Free Republic

As the housing crisis deepens, the corrosive impact of Airbnb on communities becomes increasingly evident. With over 1,000 San Diegans falling into homelessness each month, the question arises: How many Airbnb properties sit empty, exacerbating the crisis? Complicating matters further is a colossal loophole in the ordinance meant to regulate short-term rentals (STRs). While cracking down on Airbnb alone may not be a catchall solution, it’s undeniable that taking thousands of residential units offline hampers efforts to meet housing goals.

EBay Inc., the online auction company with 180 million buyers around the world, earned $34 million of profit in Florida in 2014, according to state auditors. At Florida’s official corporate income tax rate of 5.5 percent, eBay should have paid more than $1.8 million in state taxes -- enough money to hire 40 new teachers. But records show eBay actually paid $18,810 -- not even enough to hire one. It’s not an isolated example. Auditors say Sanofi Pasteur Inc., one of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers, earned an estimated $55 million of profits in Florida between 2008 and 2013 --...

Well-to-do Illinois parents, including lawyers, doctors and realtors, are reportedly giving up custody of their high school-aged children in order to help them secure scholarships and financial aid reserved for low-income students. Separate investigations conducted by ProPublica Illinois and The Wall Street Journal have uncovered dozens of cases in the wealthy suburbs of Chicago involving parents transferring legal guardianship of their teenagers to grandparents, aunts, friends, or even co-workers over the past year-and-a-half. The idea behind the tactic, which is legal in Illinois, is that once the parents give up custody, the children are able to declare themselves financially independent...

Able-bodied adults received work waiver even with record-low unemployment. Despite 10-year-low unemployment, California took advantage of loopholes in federal regulation to keep more than 800,000 federal welfare recipients from having to work. This conclusion is based on the response of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to an application to waive SNAP's work requirements for 55 of California's 58 counties, issued to the state in July.. California's waiver, which will last until August of 2019, exempts more than 800,000 able-bodied, childless Californians from having to work while on SNAP. This in spite of the fact that California's unemployment rate—4.2 percent—is at...

What are gun show loop holes?

President Obama on Friday will sign a two-month extension of highway funding into law, the White House said. The measure prevents a sudden halt in infrastructure funding that was slated to begin May 31. But White House press secretary Josh Earnest criticized the stopgap bill as a punt and urged Congress to pass a long-term measure to fund road projects. “It’s the president’s view that the era of short-term patches ... must come to an end,” Earnest told reporters. Earnest noted it was the 33rd temporary fix for highway funding since 2008. The uncertainty caused by that approach has led...

The framework deal with Iran doesn’t even provide safety for a year, Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Tuesday. He was reacting to a media blitz by US President Barack Obama assuring the public that the agreement would curb Tehran’s nuclear program for over a decade. Obama “says we have insurance here for 10 years, but I say we don’t have insurance here for even one or two years unless the loopholes are closed, and only then could it become a more reasonable agreement,” Steinitz said, adding that “I wouldn’t trust this [deal] if it was home insurance, and...

Governor Bobby Jindal of Lousiana, who pledged not to raise taxes, has raised taxes, aided by the radical Islam loving Grover Norquist. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was caught in a jam. He had to plug a $1.6 billion projected deficit for next year — 20 percent of Louisiana’s general fund — and he had to do it without violating an anti-tax pledge he made to Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), the influential conservative group headed by Grover Norquist. Jindal’s solution: eliminating $526 million in tax rebates, most notably for the state’s business inventory tax. Norquist’s group blessed the decision, concluding...

"State management of society is not only contrary to human liberty; it is also unworkable. It cannot achieve what it seeks to achieve, which is often all-round control of some sector of economic and social life... .. People find loopholes and workarounds or just invent new ways to make progress possible. This is because people will not be caged. They struggle to be free and sometimes they succeed...."....H/T Maggiesfarm

Congress is not as stupid as you think. I realize that is not a high bar; but still, credit must be given when credit is due. Quite often when our duly-elected political representatives get together in Washington to pass some ill-designed, over-intrusive and brutally expensive law, they recognize the difficulties it will create -- and so they exempt themselves. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration? The National Labor Relations Act? Minimum wage laws? None of them govern Congress. The much-lauded Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which sends corporate executives to prison for falsifying financial data, would decimate Congress if it were applied to...

Millions of illegal immigrants are getting a bigger tax refund than you. Eyewitness News shows a massive tax loophole that provides billions of dollars in tax credits to undocumented workers and, in many cases, people who have never stepped foot in the United States. And you are paying for it! Note: This is part one in a two-part series. Read part two here. INDIANAPOLIS - Inside his central Indiana office, a longtime tax consultant sits at his desk, shaking his head in disbelief. "There is not a doubt in my mind there's huge fraud taking place here," he said, slowly...

Here’s a mind-boggling explanation of how the state government, setting out to manipulate private manufacturers into making electric cars, gets so tangled up in its special treatment for special constituents that its bureaucratic web ends up working against itself. The California Air Resources Board, second only to the federal EPA in government heavy-handedness, adopted rules ostensibly to cut down on smog and, of course, global warming. Tucked into the folds of this bureaucratic diktat is a provision that some call “a loophole.” Yes, we’re as shocked as you to find that the dictatorial among us would allow for exceptions to...

At the dawn of his administration, President Obama opined: "A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency." Magical rays of white-hot sunlight emanated from his media-manufactured halo. And then bureaucratically engineered darkness settled over the land. For three years, White House officials have rolled out countless executive orders and initiatives touting open government. Just this week, they unveiled plans to move federal archival records from a paper-based to an electronic system. But behind the scenes, Obama's lawyers systematically have stymied public information requests, carved out crater-sized disclosure loopholes, fought subpoenas on scandals from Fast and Furious to Solyndra, and made...

Democratic politicians and liberal groups, including unions, often rail against corporate tax loopholes as unjustified raids on the public treasury – as they should. Loopholes are particularly troublesome during periods, such as this one, when state and local budgets are leaking red ink and basic public services are being slashed. But one multimillion-dollar loophole draws vocal support from those who usually oppose corporate tax breaks – one that happens to benefit a heavily unionized industry whose top executives are overwhelmingly Democrats and contribute lavishly to the party's candidates and causes. That would be Southern California's movie and television production community....

Call it eliminating an unfair break, or removing an unjust loophole, or even "taking a balanced approach". Just don't call it raising taxes.

Public Record: That jet-tax loophole derided by the president is one he himself proposed as part of the stimulus approved by a Democratic Congress. Does the left teleprompter know what the right teleprompter is saying? Demagoguery was redefined at Wednesday's news conference, when President Obama mentioned corporate jets and their owners no fewer than six times as an example of how the rich should pay more taxes, lest necessary things such as food safety face a budget ax. "I think it's only fair to ask an oil company or a corporate jet owner that has done so well to give...

Three Senate Democrats angry about the high price of gasoline propose to raise taxes on the firms that produce it. No, it does not make any sense to us, either. For Democrats, expensive gas is just the price of scoring a moral victory over Big Oil, and American consumers will be expected to pay any price and bear any burden that Harry Reid & Co. inflict upon them. The “Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act” is a minotaur’s labyrinth of economic illiteracy, with Democratic senators Robert Menendez (N.J.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) lurking at the center of...

"If there's an unequivocal opposite to growing up around guns," says Andrew Rothman, "it's being raised by New York Jews." He puts down his glass of water and wipes his dark goatee with a napkin. It would be quite the outlandish statement were he not talking about himself. Thinkstock Nick Vlcek Related Content Michele Bachmann calls Barack Obama anti-American and likens herself to Nostradamus March 25, 2010 Minn. GOP asks Peterson to apologize for calling 25 percent of his constituents crazy July 27, 2009 Keith Olbermann mocks Michele Bachmann on "commandeer" comment June 3, 2010 Michele Bachmann demands gangster president...

Obama and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd have claimed repeatedly that federal bailouts of big banks will not be allowed by Dodd's financial reform bill. President Obama said that suggestions the bill would continue bailouts are "not factually accurate." Yes, they are. The Dodd bill creates a roughly $50 billion Orderly Resolution Fund with assessments on large financial institutions. It would provide a government-financed alternative to bankruptcy. Even if the firm is dissolved, that is a bailout. The firm's debts are paid by taxpayers. But, you say, it's not a tax-funded bailout. Hold on. The bill also allows the...

The financial-regulatory bill now before the Senate is so filled with special-interest loopholes and exclusions that it makes the health-care "reform" bill, with its "Cornhusker Kickback" and "Louisiana Purchase," look like a model of rectitude. The Senate bill, sponsored by Democrat Chris Dodd, claims to subject all "too big to fail" institutions to greater federal supervision, but in fact it only mandates such regulation for bank-holding companies. Regulators would have to make a case-by-case decision on whether to apply it to other financial companies. That's no minor oversight, because insurance companies, like AIG, tend to have thrift charters rather than...