Free Republic

President Obama's budget proposal includes new tax increases that hit everything from deductions for top earners to packs of cigarettes. Though the president's newly released plan claims to include $580 billion in new revenue over the next decade, when all taxes and fees are counted the real number is slightly higher than $1 trillion. Republicans already have said they will not countenance new tax increases, after they already agreed to raise rates on top earners as part of the fiscal crisis deal. But both sides are sure to engage in an exhaustive debate in the weeks and months ahead, particularly...

Freshman Tea Party Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) is incensed that Republicans caved in the payroll-tax debate, and is putting the blame squarely on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “I don’t think there’s a revolt with respect to Speaker Boehner,” Gowdy said Thursday night on Fox’s "Your World With Neil Cavuto." "I think the license tag of the truck that just ran over us has Kentucky license tags. For the life of me, I cannot understand when the Senate is going to find something they care enough about to stand on policy and principle.”Last week, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a...

House speaker John Boehner is set to sign an offer from Obama to accelerate negotiations. Republicans in the House of Representatives have capitulated in the showdown over the payroll tax, handing Barack Obama an important victory going into election year. Under pressure from other senior Republicans for blocking a bill that would extend tax cuts to millions of Americans, the House speaker, John Boehner, is backing away from his insistence that any deal must cover a full year. A deal agreed by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate on Saturday covers two months, to allow further negotiations in January. It...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. law meant to snuff out billions of dollars in offshore tax evasion has drawn the criticism of the world's banks and business people, who dismiss it as imperialist and "the neutron bomb of the global financial system." The unusually broad regulation, known as FATCA, or the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, makes the world's financial institutions something of an extension of the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service -- something no other country does for its tax regime. Conceived as a way to enlist the world in a crackdown on wealthy Americans evading tax, it gives...

President Obama on Friday kept up the pressure on Republicans to agree to revenue increases in a deal to raise the debt ceiling, claiming 80 percent of the public supports Democrats' demand for tax increases. "The American people are sold," Obama said. "The problem is members of Congress are dug in ideologically." Throughout the press conference, Obama blasted Republicans for ignoring what he said is the will of the American people by rejecting tax increases that would balance out spending cuts in a debt package. "This is not an issue of salesmanship to the American people," Obama said. "I hope...

After meeting for exactly 90 minutes, the president and members of congress achieved absolutely nothing except for what ZH readers already knew: that a debt deal has to be reached by July 22 or else. "President Barack Obama said Sunday that "we need to" work out a debt deal within the next 10 days as he convened a meeting with congressional leaders, aiming to fashion a deficit reduction package for the next 10 years. As the meeting opened, Obama and the leaders sat around the table in Sunday casual dress. Asked whether the White House and Congress could "work it...

(Washington, DC) -- Republican congressional leaders are reportedly agreeing to billions of dollars in revenue increases as federal deficit discussions continue. Republican Senator Jon Kyl announced the move today saying revenue increases don't necessarily mean tax hikes. On the Senate floor Kyl said, quote, "If the government sells something and gets revenue from it, that's revenue." He also suggested user fees for government services could provide additional revenue. He says all the revenue increases Republicans have agreed to amount to between 150 billion and 200 billion dollars.

Fiscal Policy: The latest data show a record number of people with no tax obligation. We also have the highest-earning nontaxpayers ever. With more riding the wagon and fewer pulling, it should soon break down. A record number of the 142 million tax returns filed in 2008 resulted in no taxes owed, according to the Tax Foundation's analysis of the latest IRS data. About 51.6 million returns, or 36.3%, were filed by those whose deductions, exemptions and tax credits wiped out any federal income-tax obligation. These aren't people who have overpaid their taxes or had so much withheld from their...

President-elect Barack Obama follow through right away on his plan to hike the taxes of Americans making $250,000 or more? Incoming White House Chief of Staff Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) proved elusive when asked whether – in light of the continuing financial crisis – president-elect Barack Obama planned to postpone raising taxes on wealthier Americans. Appearing on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” Sunday, Emanuel said that the president-elect plans to push forward with his plans for middle class tax relief while remaining mum on Obama’s plans to raise taxes on upper-income Americans. The Washington Post and other media outlets...

Taxes: On the eve of President Obama's first State of the Union address, two Democratic congressmen are advising him to extend the Bush tax cuts instead of letting them expire. Now that's a stimulus. We hear that the administration is considering taking a more populist tack as it sails the choppy political waters of 2010. Some of President Obama's plans reportedly include several tax tidbits for the "middle class," including a doubling of the child care tax credit for families below $85,000 in income, and $1.6 billion for child care and a cap on student loan payments. Such transparent populism...

Fiscal Policy: The new year saw the death of the estate tax. But like Freddie Krueger, this epitome of class warfare and wealth redistribution is sure to return to wreak havoc among the living. Once dubbed the "Paris Hilton" tax, the levy is supposed to target the inherited wealth of the super-rich who really didn't earn it or don't really need so much of it. Or so we're told. But at some point, even inherited wealth was created and taxed in its creation. The death tax is double taxation, and just because you can't take it with you doesn't mean...

Reform: The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee wants levies on insurers to pay for ObamaCare and fines for families who don't sign up. We can cut costs and expand coverage without sacrificing freedom.To keep ObamaCare alive, Montana Democrat Max Baucus has proposed a Rube Goldberg scheme of fees and fines on insurers and the uninsured designed to forcibly bring everyone into the loving and protective arms of the nanny state. To help finance his Plan B, Baucus would impose annual fees of $6 billion on health insurers, $4 billion on medical-device makers, $2.3 billion on drug manufacturers and $750...

Tax lobbyists and policy wonks believe a national sales tax is looming, though they say it’s extremely unlikely to be tied to already controversial healthcare reform legislation. Talk is heating up because of the U.S. budget situation. Many observers believe there simply isn’t enough money coming in under the existing tax structure to pay for programs advocated by both parties. The U.S. is the world’s exception in that it does not have a national sales tax, which is known around the world as a value-added tax, or VAT. Conservative activist Grover Norquist is using the talk to enlarge his anti-VAT...

Subtitled: Understanding the revenue impact of Bush's tax cuts. Obama first foreign-policy crisis looks like it is going to be the foreign nature of having people with power equal to his telling how it is going to be. This town appears to be big enough for two queens: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants Congress to consider repealing President George W. Bush's tax cuts well before they expire in 2010, in contrast to what President-elect Barack Obama is proposing. / In an interview aired Sunday, Pelosi said, "I don't want them to wait two years to expire because they have to...

Maybe it's because tax season is looming ominously -- or maybe it was your long list of campaign promises -- but taxes are at the top of my mind when thinking about my financial wishes for 2009 What makes the tax code so mucky? Over the last 22 years, Washington has engaged in games that could be called Hide the Unpleasant Reality and Give Me Credit. For instance, welfare has a negative connotation, so we did away with some direct payments to the poor and created the earned income tax credit for the working poor. This provision can give as...