Free Republic

Planning to vote in November? Ambivalent about the two parties? Well, if you’re concerned about wealthy individuals moving their money offshore to prevent paying income taxes — and forcing you to pay more — then you have just one choice: Vote for Republicans. The same goes if you’re concerned about the middle and working classes being burdened by new taxes and deficit spending. Remember, any plan that talks about taxing the rich means that the dollars will come out of your pocket. Yes, Republicans are the only party whose policies will prevent billions of dollars from being patriated overseas to...

Earlier this year Seattle passed and then, a month later, rescinded a head-tax which would only have applied to the wealthiest companies in the city, places like Amazon and Starbucks. The intent was to raise as much as $40 million a year to fight the homelessness problem the city is struggling with. Next month, San Francisco will vote on a similar proposal. Proposition C is meant to raise as much as $300 million a year from top-earning companies in the city and will spend that money in addition to the $380 million San Francisco is already spending to fight...

A Saturday report from The New York Times found Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, paid little to no federal income taxes from 2009 to 2016 using legal tax mechanisms. An IRS policy known as depreciation is a deduction Kushner Cos. used to diminish its taxable income on properties largely bought with borrowed money. Though not illegal, the filings show how real estate tax codes leave room for profitable maneuvering. The New York Times found Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, paid little to no federal income taxes from 2009 to 2016 — without...

Fiscal Sanity: Which political party is better at managing taxpayer dollars? The latest ranking of states' fiscal condition offers an unequivocal answer. For several years, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University has ranked states based on five measures of their financial condition: cash solvency, budget solvency, the ability to meet long-term spending commitments, state spending and taxes as a share of personal income, and unfunded pension liabilities and debt. And lest anything think that Mercatus — a free-market-oriented group — is fudging the numbers, note that the data used to compile these rankings all come from official state annual...

MA Senate challenger Geoff Diehl (R) discusses new report that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) had faked and inflated tax deductions on her IRS tax returns. Video only, summary below: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/elizabeth-warren-tax-returns-may-231229689.html

It’s taken nearly five years of administrative battles, legislative interference, and lawsuits, but the California state government has finally counted farm workers’ votes in a union election at the state’s largest fruit grower, Fresno-based Gerawan Farming. The final verdict, tallied on Tuesday, explains why the Jerry Brown administration and Democratic statehouse leaders did everything in their power to destroy the votes without counting them. The margin: 1,098 workers voted “no” to the United Farm Workers, with only 197 workers voting in favor of UFW representation. There still are 635 disputed ballots, but even the math geniuses in Sacramento can see...

Chinese power is expanding. Chinese claims to the South China Sea are not going to go away in a hurry. At the moment, American power represents a restraint on Chinese expansion. It is not clear how that will hold into the future. In his landmark foreign policy speech in April 2016 candidate Trump said, “……our resources are totally over extended. ……. the U.S. must be prepared to let these (European and Asian) countries defend themselves. We have no choice.” My unique country, Australia, a predominantly European nation on the edge of Asia, does have very deep emotional, cultural and historical...

For too long the state has held our roads and bridges hostage while increasing spending on other priorities like Medicaid expansion, hoping we taxpayers get so frustrated by traffic we’ll agree to a tax increase. Well, this fall voters will have a choice. As the Denver Chamber of Commerce pimps a 21% state sales tax increase for transit, roads and a slush fund for cities, there will be an alternative as our Fix Our Damn Roads initiative will also be on the ballot. It will force the state to use its large surplus funds and re-prioritize less than 2 percent...

Late last summer, and with great fanfare, Xcel Energy announced its proposal to close the Comanche I & II power units in Pueblo a decade ahead of schedule. They offered as replacement the euphemistically titled “Colorado Energy Plan” , a massive $2.5 billion fuel-switching scheme to move its Colorado customers away from baseload, reliable hydrocarbons in favor of intermittent renewables. ... the Minneapolis-based monopoly utility will force captive ratepayers to cough up at least another $287 million. That’s on top of the modeling errors we already found in their accounting, and Xcel acknowledged. In other words, ratepayers will pay higher...

A few months before he became President Trump's top economic advisor, Larry Kudlow wrote a column urging Trump to index capital gains taxes to inflation. Thankfully, the Trump administration appears to be listening. Not only would indexing fix a glaring problem in the tax code, it would add still more juice to the economy. In a column published by IBD last August, Kudlow called the lack of inflation adjustment for capital gains taxes "an unfair and misguided policy that punishes risk and success." He said Trump "should use his executive authority — as he so often has to drain the...

New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon touted her plan to tax the “ultra-rich” to pay for a single-payer healthcare system after one of the most prominent anti-Trump Resistance groups endorsed her on Monday. The Indivisible movement endorsed Nixon, saying that New Yorkers could count on Nixon to “stand up from progressive values” when “basic human rights” are “under constant threat.” “I am thrilled to receive the endorsement of Indivisible and work together to transform the Democratic Party into one that fights for progressive values and not just big corporate donors,” Nixon reportedly said. “We need bold progressive leadership in the...

Elections have consequences. Just Senator Elizabeth Warren, who suggested that a 50% to 90% personal income tax rate for Americans is not out of the question. Warren made the shocking admission in an interview with CNBC. Warren also promised that Democrats will end President Trump’s tax cuts if they take control of Congress in November 2018. CNBC’s anti-Trump pundit, John Harwood, asked Warren: “If Democrats take the Congress…would you like to see these corporate tax cuts repealed?” Senator Warren replied: “Yeah, I really want to see them rolled back.” Question: “Back to 35%?” Warren replied: “Well, it’s not about the...

The GOP's long-promised change is an offshoot of a tax overhaul last year that cut corporate rates and winnowed down the number of individual tax brackets. On Friday, the Treasury Department and IRS unveiled the new postcard, which will replace the current forms 1040, 1040A and 1040 EZ.

Time and again we hear politicians from different parts of the country profess the virtues of a soda tax. Their reasoning ranges from wanting to improve the public health, by cutting back consumption of unhealthy drinks, to talking about how much revenue it will bring in. This proclivity of nanny statists to push policies to change people’s behavior hues quite closely to Einstein’s definition of insanity: Trying the same thing over and over, expecting different results. Policy makers of all stripes need to abandon their affinity for soda taxes. Put simply, soda taxes just don’t work. Take Berkeley, California, as...

In the battle against litter in the Garden State, plastic bags have been public enemy number one. Several municipalities, mostly along the Shore, have acted on their own to limit plastic bag use either through fees or bans. But for years, efforts for statewide regulation of the bags has failed to gain traction. Now, state lawmakers have decided that it is time to move forward. A new fee on plastic and paper shopping bags is being pushed through the state legislature: The bill cleared budget committees in both the Assembly and Senate on Tuesday and could be passed as early...

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday that new tax forms, designed to make the filing process clearer and simpler for Americans, will be released next week. “Next week we will be unveiling the new 1040 and it will be a postcard as we promised,” he said during a press conference celebrating the six-month anniversary of the passage of tax reform. “Hardworking taxpayers won’t have to spend nearly as much time filling out their [tax forms].” The 1040 form is the U.S. individual income tax return. Republicans promised to simplify the filing process for taxpayers, famously claiming the forms...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court says states can force online shoppers to pay sales tax. The 5-4 ruling Thursday is a win for states, who said they were losing out on billions of dollars annually under two decades-old Supreme Court decisions that impacted online sales tax collection. The high court ruled Thursday to overturn those decisions. snip “Each year the physical presence rule becomes further removed from economic reality and results in significant revenue losses to the States. These critiques underscore that the physical presence rule, both as first formulated and as applied today, is an incorrect interpretation of...

The End of All That's Good and Pure About The Internet https://gizmodo.com/the-end-of-all-thats-good-and-pure-about-the-internet-1826963763 Rhett Jones June 20 2018 The EU has passed an Internet link tax on anyone who links to any EU published content. The tax will be levied against individuals or organizations in any country due to mutual copyright treaty conventions. Article 11 Article 11 has been variously called the link tax or the snippet tax. Designed to mitigate the power over publishers that Google and Facebook have amassed in the last decade, it codifies a new copyright rule for linking to news organizations and quoting text from their stories. Online platforms...

Seattle leaders on Tuesday repealed a tax on large companies such as Amazon and Starbucks after a backlash from businesses, a stark reversal from a month ago when the City Council unanimously approved the effort to combat a growing homelessness crisis. The council voted 7-2 after supporters and opponents packed a meeting with signs saying, "Tax Amazon, housing for all" and "No tax on jobs," with some shouting for more time to discuss the issue. The vote showed Amazon's ability to aggressively push back on government taxes, especially in its affluent hometown where it's the largest employer and where some...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KCRA) — San Diego businessman Jon Cox may be the underdog in the governor’s race, but Republicans believe Democratic opponent and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is vulnerable because of his support for an unpopular tax. If there’s one issue that resonates with Republicans, it’s the repeal of the gas tax in California. On Wednesday, Cox made a point of blaming Newsom for the 12-cent hike at the pumps -- even though Newsom, as lieutenant governor, was not involved in the legislative vote. “He wants to defend the gas tax,” Cox said. “I'm leading the effort to repeal the...