Free Republic

Debating public policy is fair game. Whether or not we should build a wall on our Southern border will have diverse perspectives and warrants discussion. . . snip In the meantime, even the left of center Brookings Institute’s Tax Policy Center states 80% of Americans will receive a significant tax cut. . . snip So, let’s review. You live in Kansas and both you and your spouse work. You bring in about $95,000 from your two incomes and you have two kids. You will have about $2,400 less to pay in taxes in 2018, not to mention a much simpler...

Over 1 million American workers with over 100 companies are set to receive a bonus, pay hike or retirement increase as a direct result of President Trump’s tax reform package.The latest list from Americans for Tax Reform, which has been collecting the names of firms paying the Trump bonus, finds that some are paying as much as $3,000.Many of those firms have reached out to Secrets to get added to the list since we’ve been publishing ATR’s list compiled by the tax reform advocate’s communications chief John Kartch.One company, IAT Insurance of Raleigh, N.C., wrote Secrets today asking to be...

Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders released a video Thursday on social media that showed a number of millionaires asking for higher taxes in response to the GOP tax cut, which cut taxes for over 80% of America, including some wealthy Americans. The video consists of rich men sitting down and saying lines like “tax me,” “I want to be taxed more,” and “you should raise my taxes.” The video then devolves into rich white guys feeling guilty that they are rich white guys. Mr. Trump, listen to these Patriotic Millionaires who want their taxes raised, not cut. pic.twitter.com/heoPX7VWkV — Bernie Sanders...

The latest notion by the Trump Resistance: Turn state tax bill into a charitable contribution to get around Republican tax law. Sacramento I’ve routinely slammed California’s Democratic leaders for their plodding lack of creativity in dealing with the state’s many crises. Pick a problem (infrastructure, poverty, housing, etc.) and they have the same basic solution: Raise taxes, expand a bureaucracy, and give the government more power and money to “do something.” It would never dawn on them that the biggest problems are in the areas where they’ve intervened the most. But it’s time to give credit where it’s due. Their...

Philippe Reines, a longtime adviser to Hillary Clinton who worked with her in the Senate, the State Department and in her presidential campaign, spoke before interns to give his insights on the current political climate. Then interview aired on CSPAN. Reines told the students he was worried millennials might become Republican if they notice they donÂ’t have to pay as much taxes. Philippe Reines: I think millennials have to, they have to, they more than anyone have to say this is not normal and there is a lot of pressure to shut up(?) Donald Trump and his people want everyone...

As we stand on the threshold of a new year, a phrase from Simon and Garfunkel’s song “The Boxer” sums up why America’s division into two warring worldviews seems to be widening. “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” That’s true for most folks, thanks to human nature. However, we’re not on an equal playing field. The whole thing is tilted to the left. Progressive news and entertainment are everywhere, including airport lounges where thousands of travelers each day are afflicted with CNN’s non-stop propaganda. If you don’t go out of your way to get...

Starting with the first day of 2018, California officially became US’s first and largest sanctuary state, as a brand-new sweeping immigration law started producing effects on Monday, January 1st. The new law dubbed SB54 passed through the state’s legislature back in September. After DEM Governor Jerry Moonbeam Brown signed it into law in October, we can safely presume that California just took one step closer to secession from the Union, and we are not mincing words here. The problem with SB54 is that California’s police will no longer be allowed to participate in federal immigration enforcement actions, nor to ask...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Democratic California lawmakers are exploring ways to blunt the impact of the new federal tax law on the state’s taxpayers. Federal law has long allowed people to deduct their state and local taxes from their federal tax bill, but the tax overhaul signed last month by President Donald Trump caps that deduction at $10,000.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that New York state will sue the federal government over the new Republican tax law, but legal experts are skeptical the lawsuit will hold up in court. Cuomo said New York will challenge a provision of the law that limits how much Americans can deduct from their federal taxes for payments made to state and local governments. Many of the people most affected by that provision live in states run by Democrats, which tend to have higher state and local tax rates. Cuomo, widely seen as a potential contender for the Democratic presidential...

WASHINGTON, N.C. (WNCT) – There is growing concern in some counties about how much solar farms are actually costing taxpayers. Under North Carolina law, counties must give solar companies an 80 tax abatement. For smaller counties like Beaufort, that equates to around a $543,000 tax loss each year. A planned 600 acre solar farm in the county threatens to bring the total tax lost to well over $1 million a year. The more solar farms a county has, the greater that number. “Our taxpayers here are paying for that tax abatement, and they’re also paying for an increase in energy...

The Republican tax overhaul may not do a great deal to boost overall economic growth — but it’s already having one stimulus effect. Call it the Full Employment Act for Tax Pundits.Ever since the contours of the plan made clear that residents of high-tax states would take the biggest hits, a cottage industry devoted to strategizing blue-state tax work-arounds has emerged. As a reminder, Americans for generations have been able to deduct the amounts paid for state and local income tax, as well as property tax, from their federally taxable income. But the new law caps that amount at $10,000,...

Land of leaving: Moving companies rank Illinois No. 1 for outbound vans Studies by two major American moving companies rank Illinois as the top “outbound” state of 2017. On Jan. 2, United Van Lines released its 41st annual National Movers Study and Atlas Van Lines released its 2017 Migration Patterns study. United based the study on its customers’ household moves made in 2017, and Atlas studied nearly 73,000 interstate and cross-border relocations of household goods from Jan. 1, 2017 through Dec. 15, 2017. In both studies, Illinois was home to the highest rate of outbound moves in the nation. United’s...

Southwest Airlines has exercised options for 40 Boeing 737 Max aircraft, and deferred the majority of its 737 Max 7 orders to 2023 and beyond. The Dallas-based low-cost giant is boosting its orderbook as it expects a $1 billion to $1.5 billion reduction in income tax expenses in the fourth quarter of 2017, following the recent tax reform bill. Southwest will receive 15 of the 40 additional 737 Max 8s in 2019 and the remaining 25 in 2020, it says. The airline has also deferred deliveries of 23 737 Max 7s - the majority of its 30-aircraft order for the...

The cold wasn’t the only thing that hammered the Northeast in the final fortnight of 2017 — and we can thank our extreme political polarization for the traumas New Yorkers and New Jerseyans are about to suffer. On the last night of the year, the Trump administration informed New York and New Jersey that there was no longer a deal with the federal government to help fund the desperately needed new rail tunnel between the two states — a $13 billion hit. Before that came the signing of the tax bill, whose limitations on the mortgage-interest and state- and local-tax...

Congressional Democrats will hold a series of “teach-ins” to celebrate the Martin Luther King holiday, hoping to rally Americans against the GOP’s tax bill as they seek to regain their legislative footing. After ending 2017 on defense, watching from the sidelines as the GOP approved a landmark tax code overhaul and repealed a major portion of Obamacare, Democrats are vowing to try to push their agenda in 2018. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is slated to meet with top White House officials Wednesday, said she’ll pursue a series of “long-overdue, bipartisan priorities” for more spending, including the opioid epidemic,...

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) is weighing a lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of the recently passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Bill on the grounds that "it has a partisan impact. On paper, the legislation says nothing about political parties. In effect, though, the new law reduces the exemption for state-levied taxes. This hits high-tax states like New York especially hard. Since all the high-tax states are run by Democrats the new law is unfairly discriminatory toward states controlled by Democrats." Cuomo brushed aside the suggestion that his state could escape the negative impacts by lowering state taxes, calling...

I’m starting to think that all too many Democrats believe that private citizens and private corporations don’t actually own their private income or their private property. Otherwise, how can we explain the Democratic insistence, repeated endlessly over the last 24 hours, that Republicans somehow are poised to execute a grand “heist” by cutting corporate and individual tax rates, granting an estimated 80.4 percent of taxpayers an average tax break of $2,140. The rhetoric was remarkable, and the hysterics weren’t confined to fringe figures on the left. Here’s House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi:

On December 20, Congress passed a historic tax reform and tax cut measure that was signed into law by the president on December 22.  Critics of this measure have been insisting that the reduction in taxes will exacerbate the deficit and long-term debt.  Nothing of the sort will happen, even though several members of Congress and even the CBO think it might.  We can show via historical graphs produced by the Saint Louis Federal Reserve Bank that changes in tax policy and rates since 1929 have had little effect on the amount of money collected by the federal government...

In Paris's 12th arrondissement, on Bercy Street by the banks of the River Seine, on the 13th floor of the Ministry of Finance is France's tax authority headquarters. Something has been afoot there recently that is liable to upset French Jews and spook their relations with the country in which they live. Under the radar, a secret department has been created with the sole purpose of handling tax evasion by French Jews. "Globes" can reveal for the first time the details of the secret department that is targeting Jews in France and new immigrants from France in Israel.

As prominent Democratic leaders publicly decry the recently passed GOP tax bill as the “end of the world” and “Armageddon,” fans of socialist Senator Bernie Sanders secretly support the legislation, according to filmmaker Ami Horowitz. Horowitz took to the streets of New York City’s super-liberal neighborhood the East Village to speak with Bernie supporters, and find out their thoughts behind the Republican-led effort to re-structure America’s over-complicated and outdated tax system. One more thing… they were told the bill was written by Sanders himself. “Bernie came out with a competing plan,” fibbed Horowitz. “I want to give you some of...