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THE HAGUE (JTA) — The City of Amsterdam fined hundreds of Jewish Holocaust survivors for failing to pay taxes while they were in hiding or in concentration camps. The affair was exposed in an article in Het Parool, a local daily, on March 30. Many of the houses in question were confiscated and used by members of the NSB Dutch Nazi party while the Jewish owners were in hiding or in camps. The city went after survivors as late as 1947, the report said. Other Dutch municipalities waived such debts, Het Parool reported. The following year the city agreed to...

OAKLAND (KCBS) – Bay Area drivers could one day be tracked using a GPS-like device in their cars and taxed per miles driven – a scenario which is part of a proposed long-range study aimed at finding ways to reduce traffic and pollution, while also raising revenues. Members of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments are scheduled to vote on Thursday on whether or not to authorize a study of the proposal. Under the plan, drivers would have to install trackers in their vehicle and officials would tax drivers for every mile they travel. “We’re...

The owner of a historic Kailua house beside the one the president uses has his property bill cut The absentee owner of a multimillion-dollar home being used by President Barack Obama's visiting entourage gets one of the biggest residential property tax breaks on Oahu. Kevin Comcowich, the Houston investment executive who purchased the nearly 5,000-square-foot home for $9 million in January 2008, was charged $300 in property taxes this year. Last year, Comcowich paid nearly $30,000 in taxes for his 1-acre beachfront spread in Kailua. In 2007 the tab — paid by the previous owner — was about $48,000, according...

America's True Tyranny! In the days leading up to the American Revolution, the Boston Tea Party was a direct action protest against the British government by British-American subjects in the Massachusetts Bay colony of Boston. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists dressed up as Native American Indians boarded these ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. This event remains one of the most memorialized historic events in U.S. history, and its relevance has recently reemerged due to excessive U.S. government...

A provision in the Democrats' proposal to partially fund health care reform would tax medical devices and replacement parts like pacemakers, hearing aids and porcelain teeth, worrying critics who say the higher costs will be passed on to consumers. Tucked into the Democrats' proposal to partially fund health care reform is a provision to tax medical appliances -- including some manufactured replacement parts for your body. Under pressure, the Senate recently exempted medical items that cost under $100 -- such as tampons and condoms. But the tax, expected to raise about $40 billion over the next decade, is still in...

I confess to having a soft spot in my heart for old-style, Tammany Hall pols like New York Democrat Charles Rangel, current chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee -- which is the same committee another loveable old rogue, disgraced Illinois Democrat Dan Rostenkowski, used to oversee back in the day. Both are from an era that's long past, and for good reason, too. Old Dan ended up doing time in the slam for a myriad of corrupt practices, including mail fraud, and Rangel could find himself going in the same direction, if current news reports are correct....

California's registered domestic partners should report their pay on federal tax forms the way single people do, rather than using methods available to married couples, according to an internal memo the Internal Revenue Service released Monday. The clarification is the first guidance from the IRS in the wake of a sweeping state law that took effect in 2005, giving gays and lesbians many of the rights of married couples. The news should ease the confusion facing the state's 71,000 partners with the April 17 tax-filing deadline just weeks away. But the federal agency's response wasn't the answer that gay and...

Residents of Hawaii, Wyoming and Connecticut shoulder the heaviest state tax burdens in the nation. The least state taxes per person are paid by those living in Texas, South Dakota or Colorado, U.S. Census figures for 2004 show. The tax burden is important because it helps determine a state's business climate, carves a hole into taxpayers' wallets and influences individual decisions on where to live. The tax burden weighs so heavily in some states that people have called the moving van to escape to a lower-tax state.

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