Free Republic

Once, it was enough to put a notice in the newspaper when your child was born. But Mark Zuckerberg, the multi-billionaire founder of Facebook, likes to do things differently. So he welcomed his newborn daughter, Max, into the world with an open letter on his social media site, in which he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, pledged to donate almost all their £30 billion fortune to charity during their lives. The happy couple talked rather smugly about how their first child gave them cause to reflect on the future, saying they were inspired by their desire to build a better...

There was more talk at the White House Thursday about whether President Obama really would “close tax loopholes” on his own. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the president “is very interested” in working with Congress, but nothing’s “off the table” when it comes to Obama exploring the options for using his executive authority. There’s nothing to announce right now, he added. “So to the extent that there’s a lot of fretting and hand-wringing on Capitol Hill, I would urge them to not lose any sleep over this, but rather maybe it’s worth burning a little midnight oil to try...

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn has released a breakdown of how much the federal government forgoes in tax revenue due to various credits and deductions that benefit everything from NASCAR owners to gamblers. It's a fairly comprehensive analysis that should get bipartisan support, but one of the categories that Sen. Coburn targets to raise taxes from may be surprising: "the rich." Coburn highlights $100 billion in tax revenue that could be raised over the next ten years by ending some of these deductions only on millionaire households. Over the 2006-2009 time period, Coburn notes, millionaires deducted over $20 billion in gambling...

In the current debate over the lame duck deal, the focus seems to be solely on the issue of taxes. Raising rates or closing loopholes: which will it be? After all it’s essential that the federal government increase its revenues, right? Everyone knows the government has run out of money, and talk of another debt limit debacle is already surfacing. Is the cause of the deficit declining federal revenues? Perhaps it's those pesky billionaires moving jobs and profits overseas? Or, there's always some way to blame oil companies or George W. Bush. The reality is far less flattering for...

Democrats have said that that their priorities when it comes to a fiscal cliff deal are to raise more tax revenue and make the tax code more progressive. Which is why it's odd to see them drawing a line in the sand on raising tax rates. Raising marginal income tax rates is one of the most economically harmful ways to raise taxes. (The only provisions of the tax code that are more damaging are the corporate income tax and taxes on savings and investments.) Perhaps the only explanation is that Democrats don't actually care about how to efficiently accomplish their...

Large multinationals, many of them based in the United States, are masters at avoiding taxes on profits made abroad. Apple, for example, paid just $100 million in taxes in 2010 on overseas profits of $13 billion. But Germany would like to put a stop to the practice, and is finding some influential support. … The operations corporations launch to optimize their tax bill go by various names, including "Double Irish" and "Dutch Sandwich," but the principle is always the same. In a confusing network of parent companies and subsidiaries, foreign branches and holding companies, sales, earnings and costs are shifted...

Southern California has more millionaires than just about anywhere else in the nation, with L.A. coming in at No. 1, Orange County at No. 4, and San Diego ranking No. 6 in cities with the most seven-figure-plus households in 2008. So maybe we should feel a little guilty, especially as President Obama and the GOP are headed toward draconian federal cuts, the United States' credit rating is down a notch, and the stock market is diving like a conservative congressman in a bathroom stall. Because many millionaires and billionaires, it was revealed today, don't pay taxes like you and me:...

A recent column by California statewide syndicated newspaper journalist Thomas Elias indicates just how bad newspaper journalism is. Elias is so eager to find loopholes in California Prop 13 that he loses any semblance of journalistic competency or ethics. Elias is apparently unaware he is just going around in circles about tax loopholes just as a stunt pilot does loop-de-loops in an airplane. In an article in the Redding-Searchlight newspaper of July 28 ("Budget Leaves a Loophole Wide Open") Elias hasn't got a clue what he is talking about when it comes to property tax loopholes - link: http://www.redding.com/news/2009/jul/28/budget-leaves-a-loophole-wide-open/ Here...

<p>Let's say your family finances have been doing well enough lately that you can indulge your long-held desire to acquire a boat for family outings on a nearby lake or river, and you choose an 18-foot, $18,000 runabout at your local boat dealer. When the salesman writes up the paperwork, he adds about $1,400 in sales taxes.</p>