Free Republic

Brandon Johnson has refused to state whether he'll raise his city's taxes to pay for the migrant crisis - despite being asked three times in a new interview. The Windy City's mayor made the comments - or lack thereof - during a sitdown with CBS 2's Sabrina Franza Thursday, where talks hovered around the yearly task of setting a city budget. The discussion, however, quickly turned to his predecessors' pledge to house arriving asylum seekers - a promise he has vowed to continue, after an estimated 20,000 entered Chicago last year alone. As the two spoke, more than 500 migrants...

The Biden Regime is now proposing a new natural gas tax. Biden’s first order of business was to kill tens of thousands of jobs and cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. Gas prices shot up immediately after Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline. Since then, Biden has continued to wage a war on the ‘fossil fuel’ industry. He has also depleted the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Now Biden is proposing new regulations and taxes on the fossil fuel industry. “Under President Biden’s leadership, EPA is delivering on a comprehensive strategy to reduce wasteful methane emissions that endanger communities and fuel the climate crisis,”...

Olivia Chow, the communist mayor says that to close the $2B annual budget shortfall of Tronna, they must jack up taxes. Forget cutting spending, just continue to tax the hell out of everyone!!!! Well, that’s communism for you.

We are once again being reminded why the once prosperous state of California is falling into a budgetary black hole and bleeding residents at an increasing rate. (Though to be fair, some of those losses are being made up for by an army of illegal migrants who use up even more resources.) The Democrats who run the state can’t seem to help themselves, and they keep going back to the well with failed ideas to increase state revenue. The latest chapter in this ongoing story comes to us from Stephen Green at PJ Media. It appears that members of the...

John Castro, a Texas man who fought to keep former President Trump off the ballot, has been arrested on federal tax charges. “John Anthony Castro was indicted last week on 33 counts of aiding the preparation of false tax returns,” noted The Hill. “Prosecutors claim he ran a virtual tax preparation business that provided customers with tax returns beyond what they were actually owed, defrauding the government.” In court documents, prosecutors allege Castro would “promise a significantly higher refund than taxpayers could receive from other preparers and on many occasions, offered to split the additional refund with taxpayers.”

John Anthony Castro, a Texas man known for his legal efforts to challenge former President Donald Trump’s eligibility for the 2024 presidential ballot, has been arrested on charges related to filing false tax documents. Castro, who filed challenges in 27 states against Trump’s ballot placement, was indicted last week on 33 counts of aiding the preparation of false tax returns. Castro operated a virtual tax preparation business that deceitfully inflated tax refunds for clients, The Hill reported. Castro was the proprietor of Castro & Company LLC, a digital tax preparation firm with establishments in Orlando, Mansfield, and Washington, D.C., per...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) plans to roll out a free way to file federal taxes, much to the chagrin of tax preparation firm TurboTax. The IRS is launching a pilot plan, known as Direct File, that will offer a free way to submit taxes for U.S. workers. In December, the agency published its plans for an in-house filing system that taxpayers can use to submit their federal tax returns at no cost. Residents of 12 states that meet certain income criteria will be able to try the new service. To qualify, filers need to opt for the standard deduction...

Legislation moving in Sacramento to establish a wealth tax on high earners and a bounty-hunter scheme for plaintiff attorneys to target alleged tax dodgers. Democrats introduced the bill last winter, will get a hearing Wednesday as lawmakers scrounge for revenue to fill a projected $68 billion budget hole. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday will unveil his budget for the coming year. Democratic legislators are proposing a wealth tax as an alternative to spending restraint. The bill would impose annual excise tax of 1.5% on the worldwide net worth of every full- and part-year California resident that exceeds $1 billion, starting...

The latest Census Bureau data on population changes in America should have been a wake-up call to lawmakers in blue states and cities. The Census data provide even further evidence that “soak the rich” tax policies have incited a blue-state meltdown. California, New York, and Illinois all lost the most population last year. These states have nearly lost a combined 5 million people over the past decade. California and New York could both lose another three congressional seats by the end of the decade, and Illinois another two. Did I mention that these are the three states with the highest...

ALBANY — Affordability, housing and public safety are top of mind for some Capital Region lawmakers as the year's legislative session has kicked off at the state Capitol. With recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau showing New York lost more than 100,000 residents for a third consecutive year, the continuing outmigration is a key challenge that lawmakers from this area and across the state say must be addressed. Assemblyman John T. McDonald, a Cohoes Democrat, said the issue merits a comprehensive review of what has been pushing New Yorkers to leave, beyond holding a single hearing on the topic....

America's wealthiest families held an astounding $8.5 trillion in untaxed profits in 2022...This term, the Supreme Court will decide Moore v. United States...According to a report by The Lever, the Moores' case has been backed by billionaire think tanks and conservative dark money groups.

IRS provides tax inflation adjustments for tax year 2024. TLDR — your taxes will DOUBLE unless you’re married, in which case your taxes will TRIPLE. via IRS: IR-2023-208, Nov. 9, 2023 WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today announced the annual inflation adjustments for more than 60 tax provisions for tax year 2024, including the tax rate schedules and other tax changes. Revenue Procedure 2023-34 provides detailed information about these annual adjustments.

From the start of this year, owning an electric vehicle (EV) in Kentucky has become more costly due to the implementation of two new taxes, which are higher than those imposed on gasoline-powered vehicles. What Happened: The new taxes on EVs are part of a larger pattern of overtaxing these eco-friendly vehicles while gasoline-powered vehicles, which cause more environmental and infrastructural damage, continue to be taxed less. EV owners in Kentucky are now required to pay an additional annual registration fee of $120 – a fee that is already in place in most other US states, reported Electrek on Monday....

Well, this week Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley said something that upset people who weren’t going to vote for her anyway. At a Town Hall setting someone asked her “What caused the American Civil War?” It’s not at all a question with great relevance 163 years later, but it is a modern litmus test for many people on the left, i.e. people who likely weren’t going to vote for her anyway. History is amazing. Like all hindsight, it can be 20-20 in vision and clarity. Over the past 30 years, this is less and less the case. Led by late-night...

Here is my question. Was the North intending to end slavery to make growing cotton in the South untenable for the plantation owners in order to bankrupt them so that the Northern Textile barons could take over the land? I know the South seceded because the North was trying to end slavery, which would have raised the cost of growing cotton because the plantation would now have to pay wages, instead of trading labour for bodily needs. This likely was not an affordable option for the landowners, because the North was not going to pay a penny more for cotton...

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck.” ― Robert HeinleinAfter nearly two centuries of uninterrupted economic and population growth, California has hit a pothole in the road. There had been...

Baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani “will collect $2 million in each of the next 10 years” from the LA Dodgers, notes Reason’s Eric Boehm, with the other $68 million of Ohtani’s yearly salary being “deferred for a decade.” “The Dodgers will owe it to him in annual installments starting in 2034.” Why? “California has the country’s highest state income tax rates,” so “Ohtani could save as much as $98 million” if “he relocates out of California by 2034.” And the Dodgers might also reduce their own tax burden” by dodging the “MLB’s so-called ‘luxury tax’ ” that limits “how much money...

Florida condo owners are about to get hit by the perfect financial storm. With insurance rates already going up as much as 300% for some buildings along with recent changes to the Florida Condominium Act and new changes going into effect in 2025, many are going to face tough times in the coming months and year.

FIRST ON FOX: Ashley Biden, President Biden's daughter, owes $5,000 in income taxes beginning in 2015, according to a recent tax lien docket first obtained by Fox News Digital. Liens are legal claims imposed by the government on a property or assets to secure unpaid taxes after repeated attempts to collect. On Dec. 1, the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue in Philadelphia County notified Biden that the "amount of such unpaid tax, interest, additions or penalties is a lien in favor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania upon the taxpayer's property – real, personal, or both – as the case may be,"...

The Deep State totalitarians such as John Kerry and Al Gore are coming out of the closet at the United Nations COP28 “climate” summit calling for censorship, global taxes, and much more, explains The New American magazine’s Alex Newman from the summit in this episode of Behind The Deep State. Biden and Western governments were continuing to make economically suicidal pledges that will destroy the United States, and leading globalists are claiming that nothing can stop them now. Finally, Alex shows how children are being exploited to advance this evil agenda.