Jacob Kay Lasser (October 6, 1896 - May 11, 1954) was an American accountant who wrote the best selling book Your Income Tax. Max Schuster, Lasser's publisher, said "Lasser is to taxation what Einstein is to relativity."[1]
Lasser, the son of immigrants from Austria–Hungary, was born in Newark, New Jersey.[2] He studied accounting at New York University from 1915 to 1917.[2] Lasser served in the United States Navy in World War I.[2]
Lasser received a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering in 1920 and a master of science in industrial engineering in 1923, both from Pennsylvania State University.[2] Lasser worked initially at the accounting firm of Touche, Niven & Company.[2] In 1923, he opened his own firm, J.K. Lasser & Company, at 1440 Broadway in Manhattan, operating it until his death.[2] He lived in South Orange, New Jersey, and at the Hotel Beverly in Manhattan.[3]
In 1939, he published the first edition of his guide to United States federal income tax laws; it sold 23,000 copies.[2] Leon Shimkin brought the book to Simon & Schuster, which became one of the company's most profitable titles.[4] Lasser had done tax work for Simon & Schuster.[5] Besides Simon & Schuster, Lasser's firm had over 250 clients in the publishing industry.[1] The 1946 edition of Your Income Tax sold seven million copies.[2] The book was a perennial best-seller for decades and is still published annually.[5] From 1943 until his death, he wrote a monthly column on taxation in the Journal of Accountancy.[2]
He wrote several books on personal finance with Sylvia Porter.[6] Walter Lord, who was a tax lawyer before he wrote a best-seller on the Titanic, assisted Lasser in writing his tax manuals.[7]
In 1953, Lasser bought WICH, a radio station in Norwich, Connecticut.[8]
Lasser died in Manhattan in 1954. His estate was the subject of a New York appellate decision regarding ownership of stock in his company, Business Reports, Inc.In re Lasser. 128. A.D. 2d. 531. N.Y. App. Div.. March 2, 1987. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=751643521892522069 . September 4, 2022. The Lasser income tax books are now published by John Wiley & Sons.[9] His accounting firm merged with Touche Ross in 1977.[10]
His wife, Therese Lasser (1904–1979), founded a group to help breast cancer survivors.[11] Lasser had one son, Donald Judd Lasser, and one daughter, Barbara Lasser, who married Lee Edmund Gray.[12]