Free Republic

Millions of Americans are struggling to meet the April 17 IRS tax filing deadline. [Yester]day, The Hill newspaper report[ed] that the IRS is receiving an emergency infusion of $500 million from the Obama administration – not to enforce the existing convoluted tax code – but to impose the 2,700-page Obamacare law on an unwilling country. Why would the IRS need hundreds of millions of dollars to implement a healthcare law? Because Obamacare is one of the largest tax hikes in history, saddling American families and small employers with 20 new or higher taxes. Click below to see the full list...

The College Board commissioned a poll that shows a majority favor increased federal spending on education. Nevertheless, the poll also found, to the surprise of both the pollsters and the College Board, that “57% feel that the federal government already is too involved in education and should leave it up to states and localities to deal with, while only 37% think the federal government should be doing more.”

While springtime normally ushers in warmer weather, taxpayers are still feeling the chill of government this Easter season. Whether you’re hunting for chocolate Easter eggs or enjoying a family Easter dinner, government is there to take a bite out of your holiday celebration. The fourth-largest shopping holiday in the United States, 33.47 percent of the $16.7 billion spent during the Easter season is made up of government taxes and fees—approximately $5.6 billion in revenues. Easter spending is subject to income taxes, payroll taxes, corporate income taxes, and other taxes on business activity. Government then includes additional fees, excise taxes, and...

President Obama was hypercritical of Paul Ryan’s budget today, claiming that it is “thinly veiled social Darwinism.” We decided to take another look at Rep. Ryan’s budget and compare it against the President’s plan to tax his way out of a spending hole. President Obama's Plan Paul Ryan's Budget President Obama claimed in his speech today that the Ryan Budget, “Would increase health care costs and shift the burden to America's seniors.” The Ryan Budget repeals Obamacare tax hikes by eliminating the entire Obamacare law.  This includes repealing the 20 new or higher taxes which have taken or are about...

United States: between Gayland and Mohammedland Largest Protestant nation in the world doesn’t know if it wants to be Sodom or Saudi Arabia By Julio Severo In American schools, Islam is becoming compulsory subject in many places. In Colorado, students were forced to sing the song “Zikr”, written by A. R. Rahman, one passage of which says: “There is no other truth but Allah.” In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled that Bible reading in schools was unconstitutional, banning the Christian sacred book in classrooms where most students were from Christian homes. Today American students are forced to sing that Allah...

I would like to respond to a newspaper column in regards as to how skin color should not be an indicator if social ills, but I need credible info to do that. Any credible website would be appreciated.

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released its report on consumer privacy (PDF), calling for “baseline privacy legislation” along with a strong self-regulatory framework for industry. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz then penned an op-ed reiterating his privacy strategy: Congress sets “clear rules of the road” – a sort of best practices regulatory model – while the FTC threateningly aims its regulatory firearm at companies, nudging them into accepting the Commission’s recommendations regardless of statutory authority. But at a House subcommittee hearing just days later, Congressional leaders rightly pushed back against the FTC. At a House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing,...

On Sunday, Japan’s corporate tax reform kicks in and the United States will have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Including average state taxes the corporate tax rate in the United States reaches an astounding 39.2 percent, much higher than the OECD international average marginal tax rate of 25.5 percent. Obama’s own former Council of Economic Advisers chairman, Austan Goolsbee, documented firm sensitivity to taxation. Goolsbee’s paper, published at the University of Chicago, highlighted increased deadweight loss as a significant adverse consequence of corporate taxation. Simply put, taxes create inefficiencies while giving governments more money to spend. Businesses,...

ABC News boldly proclaimed police surveillance video of George Zimmerman being taken into the Sanford police station the night Trayvon Martin was killed showed no blood or bruises from an alleged physical encounter Zimmerman claimed to have had with 17 year-old Trayvon Martin. Trayvon Martin Video Shows No Blood or Bruises on George Zimmerman A new High Definition clip from the same video appears to make clear that Zimmerman had a gash, or wound of some kind on the back of his head. That would be totally consistent with his version of events on the night in question and opposite...

The House this week rejected the "Simpson-Bowles" budget by a 382-38 margin. Every major conservative group weighed in against the measure (full text, summary), which raises taxes over the next decade by $2 trillion, and is riddled with phony spending cut gimmicks and double-counting. Below is a summary of the united conservative movement opposition to this budget: Americans for Tax Reform Linked above Americans for Prosperity Dear Representatives, On behalf of the more than 1.9 million Americans for Prosperity activists in all 50 states, I strongly urge you to support both Chairman Ryan’s budget resolution and the Republican Study Committee...

The Property Rights Alliance is pleased to herald the publication of the 2012 International Property Rights Index (IPRI), the world’s most comprehensive measure of intellectual and physical property rights among nations. Sixty-nine international organizations partnered with the Washington, DC-based Property Rights Alliance and its Hernando de Soto Fellowship program to produce the sixth annual IPRI. The IPRI utilizes three primary metrics to create a composite score: Legal and Political Environment (LP), Physical Property Rights (PPR), and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Most importantly, the IPRI stresses the great economic disparities among countries with strong property rights and those without. Nations comprising...

“Independence and pragmatism” have been at the heart of Mitt Romney’s politics from his first entrance into the electoral arena, CNSNews.com reports today, with a look back at an article that revealed Romney as he was when he decided to run for the United States Senate in 1994. ~~~~~ “When Romney decided to run, Republicans exchanged quizzical looks: ‘We didn’t know a single Republican when we jumped in in December,’ his wife, Ann, says,” Brownstein reported. “As a registered independent, Romney had voted in the Democratic presidential primary in 1992 to support Paul E. Tsongas (though he backed George Bush...

President Barack Obama’s central campaign promise – a “firm pledge” against “any form of tax increase” on families making less than $250,000 per year – was broken two years ago today when he signed the Affordable Care Act into law. The healthcare law contains at least seven tax hikes that unquestionably violate Obama’s pledge. Documentation of Obama’s promise is as follows: Speaking in Dover, New Hampshire on Sept. 12, 2008, candidate Obama said: “I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income...

The jobs-killing Obamacare law contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and employers. But before we get to the tax hikes, let's dispense with the fig leaf of "assistance" that small businesses are given to transition to costly Obamacare mandates. The law creates a "small employer health credit" through 2014 which theoretically allows a business to claim a credit for up to 35 percent of the cost of providing health insurance to employees. The problem is, the credit was written in such a Byzantine and confusing way that no small employers are actually taking advantage of it. In...

In typical Center for American Progress (CAP) partisan fashion, Daniel Weiss manages to blame oil companies for the price of gasoline, America’s overspending problem, the inefficiency of biofuels, and for not drilling on land the federal government refuses to lease. But don’t let ‘em off so easy, Mr. Weiss, oil and natural gas producers are also responsible for the Iraq war, world hunger, and that time I wrecked my ATV and broke my arm (it was powered by gasoline!). The genesis of Mr. Weiss’s stream of consciousness post is both the Paul Ryan budget, which preserves standard expensing provisions for...

1) The Founding Fathers were generally religious, gun-toting small government fanatics who were so far to the Right that they'd make Ann Coulter look like Jimmy Carter. 2) The greatest evil this country has ever committed isn't slavery; it's killing more than 50 million innocent children via abortion. 3) Conservatives are much more compassionate than liberals and all you have to do to prove it is look at all the studies showing that conservatives give more of their money to charity than liberals do...

Last night, a reporter from Univision asked President Obama about the subject of a CBS News investigation: allegations that ATF allowed traffickers to send weapons to Mexican drug cartels in an operation called "Fast and Furious." "There may be a situation here which a serious mistake was made and if that's the case then we'll find out and well hold somebody accountable," he added.

You just have to admire Big Guy’s stamina don’t you? He didn’t get home from Friday's Moneyhaul until nearly 1:00 AM Saturday, and yet there he was again at 1:00 PM yesterday, off to an Irish Pub in D.C. celebrating St. Paddy’s day with his red-headed cousin from his ancestral village of Moneygall. That’s him in the middle, Henry Healy, 8th cousin on dear old Mum’s side:Big Guy, cuz Henry Healy and Ollie Hayes at D.C.’s very popular watering hole, The Dubliner.You may recognize Ollie, he was the bar tender at the pub where Lady M and Big Guy stopped...

The prospect of instituting a global tax in some form or another is constantly rearing its ugly head. Bill Gates can often be heard advocating for global taxes on financial transactions, aviation, and energy. There are even serious talks of a U.N takeover of the Internet. The latest foray into global taxation is calls by international organizations and the WHO to institute a global tax on tobacco products through the Solidarity Tobacco Contribution to fund international projects aimed at alleviating global poverty. The level of taxation would depend on the wealth of the country, meaning the U.S. would be hit...

The U.S. House of Representatives this week will be voting on H.R. 452, the “Medicare Decisions Accountability Act of 2011.” This bill would repeal the Medicare rationing board known as “IPAB,” and is part of a full repeal of the jobs-killing Obamacare law. The harmful Obamacare law created a new and unelected government panel known as “IPAB.” The basic role of IPAB would be to institute price controls and rationing within the Medicare system. This is the same type of wrong-headed price controls attempted in socialized medicine systems throughout the world. It doesn’t work anywhere else, and it won’t work...