Free Republic

Editor's Note: This piece is co-authored by Loyd Pettegrew.  Democrats and their mainstream media (MSM) enablers have been pushing for access to the president’s tax returns before he took office. In a September 27, 2020 salacious front page story, the New York Times screams,  “Long-Concealed Records Show Trump’s Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance?” The article accuses Trump of being both a billionaire who has failed to pay his fair share of taxes while also claiming he is a failed, deeply indebted businessman. Their schizophrenic analysis is irrational. Under our tax and bankruptcy laws the latter would owe no...

President Trump vowed to continue lowering taxes if he defeats Democratic challenger Joe Biden on Nov. 3, tweeting from the Walter Reed National Medical Center on Monday morning that his administration would pass a sequel to the 2017 tax overhaul. "BIGGEST TAX CUT EVER, AND ANOTHER ONE COMING. VOTE!" Trump wrote in a series of tweets from Walter Reed, where he's been staying since Friday to undergo treatments for COVID-19. "IF YOU WANT A MASSIVE TAX INCREASE, THE BIGGEST IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY (AND ONE THAT WILL SHUT OUR ECONOMY AND JOBS DOWN), VOTE DEMOCRAT!!!" he wrote in...

For the eight years of the Obama-Biden administration, there wasn’t a single month when job openings exceeded the number of people unemployed. Zero. In fact, when Obama and Biden left office in January 2017, there were 1.9 million more people unemployed than there were job openings. So there was an abundance of people looking for work, but too few jobs opportunities open to them. A little more than a year later, in March 2018, that situation had reversed. Following Trump’s regulatory overhaul and passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, employment openings exceeded the number of people unemployed for...

The U.S. economy added 661,000 jobs in September and the unemployment rate fell to 7.9 percent, indicating that the economy continued to add jobs even as coronavirus infections rose across many states. Economists had forecast an addition of around 800,0000 jobs and a decline in the unemployment rate to 8.2 percent from 8.4 percent last month. So Friday’s figures missed on job creation but beat on the unemployment rate.

During Tuesday’s first presidential debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats’ nominee vowed to raise taxes on average Americans. The former vice president said, as he previously has, that in the first days of a Biden administration, he would undo the landmark taxes cuts signed into law by President Trump in 2017. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, crafted by Republicans in Congress, cut taxes for every bracket, and overwhelmingly for the middle class. Joe Biden: “I’m going to eliminate the Trump tax cuts” Joe Biden’s tax plan shows he is completely out of touch...

To equally incentivize savers regardless of what they earn, Biden proposes a credit of approximately 26% to replace the deduction savers get for putting money in a 401(k) plan, according to the Tax Policy Center’s analysis. “The biggest thing that stands out to me, by contrast to other proposals, is that it limits the benefit for the highest earners and gives the benefit to the lowest earners,” said Jeffrey Levine, CPA and director of advanced planning at Buckingham Wealth Partners in Long Island, New York. “It’s a true redistribution of wealth proposal,” he said.

Renowned economic advisor to late President Ronald Reagan Art Laffer remains very optimistic about a rapid economic recovery, which flies right in the face of the apocalyptic narratives put out by the media. Laffer concluded that once big states “get pro-growth, once they get the restrictions removed because the disease incidence is less, you’re going to get that economy continuing to boom. I think we’re perfectly poised for a very, very rapid, continued recovery in this economy. “I am very optimistic about the country and the economy,” Laffer said.

Round about a month ago, I took a closer look at Joe Biden’s retirement-related policy proposals, or, more specifically, those of the “Unity Task Force,” which had just released its final document. One of the items in that document and on the Biden campaign website is a promise to “equalize the network of retirement saving tax breaks” — a proposal that generally translates to eliminating the tax advantages currently enjoyed by retirement savings accounts and replacing them with a “credit” or “match.” The idea is that the tax advantages, or “tax expenditures,” as they’re called, disproportionately accrue to relatively higher...

With the trajectory of the U.S. economy uncertain, Americans saved a record portion of their monthly income in April. The savings rate for that month hit an all-time high of 33.5 percent, according to USA Today, citing Commerce Department data. In the months after, that rate fell, but the June rate of 19.5 percent remained nearly triple the normal rate. The average monthly rate of savings was 7.5 percent of income before the pandemic began. “We’ve never had this much savings,” Tom Porcelli, chief economist of RBC Capital Markets, told the newspaper. “It’s uncharted territory.” An analysis by Moody’s Analytics...

As of June, the average retired worker was bringing home $1,514 a month from Social Security. This works out to all ost $18,200 a year. All things considered, this isn't very much -- but for 62% of retired workers receiving a Social Security benefit, their monthly payout will account for at least half of their income. The critical role Social Security plays during retirement for so many elderly Americans demonstrates just how important your claiming decision can be. Claiming age plays a big role in determining your Social Security payout Although there are more than a half-dozen factors that can...

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will speak Thursday during a virtual version of the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole, Wyoming, conference. He is expected to outline what could be the central bank’s most active efforts ever to spur inflation back to a healthy level. “Average inflation” targeting means the Fed will allow inflation to run higher than normal for a period of time. The effort will be the reverse of former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker’s rate hikes instituted to quash inflation in the 1980s. History will remember Paul Volcker and Jerome Powell as standing on the opposite ends of the inflation canyon,...

More and more Americans are being given the option to retire early due to the economic setbacks of the coronavirus pandemic, FOX Business’ Gerri Willis told “FOX News Rundown.” “This is fascinating. These numbers are sky-high,” she said on the daily podcast. “We didn't really understand the number of people that were being offered early retirement. And it's still not entirely clear. But what is clear is that there is a greater proportion of people going into retirement than we thought.” Willis said younger Americans in their 40s and 50s are being offered early retirement since so many industries like...

PHOENIX - The Arizona Supreme Court on August 19 rejected a lower court ruling and restored a citizen’s initiative that would raise taxes on the wealthy to help boost education funding to the ballot. The unanimous ruling is a major victory for proponents of the initiative who turned in signatures from more than 400,000 voters to qualify it for the ballot. The Secretary of State’s office has not yet completed its review of those signatures to determine if it will go before voters on November 3.

A pack of Democratic lawmakers in California are proposing a wealth tax for the state's richest citizens, forcing them to pay more essentially just for owning a lot of stuff. They also, amazingly, want the tax to follow Californians who flee the state in response, attempting to make them continue paying taxes on wealth that's not even in the state. Assemblymember Rob Bonta (D–Oakland) is blunt about his reasons for introducing the California Wealth Tax (A.B. 2088). Rich people have money. He wants more of it to pay for and expand state services. And that's it. "The California Wealth Tax...

The fastest economic recovery in U.S. history Under President Trump, America built the strongest economy the world has ever seen. The stock market broke records, the unemployment rate dropped to its lowest level in half a century, and income inequality fell as blue-collar jobs returned to our country. Then, as a pandemic from China spread across the globe, President Trump made the difficult but necessary decision to shut the economy down to slow the spread of COVID-19. 🎬 President Trump: We are witnessing the fastest recovery in history! Now, as we safely reopen, our economy is surging back faster than...

A majority of registered U.S. voters support President Trump's recent enactment of a payroll tax cut, according to a new Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen. Trump earlier this month announced the cut via executive order, a measure the president took as negotiations stalled between Republicans and Democrats over a new coronavirus relief package. Asked whether they either "favor or oppose cutting the payroll taxes for all workers and businesses," 26% of registered voters responded that they "strongly" favored it, while 26% said they "somewhat" favored it. Slightly over a third of respondents were opposed to the measure,...

One of the great puzzles of politics is why so many are against President Trump's idea of cutting payroll taxes. The puzzle starts from the fact that this is simply the standard Keynesian thing to do to boost demand in a recession, and as President Richard Nixon said more than a generation ago, "We are all Keynesians now." The vehement reaction that has greeted this executive order to defer certain payroll tax obligations (though Trump wants to forgive them permanently if he wins the election) is over the top. Maybe an executive order isn't quite the way to do it,...

President Trump opened the door this week to a capital gains tax cut, saying he's "seriously" considering it as a way to help the U.S. economy recover from coronavirus-induced recession. “We’re looking at also considering a capital gains tax cut, which would create a lot more jobs,” Trump said Monday during White House press briefing. “So we're looking very seriously at a capital gains tax cut and also at an income tax cut for middle-income families." Trump cannot use executive authority to slash the 20% long-term capital gains rate without Congress, but he could try to bypass Congress and lower...

FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early), a flourishing lifestyle movement, has crept its way into mainstream culture throughout the past decade. As we've seen the pandemic spark a renewed push for people to create more autonomy in their lives, there is continued debate about the most sensible way to invest if FIRE is your goal. Real estate proponents advocate for potentially robust monthly cash flow, price appreciation, and tax advantages, whereas index fund adherents cite minimal expenses, a lack of constant oversight, and efficient trading as reasons to invest. In reality, there are benefits to both strategies, which might lead you...

Talks between the White House and congressional Democrats have hit several snags, and while the negotiations are continuing, Democrats are refusing to budge on a number of issues. Democrats have rejected a White House offer to extend the special $600/week unemployment benefit by one week to give lawmakers some breathing room to negotiate a much larger aid package that would include assistance to states and local governments as well as an extension of the moratorium on evictions. But Democrats have dug in their heels about wanting all or nothing. Republicans are refusing to walk the plank and give their political...