Free Republic

First, the basics of the presidentÂ’s new tax proposal: Obama presented his 529 tax plan during his last State of the Union address. The plan consists of raising $1 billion over 10 years by taxing capital gains realized in withdrawals from 529 savings accounts. According to surveys cited by the White House, 70 percent of 529 account assets are held by families earning over $200,000 per year. But what exactly are 529 savings accounts -- and who usually invests in them? Glenn Reynolds explains: Though millions of Americans have been putting money into "tax free" 529 plans to save for...

With an increase in electric and hybrid vehicles along with better fuel-efficient vehicles, changing Bay Area drivers habit are posing a serious problem for state coffers. As motorists use less and less gas, gas tax revenues to pay for state highways, roads and bridges shrink. Meanwhile, as gas prices fall, so does the sales tax generated by fuel sales. In California, among the taxes collected on fuel is a 2.25% sales tax on gasoline and a 9.67 percent tax on diesel.

The president was a conservative's conservative. He had campaigned on reducing taxes and made it his legacy. But when a gas tax increase was proposed, it was a different story. In his weekly radio address, he said, "We simply cannot allow this magnificent (highway) system to deteriorate beyond repair." That was 1982. The president was Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, the disrepair Reagan feared has come to pass. The federal gas tax of 18.4 cents hasn't been raised since 1993, and the Highway Trust Fund is severely underfunded. A 10- to 15-cent a gallon increase would provide enough money to meet the...

There are gong to be many millions of newly befuddled, fearful, and angry taxpayers this April, hit with the consequences of Obamacare’s social engineering when they try to file their taxes in April. Many will suffer unexpected financial penalties and costs, especially those accustomed to filing under the simplified tax forms applying to straight salaried people with standard deductions. H&R Block is warning that “[n]o one can understand” the New Obamacare tax code requirements for filing this year. In fact, millions of people accustomed to filing the postcard-sized 1040EZ form will now have to file extremely complicated and detailed forms,...

As the old saying goes, there are two things that are certain in life, death and taxes. Tomorrow night during his 2015 State of the Union speech, President Obama will announce that people paying taxes their entire lives just isn't good enough. The President wants the current 40 percent death tax rate increased to 60 percent. Americans for Tax Reform breaks down the details: 2. Stealth increase in the death tax rate from 40% to nearly 60%. Under current law, when you inherit an asset your basis in the asset is the higher of the fair market value at the...

Those Americans who didn’t get health insurance last year could be in for a rude awakening when the IRS asks them to fork over their Obamacare penalty — and it could be a lot more than the $95 many of them may be expecting. The Affordable Care Act requires those who didn’t have insurance last year and didn’t qualify for one of the exemptions to pay a tax penalty, which was widely cited as $95 the first year. But the $95 is actually a minimum, and middle- and upper-income families will actually end up paying 1 percent of their household...

 SEE: Cruz: Abolish the IRS January 13th , 2015 ”Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said Monday that Republicans should take advantage of their control of Congress to abolish the Internal Revenue Service. “We need to pass fundamental tax reform making our tax code simpler, flatter, fairer,” he said Monday at Heritage Action’s 2015 conservative policy summit. ”And I’ll tell you, the single most important tax reform, we should abolish the IRS.” What is discouraging is, the above article goes on to say that Senator Ted Cruz ”… acknowledged it’s not really possible to abolish the IRS or adopt a flat tax...

Now that the Republicans have regained the control of the Senate that they lost in the 2006 midterm election, conservatives are salivating about the prospect of “real” or “genuine” tax reform. Revenue-neutral tax reform is based on the suppositions that there is such a thing as a fair, just, or correct amount of taxation and that government revenue should not be decreased. The opposite, of course, is the case. Revenue-neutral tax reform masks the real problem — government spending. It shifts the debate from the amount of wealth the federal government confiscates from American taxpayers to the manner in which...

North Carolina recently offered Boeing $683 million in tax incentives to open a plant in North Carolina to build Boeing’s new 777X jetliner. The NC bid failed, as did those from some other states, when Boeing decided to build the 777X in its home state of Washington where there is no state, personal, or corporate income tax.

SEE: GOP targets budget process for tax reform 1/13/15 ”The quiet push, led by South Dakota Sen. John Thune, seeks to use the potent tool known as budget reconciliation to give both the GOP and President Barack Obama the sweeping victory on tax policy that business groups want, which could include a significant cut in corporate tax rates as well as provide funding for a long-term transportation bill.” This is what happens when Republican voters elect Washington Establishment candidates to office. They use their power to manipulate a corruptible system of taxation to meet the Chamber of Commerce’s demands rather...

While few Americans were fortunate enough to see a holiday bonus this year, there is one gift that American motorists have been enjoying of late; lower gas prices. Currently sitting at more than a dollar below the average price last year, U.S. drivers are projected to save somewhere between $380 and $750 dollars during 2015 if the prices hold. While wages have remained stubbornly flat for most workers, gas prices have provided a rare glimmer of hope for American workers, who have been struggling with an anemic job market, labor participation rates not seen since the 1970s, and median family...

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) promised reporters this week that his committee would not pass any new taxes – oh, sorry, “user fees” – on gasoline. Speaking to reporters at the GOP retreat in Hershey, Pennsylvania on Thursday, Ryan flatly asserted that his committee “won’t pass a gas tax.” He even had the gall to call it a “tax,” which is perhaps the best indication of his sincerity. The former Republican vice presidential nominee recently ruled out a 2016 White House bid and will instead pursue broad tax code reform as the chairman of...

Politicians and pundits have spent a great deal of time trying to find the precise meaning of the results of the 2014 election. No one disputes that it was a great day for Republicans, but there are still many valid and varying interpretations. But whether the election was a true mandate for the GOP or simply a repudiation of President Obama, voters most certainly did not hand Republicans the U.S. Senate and elect them to a historic House majority so that they could raise federal gasoline taxes. This should really go without saying, but some Republicans are already discussing this...

The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party will present a unified front this year in favor of a transportation funding package, including about $1 billion of increased taxes and fees. Legislative DFL leaders unveiled a proposal Monday that dovetails closely with Gov. Mark Dayton's plan, along with that of advocacy group Move MN: almost $600 million per year in new gasoline taxes, plus $125 million in vehicle registration fees and hundreds of millions of dollars more for metro-area mass transit. The plan forestalls the possibility of a three-way fight among Dayton, the DFL majority in the Senate and House Republicans -- who oppose any...

Gas prices are plunging across the country, a product of surging U.S. energy production that has put the country in the same company as Saudi Arabia and Russia. However, in a strange twist of fate, that same dynamic is bringing to the fore a topic once thought to be anathema, especially in a Republican-dominated Congress: higher gas taxes. The drop in fuel prices has occurred for a record 102 consecutive days, according to the AAA, putting more than $14 billion of disposable income in consumers' pockets. However, the federal gas tax has been lodged at 18.4 cents for more than...

If you thought the Democrats – recently chased into the minority – were going to sit by quietly while the GOP put all the proposals on the table, think again. Their agenda to fix America (at least in terms understood by your dog and your veterinarian) will still be on the table. The rallying cry of income inequality isn’t going anywhere, and Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) is ready to lay out the next plan in what the Washington Post laughably calls a “stark shift in messaging” for 2015.Okay, boys… let’s see what you’ve got. Senior Democrats, dissatisfied with the...

Suddenly everyone in Washington wants a gas tax hike — apparently so that consumers don’t save too much money at the pump. As prices keep falling, the politicians and the moochers in Washington want a piece of the action. Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois and even Republicans such as Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee have linked arms with the entire road-building industry and green groups that want the cost of fuel to go up.Mrs. Pelosi won’t even hide her cynical motivation: With gas prices low, maybe motorists won’t notice that we’re gouging them: “If there’s...

Governor Dayton wants to build billions of dollars worth of roads and bridges during the next 10 years, but he's not doing much bridge-building with House Republicans. At a news conference, he slammed their $750 million transportation plan that doesn't call for any new taxes. "The panel of experts I convened said there's a $6 billion shortfall over the next 10 years and their response yesterday was $200 million from the general fund and $550 million from la-la land," Dayton told reporters at a news conference Friday morning. Dayton also accused Republicans of not even wanting to solve the problem.

For 32 years I’ve been advocating a major tax on petroleum. I’ve got as much chance this time around as did Don Quixote with windmills. But I shall tilt my lance once more. The only time you can even think of proposing a gas-tax increase is when oil prices are at rock bottom. When I last suggested the idea six years ago, oil was selling at $40 a barrel. It eventually rose back to $110. It’s now around $48. Correspondingly, the price at the pump has fallen in the last three months by more than a dollar to about $2.20...

Record-low gas prices across the U.S. have given rise to fresh talk in Washington of raising the federal gas tax for the first time in over 20 years, with leading Republicans now saying a hike must not be ruled out. The GOP has long resisted calls from business leaders and others to boost the 18.4 cent-per-gallon tax as a way pay for upgrades to the nationÂ’s crumbling roads and bridges. Yet in recent days, senior Senate Republicans have said they want to keep options open and that "nothing is off the table" when weighing the best mechanisms to pay to...