Free Republic

As the war on the rich continues to escalate on both coasts, it's the middle-class residents of blue states that will be stuck with the tab.The war on the rich is escalating on both coasts. While Democrats argue they’re righteously demanding the wealthy pay their fair share, it’s the middle class who will pay the biggest price. Legislation labeled a “wealth tax” targets the wealthy. In Washington state, billionaires would be hit with a 1 percent tax on intangible assets. New York’s legislation includes tax hikes on income, capital gains, inheritance, and even stock trades. Seattle state Rep. Noel Frame...

Newly-inaugurated President Biden is likely to take office and push for a flurry of new legislation. Yet while all eyes will be on Biden’s proposals for COVID-19 relief, healthcare policy, and undoing the 2017 tax reform law, two other dangerous ideas are flying under the radar. The first of these is a proposal to implement a so-called “mark-to-market” regime for taxing unrealized capital gains. Currently, taxpayers pay tax only on “realized” capital gains — in other words, when the asset is sold and you bank a profit. Though its on-paper value might fluctuate during ownership, only when an asset like...

Freedom from income taxes is among New Hampshire's delights: The Granite State is one of just nine that don't tax ordinary income. Of course, that benefit doesn't apply to New Hampshire residents who commute to work across the Massachusetts border. Income earned inside Massachusetts by an out-of-state resident is subject to Massachusetts taxes.What about a New Hampshire resident who used to commute to Massachusetts?A no-brainer, surely. If you don't live in Massachusetts, and you no longer work in Massachusetts, then Massachusetts has no right to tax your earnings. What could be more self-evident?Until last spring, that was the law. The...

in a rollover ira, i purchase some spy in june 2020 and occasionally a bit more, a bit later. i have had rollover ira for a long time, not done anything with it other than watch it gradually grow over time, until now. i am retirement age (over 60yo). it used to be the fidelity version of spy for many years. i want to sell $210k of spy now (dec 2020). spy went up 17.67% in about 5 months. i have a long term cg rate of 15%, short term cg rate of 37%. will i only get zinged at...

A few weeks ago, President Donald Trump proposed a payroll tax holiday to Americans earning less than $100,000 per year. The gesture is better described as a deferral of the payroll tax burden until April 2021, and that has some people worried. They should be. Talking about his plan, the president explained, "In a few moments, I will sign a directive, instructing the Treasury Department to allow employers to defer payment of the employee portion of certain payroll taxes from Sept. 1." The deferral will last until the end of 2021. As the president added, "This will mean bigger paychecks...

... Democrats in Sacramento are proposing to raise the state’s already punitive 13.3% top income tax rate to 16.8%—retroactive to January of this year. Now’s a good time for California high-earners to take their money and run. The Assembly bill would raise the top rate to 14.3% for households making more than $1 million, 16.3% on income above $2 million and 16.8% above $5 million. The combined federal-California top marginal tax rate would rise to 53.8% on wage income and 40.6% on capital gains. Another Assembly bill would apply a 0.4% wealth tax on assets over $30 million. It’s hard...

<p>Now that statues of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant and Roosevelt have been desecrated, vandalized, toppled and smashed, it appears Woodrow Wilson's time has come.</p> <p>The cultural revolution has come to the Ivy League.</p> <p>Though Wilson attended Princeton as an undergraduate, taught there and served from 1902 to 1910 as president, his name is to be removed from Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs.</p>

Is it better to live in a state with no income tax? It’s a great question considering we already have to set aside a portion of our paychecks for the federal government. The case for removing an individual income tax typically goes like this: states that don’t dip directly into their residents’ pay become beacons for growth. They’re better at creating jobs and keeping a core of young, educated workers from moving to other states. The American Legislative Exchange Council reports that over the past decade the nine states without a personal income tax have consistently outperformed – on GDP...

The IRS placed a tax lien on Hunter Biden for $112,805 in unpaid taxes from 2015, according to records the Daily Caller News Foundation obtained. Biden served on the boards of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings and the Chinese private equity firm BHR Partners in 2015. Biden has been accused of refusing to provide basic information about his finances in an ongoing paternity case in Arkansas. The IRS placed a tax lien on Hunter Biden seeking $112,805 in unpaid taxes from 2015, according to records the Daily Caller News Foundation obtained. The federal agency issued the previously unreported...

... This year, American workers and their employers owe a combined 12.4 percent on Social Security payroll taxes for income up to $132,900 (rising to $137,700 in 2020). They owe nothing on earnings above that level. Some Democrats in the thick of the presidential race and on Capitol Hill now seek to change or eliminate that cap — potentially placing a new double-digit tax on high earners, with several plans focusing on earnings above $250,000. ... The result would be a large tax increase on high earners, even before other changes a Democratic administration might contemplate, such as increasing income...

With a laundry list of tax hikes proposed by Congress or Democratic candidates for president, it's understandable why many would view Washington as the biggest threat to taxpayers’ wallets. However, policymakers at the state and local level are just as likely to reach into taxpayers’ pockets as those in Washington, D.C. Take Election Day 2019, which featured nearly 1,000 tax and fiscal ballot measures.  Publicly-accessible data from secretaries of state and county election offices found 954 measures across 19 different states and hundreds of localities, most of which were negative measures that would impact taxpayers and businesses. There were at...

The Democratic candidates for President are promising a smorgasbord of new taxes, but why wait until 2021? Last week Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen and Virginia Congressman Don Beyer unveiled the Millionaires Surtax Act, a plan to soak the top 0.2%. The bill would put an extra 10% tax on individual income above $1 million, or $2 million for married couples. This surtax would apply regardless of the income’s source—whether from long-term capital gains, currently taxed at a top rate of 20%, or wages, taxed at rates up to 37%. The legislation’s backers say it would raise $635 billion over...

Texas voters on Tuesday approved an amendment to the state’s constitution banning an income tax. While Texas is already one of seven states that does not have an income tax, the amendment will make it extremely difficult to impose the tax in the future. “Today’s passage of Prop 4 is a victory for taxpayers across the Lone Star State,” said Republican Governor Greg Abbot. “I am grateful to Rep. Jeff Leach for his bold leadership on this issue, and for the overwhelming majority of Texans who voted to ensure that our great state will always be free of a state...

I'm having difficulty formulating my failing brain.Before 1913 we operated just fine (it seems) without taxes but (and so the meme goes), now everything operates BECAUSE of taxes.

Ever since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in late 2017, Democrats and a few Republicans have decried how the law’s $10,000 cap of the state and local tax deduction harms schools, local communities, home values, first responders, and middle-class families. Fast forward almost two years later and these false claims are not going away. House Democrats recently announced a hearing scheduled for Tuesday where many of the common myths are likely to be repeated. Here are a few of the most common misconceptions. Myth #1: The Cap Hurts Middle-Class Taxpayers Before the 2017 tax cut capped the state...

In a recent poll for “Axios on HBO,” 55% of American women say they would prefer to live in a socialist country over a capitalist country. This week on “Problematic Women,” we discuss why women are embracing socialism and what can be done to stop this trend. Also, we break down why freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says members of Congress, despite already making $174,000 a year, deserve a pay raise. We crown Yale University graduate and future Justice Brett Kavanaugh law clerk Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld Problematic Woman of the Week. And we discuss these topics: — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had...

I've used a computer running Windows 7 to file our federal taxes for several years. Microsoft will stop support and security updates on January 14, 2020. We always file as soon as we get all tax forms (usually early February). Wondering if we would be safe doing the same one more time. Thoughts?

Each year, millions of Americans pay their taxes. We suffer through the nightmare of unfathomable IRS forms, spend tens of billions of dollars on tax experts so the IRS won’t audit us … and yet watch as other people slip through the cracks.Those cracks are pretty large. The IRS has concluded that approximately 16.3 percent of taxes simply don’t get paid. This was the case in 2001, 2006, and 2008-2010.In 2018, this meant that almost $643 billion in federal taxes simply went unpaid, based upon the $3.3 trillion pulled into federal coffers– what the IRS and Government Accountability Office...

Workers in Johnson County could have hundreds of additional dollars taken out of their paychecks annually to help pay for roadwork in the county and an expansion of the county jail — work expected to cost more than $130 million in the next five years. The Johnson County Council unveiled an income tax increase proposal to fund $110 million in road, bridges and infrastructure improvements across the county, mainly due to the construction of Interstate 69, and an estimated $20 million jail expansion project that would address a frequently overcrowded jail that the state has ordered the county to fix....

Studies consistently find that the 2017 law cut taxes for most Americans. Most of them don’t buy it. If you’re an American taxpayer, you probably got a tax cut last year. And there’s a good chance you don’t believe it. Ever since President Trump signed the Republican-sponsored tax bill in December 2017, independent analyses have consistently found that a large majority of Americans would owe less because of the law. Preliminary data based on tax filings has shown the same. Yet as the first tax filing season under the new law wraps up on Monday, taxpayers are skeptical. A survey...