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California’s governor and legislative leaders on Wednesday proposed raising $52 billion to fix the state’s roads through a big gasoline tax increase, higher car registration fees and a charge on emission-free vehicles. The 10-year plan would boost gasoline excise taxes for the first time in more than two decades, raising them 12 cents per gallon — a 43 percent increase. The tax would rise automatically with inflation. For the first time, owners of zero emission vehicles would pay a $100 annual fee because they use public roads but don’t pay gasoline taxes that fund highway maintenance. The plan also includes...

TALLAHASSEE — A wide-ranging $296.8 million tax cut package from the House would eliminate sales taxes on diapers and feminine hygiene products, offer tax "holidays" for purchasing school and hurricane supplies, and trim a commercial lease tax. The package, introduced Wednesday by the House Ways & Means Committee, is smaller than a collection of tax cuts proposed by Gov. Rick Scott. The fate of the proposals will depend on upcoming budget negotiations between the House and Senate. Ways & Means Chairman Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, said the House package would provide multi-year relief that could potentially reach $949 million and grow...

California’s governor and legislative leaders on Wednesday proposed raising $52 billion to fix the state’s roads through a big gasoline tax increase, higher car registration fees and a charge on emission-free vehicles. The 10-year plan would boost gasoline excise taxes for the first time in more than two decades, raising them 12 cents per gallon — a 43 percent increase. The tax would rise automatically with inflation. For the first time, owners of zero emission vehicles would pay a $100 annual fee because they use public roads but don’t pay gasoline taxes that fund highway maintenance. The plan also includes...

We can make suggestions until Doomsday, Obamascare is here to stay It appears that Obamacare is here to stay. Those doctors who grew up with the conditioning notion of utopian “social justice” love it. Those doctors who hate the government intrusion and regulation into their medical practice hate it. The American public is split as well along those lines. Nobody really believed that Obamacare, deplorably named the Affordable Care Act, would be amended to benefit the wishes of the American people, much less repeal it. Once a bureaucracy has been ensconced and billions and billions of dollars have been spent...

The White House tried very hard Friday to send a clear message that the success of President Donald Trump’s tax and infrastructure agenda does not turn on the fate of the Obamacare replacement bill. House Speaker Paul Ryan, only minutes after pulling his health care bill, appeared to at least partially contradict that. “Yes. This does make tax reform more difficult,” Ryan said. “But it does not in any way make it impossible.” Even though Ryan went on to say the House would “proceed with tax reform,” he appeared to be far less optimistic than the two top Trump administration...

An obscure bureaucratic policy that allowed IRS officials to target conservative and Tea Party tax exemption applicants during the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns is still in place, meaning the same abuses may be continuing, according to a nonprofit government watchdog. The federal tax agency’s policy requires IRS officials to stop processing tax-exempt applications that are “likely to attract media or congressional attention,” the Cause of Action Institute said in a report made public Wednesday. The policy also directs IRS officials to prepare “sensitive case reports” for their supervisors and to ignore “the merits of the application” if it involved...

Philadelphians will soon no longer be able to purchase 2-liters or 12-packs of Pepsi soda products at local stores, according to grocers. Managers of two independent Philly grocery stores confirmed they’d received letters from Pepsi saying the company would no longer distribute 2-liters or 12-packs to Philadelphia stores, as of March 20.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Some of the wealthiest New Yorkers are asking the state to raise their taxes. Eighty people including George Soros, Steven Rockefeller and Abigail Disney wrote to lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo saying they and other top earners should pay more to support schools, roads, bridges and programs to help poor and homeless residents of the state. "Now is the time to invest in the long-term economic viability of New York," the letter reads. "We need to invest in pathways out of poverty and up the economic ladder for all of our fellow citizens, including strong public...

After a several day self-imposed silence, Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday morning, slamming both Snoop Dogg's recent controversial music clip and last night's MSNBC leak of his 2005 tax return.   Two days after rapper Snoop Dogg released a music video in which he shoots a "f--king clown" dressed as Trump with a toy gun, an angry Trump tweeted  "Can you imagine what the outcry would be if @SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama? Jail time!"   As the Wrap reported yesterday, a representative for the U.S. Secret Service said that...

Breaking on Drudge, from Rachel Madcow's twitter feed. She claims to have Trump's Tax Returns.

The state Senate has already endorsed the measure. Legislators in the House could consider it as soon as Tuesday. Companies that provide the internet service can apply for repayments of some, or all of sales taxes on a project. The state Board of Economic Development decides the amount of the refund.

The National Institutes of Health is spending nearly $400,000 studying transwomen in Uganda. A new grant worth $163,996 was awarded just six days into the Trump administration, continuing a project that was initially awarded in April 2016.

Corporate Taxes: Nobody knows for sure whether President Trump supports a "border adjustment tax." That's fitting, since nobody really knows what this tax would do to the economy. Trump has been hot and cold about the border adjustment tax. On Thursday, he told Reuters that he thought the tax "could lead to a lot more jobs in the United States." On Friday, Trump's top economic advisor reportedly said it was a nonstarter. The tax is part of a wholesale rewrite of the corporate tax code proposed by the House GOP leadership, which they say will vastly simplify taxes, lower rates,...

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday that he wants to see "very significant" tax reform passed before Congress' August recess, in what could prove a tough task as lawmakers work through a complex agenda. "We want to get this done by the August recess. We've been working closely with the leadership in the House and the Senate and we're looking at a combined plan," he told CNBC in his first television interview since assuming office. President Donald Trump has repeatedly made pledges for tax reform and regulatory cuts since he took office, creating optimism among business executives and investors. So...

The Democratic mayor of Philadelphia is touting the success of the city’s beverage tax and lashing out at the “greed” of retailers as sales crater by as much as 50 percent. City officials say the unpopular soda tax is already exceeding expectations, raking in $5.7 million in revenue in January. The revenue is more than double what officials estimated, which goes towards early childhood education programs in the city. Despite the supposed success of the policy, sales among retailers are getting crushed. Stores are reporting beverage sales down 30 to 50 percent and are planning layoffs to cope with the...

The yearly ritual of submitting tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) may not be something most of us look forward to doing, but do we really want the federal government to do it for us? Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has proposed legislation that would require the IRS to offer you the convenience of doing your taxes for you. The actual bill would require the IRS to create programs that help taxpayers process and file their federal taxes for free. Sen. Warren says taxpayers spend, on average, 13 hours and about $200 for tax preparation services to file...

A group of chief executive officers are praising House Republicans' proposed border-adjustment tax as the debate escalates. Border adjustability, which would subject imports to U.S. tax and exempt exports "is consistent with the tax policies of nearly every other country in the world, and it would effectively end the 'Made in America' tax that creates an unfair advantage for foreign-based companies at the expense of U.S. jobs and economic growth," the CEOs wrote in a letter to congressional leaders Tuesday. Sixteen business leaders signed the letter, including the CEOs of Boeing, GE, McIlhenny Company, Pfizer and S&P Global. The chief...

The news media has been reporting on plans by a coalition of activist groups to hold a massive anti-Trump Tax March in Washington and at least 60 other locations on April 15. Unreported by the news media is that most of the listed partners and support organizers of the march are openly financed by George Soros or have close links to Soros financing. The website for the march, which is slated for the deadline for Americans to file their tax returns, claims that its mission is to get Trump to release his tax returns and more. The site relates: President...

Some Democrats prepare to withhold paying federal taxes in potentially the biggest tax boycott since the Vietnam War, according to a report from The Guardian. The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC), which campaigns for federal tax boycotts, says there has “renewed interest in war tax resistance following Trump’s inauguration,” with the website’s traffic doubling in the past month. “Something has clicked in the minds of thousands of people across the country… we don’t want to pay for Trump’s agenda! While many of the reasons people are fed up—extreme militarism, mass incarceration, police brutality, and mass deportations—are part of...

Full Title: Major Blow to Obamacare Mandate: IRS Won't Reject Tax Returns That Don't Answer Health Insurance Question The tax agency has stopped requiring individual filers to indicate whether they maintained health coverage or paid the mandate penalty as required under the law How much difference does a single line on a tax form make? For Obamacare's individual mandate, the answer might be quite a lot. Following President Donald Trump's executive order instructing agencies to provide relief from the health law, the Internal Revenue Service appears to be taking a more lax approach to the coverage requirement. The health law's...