandolfini died of a sudden heart attack while touring Italy with his family last month. Gandolfini was the iconic face of HBO's acclaimed drama, which made cable television, rather than the movies, the place for serious actors to "make their bones." Gandolfini himself became the model for a new breed of anti-heroes like Breaking Bad's Walter White and Mad Men's Don Draper. Few critics would dispute The Sopranos place as one of the greatest dramas in TV history.

Hollywood stars have always been famous for bringing home the big bucks, and Gandolfini was no exception. He fought as hard as a real mobster to maximize his pay. But he was legendarily generous, too. Co-star Steve Schirripa, who played Bobby Baccalieri on The Sopranos, recalled that in Season Four, Gandolfini gave each of his co-stars $33,000 for "sticking by him." And after holding up filming on

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The IRS at the Wedding

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You've all heard that April showers bring May flowers. That's fine and all, and it doesn't leave anything for the IRS unless you're a farmer or a florist. But June brings brides — young brides, old brides, blushing brides, even bridezillas. Now the IRS pays attention, because now the IRS gets to reach out for all sorts of extra taxes from the happy couple.

So, Mike and Sarah meet in college, fall in love, and get married. Maybe they host the big day at their college chapel. Maybe they get creative with the reception and throw a barbecue in a barn. What will the IRS think?

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An Apple a Day

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Back when you were a kid, your mom probably told you "an apple a day keeps the doctor away." Well here's something Mom didn't know — apparently, an apple a day keeps the tax man away, too. At least, that's the conclusion we might draw from recent Congressional hearings focused on Apple Incorporated and its strategies for avoiding taxes!

Last month, the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations conducted a hearing compellingly titled "Offshore Profit Shifting and the U.S. Tax Code — Part 2 (Apple Inc.)." The Committee graciously invited Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, to share how Apple avoids U.S. tax. (We can only imagine how delighted Cook was to receive the Committee's "invitation" — no doubt delivered on the same sort of elegant stationery you might use to announce a spring cotillion or send a "thank you" note to Grandmother.)

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Play Ball!

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The 2013 baseball season is barely a month old, and fans are already bickering over the first twists and turns. That's because rabid fans are never content to just watch a game. They have to discuss it — among friends, at the local tavern, and on talk radio. If a pop fly drops for a single behind Giants center fielder Angel Pagan, and no one is there to argue he should have caught it, does it really make any noise?

Statisticians have always delighted in analyzing baseball — some would say, analyzing it to death. So-called "sabermetricians" (followers of the Society of American Baseball Research, or SABR) pore over arcane stats like "batting average on balls in play" (a measure of how many balls in play against a pitcher go for hits, excluding home runs, used to