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US Secretary of State John Kerry claimed Wednesday he was “driving toward the finish” to secure what would be a historic deal with Iran over its nuclear program as a November 24 deadline looms. “We are not contemplating an extension,” stressed Kerry, ahead of what are likely to be crunch talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and outgoing EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in Muscat on November 9-10. “We are driving towards the finish with the view we are to trying to get it done,” he said. Kerry dismissed questions about whether the GOP’s command of Congress...

US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) that allows banks worldwide to reveal information about their depositors, takes into effect on July 1. Under the new act all foreign banks are required to reports all offshore accounts of the US citizens. Banking centers like Switzerland and Luxembourg that agreed to the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) will have to begin turning over account names and other data to US financial authorities so that they can tax unreported income. According to the Internal Revenue Service, US citizens will have fewer options to stash their cash offshore away from the...

--snip-- 8,000 to 10,000 Americans refuse to pay some or all of their federal taxes over war objections. Internal Revenue Service officials say they don't have figures for that specific category, but earlier this year reported an overall noncompliance rate of 16.3 percent and estimated the annual tax gap at about $345 billion. Peace activists are considering a mass tax resistance campaign next April to step up pressure to end the war in Iraq, Benn said.

As the United States attempts to punish Russia for its actions in Ukraine, the Treasury Department is deploying an economic weapon that could prove more costly than sanctions: the Internal Revenue Service. This summer, the U.S. plans to start using a new law that will make it more expensive for Russian banks to do business in America. […] Long before the Ukraine crisis, Congress approved the law in 2010 to curb tax evasion that relies on overseas accounts. Now, beginning in July, U.S. banks will be required to start withholding a 30 percent tax on certain payments to financial institutions...

Legendary singer Willie Nelson will be featured at a high-dollar fundraiser for Democratic governor nominee Wendy Davis. The event will be held April 27 in the Houston backyard of plaintiff’s lawyer Steve and Amber Mostyn, featuring barbecue, Nelson and — for those who stay overnight at the Hotel ZaZa — a campaign briefing on Monday morning.

European Union nations on Thursday agreed on a sweeping policy to fight tax evasion after tiny Luxembourg dropped its reservations to new rules which render its secretive banking culture more transparent. Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel confirmed at Thursday’s summit of EU leaders “the willingness of the government to take that road,” a key step to scrap the banking secrecy for foreigners. […] The legislation proposes an EU-wide automatic exchange of data on bank deposits to allow governments to identify and pursue tax evaders with foreign accounts on home soil. Van Rompuy said it would “close down loopholes, promote automatic...

Representative Charlie Rangel (D-NY) recently expressed his puzzlement over the conservative wing of the Republican Party. In between incoherent ramblings and fragmented sentences, the congressman explained that the tea party is a “cult” group that suffers from an apparent “illness”. “Politics is (sic) changing for me at this late age, to have to deal with a cult-type of group of people,” said the man who recently allocated millions of taxpayer dollars to a New York library named in his honor. (Maybe he’s speaking out of jealousy?) “When a handful of people [I assume he is referring to the tea party...

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) predicted he’ll face a “rough’ fight for reelection this cycle, but said he believes ObamaCare will be a boon to his campaign. “It’s going to be a rough one, but, you know, it’s like shooting crap. Either you win or you lose; you just can’t stay even with the first shot,” Rangel said on MSNBC on Tuesday. The long-serving Democrat had been considered a retirement risk, but announced earlier this month he plans to run for reelection. He’s likely to face a contentious primary fight from state Sen. Adriano Espaillat, whom supporters believe is well-poised to...

In the video that you can see by clicking on the "Enza Ferreri Blog" link above, entitled "Incentives for Immoral Behavior", the American economist Professor Milton Friedman explains how there are fundamentally two types of law: those that are regarded as moral and just by the vast majority of people, and those which are not. The former group of laws are generally obeyed because they speak to the inner moral sense of the population, the latter have a high rate of violations. Obviously, the greater the number of laws and regulations, the higher the number of them that will be...

Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) says that there is “no question” that members of Congress who are paid $174,000 a year are entitled to taxpayer-funded subsidies when they purchase health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges. … Under Obamacare, only people whose income is below 400 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible for a federal subsidy to buy health insurance on the government exchanges. However, a recent rule made by the Office of Personnel Management allows members of Congress and their staffs to keep the taxpayer-funded “employer contribution” they currently receive under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP)...

Updated: October 21, 2013 11:53 p.m. Mayoral front-runner Bill de Blasio did not inform the city Conflicts of Interest Board of the tens of thousands of dollars in rental income he received in recent years, Crain's has learned. City law states that elected officials must disclose income from real estate rents, but forms Mr. de Blasio has filed annually dating back to his days as a City Council member show none since at least 2007 for a rental property he and his wife own in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Tax cheat and crook Charlie Rangel is back in the news again for not disclosing funds. In 2010, Rangel lost his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee because of an investigation into 2 corporate-funded trips to the Caribbean. Later that year, the House of Representatives formally censured him after he was found guilty of 11 ethics violations. Violations included failure to disclose over $600,000 in assets on a financial disclosure report as well as short changing the IRS for 17 years on rental income from his villa in the Dominican Republic. He also raided his PAC for $393,000 to...

Former French ambassador Boris Boillon (pictured) was arrested on July 31 at Paris’s Gare du Nord station, it emerged on Friday, as he attempted to board a train to Brussels with more than 350,000 euros in cash. Former French ambassador Boris Boillon was arrested on July 31 at Paris’s Gare du Nord station, as he attempted to board a train to Brussels carrying more than 350,000 euros in cash, it emerged on Friday. It seems like a spectacular fall from grace for a man who enjoyed such an illustrious political career. Fluent in Arabic, he served as his country’s ambassador...

I’ve known Rick Santorum for 22 years, having first met him in 1990 before he’d won his first campaign for Congress. I interviewed him on WORD-FM, an evangelical Christian radio station where I was a frequent guest host (and eventually a full-time host) early in his campaign. If I was not the first media personality to interview Rick, I was one of the first. I had Rick as a guest at the request of my friend, Mark Rogers, who was running Rick’s campaign. Over the years I interviewed Rick at least a dozen times and debated him several times as...

Turkish Airlines’ Israeli office is currently being investigated for alleged tax evasion amounting to over 1.5 million shekels ($418,000), the Justice Ministry said Monday, according to the Israel Hayom daily. The newspaper quoted a statement published by the Ministry which said that the Tel Aviv District Prosecution’s Taxes and Economics Department is considering pressing criminal charges against the company as well as the head of its local office, Fatih Dogan, for failing to meet Israel’s Tax Authority guidelines for foreign companies operating in Israel. … The Tel Aviv District Prosecution believes that between 2006 and 2010 the airline filed false...

"...Sharpton's National Action Network nonprofit, which is organizing the Martin protest marches, has repeatedly failed to pay taxes. The group currently owes $871,688 for unpaid "payroll taxes and related interest & penalties," according to its latest available Internal Revenue Service disclosure. The group claims to receive more than $3 million in contributions yearly. In 2008, Sharpton aides told the Associated Press that he had begun drawing only a "token" salary from his nonprofit to ease the burden on its finances, and in consideration of his substantial earnings from TV appearances. But IRS filings in the years since show he...

Governor Palin wrote the following in response to the latest scandal coming from the Obama administration’s State Deptartment.Via Facebook: Outrageous. Once again the cover-up is worse than the “crime.” Secretary of State John Kerry WAS on his boat while Egypt fell into turmoil resulting in an overthrow of its new government ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood that the Obama Administration had so recently supported and may still support. (That, however, we do not know because President Obama’s absolutely dithering foreign policies, his "leading from behind," and his benign statements on the Muslim Brotherhood make no sense to sensible people.)The State...

Secretary of State John Kerry spent time lounging around on his yacht Wednesday while the Egyptian military was deposing their country's democratically elected president Mohammed Morsi, according to various reports. When Kerry was first spotted on his yatch, called "Isabel," near his vacation home in Nantucket, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki called the report "completely inaccurate" saying that the Secretary of State had been "working all day and on the phone dealing with the crisis in Egypt," according to CBS News. Psaki even went so far as to deny that Kerry was even on the boat.

... The setting is what makes it so eyeroll-worthy. If Kerry had been seen at a barbecue, no one would bat an eye. But on board a $7 million yacht? It just doesn't seem like he's working hard. The incident fits a pattern for Kerry: a strange penchant for foppish gaffes involving water sports. First, of course, there was the epic television ad that George W. Bush ran against Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign. Using footage of Kerry windsurfing and comparing his zig-zagging to a supposed propensity to change his positions... Then fast-forward to 2010, when then-Senator Kerry admitted...

<p>Complete Title: "The picture that proves Secretary of State John Kerry HAS been out on his boat while Egypt plunges into chaos - after his spokesman denied he been sailing in Nantucket"</p> <p>John Kerry's spokesman has admitted that the Secretary of State did go sailing off Nantucket as the Egyptian President was ousted from power, after pictures emerged of him out on the water on July 4.</p>