Free Republic

So why am I telling this story? Because there is a tax benefit if you have an accident that is a total loss, and you receive an insurance payout for said loss. It’s called a “sales tax affidavit” and is available by law in all 50 states. There are some variations depending on the state, the model year of the vehicle, damage assessment, etc., but it is still the law of the land.

12 year old goes Shopping Alone for First Time!

Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and a likely 2024 candidate for president, delivered on an earlier promise Wednesday when he said new gas stoves — in fact, all gas appliances — should be exempt from his state’s sales tax. DeSantis rolled out the first budget of his second term, and among the proposed breaks for taxpayers is a $7 million permanent exemption on appliances fueled by combustible gas, such as natural gas propane, butane, liquefied petroleum gas and syngas. The move comes as the debate over gas stoves has heated up in recent weeks. In an interview with Bloomberg...

BOISE, Idaho — A House committee on Friday introduced sweeping tax legislation that would raise Idaho’s sales tax to the highest in the nation while eliminating most property taxes on owner-occupied homes. The House Revenue and Taxation Committee approved a possible hearing on the bill that also uses some of the increased sales tax money to raise the grocery sales tax credit from $100 to $175. The move will bump Idaho’s sales tax from 6% to 7.85%, the highest in the nation, according to the nonprofit Tax Foundation group that analyzes tax policy. California currently has the highest sales tax...

The state of Arkansas embarked on its biggest highway construction program ever undertaken by the Arkansas Department of Transportation, and the people couldn't be more excited. "Arkansas is a small state with a population of just three million, but this project touches every corner of the state, with a total of 36 projects in 19 corridors," said Keli Wylie, administrator of the CAP Program and alternative project delivery administrator. The goals of the Connecting Arkansas Program include improving transportation connections between cities; increasing capacity by widening highways to four or more lanes; improving safety; and easing congestion. Supplementary aims of...

The Louisiana Legislature voted overwhelmingly Thursday to move approximately $300 million annually from a fund that pays for higher education and health care to a fund that pays for large transportation projects. Supporters have said the spending will not only improve the state’s infrastructure system, but that it will also create construction jobs. Critics are concerned the proposal would exacerbate an already expected budget deficit in July 2025 affecting state universities, hospitals and other health care programs. Gov. John Bel Edwards needs to sign the legislation for it to become law. Edwards hasn’t decided if he approves of the bill...

Nowadays, the government needs more than gasoline taxes to fund its vast mission to expand, replace and preserve transportation routes in Washington state. Legislators have drawn up a menu of 33 tax and fee increases under the proposed 16-year Forward Washington plan, updated last week by Senate Transportation Committee Chair Steve Hobbs, D-Lake Stevens. That way, perhaps no single cost will provoke enough public fury to torpedo the plan. “Nobody likes to be taxed, but we also want to make this fair as we spread it across different sectors,” Hobbs said Friday. His approach holds direct gas-tax hikes to 9.8...

Washington solidifies goal to end sale of new gas-powered cars by 2030 A bill to promote hydrogen-powered vehicles is now a state law. “Giving residents more access to purchase greener vehicles is one more way we can work together to lower greenhouse gas impacts across the state,” Gov. Inslee said, as he signed the bill. Senator Brad Hawkins sponsored the bill, SB 5000, which creates an eight-year statewide pilot project for the reduction of sales tax on purchases of fuel-cell electric vehicles. “It’s had a long journey through five different committees, but it’s definitely generated a great deal of conversation...

WESTERN SPRINGS, IL — Western Springs and Hinsdale appeared to have found agreement on the style of the new pedestrian bridge over Interstate 294. This week, the Western Springs Village Board received more detailed numbers on the village's cost of maintenance for the bridge, which would be next to 47th Street. Western Springs was told a couple of months ago that its costs would amount up to $250,000 in 25 years to repaint the entire bridge with a painted finish, plus $60,000 for picket-style fencing. But Illinois Tollway official Nicole Nutter told the Western Springs Village Board on Monday that...

On Election Day, Americans will cast their vote for President of the United States. While easily the most high-profile thing on the ballot, this is not the only important decision voters will be making. State politicians -- rather than reform government to cost less -- are angling for higher taxes. In Arkansas, for example, voters will be asked if they want to write a permanent sales tax increase into the state constitution. If “YES” wins the vote, the people of Arkansas will see their state sales taxes hiked by about 9%, taking roughly $300 million a year away from residents...

Is it better to live in a state with no income tax? It’s a great question considering we already have to set aside a portion of our paychecks for the federal government. The case for removing an individual income tax typically goes like this: states that don’t dip directly into their residents’ pay become beacons for growth. They’re better at creating jobs and keeping a core of young, educated workers from moving to other states. The American Legislative Exchange Council reports that over the past decade the nine states without a personal income tax have consistently outperformed – on GDP...

Three years after the colossal failure of demonetisation the Narendra Modi government has embarked on a similar venture, the FASTag programme, this time targeting road users across the country. But just a day before the November 30 deadline, by which date all vehicles plying the highways would have been mandatorily required to affix an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tag on their vehicles, the government blinked. And, like demonetisation, the design of this scheme also reflects a simpleton’s naivete. The announcement that those without the tag would be charged double the tariff at the toll gates set off a firestorm of...

EBay Inc., the online auction company with 180 million buyers around the world, earned $34 million of profit in Florida in 2014, according to state auditors. At Florida’s official corporate income tax rate of 5.5 percent, eBay should have paid more than $1.8 million in state taxes -- enough money to hire 40 new teachers. But records show eBay actually paid $18,810 -- not even enough to hire one. It’s not an isolated example. Auditors say Sanofi Pasteur Inc., one of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers, earned an estimated $55 million of profits in Florida between 2008 and 2013 --...

With a laundry list of tax hikes proposed by Congress or Democratic candidates for president, it's understandable why many would view Washington as the biggest threat to taxpayers’ wallets. However, policymakers at the state and local level are just as likely to reach into taxpayers’ pockets as those in Washington, D.C. Take Election Day 2019, which featured nearly 1,000 tax and fiscal ballot measures.  Publicly-accessible data from secretaries of state and county election offices found 954 measures across 19 different states and hundreds of localities, most of which were negative measures that would impact taxpayers and businesses. There were at...

Taxpayer watchdog group: Emails show sales tax revenue going toward projects that are ‘not what most voters have in mind’..[ full title] ... A Colorado Springs tax watchdog group obtained communications between city employees that show discussion of using sales tax revenue for traffic reduction and bike lane infrastructure while other city officials have denied that’s where funds would be directed. City voters approved a road improvement ballot measure called 2C in 2015, which is up for renewal in the Nov. 5 election. 2C is a 0.62 percent sales tax increase that is supposed to be dedicated to road maintenance...

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) has done voters a favor by spelling out what kinds of new taxes it would take to come up with that much money. Warren justifies many of her programs by saying all it would take is “two cents” from the wealthy. That’s a reference to her 2% wealth tax on ultra-millionaires. But Medicare for All would be so expensive that if you taxed top earners at 100%—that’s right, if you took all the income of couples earning more than $408,000 per year—you’d still fall far short. And everybody getting taxed at 100%...

A first-draft plan for Arkansas roadway spending shows lane additions to the Greenwood bypass and Arkansas 22 between Charleston and Fort Smith, as well as potential Interstate 49 construction in the Fort Smith area. Dubbed the CAP-2 draft by the Arkansas Department of Transportation, the Connecting Arkansas Program-2 list is a “data driven” starting point work that will largely be contingent on the continuation of a half-percent sales tax next year, according to ARDOT spokesperson Danny Straessle. “The governor proposes to make it permanent,” Straessle said. “This is a list of about 20 years of work.” In a recent meeting,...

Ever since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in late 2017, Democrats and a few Republicans have decried how the law’s $10,000 cap of the state and local tax deduction harms schools, local communities, home values, first responders, and middle-class families. Fast forward almost two years later and these false claims are not going away. House Democrats recently announced a hearing scheduled for Tuesday where many of the common myths are likely to be repeated. Here are a few of the most common misconceptions. Myth #1: The Cap Hurts Middle-Class Taxpayers Before the 2017 tax cut capped the state...

For over six years, California has had a top marginal income tax rate of 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation. About 150,000 households in a state of 40 million people now pay nearly half of the total annual state income tax. The state legislature sold that confiscatory tax rate on the idea that it was a temporary fix and would eventually be phased out. No one believed that. California voters, about 40 percent of whom pay no state income taxes, naturally approved the extension of the high rate by an overwhelming margin. California recently raised gas taxes by 40...

Starting this week, companies are now required to charge you if you live in California. If you order something online from merchants with a brick-and-mortar store in California like Target or Kohls, consumers pay California sales tax. But buying something online from stores that don’t have an actual store in California, until now, didn’t charge a sales tax. California has now closed that loophole. The state law changed on April 1. Now, it doesn’t matter if an out-of-state company has a real store in California or not, online transactions