Free Republic

In about 9 months, Americans will come face to face with ObamaCare. It will happen when they sit down to fill out their tax returns. My guess is that most people will be angry. ObamaCare and the IRS will work hand in hand in the implementation of the law, as Byron York points out today: "A look at the text of the health care law reveals that much of it consists of amending the Internal Revenue Code to give the IRS more power. When Obamacare goes fully into effect in January, every American will have to prove to the IRS...

The first budget from Senate Democrats in four years includes nearly $1 trillion in new taxes but would not balance the budget. The blueprint unveiled by Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on Tuesday to her Democratic colleagues would also turn off the next nine years of the sequester and replace those spending cuts with a 50-50 mix of tax increases and spending cuts. The budget would dedicate $100 billion to economic stimulus in the form of infrastructure spending and job training.

Consumer spending in the U.S. rose in January even as incomes dropped by the most in 20 years, showing households were weathering the payroll-tax increase by socking away less money in the bank. Household purchases, which account for about 70 percent of the economy, climbed 0.2 percent after a 0.1 percent gain the prior month, a Commerce Department report showed today in Washington. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 76 economists called for a 0.2 percent advance. Incomes slumped 3.6 percent, sending the saving rate down to the lowest level since November 2007. Employment gains, the rebound in...

Senate Democrats plan to draft a budget blueprint that calls for significantly higher taxes on the wealthy, oil and gas companies and corporations doing business overseas, reopening a battle over taxes Republicans had hoped to lay to rest with the “fiscal cliff.” For nearly four years, Senate leaders have ducked their legal duty to craft a comprehensive budget framework. Now, however, Democrats see the budget process as “a great opportunity” to pursue additional tax increases — and to create a fast-track process to push them through the Senate, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

(Reuters) - Americans are beginning to feel the pinch from Washington's decision to embrace austerity measures aimed at bringing down the nation's budget deficit. Paychecks across the country have shrunk over the last week due to higher federal tax rates, and workers are already cutting back on spending, which will drag on the economy this year.

President Barack Obama in 2008, and again during the 2012 election, promised absolutely, positively no tax hikes on the middle class. The rich, however, must pay more: "It's not me being stubborn, it's not me being partisan -- it's just a matter of math." How does Obama intend to pay for our cradle-to-grave welfare state? Why, by charging the dastardly "millionaires and billionaires" who "can afford to pay a little bit more." No more extending the Bush-era tax rates for the rich. To do so, Obama tells us, would "cost" $700 billion -- over 10 years. So this "break" for...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Hey, folks, have you seen the economic news today? Have you heard about the unemployment numbers today? (laughing) Gross domestic product, have you heard about any of that? Because I have it here, and it sucks. It's a disaster. The economy of this country remains a disaster. And we, the American people, have just been deceived in ways that nobody contemplated. And what we now have is the biggest tax increase in the history of the world. What we have been told by the chief justice of the Supreme Court and four liberals on the court: Obamacare...

President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees—the Christmas Tree Tax—to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama will use a news conference Thursday morning to push Congress to act on his jobs plan, a senior administration official said. Obama will likely endorse the so-called "millionaire's surtax" included in a jobs bill filed by Senate Democrats on Wednesday night, the official said. The surtax in the bill introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is a 5.6% tax hike on earnings over $1 million -- up from the 5% initially proposed. It would raise more than enough to fully pay for the president's $447 billion jobs bill within the required 10-year window,...

Here’s a quick refresher for President Obama on the devastating impact tax hikes will have on jobs and the economy, courtesy of President Obama: Higher Taxes “Will Have the Effect of Fewer Jobs.” “US President Barack Obama on Thursday urged Congress to pass the tax deal he brokered with Republican foes, saying rejecting the compromise would hurt the economy and cost US jobs. … ‘[I]f this framework fails, the reverse is true. Americans will see it in smaller paychecks that will have the effect of fewer jobs,’ he said.” (AFP, 12/9/10) President Obama Said He Was “Absolutely Convinced” That Preventing...

President Obama is reviving his battle to kill oil-and-gas industry tax breaks and seeking billions of dollars in other energy-related revenues as part of his wider deficit-cutting and jobs proposals . The White House on Monday sent Congress a plan to pay for Obama’s $447 billion “American Jobs Act” and also cut the deficit by over $3 trillion in 10 years. Several of Obama’s energy tax proposals have sputtered in the past amid resistance from Republicans and oil-state Democrats. But they are part of a White House effort to sharpen the contrast between the president and Republicans over raising...

A rotten Easter egg for homeowners is part of the tax bill passed by the lame-duck Democrat Congress and signed into law by President Obama, Dec. 17. A provision to allow homeowners to deduct local property taxes without itemizing was let lapse. About two-thirds of Americans don't make enough money to make it worth itemizing. The provision saved homeowners about $1.6 billion per year.

Liberals find themselves in a tax trap. A tax bill trap, that is. While the recently enacted tax bill certainly has elements with which conservatives can rightfully disagree, there are far more – and far bigger – parts for liberals to dislike. Following the adage “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” conservatives should love this legislation. The most obvious problem for liberals with the extension of all the Bush tax cuts for an additional two years is the bipartisan mention of its positive economic effect. This has become the consensus selling point for this legislation. The question that...

As the Obama Administration continues to float the possibility of enacting a Value Added Tax (VAT) as a solution to the growing deficit problem, polls show that such a national sales tax is widely unpopular with the American people. According to a Rasmussen poll, 60% of likely voters are against a VAT if it is simply a way to raise revenue for the government, with only 20% favoring a VAT to raise money for Uncle Sam. If the VAT is used to pay specifically for healthcare, the numbers improve swith 51% of voters nationwide still opposing a national sales tax...

When conservatives like Neal Boortz proposed the "fair tax" (a levy on consumption, not on income), we should have known that the Barack Obama left would seize on the proposal not as Boortz intended it to be -- a replacement for the income tax -- but as an addition to it. Now Obama has let it be known that the value-added tax, or VAT, is "on the table" as he casts about for taxes to lock in his gigantic levels of federal spending. At stake, of course, is our free-market system. When Obama took office, federal, state and local spending...

In an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood on Wednesday, President Obama refused to rule out the imposition of a value added tax (VAT) on Americans. On Tuesday, Obama's economic adviser Austen Goolsbee refused six consecutive opportunities to do the same when repeatedly questioned by journalist Mark Halperin. In fact, the White House has never ruled out the possibility of a VAT, which may explain why the president is now attempting to alter the terms of his central campaign promise. During his campaign, the president made a “firm pledge” that no family making less than $250,000 per year would see “any...

Obama Suggests Value-Added Tax May Be An Option By CHARLES BABINGTON Apr 21 WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days. Before deciding what revenue options are best for dealing with the deficit and the economy, Obama said in an interview with CNBC, "I want to get a better picture of what our options are." After Obama adviser Paul Volcker recently raised the prospect of a value-added tax, or VAT, the Senate voted...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's Democratic allies in the Senate promise to cut the deficit by almost two-thirds over the next five years, but their budget plan could threaten about 30 million people with tax increases averaging $3,700 in 2012 and after because of the alternative minimum tax. The alternative is tax increases elsewhere in the revenue code averaging up to $100 billion a year after 2011 to continue alternative minimum tax relief and also curb taxes on people inheriting large estates.

The news that the United States has become a two-class society – i.e., half of Americans pay federal income taxes and half don't – has bounced around the media and shocked Americans. Most people had no knowledge of this appalling economic fact. Obama's stimulus law will add nearly $800 billion in new means-tested welfare spending over the next decade. That means about $22,500 for every poor person in the United States, which will cost over $10,000 for each family that pays federal income taxes. According to the Tax Foundation, married taxpayers pay three-fourths of all federal income taxes, whereas two-thirds...

We already knew this was coming, of course — despite the dishonest, and sometimes preposterous, assurances from the bill's (suddenly verrry quiet) salesman-in-chief. Just in case Sen. Dick Durbin's accidental articulation of the truth wasn't enough to convince you that congressional Democrats knew full well that higher premiums are an inevitable outcome of Obamacare, this New York Times article should do the trick: Fearing that health insurance premiums may shoot up in the next few years, Senate Democrats laid a foundation on Tuesday for federal regulation of rates, four weeks after President Obama signed a law intended to rein in...