Free Republic

- begin excerpt - What Intuit did for tax year 2014 is change which services come with each tier, shifting some of the forms to the more expensive versions. They made the same changes to the pricing tiers on their Web-based service for 2013, so the change is not entirely unexpected. The first rumblings came as soon as the software was released last year, and some true early birds got a head start on their returns. They noticed that something was missing: some pretty common forms that had always been part of TurboTax Deluxe. These included: Schedule C (self-employment expenses...

Walker is likely to announce the arena-funding plan before his budget address [on February 3] because the arena issue would otherwise be a distraction to his main budget messages, an influential Republican legislator told the Business Journal Friday. Walker has been hearing from the MMAC and other Milwaukee-area business executives who support the arena project."Ninety-five percent of what (Walker) puts in the budget stays," the influential Republican legislator told the Business Journal Friday. "It would take a lot of momentum to get something out of the budget."Another source familiar with the arena push said that while the "jock tax" will...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is adding a veteran GOP strategist and Iowa expert to his political team as the Wisconsin Republican considers a possible 2016 presidential bid. The addition of David Polyansky gives Walker's team a big dose of Iowa experience. The strategist helped engineer former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's win in the 2008 Iowa Republican caucuses and also served as deputy campaign manager for former Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who won the 2011 Iowa straw poll.

Let's assume George and Ethel, two teachers, purchased their Southern California home in 1966 for $45,000. Lets also assume that over the next fifty years, the value of the house increased to $1,345,000. Let's also assume that George and Ethel had four children and each of them went to a private four year college and that George and Ethel continued to re-finance their home to put their children through college and take a few cruises. Today, there is a $1,145,000 loan on the house. With pensions and other savings, the now retired teachers manage to pay their mortgage and live...

In a post on Twitter, the left-wing advocacy group Progress Michigan criticized Gov. Rick Snyder for corporate tax credits that are causing revenue estimates to be lower than previous projections. “#Snyder corporate tax credits led to $454M #budget shortfall. Where are those accounting skills when you need them?” the group tweets. ForTheRecord says: Michigan previously had a tax credit program known as the Michigan Economic Growth Authority, in which the number of and amount of credits exploded exponentially under previous Gov. Jennifer Granholm. The MEGA program was ended by Gov. Snyder shortly after he took office. The current budget shortfall...

Paying Your Fair Share:: By: Larry Walker II ::In Tax Simplification, Part II, I expounded on a 2010 Annual Report to Congress, in which National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson focused on the need for tax reform as the No. 1 priority in tax administration. In particular, she focused on the problem of delivering social benefits through the tax system, which complicates the mission of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), resulting in a dual mission of welfare administration as well as revenue collection. But instead of taking heed, the federal government doubled down, adding a new health care excise tax...

President Obama is pitching his new tax plan as a way to help the middle class at the expense of the rich. But middle-class savers are bound to notice if he achieves two of the White House’s stated goals—to “roll back” tax benefits of 529 college savings plans and “repeal tax incentives going forward” for Coverdell Education Savings Accounts. Both plans allow parents, grandparents or anyone looking to help fund a kid’s education to contribute after-tax dollars into accounts that grow tax-free. There is also no tax when the money is withdrawn, provided it is used for qualified educational expenses...

It’s not enough for the Nevada Legislature to change retirement benefits for future public employees. The state’s pension plan provides perks and payouts so absurdly generous that some of them need to be dialed back right away. Taxpayers are on the hook for billions of dollars worth of unfunded pension benefits, when they can barely afford to save for retirement themselves. It’s bad enough that they must subsidize benefits they’ll never have. But it’s outrageous that taxpayers subsidize the cost of providing government workers, who already retire far earlier than their private-sector peers, with even earlier retirements. In Sunday’s Review-Journal,...

President Obama during his State of the Union address Tuesday night used the words "economy," "jobs" and "family" most often. When talking about the economy, the President laid out steps to aid moderate-income Americans to a skeptical Congress. In our adjacent poll, tell us what you think is the most important step to addressing income inequality in America.

Bill and Hillary are reportedly using tax advantaged strategies used by multimillionaires. Bill and Hillary Clinton are finding their way around an estate tax they have long supported, a cause they said would prevent the U.S. from being overrun by inherited wealth. The Clintons are employing a series of financial planning strategies that will help reduce the tax burden on future recipients, which can be as high as 40%, Bloomberg News reported.

Call him President No. He doesn’t want to cut taxes. He will veto any attempt to overturn the mess of Obamacare. He is adamant about opposing anyone who wants to undoing his executive order on amnesty, or his sudden turnabout of U.S. policy on Cuba. He won’t say yes to the Keystone XL pipeline. And hell will freeze over before he utters the words “radical Islamic terrorism.” Now the White House is furious that Speaker John Boehner has issued a February 11th invitation for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress, this just hours after the president made it...

resident Obama's disrespect for motherhood has manifested itself in policies ranging from support for same-sex marriage to defense of a form of abortion that involves forcing a baby into a drug-induced premature delivery and then leaving that little one to die. When it comes to the most vulnerable and innocent human beings -- those for whom great mothers have great hearts -- Obama has a heart of stone. It is demonstrably true that he does not believe a child has a right to a mother or a need for a mother. If he did, he could not support same-sex marriages...

President Obama is either the most cynical man in Washington today, or the blindest.That is the only conclusion one can reach after being subjected to his 2015 State of the Union Address."You know, just over a decade ago, I gave a speech in Boston where I said there wasn't a liberal America, or a conservative America," Obama recounted. "Over the past six years, the pundits have pointed out more than once that my presidency hasn't delivered on this vision," Obama continued. "How ironic, they say, that our politics seems more divided than ever." At this point, even a slightly more honest or self-aware politician...

Taxing Section 529 tax-free education plans is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. Of all the lying, broken campaign promises,and studied burglary President Obama has committed over the past six years—seven really, if you count his first campaign—this has to be the worst. He who can’t help but toot his own horn (tooting his horn was his only moment of clarity in the whole State of the Union Speech), said this last night: Of course, the education race doesn't end with a high school diploma. To compete, higher education must be within the reach of every American. (Applause.) That's why we've ended...

According to media reports, taxpayers may be thinking they are in the midst of a tax-cutting spree by the government. A Jan. 2 Michigan Radio headline read: “Snyder tries to chill tax cut fever” Earlier in 2014, John Austin, the director of the Michigan Economic Center at Prima Civitas Foundation as well as the president of the Michigan State Board of Education, wrote an article for Bridge magazine titled: “Constant tax cuts killing Pure Michigan” in which he bemoaned Michigan’s “tax cutting mania.” But in terms of an actual reduction in a tax rate, the state has enjoyed such an...

FR Tax Pro's I need your feedback.The following are the main points post an indirect conversation with a CPA after they attended a Seminar on Section 3115, and changes to the "Code".This has to do with Section 179 expensing vs. going to the Deprecation Schedule(s).Here they are: * Not expensing any capital goods over $500. * They want businesses to depreciate any capital good (Marcs) above $500. * "They" might want businesses to go back and amend many years to comply. * No statue of limitation as to how far back "they" can go. * If the CPA's makes a...

President Obama will deliver yet another State of the Union Address with much the same message and policy prescription of his first six: Spread the wealth around. He wants $320 billion in new taxes on both the middle class and wealthy over the next decade to pay for income redistribution handout programs that are supposed to help the poor and middle class. But Obama has been president now for six years. If his redistribution policies worked, why are the poor getting poorer and why has the middle class stalled out? Is this George Bush's fault? The irony of the Obama...

You know what they say: the only things you can count on are death and taxes. And with Big Guy’s new plan - scheduled for the big reveal tonight – we get both rolled into WON! That’s right, the retreaded Robin Hood agenda includes new, stiff Grim Reaper taxes. So if you didn’t earn that yourself, you’ll have to share it with BigGov.com who will redistribute it for you: to the poor - and, if there’s any left after we’ve leveled the playing field for America’s least fortunate, the middle class.Our current cute-white-guy-spokes-mouth, “Josh” “Ernest” has been practicing reeling our...

Florida's Cell phone and TV tax is a heavy burden on Florida's families......

Trying to bury bad news by releasing it over a holiday weekend is one of the oldest tricks in the book. What makes it funny in the case of President Obama is that the bad news isn’t some inspector general’s report or inside-the-Beltway scandal, but the details of the $320 billion tax increase that Mr. Obama himself plans to ask for in his State of the Union address this week. The White House fact sheet on the tax increase was released at 8 p.m. on Saturday night of the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. Compare it with...