Free Republic

If Trump wants to hit the Democrat base hard and put maximum pressure on the Dem's, he needs to announce that during the "Chucky Schumer Shutdown" there will be no IRS refund checks. Between the earned income credit and the child tax credit, low income taxpayers with children can get over $8,000 in tax refund without paying anything in. These people drool and chomp at the bit, screaming if their refunds don't arrive ASAP. They will put lots of pressure on the Dem's.

Cops came to the headquarters of Newsweek and IBT Media at 7 Hanover Square this morning. More than a dozen police showed up this morning at the office that serves as the shared headquarters for Newsweek magazine and IBT Media, which rebranded in 2017 as Newsweek Group, according to multiple sources who were present. The reason for the visit was not clear, but one employee said police were taking photos of the company’s servers. Employees said the police appeared to be from the NYPD, not the FBI. NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The office is...

About two dozen NYPD offficers and investigators from the Manhattan district attorney’s office raided the offices of Newsweek and its parent company, IBT Media, on Thursday. IBT Media was co-founded by Jonathan Davis and Etienne Uzac. The IRS placed a $1.2 million federal tax lien against Uzac in December 2017. The agents were said to be photographing servers in the offices, but not downloading any files at the offices on 7 Hanover Square, according to sources. They appeared to be photographing the serial numbers on the machines, said a source.

Illinois Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin is full of righteous indignation these days regarding President Trump's comments in a private meeting. Following the meeting, Durbin ran outside to whine to the media. Trump wants immigrants who come to America wanting to be Americans who will make America and themselves successful. Durbin wants immigrants who come to America wanting to be Democrats dependent on government who will make the Democratic Party successful. He wants to bring in the huddled masses yearning to get free stuff, and the American citizen taxpayer be damned. The fact is, Durbin is just another political hack who...

GOP may increase IRS’s budget © Getty Images Republicans are weighing whether to increase the IRS’s funding so that the agency has more money to implement the new tax-cut law. GOP lawmakers were highly critical of the agency during the Obama administration, but now want to make sure that their signature legislative achievement is carried out effectively. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday that the administration is talking to Congress about providing the IRS with more money for implementation purposes. And GOP lawmakers have expressed an openness to a funding increase.

An obscure provision in the tax code could force the foundation started by Paul Newman to sell the food company Newman's Own. The foundation is trying to coax lawmakers to shield Newman's Own from an onerous tax bill that could force divestment. Executives are hoping Congress will put a last-minute fix in any potential deal to fund the government past Jan. 19.

Started my 2017 taxes. The dreaded individual mandate question is on there.

The latest notion by the Trump Resistance: Turn state tax bill into a charitable contribution to get around Republican tax law. Sacramento I’ve routinely slammed California’s Democratic leaders for their plodding lack of creativity in dealing with the state’s many crises. Pick a problem (infrastructure, poverty, housing, etc.) and they have the same basic solution: Raise taxes, expand a bureaucracy, and give the government more power and money to “do something.” It would never dawn on them that the biggest problems are in the areas where they’ve intervened the most. But it’s time to give credit where it’s due. Their...

The tax plan that President Trump signed into law last week creates one of the largest new loopholes in decades: a 20% deduction for “pass-through income.” Pass-through income is business income that is immediately “passed through” to the owner’s personal tax return, thereby avoiding the corporate income tax. Proponents of the Republican tax plan claim the cut benefits small businesses, but that’s a red herring. In reality, the new deduction disproportionately benefits the wealthy, penalizes workers and, in part because it is so complex, will ultimately reward those who can afford the best tax advice. The new deduction could have...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) said "we are all going to lose patience with the attorney general" over his perceived apprehension to prosecute people like Lois Lerner and Peter Strzok. "I love Jeff Sessions. I think he is a great guy, but he has got to do the job he is there to do," Huckabee said. He said Sessions, a former Alabama senator, must "enforce the law... universally. Without regard to who the person is." Huckabee said Sessions may be holding off on prosecuting Lerner, the former IRS employee allegedly implicated in the conservative nonprofit targeting scandal, or Strzok,...

A Major Victory: State Releases Clinton Server Emails from Weiner’s Laptop! Judicial Watch Opposes Secrecy in Obama IRS Scandal Happy New Year! A Major Victory: State Releases Clinton Server Emails from Weiner’s Laptop! Today, the U.S. Department of State began releasing Huma Abedin’s work-related documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that were found on her estranged husband Anthony Weiner’s personal laptop. This is a major victory. After years of hard work in federal court, Judicial Watch forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents. We have been following this case closely because...

Sean Zielenbach writes a check to prepay his property taxes Wednesday at Alexandria City Hall. People across the United States rushed this week to pay their 2018 property taxes early, hoping to take advantage one last time of a federal deduction that will be scaled back under the tax-code overhaul signed by President Trump. On Wednesday, however, the ­Internal Revenue Service announced that those prepayments could be deducted only in limited circumstances, a decision that appeared to invalidate many taxpayers’ efforts and raised the prospect that local governments could come under pressure to refund millions of dollars. The announcement...

Last week Politico reported on an explosive in depth investigation surrounding how the former President Obama administration allowed the terrorist group Hezbollah to continue a multinational drug running and money-laundering operation to fund terrorism in order to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. The DEA’s “Operation Cassandra” was intentionally blocked; while the administration allowed drug-running into the U.S., weapons procurement to kill Americans and money laundering to facilitate all the terrorist activity. Supporting Hezbollah was down-played and intentionally permitted by the Obama administration.

“They’ve been burned. They’ve been hammered. They’ve been bludgeoned,” George Washington University law professor Miriam Galston explains to the Washington Post. “They’re trying to survive.” In this heartbreaking discussion during this special time of year, the “they” are the poor, long-suffering folks . . . at the Internal Revenue Service. It is a terrible, too-long-ignored scandal, which should tear at the heartstrings of every American. “Years of conservative attacks on the Internal Revenue Service have greatly diminished the ability of agency regulators to oversee political activity by charities and other nonprofits . . .” posits the recently published Post analysis....

Personal Exemption A personal exemption is the amount that you can deduct from your income for every taxpayer and most dependents claimed on your return. Current law: $4,050 per person, which means a married couple with two dependents would receive a personal exemption of $16,200. New law: The personal exemption is eliminated. The exemption returns after 2025.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which oversees the Internal Revenue Service, reports that in fiscal 2016 the IRS closed four cases in which IRS employees were found to have violated a law governing their behavior toward taxpayers and that these violations included “harassing and abusing taxpayers and using obscene and profane language.” In 1998, Congress enacted a law imposing restrictions on the way that IRS employees could treat taxpayers. As explained by the IG, this included a prohibition on an IRS employee contacting a taxpayer at “unusual or inconvenient times,” contacting the taxpayer directly if the taxpayer “has...

A top Democratic senator said Wednesday he fears the IRS may be too biased to handle the audit of President Trump’s taxes, saying the fact that the agency is led by an acting commissioner who is also a top Trump political appointee at the main Treasury Department is worrisome. Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said an agency already roiled by problems of political taint stemming from the tea party targeting needs to be extra careful to avoid conflicts now. “Yet, we now face a situation where the acting IRS commissioner is concurrently one of...

The weaponization of the IRS to suppress the organization of conservative nonprofits when the tea party movement was in full bloom, remains an open sore on our democratic political system. The weight of the most feared agency of the federal government was used to suppress a political movement. Despite the payment of millions of taxpayer dollars to groups that were prevented from getting their status approved because their politics were disagreeable to the incumbent president and his supporters in the federal bureaucracy, the damage cannot be undone, and the perpetrators have suffered no judicial consequences. Los Lerner, the point woman...

If Republicans succeed in limiting the state-and-local tax deduction, one hope is that this could finally inspire a come-to-Jesus moment in prodigal high-tax states. Democrats in Illinois ought to be especially chastened by new IRS data showing an acceleration of out-migration. The Prairie State lost a record $4.75 billion in adjusted gross income to other states in the 2015 tax year, according to recently IRS data released. That’s up from $3.4 billion in the prior year. Many of the migrants were retirees who often flock to balmier climes. But millennials accounted for more than a third of the net outflow...

Former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner told a federal court last week that there’s “no legitimate” reason why the public should see her testimony about her role in tea party targeting, pleading with a judge to keep her deposition permanently sealed. Ms. Lerner and her former chief lieutenant, Holly Paz, have said they faced death threats in the past, and say they fear any more attention to their behavior would spur a new round of harassment. They said there’s “exceedingly low” public interest in having their depositions released, and they said tea party groups are pushing for disclosure out...