Free Republic

The Treasury Department released this month figures showing that federal tax revenue exceeded $3 trillion in fiscal year 2014—the first time revenue surpassed that mark. Yet the deficit was still almost $500 billion. Clearly, the government continues to spend too much. We should tax enough to fund the legitimate functions of government, like national defense, homeland security, public health and others, but no more. The new record also shows us that, absent policy changes, the amount of revenue the government takes out of the private sector keeps getting bigger. Tax revenue grows as income grows, no matter what kind of...

Drivers in Chicago have gotten wise to speed cameras, budget figures show, and now the city needs to come up with $50 million in revenue. Chicagoans are costing the city tens of millions of dollars -– through good behavior. Mayor Rahm Emanuel underestimated the intelligence of Chicago drivers, and the city paid for it big time. On a smooth, wide, well-travelled stretch of Irving Park Road, running between two cemeteries — no homes, no stores, no parking — the city of Chicago is trying to balance its budget. Each flash means a photo; each photo, a violation. Each violation: a...

Government overspending, gleefully celebrated by record tax collections of your hard earned dollars. The rapacious government needs to be fed. This Washington Times piece did an nice overview of FY2014: The Treasury Department unveiled its Fiscal Year 2014 numbers, which showed that the government’s revenue, for the first time ever, hit the $3 trillion mark. However, the government still overspent its revenues, leaving a $483 billion deficit. Supporters of President Obama are touting the “success” of a $483 billion deficit by pointing out its the lowest deficit since 2008. A “mere” $483 billion deficit is not something to be celebrated....

Maryland is now facing a $405 million revenue shortfall over this year and next, largely the result of sluggish job growth, stagnant incomes and a weak housing market, state officials reported Wednesday. Five years after the official end of the recession, Maryland continues to confront fiscal trouble. This latest shortfall will force Gov. Martin O'Malley's administration and the General Assembly to make deeper cuts than previously expected to balance the state's roughly $40 billion budget. "Another year has passed, and ordinary families and small businesses haven't even recovered to where they were before the financial collapse, much less made up...

As Texas lawmakers convene in January for the next legislative session, their chief task will be to write a two-year budget. And the state's next comptroller will be charged with estimating how much revenue lawmakers can expect to work with. The responsibility has become a political minefield, particularly after Comptroller Susan Combs’ estimate ahead of the 2011 session drew criticism for underestimating tax revenue by several billion dollars. Combs’ office recently researched the accuracy of revenue estimates going back 40 years and found that, by one measure, other comptrollers’ estimates have landed farther from the actual number. Since 1942, the...

Kansas has a problem. In April and May, the state planned to collect $651 million from personal income tax. But instead, it received only $369 million. In 2012, Kansas lawmakers passed a large and rather unusual income tax cut. It was expected to reduce state tax revenue by more than 10 percent, and Gov. Sam Brownback said it would create “tens of thousands of jobs.” In part, the tax cut worked in the typical way, by cutting tax rates and increasing the standard deduction. But Kansas also eliminated tax on various kinds of income, including income described commonly—and sometimes misleadingly—as...

<p>French President Francois Hollande woke up to a nasty surprise yesterday - a 14 billion euro shortfall in his budget due to wildly inaccurate priojections of how much revenue would be generated by his massive tax increases.</p> <p>Like politicians in Illinois, New York, and California who banked on big tax incresases on the "rich" to bankroll their spending, Hollande has discovered the law of diminishing returns; people will either seek to avoid the higher taxes or simply refuse to earn the higher income. In the case of France, several high profile citizens have left for greener - and lower tax - pastures.</p>

Since 2008, Mackinac Center for Public Policy analysts have periodically published estimates of cigarette smuggling in 47 of the 48 contiguous states. The numbers are quite shocking. In 2012, more than 27 percent of all Michigan in-state consumption was smuggled. In New York, almost 57 percent of all cigarettes consumed in the state were also illicit. This has profound effects on the revenue generated by state (and sometimes local) government. Clicking on the graphic at right brings up a chart of estimates we made for 2012. In the "smuggling rate" column a positive percentage indicates a net export state. For...

To the trial judge, the case of Daniel Garcia-Mendoza seemed to be a police stop based on "driving while Latino." Plymouth police officer Ryan Peterson said he was suspicious because "the driver had both hands on the steering wheel and was looking straight ahead." What's more, neither driver nor passenger "were looking at me." Checking the license plate, Peterson learned there was no driver's license listed for the car's owner. Peterson pulled over the 2003 Chevy Tahoe on Interstate 94 in Minneapolis on March 19, 2012. "Luckily for Peterson, perhaps," neither Garcia-Mendoza nor his passenger had a driver's license, the...

Even before resident Allen Moe got socked with a ticket for trying to avoid hitting potholes, I had already renamed a badly pockmarked section of Shannon Parkway in Rosemount "Moon Crater Boulevard." Now, I'm sure many Twin Cities motorists have done similar nomenclature revisions, given the plethora of potholes from this past winter of woe. I hear Wheelock Parkway in St. Paul is now called Wheeloff Parkway. A motorist was seriously injured recently when his airbags deployed after he inadvertently hit a large pothole. Auto shops are overbooked with suspension, tire and alignment repairs. So I was taken aback by...

President Barack Obama plans to ask Congress in early March, as part of his fiscal 2015 budget, to reduce some of the tax advantages for employer-sponsored retirement plans for higher-income earners, according to published reports. Plus, the president wants to limit the value of all tax deductions, defined contribution exclusions and IRA deductions to 28% of income — and include an overall cap on all retirement accounts, including pensions, that could bring in $1 billion a year in new tax revenue, according to a Pensions & Investments report. Read Companies bracing for 1-2 retirement punch . According to the report,...

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday agreed to pay nearly $6 million to a group of police officers who accused their superiors of imposing a secret traffic ticket quota system on the Westside. The settlement, approved unanimously, brings to more than $10 million the amount of taxpayer money spent on payouts and legal fees from the ticket quota cases. But that number could grow because one more officer's case is still pending. The ticket controversy has been a black eye for the Los Angeles Police Department. Ticket quotas are against state law. After the officers’ allegations were made public,...

Chicago's first speed cameras at just four locations issued warnings to more than 233,000 speeders in 45 days, violations that would have totaled $13.8 million in tickets, according to data released by the city today. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has touted his speed camera program as a way to improve traffic safety for children near the city's parks and schools, but the early warning violations from Chicago's first speed cameras are the latest indicator that the fledgling program could be a financial windfall for the city. Emanuel has projected $15 million in speed camera revenue for the remainder of 2013, with...

BEIJING — Nineteen province-level governments in China collected a total of $2.7 billion in fines last year from parents who had violated family planning laws, which usually limit couples to one child, a lawyer who had requested the data said Thursday. The lawyer, Wu Youshui of Zhejiang Province, sent letters in July to 31 provincial governments asking officials to disclose how much they had collected in 2012 in family planning fines, referred to as “social support fees.” He said he suspected that the fines were a substantial source of revenue for governments in poor parts of China. Mr. Wu’s findings...

It is a petition to end what many Tucson drivers describe as a traffic light trap. John Kromko is the man behind the petition. His group, Tucson Traffic Justice, claims the cameras are a scam. ... Ditching the cameras is not as far-fetched as it may seem. More and more cities are shutting down the system including San Diego, Los Angeles and Tempe.

California now has so much projected revenue that Sacramento legislators don't what to do with it, The New York Times' Adam Nagourney reports. The final budget surplus figure for 2014 will fall somewhere between $1.2 and $4.4 billion, depending on who's counting. "An unexpected surplus is fueling an argument over how the state should respond to its turn of good fortune," writes Nagourney. Just three years ago, of course, the state was running a $60 billion deficit. The surplus is almost certainly the result of wealthy Californians trying to bank capital gains before the Bush tax cuts expired, Nagourney says.

Federal accident investigators recommended Tuesday that states cut their threshold for drunken driving by nearly half, matching a standard that has substantially reduced highway deaths in other countries. The National Transportation Safety Board said states should shrink the standard from the current .08 blood alcohol content to .05 as part of a series of recommendations aimed at reducing alcohol-related highway deaths. More than 100 countries have adopted the .05 alcohol content standard or lower, according to a report by the board's staff. In Europe, the share of traffic deaths attributable to drunken driving was reduced by more than half within...

The state of Florida on Saturday filed a lawsuit against BP and Halliburton over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The suit argues that Florida is entitled to the revenues it lost because of the spill. These include a long list of lost taxes -- sales, corporate, cigarette, liquor -- and other forms of revenue...

“Revenue” Redefined: Libs abuse another innocent word by Daniel Clark Sometimes it seems like it would be a good idea to publish a liberal-to-English dictionary. That way, normal people would be able to understand what liberals mean when they take already existing words, and apply meanings to them that are nowhere close to their true definitions. Listening to liberals speak can be like visiting Alice’s Wonderland. Taking things that belong to somebody else is what they call “fairness.” Parading through town while wearing leashes and chains and nothing else is an exhibition of “pride.” Violent criminals who are turned loose...

Democrats say they want to raise as much as $1 trillion in new revenues through tax reform later this year to balance Republican demands to slash mandatory spending. Democratic leaders have had little time to craft a new position for their party since passing a tax deal Tuesday that will raise $620 billion in revenue over the next ten years. The emerging consensus, however, is that the next installment of deficit reduction should reach $2 trillion and about half of it should come from higher taxes. This sets up tax reform as one of the biggest fights of the 113th...