Free Republic

One Big Beautiful Bill Act – car loan interest tax deduction is a groundbreaking new tax benefit that allows taxpayers to deduct up to $10,000 per year in interest on loans for new U.S. assembled vehicles from 2025–2028. This provision, part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025, aims to support American manufacturing and provide significant tax savings for vehicle owners. Below, you’ll find a comprehensive list of qualifying vehicles and all the key requirements you need to know to claim this deduction. To qualify for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act car loan interest tax deduction, your...

Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as New York City’s mayor today. The 34-year-old promised universal childcare for the many by taxing the wealthiest few. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders swore Mamdani into office and even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made an appearance. “The cost of childcare will no longer discourage young adults from starting a family because we will provide universal childcare for the many by taxing the wealthiest few,” Mamdani told the crowd. “Those in rent-stabilized homes will no longer dread the latest rent hike because we will freeze the rent. Getting on a bus without worrying about a fare hike...

New Jersey drivers are about to get hit with a nearly 9% hike in the state’s gas tax — leaving them once again grappling with one of the highest rates in the country. Thanks to legislation signed into law in 2024, the state — the only one in the nation to not allow self-service pumps — is raising its gas tax by 4.2 cents to 49.1 cents for gasoline and 56.1 cents for diesel Jan. 1. The jump would average out to about $27 more per year per driver, for a total cost of $320 just for the state gas...

A company owned by Tim Mynett, the multimillionaire husband of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), failed to pay its fair share of taxes in 2021, according to a tax lien obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Mynett's company, EStreetCo, accumulated nearly $206,000 in unpaid income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes in 2021, the IRS charged in a tax lien filed against the company in Sonoma County, Calif., in January 2023. Omar, who introduced legislation in February to "make corporations pay their fair share," was married to Mynett when the IRS says the company failed to pay its taxes. In her...

An Oklahoma lawmaker has taken inspiration from an initiative in Massachusetts, to bring additional funding for education. Representative Andy Fugate has plans to introduce a millionaire tax, with the revenue going to low performing schools. ......... “An additional 2% in personal income taxes on your net income over $1 million, and an additional 2% on net income that goes over $5 million,” said Rep. Fugate. .......

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent predicted that Americans will see "gigantic" refund checks in the upcoming filing season, thanks to tax cuts in President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Bessent, who also serves as the acting commissioner of the IRS, made the remark during an appearance on the "All-In Podcast." The treasury secretary told the hosts that the tax provisions in the act, which Trump signed in July, applied retroactively to the beginning of the year, and because most workers did not change their withholdings, many can expect sizable refunds in 2026. "I can see that we’re gonna...

For many Americans, charitable giving peaks in December. It is driven by holiday generosity, end-of-year reflection, and for some, last-minute tax planning. But a quiet change in the tax code is about to reshape how millions of taxpayers should think about charitable donations. Timing now matters more than ever. Starting in tax year 2026, Americans who do not itemize deductions will once again be able to deduct charitable donations. This time, the benefit is permanent and more generous than before. For the roughly 90 percent of filers who typically take the standard deduction, waiting until January instead of donating in...

A potential veto of Chicago’s 2026 budget by Mayor Brandon Johnson could trigger the Windy City's first-ever municipal shutdown. Johnson reportedly rebuked the budget passed by council over the weekend, which lacks the mayor’s favored per-employee "head tax" on corporations, as "morally bankrupt." If Johnson were to veto the budget, it would place the onus back on city council to rehash a plan that could get signed before Dec. 30 – or plunge the city into shutdown. City Council lacks any Republican representation – with a Democratic majority of 48 plus two independents, so the situation represents a clash within...

Billionaires including Peter Thiel, the tech venture capitalist, and Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, are considering cutting or reducing their ties to California by the end of the year because of a proposed ballot measure that could tax the state’s wealthiest residents, according to five people familiar with their thinking. Mr. Thiel, 58, who owns a home in the Hollywood Hills and operates a personal investment firm from Los Angeles, has explored opening an office for that firm, Thiel Capital, in another state, and spending more time outside of California, three of the people said. Other billionaires who appear...

California’s richest residents could be slapped with a one-time 5% tax on their net worth if a new law makes it onto the ballot next year. The measure – called the “2026 Billionaire Tax Act” – seeks to counter $30 billion in potential federal funding cuts to California’s Medicaid program. Cash from the new tax could also pay for the Golden State’s struggling public education system, according to supporters of the act, which include the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). If passed and signed off by Gov. Gavin Newsom, California’s tech bosses like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia CEO...

Housing and Urban Services Secretary Scott Turner said a majority of illegal alien families in the United States rely on taxpayer-funded welfare programs, costing tens of billions of dollars each year and placing significant strain on housing, healthcare, education, and public safety systems. Turner said roughly 59 percent of illegal alien families use at least one welfare program, at an estimated annual cost of $42 billion.

Americans should expect to be flush with cash next year, with fat tax-refund checks and more take-home pay in their pockets, says a top contender to become President Trump’s next Federal Reserve chair. “We are going to see the biggest refund cycle ever in the history of America, and people are going to get massive refund checks,” boasted National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett this week in an interview on FOX Business’ “Varney & Co.” “We’re expecting just that part of it alone to be worth a couple-thousand-dollar refund … the numbers are striking.” Hassett’s comments Thursday came a day...

Would you rather be a millionaire or have safe, reliable passive income for life? That’s the difficult choice that many lucky lottery winners are frequently faced with. While the prospect of a seven-figure payout is tempting, 20-year-old Brenda Aubin-Vega from Quebec, Canada recently decided to take the recurring payment option instead. After scratching off three piggy bank symbols on her Gagnant à Vie ticket, Aubin-Vega was stunned to discover she had just bagged the game’s top prize. “I couldn’t believe my eyes! I checked my ticket over and over again,” she told Yahoo News Canada (1). After calling her dad...

In his biographies of the Roman emperors, Suetonius describes a conversation between Vespasian and his son Titus, who disapproved of his father taxing the urine that tanners and other industries collected from public restrooms: “When Titus found fault with him for contriving a tax upon public conveniences, [Vespasian] held a piece of money from the first payment to his son’s nose, asking whether its odor was offensive to him. When Titus said ‘No,’ he replied, ‘Yet it comes from urine.’” This sentiment has been summarized in the proverb, “Money doesn’t stink.” Currency, in other words, is morally neutral. Its buying...

Conservatives can’t save the country by funding their enemies—defunding the Department of Education would return billions to taxpayers, cut grift, and let education compete. Help your enemies and harm your friends. That’s the kind of big-brain, third-eye-opened, decalcified-pineal-gland (real eyes realize real lies) type of thinking that made the post-war conservative movement into the political juggernaut it is today. I mean, just check out the Conservative Inc. plan to save America: Step 1: Hand out pocket Constitutions. Step 2: Give liberals huge sums of tax money. Step 3: Denounce Trump for being mean. Step 4: Save the Country. Brilliant stuff,...

As the old aphorism goes: “Don’t tax you; don’t tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.” Nobody likes paying taxes, but most Americans accept them as a necessary evil and are willing to pay their fair share, unless politicians waste those tax dollars in extraordinarily—well—wasteful ways, or steal them outright. I refer, of course, to California, where, as the classic Eagle’s song Hotel California goes: “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.” California, it’s no secret, is in deep financial trouble. In 2022, Gavin Newsom bragged about a $97.5 billion dollar surplus. By the...

Democrats want us to believe they care about the little guy, the working class, the average American. Yet. somehow, their policies always seem to hurt the people they claim to help and enrich the elites who fund their campaigns. On the campaign trail last year, President Trump proposed his No Tax on Tips plan, and the left freaked out. Though they claimed it was bad policy, Kamala Harris went on to steal the plan just a couple of months after him. No Tax on Tips became the law of the land with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill,...

There comes a point at which the velocity of stupid outpaces, and then laps, the rigors of reason. California is about to get lapped. Gov. Gavin Newsom and his leftist legislative supermajority and their union buddies have finally run out of other people's money. The left's fix for this is to chase away all the rest of the billionaires who still call California home by pushing a ballot initiative demanding a 5% retroactive wealth tax on the net worth of billionaires. The billionaires who still call California home are thinking about leaving. And it's all because the left prefers takers...

President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that Americans may "not even have income tax to pay" in the near future, saying tariff-driven revenue could allow for the historic elimination of the federal income tax under his tenure. Trump told a press gaggle after his cabinet meeting that "at some point in the not too distant future you won’t even have income tax to pay," arguing that revenue the government is collecting under his administration is now "so great… so enormous." "Whether you get rid of it or just keep it around for fun or have it really low, much lower than...

For decades, people have fretted about the financial sustainability of America's bedrock retirement income program. Now, Social Security's precarious fiscal state is an issue for the here and now. * How to fix it is set to be a defining political fight of the next several years, with millions of Americans' benefits and the fiscal future of the United States at stake. Why it matters: There is a tug-of-war between the benefits future retirees receive and the taxes that working-age people pay. Something has to give, and surprisingly soon. The big picture: The Social Security retirement fund is set to...