Free Republic

Republican lawmakers, with little public debate, quietly added a billion-dollar health-care benefit to legislation that was rushed through Congress just before it adjourned Saturday morning. Acting at the urging of several major business lobbies eager to reduce their medical-insurance costs and the outgoing chairman of the House's tax-writing committee, lawmakers adopted the provision even though only a single committee had previously approved it. The provision, which materialized without fanfare late last week inside a massive tax-cut measure, expands the amount of money that can be contributed tax-free to health savings accounts (HSAs). The accounts can be used to pay medical...

WASHINGTON - A package of energy tax breaks proposed in the Senate would give up to $2,400 to buyers of hybrid motor vehicles, subsidize the purchase of more efficient appliances and help pay for the development of clean coal technologies. The $16 billion in tax incentives is double what was proposed in the House and would commit about $6 billion over 10 years to energy efficiency, conservation and promotion of alternative fuels. The House agreed to about $8 billion, with less than $500 million for efficiency and conservation, in the energy bill it passed in April. The Senate Finance Committee...

We have recently learned that the IRS has begun singling out taxpayers at random for "special audits." The sole purpose of these random, unwarranted government intrusions into the lives of individual Americans is to give the IRS a better statistical model about overall taxpayer compliance. Many of these randomly selected individuals will have to hire lawyers and accountants to help comply with the paperwork demands generated by these audits. If the IRS truly wants to improve compliance, their efforts would be better spent on reforming the archaic, complicated 45,000-page tax code to make it easier to comply. A simple...