Free Republic

President Trump recently floated the idea of eliminating the federal income tax. That tax became a fixture in 1913 when Congress ratified the 16th Amendment. The first U.S. Tax Code was about 400 pages. Today, with everything included, it’s more than 70,000 pages! Initially, the income tax was 1% on all incomes above $3,000 ($95,000 in today’s dollars) and applied to only 3% of the population. Today, the graduated rates start at 10% for families earning more than $30,000 and go up to 37% for families earning above $609,000. The rates vary greatly: The top 1% of taxpayers pay 45%...

A group of Democratic members of Congress are calling on the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the national Christian conservative advocacy organization Family Research Council's official status as an "association of churches." Reps. Jared Huffman of California and Suzan DelBene of Washington sent the letter on Tuesday, with 11 other lawmakers joining. The correspondence is addressed to U.S. Treasury Department Secretary Janet Yellen and IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. The Democrats conveyed "continued concerns about the tax-exempt status of certain organizations" such as the FRC, claiming that said groups "are self-identifying as 'churches' or 'associations of churches' to receive more favorable...

KEY POINTS The Bank Secrecy Act has been around since the Nixon administration. The law was designed to stop criminal enterprises, large and small. Unless you're breaking the law, you have nothing to worry about. It's your money, and generally, you have the right to withdraw as much -- or as little -- as you desire from your bank account. However, under a law called the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), banks must report any deposits or withdrawals of $10,000 or more. Here, we'll cover why the BSA exists and if it's anything you need to be concerned about....... During the...

You can add the Internal Revenue Service to the ranks of federal agencies conceding that raining taxpayer money on all and sundry to offset the negative effects of pandemic-era closures didn't go as well as intended. Not only was a program meant to offset the cost of paying workers during lockdowns and voluntary social-distancing prone to being gamed, but the "vast majority" of claims submitted to the program show evidence of being fraudulent. The Tax Man Is Shocked To Discover Fraudsters In the course of a detailed review of the Employee Retention Credit, "the IRS identified between 10% and 20%...

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is not waiting until after the presidential election to launch a bid to put one of former President Donald Trump’s ideas into effect. Cruz has introduced the No Tax on Tips Act that would keep the Internal Revenue Service from taking a slice of the income service workers gain through tips, according to a news release on Cruz’s website. During a recent rally in Las Vegas, Trump indicated he opposes taxes on tips, according to The Hill.

President Trump recently floated the idea of eliminating the federal income tax. That tax became a fixture in 1913 when Congress ratified the 16th Amendment. The first U.S. Tax Code was about 400 pages. Today, with everything included, it’s more than 70,000 pages! Initially, the income tax was 1% on all incomes above $3,000 ($95,000 in today’s dollars) and applied to only 3% of the population. Today, the graduated rates start at 10% for families earning more than $30,000 and go up to 37% for families earning above $609,000. The rates vary greatly: The top 1% of taxpayers pay 45%...

The IRS plans to end a major tax loophole for wealthy taxpayers that could raise more than $50 billion in revenue over the next decade, the U.S. Treasury Department says. The proposed rule and guidance announced Monday includes plans to essentially stop “partnership basis shifting” — a process by which a business or person can move assets among a series of related parties to avoid paying taxes. Biden administration officials said after evaluating the practice that there are no economic grounds for these transactions, with Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo calling it “really just a shell game.” The officials said...

Democrats are fuming mad over Republican proposals to scale back IRS funding and defund the agency’s new free online tax filing system. House Ways and Means Democrats called Republicans’ latest Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) funding bill “disastrous” in a Thursday statement, blasting the GOP for risking another fight over spending that led to the downgrading of U.S. creditworthiness by a major ratings agency last year. “It seems like Republicans’ 2023-2024 appropriations disaster wasn’t enough for their conference. … Just three months after Democrats once again governed from the minority and staved off the worst of Republicans’ chaos and...

An Ohio doctor who drew national attention when she claimed COVID-19 vaccines made people magnetic is being sued by the federal government over claims she hasn't paid nearly $650,000 in federal taxes and late fees. The lawsuit, filed last month in federal court in Cleveland, claims Sherri Tenpenny didn't pay taxes in 2001, 2012 and 2013.

Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley and Special Agent Joseph Ziegler are longtime IRS employees who came forward as whistleblowers to accuse the agency of allowing Hunter Biden to skate on serious tax charges. Here, the two explain why they want to be a part of a civil suit the president’s son filed against the IRS — to defend strongly what the government won’t. Like most whistleblowers, we did not wake up one morning and decide to pick a fight. We simply tried to do our jobs like always, even in the face of increasing resistance from a system that did...

Breaking News: Donald Trump could owe $100 million for improper tax breaks on his Chicago tower, an IRS audit uncovered by The New York Times and ProPublica shows

‘Pro-Palestinian protesters are backed by a surprising source: Biden’s biggest donors,’ headlined an article by Politico.. Politico’s editors are “surprised” to find the far-left demonstrations overwhelming college campuses this spring are funded by the same sources fighting to keep President Joe Biden in power. On Sunday, the Beltway magazine published an exposé on the financiers bankrolling the campus protests, for which demonstrators trained for months. “Pro-Palestinian protesters are backed by a surprising source: Biden’s biggest donors,” the headline reads. “ Joe Biden has been dogged for months by pro-Palestinian protesters calling him ‘Genocide Joe’ — but some of the groups...

Warren Buffett, the billionaire Oracle of Omaha, says that Washington will likely "take a larger percentage of what we own ... Joe Biden .. won't push to extend the Trump tax cuts next year ... if Congress fails to extend the Trump-era tax cuts, it means an average American family of four making $75,000 will get hit with a $1,500 tax increase. “Main Street businesses will face a 43.4 percent tax rate” and “working parents will suffer from a Child Tax Credit slashed in half” along with the standard deduction every taxpayer is due. Remember Biden's promise not to raise...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) filed a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of the Treasury for unlawfully concealing records regarding the Biden Administration’s plans for race-based tax audits. Congress prohibits the IRS from collecting data on taxpayer race and ethnicity directly and from acquiring such data indirectly from other agencies. However, to advance the “equity” cult, the Biden Administration simply steamrolled the law. On May 18, 2021, the Department’s Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo said that “racial equity” was a key factor in the Administration’s “design of tax compliance.” On December 14, 2021,...

Atlanta News First reports that Atlanta taxpayers endured extensive queues outside the city’s Tax Assistance Center, but not everyone was looking for last-minute help from the IRS ahead of the April 15 tax filing deadline. The center was open Saturday with extended hours, allowed individuals to engage directly with IRS representatives regarding their refunds, but the demand to do so led to hours-long waits under the sun. A majority of the people in line had received an email or letter from the IRS stating they had to verify their identity in person. The notification went on to say their refund...

The Inflation Reduction Act created a pilot program that’s finally given Americans a free and easy way to file their federal taxes with the government, and it’s getting rave reviews. A man holds a sign advertising a tax preparation office for people that still need help completing their taxes before the Internal Revenue Service deadline on April 14, 2010 in Miami, Florida. Cindy Black of Lynnwood, Washington, has almost always done her own taxes. The 62-year-old nonprofit executive’s situation is straightforward: She only has one or two W2 forms for her employment, sometimes with a 1099 for some consulting work...

Tyranny by the Numbers: The Government Wants Your Money Any Way It Can Get ItThe government wants your money.It will beg, steal or borrow if necessary, but it wants your money any way it can get it.This is what comes of those $1.2 trillion spending bills: someone’s got to foot the bill for the government’s fiscal insanity, and that “someone” is the U.S. taxpayer.The government’s schemes to swindle, cheat, scam, and generally defraud taxpayers of their hard-earned dollars have run the gamut from wasteful pork barrel legislation, cronyism and graft to asset forfeiture, costly stimulus packages, and a national security...

"Never trust a man who lays his hand on his heart when he assures you of anything," goes the old axiom. That's why I never trust a Democrat who makes any promise ever about a federal agency or program. Take Medicare. In 1966 when Medicare began, it cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that Medicare would cost about $12 billion by 1990. Instead, it cost $107 billion and today costs the government close to a trillion dollars.So when Joe Biden and the Democrats assured Americans and Republicans in Congress that the $80 billion the president wanted...

Two things keep the IRS out of most people's hair: the annual gift tax exclusion and the lifetime exclusion. Nerdy takeaways: * A gift tax is a tax owed on the transfer of money or property to another person while receiving nothing or less than full value in return. * The gift giver is the one who generally pays the tax, not the receiver. * If you give more than the annual gift tax limit, you may have to file a gift tax return, but this does not necessarily mean that you'll owe taxes on the gift. * The 2024...

My tax return is being held so the IRS can review it. The letter says they want to verify several things including “Itemized Deductions”! I use the standard deduction. I’m guessing it has to do with my voter registration as a republican. Anyone else experiencing this? Cheers!