Sean Malone’s “No Vans Land”: How a Small Businessman Beat NYC’s Public Transit Union

ReasonTV·

Published on Aug 18, 2013

“When you restrict someone like Hector from running his business, when you hit him with fines and prohibitions, and you give him all these restrictions” says Sean Malone, the Creative Media Director of the Charles Koch Institute, “you’re not killing some big business. What you’re doing, in this case, is harming immigrant guys.”

Malone sat down with Nick Gillespie of ReasonTV to discuss his new online documentary, “No Vans Land.” It tells the story of Hector Ricketts, a Jamaican immigrant who settled in New York City and started a commuter van service. Ricketts’ vans catered to a neglected market: healthcare workers in the outer boroughs, far from Manhattan, who were underserved by public transportation. He offered fares that were lower than city buses, while receiving no subsidies from taxpayers.

As Ricketts’ business grew, he came into conflict with the city. The metropolitan transit workers union perceived his vans as a threat to their livelihood. The politically powerful union pressured the city to crack down on the entire commuter van industry, imposing restrictions and fines that made it difficult to conduct business.

With time, tenacity, and the assistance of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, Ricketts was able to take on the city bureaucracy, and win the right to stay in business.

Malone continues to make documentaries about the struggles of small entrepreneurs. His next project champions entrepreneurs in the hair braiding profession, who’ve created jobs in Mississippi by eliminating arbitrary barriers to enter the field.

Go to http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/08/16… for downloadable versions and subscribe to ReasonTV’s YouTube Channel to receive notifications when new material goes live.

Runs about 6:50.

Produced by Todd Krainin. Camera by Amanda Winkler and Krainin.

Related articles

• Video: Sean Malone’s “No Vans Land”
• Sean Malone’s “No Vans Land”: How a Small Businessman Beat NYC’s Public Transit Union
• When regulations attack: Meet Hector Ricketts, small-biz success story stifled by government

IRS Protectionism: New Licensing Scheme Challenged in Major Federal Lawsuit

 

Uploaded by InstituteForJustice on Mar 12, 2012

For more visit http://www.ij.org/IRS

Congress never gave the IRS the authority to license tax preparers, and the IRS can’t give itself that power.

But last year the IRS imposed a sweeping new licensing scheme that forces tax preparers to get IRS permission before they can work. This is an unlawful power grab that exceeds the authority granted to the IRS by Congress.

The burden of compliance will fall most heavily on independent tax return preparers and small businesses. Unsurprisingly, big firms such as H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt support the licensing scheme. As The Wall Street Journal explained: “Cheering the new regulations are big tax preparers like H&R Block, who are only too happy to see the feds swoop in to put their mom-and-pop seasonal competitors out of business.”

These regulations are typical government protectionism. They benefit powerful industry insiders and at the expense of entrepreneurs and consumers, who will likely have fewer options and face higher prices. But tax preparers have a right to earn an honest living without getting permission from the IRS. And taxpayers—not the IRS—should be the ones who decide who prepares their taxes.

That is why on March 13, 2012, three independent tax preparers joined the Institute for Justice in filing suit against the IRS in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. This lawsuit challenges the IRS’s statutory authority to impose this licensing scheme, and seeks to overturn regulations that would affect an estimated 350,000 tax return preparers, forcing many of them to stop working in the occupation of their choice.