Free Republic

President Joe Biden on Tuesday is expected to tout the nation's economic health in his State of the Union Address, just days after a blockbuster jobs report showed a strong labor market has coincided with a monthslong easing of inflation. Looking ahead, however, Biden is expected to propose solutions for what he considers an ongoing economic ill: income and wealth inequality. The wealth of the top 1% increased by $6.5 trillion in 2021, according to a study the Federal Reserve released last year. That wealthiest sliver of Americans controls 32% of the country's wealth, the study found. The Biden administration's...

NEW YORK (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service is recommending that taxpayers hold off on filing their tax returns for 2022 if they received a special tax refund or payment from their state last year. Last year, 19 states offered diverse programs that offered inflation relief payments or refunds for taxpayers. The IRS issued the guidance Friday due to the agency’s uncertainty about the taxability of the payments. “We are working with state tax officials as quickly as possible to provide additional information and clarity for taxpayers,” the IRS said in its statement. For residents from states such as California...

Last week, a group of Democratic lawmakers known for their climate policy advocacy gathered outside the U.S. Capitol building to call for a new tax on the immense profits earned by oil and gas companies since Russia invaded Ukraine last year. “We know truthfully how much money they made by gouging consumers,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island with a history of pushing for action to combat climate change. “We’re working to try to take that back.” Taxes have always played a key role in climate policy. For decades, climate advocates pushed for a tax on carbon...

Energy customers, many of whom say they are being crushed by gas and electricity bills that have doubled, tripled and even quadrupled in the last few months – accepted the Colorado Public Utility Commission’s invitation to comment on skyrocketing energy prices, and it wasn’t pretty. Dawn Fetzko, a customer, said she learned about the public meeting while watching the news. “We're working trying to earn a living and now trying to earn a living to pay our utility bill,” she said. “I know my utility bill went from $150 to a shocking $365 in one month.” “It's no secret that...

A marijuana brand bearing the name of one of the world's most famous stoners has pulled out of California as the state's cannabis taxes gut legal operations and allow the black market to thrive. Garcia Hand Picked - founded by the relatives of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia - removed its products and operations from California as the state's laws coupled with Federal taxes have left legitimate producers paying as much as 80 percent in taxes. As businesses jump through hurdles to produce and sell marijuana, black market operations and illegal farms have managed to operate without legal barriers and...

While millions of jobless Americans struggled to make ends meet during devastating government-mandated lockdowns, thousands of federal employees double-dipped from taxpayer-funded pandemic unemployment funds while mostly working from home. Despite staying on taxpayers’ payroll during the height of the pandemic panic, greedy bureaucrats in the Internal Revenue Service, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, United States Postal Service, Amtrak, and the Secret Service defrauded taxpayers out of millions more dollars under the guise of Covid unemployment fund and wage assistance programs. In the Department of Homeland Security alone, nearly 2,000 ineligible or potentially ineligible employees received lost wage assistance...

After the Internal Revenue Service issued several releases warning about potentially lower tax refunds this filing season, some analysts say that it could put strain on some families who may have anticipated an expanded child tax credit. Analysts Sound Off.. Financial expert Lynnette Khalfani-Cox told NPR on Jan. 22 that there are “four main reasons” that cause will cause 2022’s returns to be smaller. “The first is: no more stimulus checks. The second is that what was called the enhanced child credit—that’s gone,” she noted. A third reason is that a pandemic-era tax break for charitable deductions was killed for...

California lawmakers are pushing legislation that would impose yet another new tax on the state's wealthiest residents — even if they've already moved to another part of the country. (You can run, but you can't hide!) Assemblyman Alex Lee, a progressive Democrat (is there any other kind?), recently introduced a bill in the California state Legislature that would impose an extra annual 1.5% tax on those with a worldwide net worth above $1 billion, starting as early as next year. Moreover, as soon as 2026, the threshold for being taxed would drop dramatically: those with a "worldwide net worth" exceeding...

The direct payments have been sent out automatically based on Californians’ 2020 tax information. Now, as they prepare to file their 2022 taxes, some inflation relief recipients will need to report the payments as income, according to the the Franchise Tax Board (FTB). The first important thing to note, the FTB says, is that there’s a difference here between state taxes and federal taxes. As far as California state taxes are concerned, the Middle Class Tax Refund (MCTR) is not taxable income, a FTB spokesperson told Nexstar. That means you don’t need to claim your inflation relief payment — no...

Audits of 12 school districts has state Auditor General Timothy DeFoor believing school boards are playing a “shell game” with taxpayer funds by moving money into reserve accounts to allow them to make a case for raising property tax rates. State laws limit how much school districts can raise property taxes and sets limits on those increases but allows for exceptions to be granted in one of two ways: ask voters’ permission through a referendum or ask the state Department of Education for a referendum exception. “These 12 districts collectively raised taxes 37 times during the four years we reviewed...

A New York Times editorial board member actually claimed that Americans should be concerned about their taxes being too low when thinking about the $31 trillion-plus national debt crisis. Yes, you read that correctly. Binyamin Appelbaum, The Times editorial board’s so-called “lead writer on economics and business” argued that the government is actually a victim in the debt crisis that it created. “The Real Debt Crisis Is Low Taxes,” read the headline of his nonsensical Jan. 25 op-ed. It seems he realized just how stupid his headline sounded as The Times later changed the headline entirely, making it appear more...

California lawmakers are pushing legislation that would impose a new tax on the state’s wealthiest residents — even if they’ve already moved to another part of the country. Assemblyman Alex Lee, a progressive Democrat, last week introduced a bill in the California State Legislature that would impose an extra annual 1.5% tax on those with a “worldwide net worth” above $1 billion, starting as early as January 2024. As early as 2026, the threshold for being taxed would drop: those with a worldwide net worth exceeding $50 million would be hit with a 1% annual tax on wealth, while billionaires...

Should an elderly grandmother be forced to hand over millions of dollars to the government for failing to file a particular form?The Supreme Court today rejected to consider a case on whether some Internal Revenue Service (IRS) penalties are actually unconstitutionally excessive fines. The case revolves around Monica Toth, an 82-year-old Boston-area woman who the IRS wants to seize more than $2 million from because she ran afoul of IRS documentation guidelines. In the 1930s, Toth's family fled from Nazi Germany to Argentina, where she was born. Toth moved to America at age 22 and later became a U.S. citizen....

How many times have you heard President Joe Biden or Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) berate the Trump tax cuts as “a giveaway to the rich?” Biden and congressional Democrats now want to let expire major planks of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, former President Donald Trump's signature domestic achievement, particularly the incentives for American businesses to invest more here at home. We now have incontrovertible evidence that after five years since they took effect, the Trump tax rate cuts of 2017 raised revenues over this time period. For full disclosure, I should note...

Catherine Rampell of the WaPo is correctly recognizing that states are sabotaging their finances. While she recognizes the coming problem, she blames tax cuts instead of overspending and depending on the rich as the culprit. Democrats rarely think they spend too much and rarely want to allow the people and businesses to keep more of what they earn. As recession looms (maybe), states sabotage their own financesRampell, like most journalists, has falsely blamed Trump's tax rate cuts for cutting federal revenues when revenues actually rose substantially after the rate cuts. Overspending has always been the problem in DC.Many states sabotaged...

Supporters of taxes on the very rich contend that people are emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic with a bigger appetite for what they’re calling “tax justice.” Bills announced Thursday in California, New York, Illinois, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Washington and Connecticut vary in their approaches to hiking taxes, but all revolve around the idea that the richest Americans need to pay more. All of the proposals face questionable prospects. Similar legislation has died in state legislatures and Congress. But the new push shows that the political left isn’t ready to give up on the populist argument that government can and should...

Left-leaning proponents of taxing the assets held by America’s billionaires have a new target: In lieu of a federal wealth tax, state lawmakers want to tax billionaires where they live, in states like California, Washington and New York. A group of legislators in statehouses across the country has coordinated to introduce bills simultaneously in seven states later this week, with the same goal of raising taxes on the rich. “The point here is to make sure we do at the state level what is not being done at the federal level,” said Gustavo Rivera (D), a New York state senator...

As reported earlier Joe Biden and Kamala Harris proudly displayed their tax filings on the JoeBiden.com webpage. But then suddenly the documents were taken down and the webpage sent readers to a Democrat fundraising page. The Gateway Pundit investigated these documents on the Wayback Machine. Links to their tax filings were originally posted on the joebiden.com financial disclosure webpage in July 2019. The original list of tax filings included filings from 2016, 2017, and 2018: In January 2022 the JoeBiden.com financial disclosure webpage included the additional filings from 2019 and Senator Harris’s forms from 2019. The JoeBiden.com financial disclosure webpage...

A bill heralded by progressive lawmakers would allow Montgomery County and other jurisdictions in Maryland to raise income taxes on high-earning residents by a half-percentage point to provide tax relief for low- and moderate-income families. The bill would increase the maximum allowable income tax rate from 3.2% to 3.7%. “It’s simply unfair that the wealthy few have a smaller tax burden,” Del. Julie Palakovich Carr (D-Dist. 17) told members of the news media last week...If passed, the bill would raise the cap on what county governments can tax residents in the highest income bracket. The statutory limit on income tax...

Hennepin County, Minnesota homeowner Geraldine Tyler in an undated photo. (Courtesy of Pacific Legal Foundation) The Supreme Court decided late on Jan. 13 to hear the appeal of a 94-year-old homeowner who is challenging the constitutionality of laws that allow local governments to take the full value of a home as payment for much smaller property tax debts. The decision came after the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a public interest law firm that is representing the homeowner, released a report last month saying that 12 states and the District of Columbia allow local governments and private investors to seize dramatically...