Free Republic

Excerpt from agenda of an upcoming webinar: An employee now living and working from home in Indiana would be subject to Indiana wage-hour laws even if the employee used to work in Illinois and the employer is still located in Illinois. Overtime rules, minimum wage rates, and permitted deductions from paychecks, even pay stub requirements are governed by where the employee is physically performing the work. The same applies to garnishments for child support and creditors.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is looking to hire over 3,700 additional tax enforcers as it ramps up its audit crackdown of higher-earning taxpayers, though a watchdog warns that Americans making less than $400,000 could get caught in the dragnet because the agency doesn't have a clear definition of "high-income." The IRS said on Sept. 15 that it had opened over 3,700 positions nationwide to assist with "expanded enforcement work" that focuses on complex partnerships, large corporations, and high-income earners. The compliance positions will be open in more than 250 locations across the United States and are part of a...

A Washington utility company jacked its rates on residents as a result of the Democrat-passed cap-and-trade program, but was prohibited from informing its customers as to the reason why, according to a new report. The Center Square reported that the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) approved a request by Puget Sound Energy earlier this month to raise its natural gas rates to cover the costs of Washington’s cap-and-trade program, part of the Climate Commitment Act, which was passed by the Democrat-controlled state legislature and signed into law by Democrat Governor Jay Inslee. However, the UTC mandated that Puget Sound...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Thursday joined a group of millionaires in their call for Group of 20 (G20) nations to tax the ultrarich. In an open letter to G20 heads of state, Sanders, along with more than 300 millionaires, economists and politicians, called on the world’s largest economies to enact new tax regimes — at both national and international levels — that will prevent the “ultra-rich” from being able to “avoid paying their dues.”

Legislative Democrats have been scheming to kill Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, since before it was added to the state Constitution in 1992. Hardly a year goes by without a bill, proposal, “listening tour,” or lawsuit hatched to enable state legislators to spend money TABOR denies them. Now, they’re at it again. This time, they’ve proposed a Rube-Goldberg ballot initiative called Proposition HH. Some of its superficial details might seem novel — like lipstick on the proverbial pig — but it’s only the latest gambit in a political long-con that has gotten very, very old. That’s why the...

Social media has buzzed with GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s apparent support of a massive inheritance tax. In Ramaswamy’s Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence, he proposes the idea of a 59% minimum inheritance tax. Ramaswamy draws the number from suggestions proposed by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Piketty, an avowed socialist, authored Time for Socialism: Dispatches from a World on Fire, 2016-2021. “Piketty argues that the time has come to support an inclusive and expansive conception of socialism as a counterweight against the hypercapitalism that defines our current economic...

A little-discussed legal case heading for a hearing at the US Supreme Court’s October session has the ability to not only blow up a lot of current tax law but torpedo Joe Biden’s proposed “billionaires tax” before the House of Representatives gets the chance to euthanize it.In 2005, Charles and Kathleen Moore invested $40,000 in an Indian business named KisanKraft, which marketed power tools to Indian farmers in exchange for 13% of the company’s equity. It was a good investment, and the company made a profit every year. The profit was reinvested in the company and made no distribution to...

Property-tax relief? Hardly. Proposition HH on this fall’s statewide ballot is really about growing government. And it attempts to do that by piggybacking on public outrage over skyrocketing property tax bills. The proposal’s purported property-tax “relief” — served up by Gov. Jared Polis and his legislative allies as one part of their dizzyingly complicated scheme — is a ruse. As with every attempt to play politics with a crisis, there’s a hidden agenda. And that agenda is to snooker Colorado voters into letting the state keep and spend billions of dollars in surplus tax revenue that otherwise would have to...

President Vladimir Putin has signed a law introducing a windfall tax on excess profits of Russian companies, which was published on a government website on Friday. The law, passed by parliament last month, is aimed at raising 300 billion roubles and easing strain on the budget as Russia wages its war in Ukraine. Reuters reported exclusively on Friday that Russia had doubled its 2023 defence spending target to more than $100 billion, or a third of all public expenditure.

The six biggest U.S. pharmaceutical companies reported $215 billion in domestic sales in 2022, but paid only about 3% of their global profit in taxes, far below the average corporate tax of 21%,

It looks like these authoritarian leftists are getting quite desperate. Only a month after the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) falsely labeled Moms for Liberty as a hate group, folks on the hard left are now trying to weaponize the IRS against the parental rights advocacy group.This is the latest in the ongoing conflict between right and left over the school system. The attorney filing the complaint is hoping to have Moms for Liberty stripped of its 501(c)4 non-profit status, which would make it harder for the organization to raise funds.A Michigan attorney has confirmed she filed an Internal Revenue...

Like a lot of Coloradans, residents of Costilla County balked at the changes to their property values because of what it means for their property taxes. Higher values, higher taxes. The county assessor is in charge of determining that value, but the values that people are getting back don't make much sense to them right now. Whether you are Joe C. Rodriguez who has lived in southern Colorado for 79 years, or Tom Philips who moved out there in 2021 for his retirement home, it's the same problem across the board. They both got increased values out of what they...

I had not heard this. And what I am hearing is pretty disturbing as, unsurprisingly, it completely screws American businesses. It takes the concepts of globalism and equity, then combines them while surrendering our sovereignty over our own tax revenues. Basically giving it away.Does that sound about right? The quiet new way @JoeBiden & @TheDemocrats wants to tax you. @OECD surrenders America’s sovereignty over our tax code and allows foreign countries to take our taxes that were meant for our own essential programs and military. https://t.co/7H2rYl6iB0— Topper in NC (@LieselGreer) July 22, 2023Horrifically enough, it is.Over the past two years,...

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...

he issue of declining life expectancy in the country has garnered increased focus in recent times, particularly during the pandemic, where the biggest decline since WWII was observed. With the ongoing decline in life expectancy in the United States, a recent report reveals that Americans were at a disadvantage starting in the 1950s. Unfortunately, the situation has only worsened over time. Furthermore, a recent American Journal of Public Health study highlights over 50 countries with better life expectancy rates than the U.S., and a few states within the U.S. may bear partial responsibility for this trend.

America’s two-tier justice system keeps rolling along. And Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, who snubbed the House’s request for documents pertaining to his probe of Hunter Biden, is the latest to show how far the Department of Justice will go to keep it rolling. Hunter, President Joseph Robinette Biden’s black-sheep son, is facing tax and weapons charges that would represent deep hot water for most Americans. But Hunter isn’t most Americans. He’s the president’s son, and, allegedly, bagman as well. And our Justice Department, headed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, is out to spare him the consequences of his actions....

"As fuel taxes plummet, states weigh charging by the mile instead of the tank.” That was the headline of a recent AP story, which should scare freedom-loving citizens everywhere. And you can place the blame squarely on government-subsidized EVs for this terrible new development. The background is that state and federal gasoline taxes aren’t raising “enough” money these days to pay for roadway construction and maintenance. And a big reason for the growing shortfall is the increase in electric vehicles. EVs get massive tax subsidies to convince people to buy them, but their owners don’t pay gasoline taxes, for the...

In Paris, the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact has just concluded. The two-day Paris meeting attracted a host of important globalists and heads of state, including Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz, Brazilian president Lula da Silva, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, World Bank head Ajay Banga, IMF President Kristalina Georgieva, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres. These and many other globalist movers and shakers headlined the latest in a series of international climate confabs whose purpose is compensating poor countries for alleged climate-related injustices.

We’ll say it again now that Gov. Jared Polis has inked his purported “relief” for soaring property taxes: His plan is largely an illusion. Ignore the stagecraft of Wednesday’s signing ceremony for Senate Bill 23-303. It was a nice publicity stunt — the governor and assorted lawmakers turning up at the home of a Commerce City resident who supposedly would benefit. It was all sleight of hand. As we noted here only weeks ago, the Polis plan is as if someone offered to help you pay your bills — then reached into your pocket, grabbed your wallet, pulled out some...

Exit, Lori Lightfoot; enter, Brandon Johnson — and the song remains the same. Or does it?It’s hard to imagine conditions in Chicago getting more desperate than under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, but new Mayor Brandon Johnson — in office less than a week, as I write — is already doing his damnedest to make everyday life and business survival in one of the country’s most iconic cities even worse.But imagine, we must.As reported by The New York Post, the iconic Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) opened in 1898, only 27 years after the infamous Great Chicago Fire. Proud Chicagoans heralded the...