Free Republic

* Currently, there’s a $10,000 limit on the federal deduction on state and local taxes, known as SALT, which will expire Dec. 31, 2025, without action from Congress. House Republicans are calling for a higher limit on the deduction for state and local taxes, known as SALT, as part of President Donald Trump’s tax and spending package. The House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees tax, released the full text of its portion of the bill on Monday afternoon. The SALT provision would raise the cap to $30,000 for those with a modified adjusted gross income of $400,000 or less....

Planned Parenthood used Mother’s Day weekend to release its 2023-2024 annual report revealing a staggering 402,230 abortions during that year — the most the corporation has ever reported to date. This is an increase of 2.42% from the 392,715 abortions Planned Parenthood reported last year. As Congress debates whether to defund Planned Parenthood, this newly released annual report shows that taxpayer dollars granted to Planned Parenthood (for the year ending June 30, 2024) have risen by more than 13% from the $699.3 million recorded by Planned Parenthood in 2022-23 to a whopping $792.2 million recorded in 2023-24. Between 2022-23 and...

Pro-life lawmakers from across the country are demanding that Congress put an end to federal funding for Planned Parenthood, calling on Republicans to use their “trifecta” in Washington. The letter, sent to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Idaho Senator Mike Crapo and Kentucky Rep. Brett Guthrie and signed by 183 legislators, urges Republican leadership to include a measure to defund “Big Abortion” in the budget reconciliation bill, which is scheduled for markups on Tuesday. Planned Parenthood rakes in tens of millions from taxpayers every year, according to its annual reports, while performing about 400,000 abortions between...

The House Ways and Means Committee will soon release the GOP’s first draft of the party’s tax proposals, and the irony is that the bill may be getting worse even as a good bill becomes more urgent. President Trump has pitched a tax-rate increase that even Democrats failed to pass, and parochial demands are shrinking the pro-growth value of the bill. Republicans seem to have forgotten the principles of sound tax policy, even the lessons of the successful 2017 reform. Most of the 26 GOP Members of Ways and Means weren’t in Congress in 2017. The intellectual capital of previous...

On April 10, the House voted to pass H. Con. Res. 14, a budget resolution blueprint that sets spending and revenue targets or the federal budget. Budget resolutions do not actually set funding levels and do not have the force of law. However, they are an important first step toward the process through which Congress can begin to appropriate federal funds. By passing this resolution, the House will be able to continue the process of passing a budget reconciliation bill. A reconciliation bill can only focus on budget-related measures, but it’s a powerful tool because it only needs a simple...

House Ways and Means Committee partially revealing tax legislation... leaders of at least four nations headed into Ukraine...Kremlin appreciation for President Trump's efforts to settle the war... South African officials criticizing the US plan to take in white... "I won't fight for a team that refuses to win"...Marjorie Taylor Greene...will not run for US Senate... Newark, New Jersey Mayor Ras Baraka arrested at an immigration detention... A federal district judge ordering release...Turkish student from Tufts University... On Saturday morning India saying its armed forces are responding to Pakistan's Saturday morning attacks...Pakistan announcing retaliation against India...Indian airbases among the targets hit......

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that he did not want to see taxes go up on anybody when asked about President Donald Trump’s comments on taxes. On Truth Social Trump posted, “The problem with even a “TINY” tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming,“Read my lips,” the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election. NO, Ross Perot...

A Long Island suburb voted to wallop homeowners with a 87% property tax hike— with local officials saying the insane increase was necessary because of a years-long administrative goof. Atlantic Beach’s village board of trustees told residents the big number was needed because of how taxes were assessed by the county in recent decades but officials refused to give The Post further information or answer any questions. The Nassau County assessor said it was the village government that was improperly billing commercial properties. ... Though village officials blamed assessment quirks, some residents said part of the hike is to cover...

People who pay more in taxes could be less likely to die from cancer. The link was revealed in a new study published in JAMA Network Open, which aimed to explore how state-level tax revenue impacts cancer screenings and mortality in the U.S. Researchers from The Ohio State University, Emory University in Georgia and the University of Verona in Italy analyzed 1,150 state-years of tax data over a 23-year period, between 1997 and 2019. (A state-year refers to one year of data from one state.) They also reviewed population-level cancer screening rates and cancer-related deaths from Centers for Disease Control...

A great piece in the WSJ by former Reagan speechwriter Kenneth Khachigian reminds us of what happened when Reagan was snookered into raising taxes 40 years ago.“In 1988 Reagan complained that the 1982 tax increase that he reluctantly embraced was among the worst decisions of his presidency.”“The fellas promised I would get $3 of spending cuts for every $1 of taxes I agreed to. Instead, for every dollar of new taxes we got $1.70 in new spending – the complete reversal of what I was promised.” We would add that on several occasions when taxes were proposed to Reagan during...

The big, beautiful tax bill winding its way through the House and Senate just got a lot better. The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio just posted the draft text of its portion of the bill yesterday and it’s a banger. They would amend the Congressional Review Act (which allows Congress to rescind costly regulatory agency regs) to correct its biggest design flaw. Even if the House and Senate vote to overturn a regulation, the president who issued the regulation can use his veto to save his own rules (except when the presidency has just changed...

Last night, President Donald J. Trump renewed his call for Congress to pass the “one big, beautiful bill” and once again deliver the largest tax cuts in history to the American people.Loading…In addition to finally exempting tips, overtime, and seniors’ Social Security from taxes, here’s what else that means:Real wages will go up by as much as $3,300/year.Take-home pay for median-income households will increase by as much as $5,000/year.Short-run real GDP will be boosted by 3.3-3.8% and long-run real GDP by 2.6-3.2%.4.1 million jobs will be saved.

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher criticized and mocked Republicans and stated that they lied about raising taxes on the wealthy and said that raising taxes on the rich “never really happens” and responded to the argument that he could just voluntarily pay more in taxes himself if he wants to and no one will stop him from doing that by saying, “that’s not going to happen.” While discussing the budget proposal from the Trump administration from earlier in the day, Maher said that the administration is increasing the budget for the Defense Department in their...

House Republicans are planning to include several of President Trump’s campaign promises in the first draft of the bill, which they hope to release soon.It was easy to miss, but last weekend President Trump floated a fundamental rewrite of the American tax code. In a social media post, and again in remarks to reporters, Mr. Trump suggested the United States could stop taxing income under $200,000 and instead rely on revenue from his extensive tariffs. “It’ll take a little while before we do that, but we’re going to be cutting taxes, and it’s possible we’ll do a complete tax cut,”...

President Donald Trump said Sunday that his tariff policy will substantially reduce, even completely eliminate, income taxes for some American workers. “When Tariffs cut in, many people’s Income Taxes will be substantially reduced, maybe even completely eliminated,” Trump wrote in a 6:06 a.m. post on Truth Social. “Focus will be on people making less than $200,000 a year.” Trump continued, “Also, massive numbers of jobs are already being created, with new plants and factories currently being built or planned. It will be a BONANZA FOR AMERICA!!! THE EXTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE IS HAPPENING!!!

Every year for the last half-century, thousands of the poorest Utahns have turned to Planned Parenthood for free or discounted family planning health care, like birth control or testing for sexually transmitted infections. But under a directive from President Donald Trump’s administration to freeze the federal funds that helped pay for those services, Planned Parenthood Association of Utah was forced to raise its fees earlier this month. And now, it will close a quarter of its clinics in the state — the two furthest from Salt Lake City, and ones most accessible to some of Utah’s most rural residents. “When...

Colorado Governor Jared Polis has signed a bill forcing Colorado taxpayers to fund abortions. Polis signed SB25-183, a recently approved state measure that would allocate a minimum of $1.5 million per year of taxpayer funds to cover elective abortions. With Colorado having abortions up to birth, that means taxpayers will be on the hook for paying for killing viable babies who could easily live outside the womb. And with the $1.5 million figure a minimum, Colorado residents may be forced to pay even more to kill thousands of babies. “One thing pro-life and pro-choice people agree on nationwide is that...

During an interview with WVON on Thursday, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said “the fluctuations of the market and Trump’s tariffs” have resulted in massive losses to the city “just because of the uncertainty and the chaos.” And also stated that he wants to raise taxes by imposing a financial transaction tax and expressed openness to a corporate head tax and stated that those things, along with lots of other ideas, would put “the burden on the very people that Donald Trump is trying to protect.” While discussing the city’s budget, [relevant remarks begin around 5:35] Johnson said that the budget...

Homelessness keeps rising, homeless taxes keep rising and the money disappears. In Los Angeles County, spring is in the air and so are higher taxes. Beyond the usual punishing ritual of April 15, county residents also now face some of the highest sales taxes in the country. Sales taxes in the area have shot up from 9.75% to as high as 11.25% to fund still more services for the ‘homeless’. The permanent sales tax increase is supposed to raise $1 billion a year to replace the stolen billions spent by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Families will pay even...

One has to view the federal government as a criminal organization. That’s the only way it makes sense, that’s the only way to approach a rectification. Without that, with thinking that there are just some adjustments to be made in the Republican or Democrat balances in the House and Senate, nothing will happen. The government is a means of swindling the American people of taxes, promising to address their issues, but that’s like a fraud scheme designed to promise fixes to one’s house until they get the down payment and disappear into the mist. The level of transfers from the...