Free Republic

House Democrats are plotting a huge tax raid on the wealthy, businesses and investors to raise $2.9billion to cover the cost of President Joe Biden's domestic plans, leaked documents reveal. The plans are a major rollback of Donald Trump's tax cuts and will see the corporate rate hiked from 21 per cent to 26.5 per cent according to the draft proposal circulating among Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee. Democrats are also expected to propose a 3 per cent surtax on individual income above $5million, which alone will raise $127billion. The plans are a major rollback of Donald...

Important Questions on the ballot, next Tuesday, November 4 There are two State questions that are proposed constitutional amendments. One relates to your right to bail and pretrial release, and the other is on Open Space. If you are in Morris County, there is a third question that is also about Open Space.   Please use this information to inform your friends and family, and tell them it is critical for them to get out to vote! Public question No. 1 - End the Right to Bail !!!! A “yes” vote on this constitutional amendment would END your current right...

Walgreens leaving Illinois for Switzerland? SPRINGFIELD – I picked up my vacation photos at Walgreens the other day.  And I didn’t hear any French, German or Italian spoken.How surprising.I’ve read that the Deerfield, Ill.,-based drugstore chain is considering becoming a Swiss corporation. I’ll admit the thought of a company that is essentially an American icon becoming a foreign corporation gives me pause.  After all, Walgreens is one of Illinois’ premier companies. It was founded here in 1901 and is headquartered in Deerfield, Ill. And now they are talking about moving their headquarters to Switzerland.But what exactly does it mean when...

Yesterday, the Senate narrowly voted (51-48) to raise taxes on 1.2 million small businesses, which will likely kill more than 700,000 jobs at a time when nearly 13 million Americans are out of work. Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Jim Webb (D-VA) joined all Republicans in bipartisan opposition to the tax hike. This is President Obama’s economic plan. This is what he asked Congress to do. And he recently told a fundraising crowd that his economic plan has been working. “Just like we’ve tried [Republicans'] plan, we tried our plan—and it worked,” he said. But Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner,...

Trenton If the citizens of New Jersey like candor, Chris Christie is the governor they’ve been waiting for. Or I should say citizens of “the failed state” of New Jersey, as he tends to call it. It’s a “broken state” and a state that’s “broke.” New Jersey was in “a shambles,” he says, when he became governor in January. It’s “a fiscal basket case,” suffering from the “madness” of tax increases and excessive government spending, a “wonderful state” that’s been brought to “the edge of bankruptcy” and faces “the ruination” of its economy and “the quality of life that we...

Over 4.1 million Americans have lost their jobs during Obama's first year in office. The unemployment rate is over 10 percent or 17.3 percent if those who have given up on finding a job are counted.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday criticized U.S. President Barack Obama's plan to raise taxes on U.S. companies' foreign operations, saying it would amount to double taxation that will hurt the global economy. "This is a serious decision for the world economy," Putin said at a meeting of the Presidium, the government said on its web site. "If taxes are imposed on all companies working abroad, then it will mean the total destruction of the system for avoiding double taxation." Putin instructed Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin to hold discussions on the plan with Obama's administration. Kudrin met with finance ministers...

The Obama administration has riled corporate America by cracking down on secretive offshore tax havens. But now a big onshore refuge — Delaware — is drawing scrutiny, too. Squeezed by hard times, states are pushing to collect taxes that corporations are avoiding through Delaware shell companies. Maryland has reclaimed $267 million in such taxes, including interest and penalties, and has assessed an additional $143 million. About 20 states have adopted laws that would effectively keep companies from using the decades-old tax loopholes in Delaware. At stake are tens of billions of dollars in annual tax receipts, funds that states say...

Listen to President Obama, and the status quo seems a cesspool. Pervasive "loopholes" engineered by "well-connected lobbyists" allow U.S. multinationals to skirt American taxes and outsource jobs to low-tax countries. Myth: Aided by those overpaid lobbyists, American multinationals are taxed lightly -- less so than their foreign counterparts. Reality: Just the opposite. Most countries don't tax the foreign profits of their multinational firms at all. Myth: When U.S. multinationals invest abroad, they destroy American jobs. Reality: Not so. Myth: Plugging overseas corporate tax loopholes will dramatically improve the budget outlook as multinationals pay their "fair" share. Reality: Dream on.

<p>President Barack Obama wants to end $26 billion in oil and gas industry tax breaks, calling them ''unjustifiable loopholes'' in the tax system that other companies do not get.</p> <p>Obama's proposed fiscal 2010 budget, details of which were released Thursday, also more clearly spells out his intention to shut down a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and calls for ending a government subsidy that helps utilities license and plan for new nuclear power plants.</p>

President Obama revealed Monday that he's half a supply-sider. If only someone could explain to him the other half. We have a tax code, the President said, "that says you should pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, New York." That sounds like a great argument for lowering taxes on the guy creating jobs in Buffalo. Alas, that's not what he has in mind.

... One of the most controversial [Obama business tax increase] proposals would delay deductions against overseas profits until those profits are brought back to the United States. In theory, that makes perfect sense, because matching deductions and income in the same year is a fundamental principle of United States tax law. In practice, applying the matching principle to overseas operations could put American companies at a competitive disadvantage to foreign companies that do not face United States tax laws. It could even impede job creation in the United States — exactly the opposite of what the Obama administration intends. That’s...

President Barack Obama promised sternly on Monday to crack down on companies ''that ship jobs overseas'' and duck U.S. taxes with offshore havens. It won't be easy. Democrats have been fighting -- and losing -- this battle since John F. Kennedy made a similar proposal in 1961. Obama's proposal to close tax loopholes was a reliable applause line during the presidential campaign, but it got a lukewarm response Monday from Capitol Hill. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the plan needed further study, even though similar ideas have been around for years....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Monday will propose changing provisions in the tax code that he says encourage U.S. companies to move jobs overseas, as part of a broader package aimed at saving $210 billion over 10 years. Obama will seek to follow through on a campaign promise to change the tax treatment of American firms with overseas operations. That portion of his plan -- opposed by such firms as Pfizer Inc and Oracle Corp -- would raise more than $100 billion in revenue over the next decade. Obama vowed in a February address to the U.S. Congress...

The Obama administration will roll out details Monday of what aides are calling a far-reaching crackdown on offshore tax avoidance, targeting many U.S.-based multinational corporations and wealthy individuals. President Barack Obama will flesh out a proposal included in his February budget blueprint seeking to curb the practice of parking foreign earnings in offshore tax havens indefinitely. By some estimates, $700 billion or more in U.S. corporate earnings have accumulated in overseas accounts in recent years. The plan to be announced Monday will go further. It aims to change the legal treatment of offshore subsidiaries and structures that companies have used...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama has proposed a dramatic tax increase on the foreign profits of U.S. multinationals, in a 10-year budget blueprint released Thursday. The tax increase on foreign income, taken together with proposals to crack down on offshore tax cheating, would swell federal coffers by an extra $25 billion a year in revenue by 2014, according to projections by White House budget officials. The budget plan would also impose a $31.5 billion tax increase, over a 10-year period, on oil companies, by repealing various tax breaks now enjoyed by the sector. In addition to that, Mr. Obama would...

Comparing International Corporate Tax Rates: U.S. Corporate Tax Rate Increasingly Out of Line by Various Measures by Robert Carroll Fiscal Fact No.143 The U.S. has left the major features of its business tax system unchanged over the past fifteen years. Meanwhile, other countries have been changing theirs, potentially hurting the competitiveness of the United States. Perhaps most emblematic of the trend abroad is lower corporate tax rates in virtually all developed nations. As a result, the United States now has the second-highest statutory tax rate among OECD member nations. Figure 1 below tells this story: The U.S. became a low-tax...

Millions of entrepreneurs, teachers and parents with children in college have a financial stake in whether Congress, in the dying hours of Republican rule, revives tax breaks that expired 11 months ago...Residents of Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming - each without an income tax - will miss out on an average $1,500 deduction for state and local sales taxes...Before the election, Republicans tried unsuccessfully to link the tax cuts to a bill that would reduce the estate tax, which most Democrats find unacceptable, and raise the federal minimum wage, which many Republicans dislike.

Business lobbyists are set to square off against state lawmakers who are considering reducing residential property taxes and recoping some of the revenue by raising property tax rates for business. The idea, which would require an amendment to the state constitution, is to be discussed next week at a Sept. 7 legislative committee meeting. It was initially touched on at a committee meeting earlier this month. Business advocates are outraged that the topic is being discussed at all. “From our perspective, that is not reform,” says Jim Leonard, vice president of government relations for the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce....

Where you live can have a big impact on how much you pay in taxes each year. The spread, according to numbers crunched by the nonprofit Tax Foundation, might not be enough to make you pull up stakes and move to a new state, but it can give you a case of tax envy. The state and local burden ranges from 6.4% (Alaska) to 13% (Maine).