Free Republic

As the April 15 tax deadline approaches, a quiet but significant shift is taking place across the United States tax system. Fewer audits. Fewer enforcement agents. And a growing perception among some taxpayers that the odds of getting caught have dropped. At the center of it all is the Internal Revenue Service, which is undergoing a major transformation under the administration of Donald Trump. The agency has lost tens of thousands of workers and is facing further proposed cuts, raising serious questions about tax compliance, federal revenue, and what it all means for investors.A Shrinking IRS WorkforceThe IRS is significantly...

A quiet western Massachusetts town is being torn apart by a proposed 50% property tax hike — with neighbors stealing yard signs from one another and some residents warning they could be forced to sell their homes. Residents of South Hadley, Mass., head to the polls Tuesday to vote on proposals to close the local budget gap. One would raise $11 million for the town and hike average property tax bills by about $1,700 per year, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette. The more modest proposal would generate a cool $9 million, increasing average property tax bills by roughly $1,400....

Nobody really budgets for a financial car crash in April. But that’s exactly what millions of Americans are dealing with this year. Instead of the refund they were counting on to finally pay off Christmas gifts or fund a summer trip, tax season 2026 is handing them a bill. And for a lot of people, it’s not a small one. It’s the kind of bill that makes you want to throw your laptop out a window. The reasons aren’t actually that complicated – the government practically set a trap for anyone with a side hustle. Between confusing tax law changes,...

California politicians are trying to repeal Prop 13! Help us defeat costly their costly and unfair tax and utility hikes and pass the California Taxpayer Protection Initiative! California’s working families are already struggling with a high cost of living and state and local politicians are making it worse by constantly trying to raise taxes and spike our utility rates. California politicians are specifically trying to repeal Prop 13 — along with a blizzard of other tax hike proposals. That’s why Carl DeMaio and Reform California are helping to lead the campaign to block any more tax hikes and pass a...

June Lake is part of Mono County, which has the highest average gas price in the United States. “My husband and I were watching the news this morning, and it came on about $4 gas and I said, ‘Well, where are you? Ours is $7.50!’” she said, citing the price at the only gas station in her town.

The head of an influential Big Apple business advocacy group warned that companies are already taking steps to relocate or move jobs elsewhere because of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s tax-hike crusade. Steve Fulop, CEO of the Partnership for the City of New York, said many corporations are considering leaving or shifting their workforces to less costly states after it was revealed $900 billion asset manager Apollo Global Management is plotting a second US headquarters in the Sunbelt. “In the last week, there have been several [major companies] in the Partnership that have said they’re going down the same road [as Apollo],...

Liberal Maine Democrats control Maine State Government: Governor, Senate, House. They are poised to impose a 2% tax on the 2,600 tax paying Mainers who earn a million dollars or more per year. The governor said she expects the state will see added income tax revenue of $150 million over the next two years. There is no mention in the news story about the likelihood of any of those 2,600 taxpayers changing their legal residency to income tax free states in response to this new law. Nor is there any discussion regarding the possibility of future legislation lowering the tax...

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to tax his way out of the Big Apple’s self-imposed fiscal crisis is facing a fresh and little-discussed threat, according to well-placed financiers – and it’s coming from artificial intelligence. As I reported earlier this week, investors lately have begun to shun city debt – either selling it in the secondary market or balking at buying its newly issued bonds – over concerns that Mamdani’s numbers aren’t adding up. The worry is that his $127 billion budget still faces a $5.4 billion deficit and that his solutions – like raising taxes on anyone who works –...

This thread is about EO 14247. I just got my tax returns back and I am told that all of my 2026 estimated taxes for Federal and State must be electronic. That is, they must be sucked out of an account by ACH transfer. No more mailing of checks. However, the government will graciously accept my mailed in check for what is due on the return itself. I checked with CoPilot, and it said that EO 14247 of March 25, 2025 mandates that all payments to the Federal Government (including estimated taxes) must be electronic via a portal (IRS.Gov/Payments, I...

Taxpayers are yet again helping fund disruptive activism in Los Angeles — this time the radicals planning to chaos across the city and county for Saturday’s “No Kings” protests, which organizers claim will be the biggest yet. One the leading groups participating in the event is the Liberty Hill Foundation, a social justice nonprofit that receives $14 million in Los Angeles city funding for tenant outreach and housing programs. Public filings show the group has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the ACLU of Southern California, raising further questions about taxpayer-supported organizations being used for radical political advocacy. ACLU...

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — In a series of exchanges spanning over three days, Connecticut’s top Democratic leaders appeared divided over whether or not to move forward with Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposal for a one-month gas tax holiday to address rising costs triggered by the war with Iran.The Democratic House speaker and House majority leader both signaled on Wednesday that their 102-member caucus is not clamoring for a gas tax holiday. A reprieve from the 25-cent-per-gallon tax, they reason, will not deliver sufficiently targeted savings.

Back in November, just days after Zohran Mamdani won his election to become the next mayor of New York City, I wrote about the cost of all of his proposals from free child care to free buses. The free child care plan alone was estimated to cost $6 to $9 billion per year and that's just the cost to offer it in NYC, which is less than half of the population of the state.The problem with all of these plans is that Mamdani had no way to pay for any of this. At the core of his big spending socialist...

Choosing when to collect Social Security retirement benefits is a consequential decision. It will affect your finances for the rest of your life. You’ll be able to claim reduced retirement benefits as early as 62.In fact, in 2022, nearly 30 percent of new Social Security beneficiaries began receiving benefits at age 62, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. The full retirement age (FRA) for those born in 1960 or later is 67, according to the Social Security Administration (SSA). Although you can claim the benefits early, there are drawbacks. And one of them relates to any continued employment.Social Security Earnings...

Facts are a harsh mistress. And nobody seems more incapable of grasping facts than Democrats in general, and New York's Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul in particular. In her latest embarrassing slip-up, the climate law she supported, and the Empire States ever-more-onerous taxes are driving all the wealthy people, the people who start and run businesses and provide jobs, out of the state. Now, because of the green policies, utility rates are climbing, meaning that a big chunk of the rest of the residents of New York are looking to the exits as well. Now Governor Hochul wants to delay full...

Note to Democrat politicians. The Maasai is an African tribe known to bleed their cattle. In their culture they use the cattle blood often mixed with milk as food. One thing that separates the Maasai from leftist politicians is they carefully work to keep their herds healthy by never bleeding their cattle till they become weak and unhealthy. Unlike Democrat politicians the Maasai understand their herds are their livelihood thus must prosper and thrive for them to prosper and thrive. So they take very good care of their herds so the blood they do take does not harm the animal....

Imagine a small concert venue, hosting 900 people, give or take. That’s about the number of passengers and crew on a small cruise ship, or of students attending the average U.S. public high school. A group that size collectively holds more wealth than the bottom half of the country combined, because that’s roughly how many billionaires live in the U.S. But a new bill is asking the people in that hypothetical cruise ship, concert venue, or high school to chip in, and to bankroll multi-thousand-dollar checks for millions of middle-class Americans. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna introduced the...

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul became the latest blue-state leader to lament the flight of wealthy tax-paying residents to Republican-led tax havens like Florida, Alaska, Wyoming and Tennessee, calling millionaires who stayed in the Empire State to fund its massive social services net “patriotic.” With Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declaring his jurisdiction a “free state” for transplants wishing to leave liberal policies and taxation behind, blue states like New York, Illinois and California are squeezing and at times pursuing natives who emigrate to financially greener pastures — while at the same time, some governors are blasting conservative voters as inauthentic...

The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday to crack down on illegal immigrants participating in welfare fraud despite fierce objections from most Democrats. Lawmakers voted 231-186 to approve the Deporting Fraudsters Act, with 186 Democrats opposing the measure. The bill, sponsored by Rep. David Taylor, R-Ohio, would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to explicitly define fraud as a deportable offense. Republicans said the legislation is necessary to ensure that noncitizens who steal taxpayer dollars are no longer eligible for immigration relief services or legal protections.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is pushing to reduce the state’s estate tax exemption threshold by nearly 90%, from over $7 million to $750,000, while raising the top estate tax rate from 16% to 50%. The proposal appeared in a memo circulated by Mamdani’s office to state lawmakers negotiating the state budget. New York Focus first reported the memo. Mamdani is confronting a $5.4 billion city budget deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1 and is seeking assistance from the state legislature to generate revenue to address the shortfall. The memo included nearly a dozen potential revenue-raising ideas....

Chuck Collins figures he won life's lottery by inheriting vast sums of money through his great-grandfather Oscar Mayer's processed meat company. Rather than fight to protect every dime, Collins helped push to hike taxes on the ultrarich like himself. He was successful in helping implement a higher tax in Massachusetts on income over $1 million, and the idea took hold in a handful of other blue states, including California, Maryland, Minnesota and New Jersey. Lawmakers in the state of Washington, which doesn't have an income tax, could send the governor this week a measure that would impose one on million-dollar...