All Things Considered

"Buying a car sucks," Scott Painter says. "It's something that most consumers fear."

Back in the '90s, Painter started a company to try to change this. "The name of the company was Cars Direct," he says. "The mission was to sell cars directly."

Painter wanted his company to build virtual dealerships that would let people go online and buy cars. But after talking with a few car execs, he realized nobody would even consider his idea.

A new surge of Syrian refugees is swamping humanitarian aid agencies in southern Turkey, where official refugee camps are full.

But the newcomers may be just the tip of the iceberg. In central Syria, civilians under attack by combat jets, tanks and artillery have fled towns and villages north of the city of Hama, and thousands are on the move.

"What they do now, they burn everything ahead of them. They bomb this area with everything they've got," says Hossan Hamadah, a Syrian-American from Texas.

If you usually wait until April to file your taxes, you might want to hurry up — before identity thieves beat you to it. Using stolen names and Social Security numbers, these criminals file fake tax returns with false wage and withholding information. This generates big — and fraudulent — refunds, before the real taxpayer gets around to filing.

The Internal Revenue Service says it's busy working to combat what prosecutors call a fraud epidemic.

Most taxpayers don't have any idea something is wrong until they hit the send button on their taxes and get an error message.

The iconic brand Maker's Mark had planned to cut its alcohol content from 90 proof down to just 84, due to dwindling supply. Now, after a serious backlash from fans, the company has reversed its decision and will stick to the original alcohol content. Melissa Block hears from one liquor store owner in Louisville, Ky., about his customers' reactions to the decision.

The man who brought Showtime to Los Angeles has died. Under Lakers owner Jerry Buss, the team won 10 NBA championships. His players loved him, and his business smarts helped market the team in ways the league had never seen before. Buss had been hospitalized recently and was undergoing treatment for cancer. He was 80 years old.

Three years of spiraling economic crisis in Greece have devastated every sector of the economy. The Greek media are among the hardest hit. Many newspapers and TV outlets have closed or are on the verge, and some 4,000 journalists have lost their jobs.

Many people believe the country's news media have failed to cover the crisis — and lost credibility along the way. And many Greek journalists acknowledge that a massive conflict of interest sooner or later had to explode.

Transcript

JACKI LYDEN, HOST:

Well, it may not be the happiest of anniversaries, but get out the candles anyway. This month marks the 100th anniversary of the American income tax.

Joining us to talk about a century of the tax we all love to hate is Joe Thorndike. He has a pretty exotic job: tax historian. He's just written a book called "Their Fair Share: Taking the Rich in the Age of FDR." He's also the director of the Tax History Project. Joe, thanks for joining us.

JOE THORNDIKE: Thanks for having me.