Free Republic

Canada’s national debt has reached a point where the entire Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenue is now being used to cover interest payments. Every dollar collected from GST is funneled directly to bondholders, leaving nothing for essential government services. The numbers are staggering. In the last fiscal year, $55 billion was collected in GST, and $55 billion was paid out in interest on government debt. The Bank of Canada holds 20 percent of these bonds, meaning it is effectively paying itself interest on the debt it owns. This raises serious concerns about the sustainability of Canada’s fiscal policy. When...

Delaware’s new Governor has dismissed Texas and Nevada's attempts to steal companies incorporated in The First State. Matt Meyer, just two months into office, has already made significant changes to the state's corporate laws, including limiting shareholders’ ability to sue company founders. The rapid changes are an attempt to stem the tide of companies leaving Delaware to incorporate in other states — dubbed 'Dexit' — but critics argue it merely makes the state friendlier to billionaires. Tesla threatened to leave the state when Tesla was sued over the hefty pay package for Elon Musk. More than 60 percent of the...

Other universities also operate at or anticipate large deficits. Brown University is facing a $46 million deficit that could grow to $90 million.. The deficit could “deepen significantly” according to an announcement from the Providence, Rhode Island university. While the university has an endowment, it is already tapping it as much as reasonable. The school announced the reasons for the deficit problems: These include nearly flat net revenue from undergraduate tuition growth due to a steady size of the undergraduate student body, downward pressure on tuition increases, and increased financial aid; the macroeconomic factors of unexpected high inflation, growth in...

The WNBA is coming off of its most-popular season in league history with the arrival of Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and the rest of the 2024 rookie class. It is still going to lose a lot of money and NBA owners are reportedly furious with the continued financial struggles. They are tired of paying to prop someone else up. According to the New York Post, the WNBA will lost $40 million this season. This is the 26th-straight year where it will fail to turn a profit. Never before has the professional women’s basketball league made a single dollar since it...

While the WNBA is getting sellout crowds for the finals between the New York Liberty and Minnesota Lynx, the league’s owners will not be making a return on their investment for the foreseeable future, sources close to the situation said. The NBA owns nearly 60 percent of the league. When one combines the NBA owners’ personal stakes in WNBA teams and the WNBA itself, the amount rises to 75 percent, a source with direct knowledge of the numbers said. The NBA team owners have invested hundreds of millions in the WNBA since its 1996 formation, per sources.

You’ve got to give credit to former President Donald Trump for being the first to bring up what has become a politically popular proposal to eliminate the federal income tax on tipped wages. It was a smart political move. Republicans, long maligned as the party of billionaires and multinational corporations, could use more policy proposals aimed at helping lower and middle class workers and small businesses. This proposal would do both, and it also, on the surface at least, aligns with conservative fundamental principles of shrinking taxes and the overall size of government, generally always a good thing. You’ve also...

One of the most damaging impacts of Illinois’ people loss to other states is the destruction of Illinois’ tax base. When people leave in a given year, they take their incomes (adjusted gross incomes, or AGI) with them, and that means the state’s tax base suffers. A smaller tax base, everything else equal, means less tax revenues for safety, education, road repair and every other core government service – or, as is typically the case in Illinois, more debts and more tax hikes.Unfortunately, Illinois’ out-migration problem is much bigger than just a one year loss: the state has lost people...

Federal tax revenue increased 33% since Congress passed the Trump-era tax reform bill in 2017, while spending increased more than 50% over that same time frame. The data is contained in the Congressional Budget Office's recently released 10-year budget outlook. "Measured as a share of the economy, tax revenue averaged 17% of gross domestic product in the years since the TCJA was passed, the same share as in 2017, and would have been higher if not for the pandemic and associated economic shutdowns," wrote Alfredo Ortiz, president and CEO of the Job Creators Network. "The CBO projects the tax share...

With stiff, cold fingers, Sambeittou Sambeittou removed the neatly folded piece of cardboard he carries in his pocket like a wallet and treats like a precious jewel. “I’m looking for carpenter jobs” is written in marker along with a phone number. The 45-year-old huddled with other migrants from Africa at the entrance of a Lowe’s in Brooklyn, hoping for a few dollars in tips from customers loading drywall, lumber and insulation into their vehicles. Sambeittou never learned to read and write in Mauritania, the West African country he left three months ago on a journey that took him through Senegal,...

SAN JOSE (Reuters) - Nicaraguan migrants sent relatives back home record remittances this year through November, data from the country's central bank showed on Wednesday, fueled by massive waves of migration leaving the Central American nation in recent years. In a statement, the bank noted a record haul of about $4.24 billion in remittances for the 11-month period, 47% more than the amount sent home during the same period last year. The 2023 remittances tallied by Nicaragua's central bank showed that nearly 60% came from the senders in the United States and almost 20% from neighboring Costa Rica.

The taxman just delivered a body blow to another member of the Biden family, informing her that she owes thousands of dollars in unpaid back taxes. The revelation, first reported by Fox News, is another indication of the pressure that multiple family members to President Joe Biden are under to profit off his stature and status. A recent tax lien docket by the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue shows that Ashley Biden, daughter to the president, owes $5,000 for unpaid tax bills accrued between 2015 — when Biden was vice president — and 2021, shortly after he took office again. The...

The Biden administration is facing heavy criticism from Native Alaskans over its crackdown on oil and gas drilling in Alaska, activity which generates tax revenue vital for key state and local programs. Native Alaskan leaders have particularly taken issue with the Department of the Interior's (DOI) recent actions blocking future oil and gas development in the National Petroleum Reserve (NPR), an area in North Slope Borough, Alaska, specifically set aside by Congress for resource development, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), and in federal offshore waters off the state's coast. "My community unapologetically supports the leasing program," Charles Lampe,...

Walmart’s world We know you know Walmart is big, but it’s hard to overstate just how big America’s largest retailer actually is. In addition to selling the most stuff and employing the most people of any private employer, Walmart's physical footprint is unmatched, with enough floor space in stores in the US alone to fit some 12,500 football fields. On the topic of employment, Walmart’s roster is nothing short of an army, employing approximately 1.6 million “associates” just in the US — more than the 1.4 million people that call Hawaii home — enough to make it the 41st most-populous...

The Republicans’ little red book is showing people escaping big crime and tax states like New York and California for lower tax, lower crime states like Florida and Texas. But to Democrats who are really bad at math, 7+7 = 0? Most people are already familiar with the mass migration from the Democratic strongholds of California and New York, known for high crime and tax rates. We have delved into this in our article, “Americans Continue To Flee High-Tax New York And California,” highlighting Texas and Florida as preferred destinations. California and New York have sustained population declines during Covid...

On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Cavuto: Coast to Coast,” New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli (D) discussed the state’s projected $36 billion budget shortfall over three years and stated that taxpayers leaving the state is part of the issue along with the fact that the economy is slowing down. DiNapoli stated, “I think there are a couple of factors happening: There’s no doubt the economy certainly is slowing and we are feeling the effects in the current year collections of the slowdown, as far as financial services, Wall Street’s a very important part of the economy in...

Heavily taxed blue states such as New York and California last year had some of the country's most drastic drops in tax revenue. At the same time, Republican states are enjoying the highest revenue increases even as they keep income taxes low. Under Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, California has turned a $100 billion budget surplus into a $32 billion deficit, Bloomberg reported Friday, forcing the state to trim its "lofty climate change program, delay funding, and increase internal borrowing." In this year alone, the once-Golden State has seen its tax revenue crater by nearly 25 percent as it hemorrhages wealthy...

Still, that upward [revenue] revision for the upcoming year would not be enough to cover a shortfall created by a cost overrun related to a state expansion of health care to noncitizens who would otherwise be ineligible for Medicaid benefits. Those programs, which provide health care benefits similar to Medicaid to noncitizens aged 42 and older, are now expected to cost about $1.1 billion next year – a 400 percent increase from the original estimate of $220 million included in Pritzker’s February budget proposal.

According to an April report released by watchdog group OpenTheBooks.com, the Internal Revenue Service has spent $10 million since 2020 on guns, ammunition, and other tactical gear in an effort to militarize the agency. The report revealed that the IRS and 102 other agencies outside the Department of Defense invested a combined total of $3.7 billion since 2006 – adjusted for inflation – on weapons, ammunition, and military-style equipment. OpenTheBooks.com stated that 76 of the 102 are rank-and-file regulatory agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Social Security Administration, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services. “There are now more...

A new report has put a price on exactly what the "work from home" trend has cost the office-laden city of Manhattan: a stunning $12 billion per year. Working at home means that office workers who would normally be out and about are spending $12 billion less than what they spent before the pandemic, according to a new Bloomberg News study.The average worker is spending about 30% less time in the office, meaning that spending on food and entertainment has fallen by about $4,700 per person, data from Stanford University shows.On a per-person basis, the figure is higher than anywhere...

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D.-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R.-Ky., have struck a deal to include the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), according to Axios. If the deal holds, it will move this essential piece of legislation to President Joe Biden’s desk. The NDAA must pass by year’s end to fund America’s military. The JCPA would allow news organizations to band together to negotiate fair fees from online platforms, such as Facebook and Google, who derive ad revenue from the hard work of newsrooms — mostly small, local, community-rooted...