Free Republic

Regarding your editorial “The Tax Increases to Come” (Nov. 13): Your concerns about our Millionaires Surtax Act focus on the very rich—but fail to consider everyone else. Our plan asks the top 0.2% to invest more to open the doors of the American dream to others. The U.S. is at a serious crossroads. The IMF, OECD and even the Journal’s reporting document how extreme inequality constrains economic growth. In fact, the Journal reports that wealth has more than doubled for the top 1% of households since 2003, while others mostly tread water. This gap limits educational opportunities, social mobility and...

This is the Read.md file on the site, explaining how to use a standalone executable file (compiled from a batch file) to disable recently discovered Intel's bug, until Intel machines' firmware get fixed. Download the DisableAMT.exe (or DisableAMT.zip) from https://github.com/bartblaze/Disable-Intel-AMT --------------------------------------------- # Disable Intel AMT Tool to disable Intel AMT on Windows. Runs on both x86 and x64 **Windows** operating systems. Download: [DisableAMT.exe](DisableAMT.exe) [DisableAMT.zip](DisableAMT.zip) ## What? On 02 May 2017, Embedi [discovered](https://www.embedi.com/news/mythbusters-cve-2017-5689) "*an escalation of privilege vulnerability in Intel® Active Management Technology (AMT), Intel® Standard Manageability (ISM), and Intel® Small Business Technology versions firmware versions 6.x, 7.x, 8.x 9.x, 10.x,...

For the past nine years, millions of Intel workstation and server chips have harbored a security flaw that can be potentially exploited to remotely control and infect systems with spyware.Specifically, the bug is in Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT), Standard Manageability (ISM) and Small Business Technology (SBT) firmware versions 6 to 11.6. According to Chipzilla, the security hole allows "an unprivileged attacker to gain control of the manageability features provided by these products."That means it is possible for hackers to log into a vulnerable computer's hardware – right under the nose of the operating system – and silently tamper with...

As I sit here doing my 2016 tax training (I am an Enrolled Agent), I am wondering how many Blue State / Blue City politicians have really realized how much of a disaster SOCIALIST Sen. Bernie Sanders would be if he were to be elected and pass his proposal for increasing the Federal Income Tax rates? This post is an effort to answer his campaign point of "Why can't we return to the Eisenhower tax rates?"

**SNIP** What happened? Inflation, mostly. While the “regular” tax brackets, exemptions and standard deductions were adjusted annually for inflation, the AMT brackets and exemptions were not, so many people whose income increased entered the dreaded AMT zone. Especially vulnerable are people with income over $75,000 and some large deductions, but not the exotic ones that were originally targeted by the AMT’s creators. Most vulnerable are taxpayers with several children, interest deductions from second mortgages, capital gains, high state and local taxes, and incentive stock options. Thankfully, the AMT brackets and exemptions are adjusted for inflation for 2013 and beyond, which...

They keep coming back, like the villains of a good zombie movie, chanting "more taxes, more taxes." Long ago, Congress passed the alternative minimum tax, or AMT—a simple flat rate to ensure that in an insanely complex tax code, no one escapes paying something. Now we need an alternative maximum tax as a simple, rough-and-ready way to limit the tax zombies' economic damage. Call it the AMaxT. With Monday's deadline for filing tax returns looming, let's start a national conversation: How much is the most anyone should have to pay? When do taxes indisputably start to harm the economy and...

It is tempting for people who earn less than $400,000 to think that they got off easy this week under the tax deal to end the fiscal impasse, given that only those with incomes above that level will be in a higher income tax bracket in 2013. But the legislation that both houses of Congress have now approved could increase taxes on people with incomes that are not quite that high as well. That’s because the bill includes language that begins to do what both President Obama and Mitt Romney proposed at various points in the past: Limit certain tax...

Folks, Spent more than an hour with my favorite CPA to run through some tax planning scenarios of what will happen to my family w/ the what ifs. She tweaked or found out how to do so, i.e. turn off "The Patch" with her tax planning software. Many clients are coming in to find out what the news is.... If the AMT is fixed this year we are up 600 Fed, minus 300 ish for the State so net ahead... If the AMT isn't fixed for 2012 we owe $2,800 ish.... If the Bush cuts lapse and AMT fixed for...

One of the key questions lurking in the "fiscal cliff" talks — though well below the public's radar — is what happens to the alternative minimum tax — or AMT. Implemented in 1969 to make sure upper-income Americans pay their share of taxes, the AMT has increasingly snared more middle-income Americans over the years because it was never indexed for inflation. During the 2011 tax year for example, the higher tax hit single taxpayers with incomes as low as $48,450 and joint filers making only $74,450. But millions more Americans could be subject to the AMT in their 2012 returns...

Taxpayers probably won't have a clear idea of their 2012 tax obligations until the last minute this year — and possibly not even then. They could find themselves owing several thousand dollars in income tax that they didn't plan for and may not be able to afford.

Fiscal cliff: “Fiscal cliff” is the popular shorthand term used to describe the conundrum that the U.S. government will face at the end of 2012, when the terms of the Budget Control Act of 2011 are scheduled to go into effect. Among the laws set to change at midnight on December 31, 2012, are the end of last year’s temporary payroll tax cuts (resulting in a 2% tax increase for workers), the end of certain tax breaks for businesses, shifts in the alternative minimum tax that would take a larger bite, the end of the tax cuts from 2001-2003, and...

The best hope for a deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff” may lie with the alternative minimum tax, an obscure provision of the tax code that is about to become alarmingly relevant to millions of middle-class taxpayers. Unless Congress acts by the end of the year, more than 26 million households will for the first time face the AMT, which threatens to tack $3,700, on average, onto taxpayers’ bills for the current tax year. Because those people have never paid the AMT, they have no idea they are in its crosshairs — put there by a broader stalemate over tax...

Without congressional action, at the end of 2012 the so-called “Bush-Era tax cuts” will expire, impacting nearly all taxpayers. Bush-Era tax cuts is the term generally used for the 2001 and 2003 Tax Reconciliation Acts. These changes were to last only 10 years, but a 2010 Tax Act extended the cuts until the end of 2012.... Let’s take a look at the following couple. They are doing well, having combined wages of $125,000. They have 2 young children, $2,000 of capital gains, and $500 of dividend income. Under current rules, they would have a federal income tax of $15,810. However,...

From Mitt Romney to Warren Buffett, people are clamoring for fairer taxes. But thanks to yet another lapse by our lawmakers in Washington, more than 20 million taxpayers may pay a tax that was originally designed to hit only the ultra-rich -- and the increase could cost you as much as $8,000. When it was first designed, the alternative minimum tax, or AMT, was meant to make taxes more fair. The idea behind the AMT was to make sure that rich people didn't use deductions to zero out their taxes every year. Because of inflation, though, the AMT threatens to...

WASHINGTON -- Billionaire investor Warren Buffett isn’t as undertaxed as he and President Obama seem to think. *** Buffett actually was taxed twice on his investment income. First, Buffett had to make the money he invested. Those earnings were taxed as corporate income, at about a 35-percent rate. Then, Uncle Sam took another cut when Buffett invested the money and earned a profit. That’s when Buffett paid the 15 percent capital-gains tax rate. All told, after combining corporate taxes and capital gains taxes, Buffett forked over about 45 percent of his earnings.

Washington has repeated nearly every economic policy mistake of the 1930s in recent years, so why not repeat one of the bigger blunders of the 1960s too? We refer to President Obama's proposal yesterday for a new "Buffett Rule" to raise taxes on Americans earning more than $1 million a year. This may sound familiar to readers of a certain age, because it is how the current, and much-hated, Alternative Minimum Tax was born. Mr. Obama, meet Joe Barr. As LBJ's last Treasury Secretary—he served only 30 days—Barr became famous for his January 1969 testimony before Congress that 21 millionaires...

Today the president will unveil a multi-trillion-dollar deficit reduction package, which reportedly includes hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases.  These tax hikes could top $1.2 Trillion -- a figure that includes the $800 Billion in tax increases the president's plan will propose, plus the price tag for his unpaid-for $450 Billion "jobs plan."  Careful -- these numbers should not be confused with the additional record-shattering $800 Billion across-the-board tax increases scheduled to take effect in 2013, when the current Bush rates expire.  Two daunting tax cliffs; so little time.  For a solid overview of why the president's deficit...

In the heated battle over extending the expiring Bush-era tax cuts, a single number has emerged from the crossfire: $250,000. It's the annual income that President Obama and others have repeatedly used to define what it means to be "rich" in America today. And even though a tentative deal has been reached on the cuts, $250,000 is etched in the minds of policymakers and pundits as the number that separates the middle class from the wealthy. By most measures, a $250,000 household income is substantial. It is six times the national average household income, and just 2.9 percent of couples...

(CNSNews.com) - Almost 23 million American households are about to have their federal taxes raised by an average of $3,900 this year, but they may not know it yet. They could get a big surprise when they prepare their tax returns next year. Among those subject to this already-in-place tax increase are some families making less than $50,000 per year, and virtually all married couples earning between $100,000 and $500,000 a year, according to data published by the Congressional Budget Office. The looming tax hike is contrary to President Barack Obama's repeated promise not to increase taxes on any individual...

They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2011: First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief... Personal income tax rates will rise...Higher taxes on marriage and family. Second Wave: Obamacare There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011... Third Wave: The Alternative Minimum Tax and Employer Tax Hikes When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise—the AMT won’t be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired....