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"There is a lot of chatter these days about holding those evil companies that hire illegals to some type of legal retribution. Let me explain why this is the willful failure of government, not the actions of some greaseball company owners." ... "When the first unscrupulous contractors started working with illegal aliens, they generally paid cash under the table. No payroll taxes or anything like that were paid. When this percolated up to the powers that be, there was an outcry. About hiring illegal aliens and putting hard working American citizens out of work? Not a chance. They came down...

Take it from someone who has a hoard of legal accordion files stashed away in a hope chest: It’s a good idea to keep your tax records. However, if you’re going through a phase of trying to get rid of everything, the IRS is (sort of) clear on how many years to keep the paper trail. How Long To Keep Your Tax Records Let’s go in descending order: Forever: If you never filed a return, or if you filed a fraudulent return (neither of which is recommended) 7 years: If you file a claim for a loss from worthless securities...

The federal government notched its 31st straight month in the red in April, though individual income tax receipts are “significantly” higher than expected and made the deficit mush smaller than it otherwise would have been, the Congressional Budget Office said Friday. With the economy looking stronger than expected, income tax receipts are up 26 percent, or $130 billion, over 2010 at this point, the CBO said, calling the inflow “the result of increased amounts withheld from paychecks and strong growth in payments accompanying 2010 tax returns,” which were due last month. The better-than-expected tax revenue, which comes despite last December’s...

Social Security Payouts Are Already Crippling The Government This Year Bruce Krasting Jun. 10, 2010, 5:40 PM There is enough published information from the Social Security Trust Fund to make some observations for the first six months of 2010. The data on FICA/SECA tax receipts and benefit payments: (all amounts in $billions) The numbers are going in the wrong direction. Receipts are down across the board while expenses keep rising. This chart looks at the Jan.-June results for 2008-2010. These lines were not expected to cross for at least another five years. This is the cost of the protracted recession...

Atlas may have too much to shrug off. The Commerce Department says personal income fell 1.3% in June, the worst in four years. The Internal Revenue Service reports a staggering 18% drop in tax receipts thus far this year, the biggest drop since Franklin Roosevelt’s Great Depression. Conservative estimates of the nation’s deficit peg it at $1.8 Trillion dollars. Individual taxpayer receipts have fallen by 22% compared to this point last year. Corporate tax receipts are down 57% from last year. For just the second time since 1940 Social Security tax receipts have dropped. Unless something miraculous happens, Medicare tax...

It’s pretty hard to dress up a disaster as something less than that, but the Associated Press’s Martin Crutsinger gave it his best shot in his report yesterday about Uncle Sam’s the May Monthly Treasury Statement, in effect understating the amount and significance of federal government’s rapidly deteriorating financial situation. With the help of dubious handling of last year’s stimulus payments in May 2008’s Treasury Statement, Crutsinger ignored serious declines in tax receipts from economic activity that are, if anything, accelerating. I’ll cover that problem in this post. Additionally, after only briefly mentioning it last month (noted at the time...

Internet giant Google's stock has soared since it went public almost two years ago -- and that has created a windfall for state government coffers. California took in a record $11.3 billion in personal income tax receipts in April, $4.3 billion more than it collected last April. It's almost certain that a significant chunk of April's haul came from Google employees -- perhaps one-eighth or more of the tax receipt gain. The fact that a single high-flying Silicon Valley company is giving such a big boost to the state treasury can be determined by examining insider stock trading information filed...

WASHINGTON - State tax receipts jumped nearly 10 percent last year as a strong national economy increased individual earnings and corporate profits. Most states showed increases without raising tax rates, meaning the gains were caused primarily by an expanding economy, said Corina Eckl, fiscal program director for the National Conference of State Legislatures. "It's absolutely attributable to an improving national economy," Eckl said. "Very few, very modest tax changes happened last year." Nationally, states collected a total of $649 billion in taxes in the 2005 budget year, which ended in June for most states, according to a report Thursday by...

...[T]he Congressional Budget Office has now confirmed that federal revenues will rise this year by more than $262 billion-- the largest single-year increase in tax revenues in American history.... The first is that this windfall means that tax revenue as a share of the economy is climbing back to normal levels. As the nearby chart shows, at 17.5% of GDP this year, Uncle Sam's tax take is close to the 17.9% postwar average. And CBO estimates that as the economy continues to grow, the tax take will slowly rise throughout this decade to 17.8%. This is because more Americans are...