Free Republic

It’s that time of year again — tax season! Some people dread it; some people (like me), who think of the tax refund as a bonus, love it, even if it was my own money to begin with. Either way, taxes can’t be completely avoided — we all pay taxes.While the majority of Americans may not know what their tax money is being used for, most of us know that taxes caused the American Revolution — the colonists fought against taxation without representation. The straw that broke the camel’s back for the Revolutionary War was taxation on tea (the Boston...

If you’re not sure who Barbara Anderson was, you might offer up a little thanks to her while you’re filing your taxes. The longtime taxpayer advocate spent decades fighting to make life easier for the state’s overburdened taxpayers, saving them huge amounts on their tax bills over the years with a series of ballot questions that successfully challenged Beacon Hill’s taxation polices.Her longtime opponent and friend, Jim Braude, described her as a force of nature that will never be seen again in Massachusetts politics. She died on Friday at 73 of leukemia. Since stumbling into taxpayer advocacy in 1977 as...

Margo Seibert, Jennifer Moore, Catherine O'Neil, Natalie Brasington, and Taja-Nia Henderson, filed a lawsuit Thursday against New York's tax department and its commissioner, Jerry Boone. Their demand: Stop imposing a 4% "luxury tax" on feminine hygiene products. The complaint points to guidelines published by the taxation department in 1998 and 2014 that categorize pads and tampons as "general merchandise." That means they're not eligible for a "medical supplies" tax exemption.

Should government be allowed to tax everything? Should elected officials have the power and the latitude to tax every transaction, every activity, every nonactivity, and every single little thing in our brief little lives? As it is, government already taxes income, production, consumption, ownership, death, and sin. And if they wanted to they could tax "being"; not being itself, as in Being, but particularized being. It's called capitation, whereby one is taxed for existing.

Every year, the World Economic Forum releases its Global Competitiveness Report on the state of the world's economies. The WEF looks at data on areas as varied as the quality of the teaching of math in schools to the rate of inflation in each country. It then uses the data to compile a picture of virtually every country. One of the indicators the WEF uses is a country's tax burden, with higher scores indicating lower competitiveness. To measure tax it uses the World Bank's total tax rate. Here's what goes into that: The total amount of taxes is the sum...

President Barack Obama will propose a $10 a barrel tax on oil to pay for transporation programs, reports said Thursday. The proposed tax would help pay for projects to encourage mass transit, high-speed rail and self-driving cars, Politico reported. The proposal is due to be included in Obama's final budget request next week. The Republican-controlled Congress is likely to harshly criticize Obama's plan, which comes in the midst of an election year.

The U.S. Supreme Court, which delivered major rulings in 2012 and 2015 preserving President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, on Tuesday declined to take up a new, long-shot challenge to Obamacare brought by an Iowa artist. The court turned away an appeal by Matt Sissel, who had asserted that the 2010 Affordable Care Act violated the U.S. Constitution's requirement that revenue-raising legislation must originate in the House of Representatives, not in the Senate, as the healthcare law did.

It was the Detroit News headline "Trump goes after Ford Motor Co." not how long Hillary went overtime in the restroom that got our attention. Donald Trump made a whistle stop outside Grand Rapids, Michigan to take aim at Ford’s plans to expand production in Mexico. Trump promised if elected he would threaten manufacturers with big tariffs on imports to discourage building manufacturing plants south of the border. Trump to Ford, "If you build that plant in Mexico, I’m going to charge you 35 percent on every car, truck part that you send into our country," he said. "Every single...

Big oil is taking no chances with the outcome of Alberta’s royalty review currently underway. In 2007, the industry was surprised when royalties were jacked up despite dozens of corporate presentations to the royalty review panel warning of the fragility of investment economics and the damage increased royalties would cause. Therefore producers and others with significant vested interest have already started the lobbying process. Such is the case with Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) which made a slide presentation to the new NDP Alberta government on August 20. The industry has obviously learned never to assume politicians actually understand what...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- The child protection agency in Hennepin County has been ignoring reports of child abuse to ease its caseload and control its budget, according to a national child welfare group. The group, Casey Family Programs, studied the county's system for months and presented the findings of a report released last week to the Hennepin County board on Thursday. Casey Family Programs director Dee Wilson also told the board that child protection workers commonly screened out abuse reports, which means families weren't visited and services weren't offered, the Star Tribune ( http://strib.mn/1IhwPjh ) reported. Additionally, neglect cases are looked...

While the Obama administration and environmentalists celebrate Pope Francis’ encyclical on global warming, Sen. Jim Inhofe is warning the pope’s views on the subject could be used by the left to enact the biggest tax increase in U.S. history. “I disagree with the pope’s philosophy on global warming,” the Oklahoma Republican said in a statement. “I am concerned that his encyclical will be used by global warming alarmists to advocate for policies that will equate to the largest, most regressive tax increase in our nation’s history.” Francis’s encyclical, called “Laudato Si,” calls for reducing fossil fuel use and increasing green...

EVERY day, millions of Americans rely on a remarkable network of roads, bridges, subways, trains and buses to connect us to work, school and opportunity. But our transportation system, once the envy of the world, is in jeopardy. In New York City, subways and buses are overcrowded and often unreliable, and roadways and bridges are in dire need of repair and rehabilitation. From the next phase of the Second Avenue subway to plans to connect the Metro-North Railroad to Pennsylvania Station, to the proposed new subway line under Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, there isn’t a short- or long-term expansion project...

HSBC, Europe’s biggest bank, has ordered a review into whether it should move its headquarters out of Britain and potentially back to its former home in Hong Kong, threatening London’s reputation as a global hub for finance and investment. The announcement from HSBC, founded in Asia but a key part of the British establishment, prompted a warm response from Hong Kong, where it is revered as “The Bank”, and silence from the British government. The commitment to the review comes less than two weeks before British parliamentary elections on May 7 and poses challenges for both Prime Minister David Cameron...

A bipartisan group of senators reintroduced legislation Tuesday to apply sales taxes to all Internet purchases, long a goal of state and local governments as well as traditional "bricks and mortar" retailers. The legislation would require online merchants to collect and remit sales taxes to the local authorities where the purchaser lives. Similar legislation easily passed the Senate, 69-27, last Congress, but stalled in House due to opposition from the Republican leadership. Passage in the Senate is less likely this time since Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., an opponent of the legislation, is now majority leader. Proponents nevertheless believe they can...

In the 1930s, tens of thousands of farmers, mostly from Oklahoma, fled the Dust Bowl for California with hopes of a better life. Today it is ironic that California’s Farmers (Farmer Brothers coffee company, that is) has announced that it is fleeing our state for a less expensive destination that includes Oklahoma on the short list. Any humor, however, will no doubt be lost on the 350 employees who are about to lose their South Bay jobs paying $40,000 to $80,000. Farmer Brothers, a fixture in California for more than 100 years, is just another of a long list of...

President Obama will unveil a $4 trillion budget Monday, featuring an ambitious public works program, a one-time tax on foreign profits kept overseas by corporations, tax credits for middle-class Americans, and a 1.3 percent pay raise for federal employees and troops. The massive document is a blueprint for what Obama has been calling “middle-class economics,” but congressional Republicans are likely to view it merely as the president’s opening bid in a contentious process designed to forge a tax and spending plan for the new fiscal year.

President Obama plans to call for billions in tax increases on top earners – including a hike in investment tax rates -- in order to fund new tax credits and other measures the White House claims will help the middle class. The president's proposals, which also include eliminating a tax break on inheritances, are likely to be cheered by the Democratic Party's liberal base when they are announced Tuesday night in his State of the Union address. However, the tax increases are all but certain to be non-starters with the new Republican majority on Capitol Hill. The president's address --...

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...

Tobacco and Firearms. Gifts that keep on giving to the left. (Vanity/Opinion) Let’s use the historic fight against Big Tobacco as a backdrop for the Eric Garner case. Many of us are familiar with the history of the left’s crusade against Big Tobacco. There were epic Congressional and Judicial battles to prove that Big Tobacco lied about the effects of cigarettes. Then followed lawsuits against Big Tobacco which extorted vast transfers of wealth from Big Tobacco to the Government. The hatred of the left to Big Tobacco compared only to the hatred of Kahn to Captain Kirk.

If you’re trying to convince the Supreme Court not to grant certiorari in a high-profile case, I suspect that publishing an op-ed in the Washington Post on the day the Court is scheduled to consider the petition is not the best strategy. I also suspect that it would be a good idea to ensure than such op-ed not include blatant falsehoods. It would be one thing for such an op-ed for forcefully advocate a given perspective on a contested issue. Quite another for it to simply make stuff up. In this case, however, we see the latter. Friday the Supreme...