Free Republic

Tax attacks on the rich may seem extreme in the U.S., but around the world rates are far more aggressive. A report by KPMG highlights 2010 individual income tax for countries around the world. We ranked the countries based on the income tax rate on $300,000 of gross income and included the income level at which the top marginal rate kicks off. As a point of reference, America's top marginal rate starts at $373,650 and its percentage 27.9%. That keeps the U.S. out of the top 20.

More than 77,000 federal government employees throughout the country — including computer operators, more than 5,000 air traffic controllers, 22 librarians and one interior designer — earned more than the governors of the states in which they work. The findings, from a Congressional Research Service report requested by Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, were released at a time when public workers’ salaries and benefits are under scrutiny across the country as governments try to streamline. CRS reviewed 2009 salary figures, the most recent available, and found 77,057 employees who earned more in annual pay than their respective governors. Of those...

~ By: Larry Walker, Jr. ~For the first time since World War II, the National Debt of the United States has exceeded personal income, on a per capita basis. The point of no return was breached in 2010, during Barack Obama’s second year in office, and the derangement continues to spin hopelessly out of control. This means that every dollar earned by an American citizen is now owned by the federal government, and then some. That’s right, the average annual income of most working-class Americans now belongs to the federal government. The warning of Thomas Jefferson has come to pass,...

~ By: Larry Walker, Jr. ~According to the latest report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, real gross domestic product increased at an annual rate of 1.8% in the first quarter of 2011. But by now most of us understand that this is merely calculated by measuring an increase of roughly 0.45 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011, and then multiplying the result by four (.045 * 4 = 1.8). That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t necessarily tell us the truth. What most of us really want to know is the...

Unemployment is rising, the federal government is broke, and so are many of the states. Now more than ever America needs its various governments to exercise restraint, and to scale-back on spending. And in the midst of this environment a stunning proposal has emerged in the nearly insolvent state of California: a third income tax. The proposal is actually worse than a mere “additional” income tax – and I’ll explain this in a moment. First let’s look at the “other two” income taxes. For the record, if you’re an American and you work and you earn personal income, your U.S....

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The first quarter ended on an up note with U.S. consumer spending looking better than expected, given higher gasoline costs, the Commerce Department reported Friday. March data showed consumer spending rose 0.6% in current dollar terms, roughly in line with expectations on Wall Street. “At least through March, households continued to spend, but rising prices [are] eating up a lot of that money,” said Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors Inc. The report on personal incomes as well as consumer spending fleshes out monthly details contained in the government’s data on growth in gross domestic product...

Did Barack Obama take Tax 1 in law school? I did, and I remember the first day of classes, when mild mannered Professor Boris Bittker asked a simple question: "What is income?" I was pretty confident I could come up with a quick answer, and so were a lot of other students. By the end of the hour, after Professor Bittker had politely punched huge holes in every student's definition, it was pretty clear that none of us could. Income is a slippery concept -- especially slippery when you're trying to tax it. Which leads me to think that Obama...

As has been long recognized, it is best to watch Barack Obama's actions as opposed to listening to his words. We are finally getting some insight into something he said, i.e. are able to begin to flesh out a definition. Obama once said "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money..." Here is the video [VIDEO AT SITE] As of 2010, Obama's net worth was about $5 million. He reported an income of $1.7 million in 2010, and 5.5 million in 2009. Given that he has no expenses, Obama's net worth now ought to be about...

Obama wants to raise taxes. So does Mondale. Obama won't tell you. Mondale just did. Remember Walter Mondale? Oddly enough, we do, mostly for this fun fact: He's the only major-party American politician to have lost elections in all 50 states. In 1984, he told Americans to take a hike, and they told him the same thing. In a Washington Post op-ed piece over the weekend, Mondale quotes his own speech to that year's Democratic National Convention in San Francisco: "Taxes will go up. . . . It must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I....

“By ignorance we mistake, and by mistakes we learn” -Unknown So what happens when open minded progressive students get a chance to put their mouth where other people's money is? (See the video embedded at the original post here or at YouTube.)To a person every student opposes the idea, and thinks redistributing GPA is different from income. Why is it different? These girly boys are not man enough to admit their hypocrisy, that's why.The "progressive" tax comes knocking on their academic door and their "intellect" can't handle the confrontation. It's so simple, if a high GPA is the key...

I read a few years ago a proposal to put a penny tax on each share of stock traded. I checked the NYSE stats page and found in 2010 over 210 Trillion shares changed hands. Simple math shows that a penny a share tax would generate an additional 2 Trillion dollars to the US Treasury. Every year. The most aggressive budget put forward right now will cut spending by 6 Trillion over TEN years, thats 600 billion a year in cuts. Since our spending problems exploded with the stock market derivative bailouts, it is only right the market should pay...

Since Obama is starting up the "tax the rich" dogma again, I thought it was time to discuss exactly how much taxes the "rich" are paying. The Congressional Budget Office publishes a great deal of information about how the federal tax burden is distributed, and compiles all of it at the cited link. It provides data from 1979 to 2007, adjusted to 2007 dollars so that you can compare how it has changed, without worrying about inflation. However, I discovered that someone has taken all this information and created a series of graphs that make it much easier to understand:...

Real earnings fell for a fifth straight month as wages fail to keep up with soaring gasoline prices and other costs. Inflation-adjusted earnings for all private workers dropped 0.5% in March, the worst monthly drop since July 2008, according to Labor Department data. Nominal wages were flat while consumer prices climbed more than 0.5% for a second straight month. Year over year, inflation-adjusted weekly pay sank 0.4% That’s the first drop in a year and down from a 2.2% gain in October. Since October, real weekly wages have dropped at a 3.8% annual rate — matching the decline set in...

Are the rich really getting richer? That’s a pretty standard line from the Left, a lament usually cited in the course of calling for higher tax rates. Robert Reich is particularly fond of this mode of attack: A recent post of his was headlined, “For 70 years, the wealthy have grown wealthier.” Professor Reich probably doesn’t write his own headlines, but it’s a common enough sentiment for him, and his prose is rich with phrases such as “the super-rich got even wealthier this year.” He isn’t alone in employing this mode. Take this from an April 7 Salon article: “And...

Appearing on Tuesday's CBS Early Show, Newsweek senior writer Andrew Romano touted a survey in the magazine's latest issue showing that 38% of Americans failed the U.S. citizenship test and claimed to know the cause: "One of the big ones is income inequality in the United States. We're one of the most in-equal societies in the developed world." Romano argued to co-host Erica Hill: "When people don't have a lot of money, there's a difficulty getting a good education, there's a lack of opportunity and a lack of knowledge. That's one of the reasons why we don't do as well...

Gov. Mark Dayton's plan to raise income taxes on the state's top earners caused an outbreak of political scuffling at the Capitol Thursday, with Republicans bringing the plan to House and Senate votes that the Democratic governor blasted as political game-playing. The income tax increase, which would bring in an estimated $2.4 billion and which Dayton has proposed to help eliminate a $5 billion state budget shortfall, failed unanimously in the House of Representatives and mustered only a single vote in the Senate. Republicans voted no because they say income tax increases would damage job growth and the state's economy;...

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Establish smart spending habits. Live like you're poor. How do you do that? Drive your cars into the ground, don't eat out very much, avoid expensive and potentially unhealthy processed foods, buy food in bulk, buy just enough clothes to fit your needs, and use public transportation. ... Use credit cards only as a convenience to avoid carrying cash; limit your credit card spending so that you can easily pay off the balance each month. Make every dollar count with your spending, so you can free up money to invest in the future. Get healthy. One of the best things...

Would you support Gov. Dayton's proposed $3.35 billion income tax increase? Total Votes = 884 Yes. 40.27 % No. 54.97 % I'm not sure. 4.751 %

Even though barrels of ink have been affectionately spilled about all of those House members sleeping in their Capitol offices in order to save money, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is none too happy about the trend. CREW has asked the Office of Congressional Ethics to look into whether the office sleepovers violate tax laws by not being reported as a taxable fringe benefit. “House office buildings are not dorms or frat houses,” said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan. “If members didn’t want to find housing in Washington, they shouldn’t have run for Congress in the first place.”...