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A tax bill that would raise revenue $2.1 billion by boosting taxes on high-wage earners, smokers and corporations is headed for debate by the Senate. The bill, which also helps support a development plan pushed by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester officials say could bring thousands of jobs to Minnesota, is expected to be on the agenda once state Senators return to chambers at 11 a.m. The bill passed the state House by a 69-65 vote early Monday morning, May 20. It is one of the last major tax and spending bills the Legislature is taking up as it finalizes...

It's time to grapple with the new 3.8% tax on investment income. The ordeal of 2012 taxes is barely over. But it isn't too early to understand and cushion the blow of the investment-income levy, which Congress passed in 2010 to help fund the health-care overhaul. The tax, which took effect Jan. 1, applies to the "net investment income" of married joint filers who have more than $250,000 of income (or $200,000 for singles). Only investment income—such as dividends, interest and capital gains—above the thresholds is taxed. The rate is a flat 3.8% in addition to other taxes owed. "Affluent...

House DFLers are going after "The One Percent" in a big way. Make that the 1.1 percent of Minnesotans who earn the highest incomes. The DFL-controlled House passed a tax bill -- 69-64 with all Republicans voting "no" -- Wednesday, April 24, that creates a new, fourth income tax bracket with an 8.49 percent rate -- up from the current 7.85 percent rate -- for the top-earning 1.1 percent of Minnesotans -- couples with taxable incomes over $400,000. On top of that, the bill would impose a temporary 4 percent income tax surcharge on the 0.5 percent of taxpayers making...

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) in their weekly mortgage application indices, the Refinance Index increased 5 percent from the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 4 percent from one week earlier is at its highest level since May of 2010 and the adjusted Conventional Purchase Index increased 3 percent to the highest level since October 2009. While mortgage purchase applications remain below the average from 2000-2103, they are showing a generally rising trend. Given the relative affordability of housing, it is a little surprising that mortgage purchase applications are so low. The usual lineup of suspects...

Didn't see your state on the lists of Best States to Make a Living or Worst States to Make a Living? Find it below in the full 50-state rankings. Again, these rankings are based on an analysis that considered: •Average wage and unemployment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics •Cost of living data from C2ER (formerly ACCRA) •State tax rate information from Tax-Rates.org •The Workplace Environment rankings from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index poll Going from best to worst, here is how all 50 U.S. states ranked for 2013:

In a March 18 post on his “Economics One” blog, John B. Taylor published the very illuminating chart reproduced below. The chart, which is based upon IRS data complied by economist Emmanuel Saez, shows that (at least in absolute terms) rising inequality hasn’t even benefited the so-called rich. They, like the rest of America, would be better off today if the government policy errors that led to the increasing income disparity had not occurred. From 20 feet away, anyone can see that something bad happened to the U.S. economy in 1968. Prior to that, America experienced rapid income growth that...

<p>Nearly half — 48 percent — of American workers haven’t noticed that more money is being taken out of their paychecks for the payroll tax that funds Social Security, according to a survey released today by Bankrate.com.</p> <p>In the previous two years, workers’ paid 4.2 percent of wages (on income of up to $113,700 this year) instead of 6.2 percent. But during last year’s tax negotiations to avoid the fiscal cliff, the payroll tax holiday wasn’t extended. Many predicted at the time that low-income workers would be the most hurt by the payroll tax going up 2 percentage points.</p>

Sequestration, the measly slowdown in the growth rate of government spending, was President Obama and his Chief of Staff (now Treasury Secretary) Jacob Lew’s idea. Now President Obama has signed it into law. Today, I received an email from The White House explaining that it is all the Republicans fault for not closing tax loopholes on the wealthiest Americans. Furthermore, hundred of thousands of Americans will lose their jobs … or see their paycheck reduced. Dang, I wish Obama had thought of that in the first place!! Well, this is a better forecast that Maxine Waters’ (D-CA) prediction of 170...

According to the BEA release this morning, personal income dropped by 3.6% in January, the biggest drop in 20 years. Meanwhile, the personal savings rate (as a percentage of disposable income) fell to its lowest point since 2007. As I have pointed out before, wages and salaries as a percentage of GDP continues to plummet since 1970. Of course, none of this is positive news for the housing market. The housing recovery cannot be eternally lifted by cash investors and The Fed zero interest rate policies. At least the 10 year Treasury rate is falling with wages and salaries. But...

Consumer spending in the U.S. rose in January even as incomes dropped by the most in 20 years, showing households were weathering the payroll-tax increase by socking away less money in the bank. Household purchases, which account for about 70 percent of the economy, climbed 0.2 percent after a 0.1 percent gain the prior month, a Commerce Department report showed today in Washington. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 76 economists called for a 0.2 percent advance. Incomes slumped 3.6 percent, sending the saving rate down to the lowest level since November 2007. Employment gains, the rebound in...

On February 3rd, 1913, one of the two most historic events in US history took place: the ratification of the 16th amendment, which established Congress' right to impose a Federal income tax on Americans, and overturned Article I, Section 9 of the US Constitution which explicitly prohibited a general income tax. The amendment was brief and to the point, and read as follows: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration." And with that, the US Federal Income...

Where do you fit in the 2012 ranking of total money income by age group in the United States? While we've previously built a tool where you can find out your percentile ranking among all individuals, men, women, families and households in the U.S., we thought it might be fun to break the data for individuals down a little differently - by age group! Our chart below reveals what that distribution looked like for 2012, as indicated by the curves showing the major income percentiles from the 10th through the 90th percentile for each indicated age group on the horizontal...

RALEIGH — Efforts are under way to make North Carolina the first state since Alaska in 1980 to eliminate taxes on total personal income. Competing proposals also would launch a pro-growth tax reform renaissance that would scrap corporate income taxes that discourage capital investment and savings. The John Locke Foundation introduced a plan Wednesday including those elements, along with a repeal of estate taxes and the retail sales tax at the state level. Researchers at the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C-based tax research group, are among those lauding the JLF plan. “The whole point is economic growth. It’s not...

Politicians typically talk about rising inequality and the sluggish recovery as separate phenomena, when they are in fact intertwined. Inequality stifles, restrains and holds back our growth. When even the free-market-oriented magazine The Economist argues — as it did in a special feature in October — that the magnitude and nature of the country’s inequality represent a serious threat to America, we should know that something has gone horribly wrong. ... There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery. The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically...

But let's take a look at that list of high-income-inequality states again. What do California, Arizona and New Mexico all have in common? I'll give you a hint: Texas comes in seventh on the high-income-inequality state list. That's right: The three states with the highest income inequality also all share a border with Mexico. But what about New York? Or Georgia? Or Illinois (which is the sixth-most-unequal state)? They are all hundreds of miles away from Mexico. Well, it turns out that all of those states have huge illegal immigrant populations too. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, every one...

All of this talk about taxing people who make 200k or 250k or more. What a joke. With the excessive printing of money, almost everyone in this country who has a job will make 200,000 thousand dollars or more. And, milk will be $12 a gallon, etc., ad nauseum. However, everyone will still fall under taxation rules when that happens. You're making more money, but everything rises in price to meet your income and now you're paying more in taxes. How can people be so foolish to vote these insane policies into effect? What about rental property? The next step...

The median net worth of American households has dropped to a 43-year low as the lower and middle classes appear poorer and less stable than they have been since 1969. According to a recent study by New York University economics professor Edward N. Wolff, median net worth is at the decades-low figure of $57,000 (in 2010 dollars). And as the numbers in his study reflect, the situation only appears worse when all the statistics are taken as a whole. According to Wolff, between 1983 and 2010, the percentage of households with less than $10,000 in assets (using constant 1995 dollars)...

From a recent Glenn Reynolds USA Today column [1]: So Washington gets fat, and it does so on money taken from the rest of the country. Just how fat have Washington and the Beltway counties gotten? According to the latest U.S. Census data, between 2000 and 2010 the richest of the Washington, D.C., area have accrued about twice as much new wealth as those not living in or around the area.Also, some Washington counties have gotten about twice as much new wealth as some of the other richest counties in the United States.An April 2012 Forbes article [2] lists...

I admit that I could have gone full Cassandra on CNBC’s Rick Santelli yesterday about the economy. Never go full Cassandra on TV. Today’s economic numbers do have a hint of Cassandra about them. First, Personal Income in October rose 0.0%. This is unwelcome news going into Christmas/Holiday season and for the housing market. Compare the growth of Personal Income prior to “The Great Recession” (yellow box) with post Great Recession. Oogh! Second, the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index New Orders fell to their lowest level since Q2 2009. Double oogh! And yesterday’s horrendous Q3 Personal Consumption print of +1.4% was...

“Identity theft, tax refund scams are really no less than a tsunami that is barreling towards us,” said U.S. attorney Wifredo Ferre... For victims like South Dade’s Lauri King, waiting for help from the Internal Revenue Service is getting harder. She still doesn’t know when the agency may get around to mailing out her refund... King filed her tax refund seven months ago. She expected to get her refund a few months later, but continues to wait for the IRS to finally act... “Just two weeks ago, I mentioned to my husband, did we ever get our IRS refund and...

Elizabeth Warren obtained federal fee waivers despite high 6-figure income and 8-figure net worthDid not pay her “fair share,” obtained PACER fee waivers in at least 50 federal districts 2005-2012 Posted by William A. Jacobson Sunday, October 14, 2012 at 5:30pm **SNIP** Warren falsely and without any legitimate legal basis claimed to be Cherokee for employment purposes. Warren also chintzed by failing to register for the Massachusetts Bar despite an active practice of law in Cambridge since the mid-1990s, thereby evading Bar registration dues. Howie Carr has a great column today about Warren’s class warfare phoniness. Add another example to...

Analysts say many other companies, including the White Castle hamburger chain, are considering employing fewer full-timers because of key features of the Affordable Care Act scheduled to go into effect in 2014. Under that law, large companies must provide affordable health insurance to employees working an average of at least 30 hours per week. If they do not, the companies can face fines of up to $3,000 for each employee who then turns to an exchange — an online marketplace — for insurance.

Consumer spending rose in August, thanks to higher gas prices, while incomes barely budged, government data showed Friday. The Commerce Department said consumer spending rose 0.5 percent in August from July, the biggest jump since February. The increase was led by a 1.7 percent surge in purchases of nondurable goods, reflecting the sharp 28.2 cents per gallon rise in gas prices during the month. Spending on durable goods rose 0.3 percent, helped by gains in auto sales. Spending on services rose just 0.2 percent. Income rose just 0.1 percent in August, reflecting the weak job market. Taking into account inflation,...

A large majority of likely voters believes all Americans should pay some federal income tax -- even if it is as little as one percent of what they make. Seventy-nine percent say everyone should pay something, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday. That includes 85 percent of Republicans, 83 percent of independents and 71 percent of Democrats. According to the IRS, last year approximately 41 percent of tax filers did not pay federal income tax. The Tax Policy Center estimates that will increase to 46 percent this year. Most voters (73 percent) are at least somewhat familiar with...

September 18, 2012 By:  William McBride Lots of talk today about the half of the population that do not pay federal income taxes, based on Romney’s comment that 47 percent pay no income tax. The 47 percent number is an estimate of the share of the total population that pays no income tax, coming from the Tax Policy Center, which is in line with our estimate using IRS data, but slightly less than the 51 percent estimated by the Joint Committee on Taxation.However, the hard data from IRS tax returns indicates that about 41 percent of filers pay no...

When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney claimed at a private fundraiser last spring that 47 percent of Americans pay no income taxes, he was mostly right. But that 47 percent still must pay a whole slew of other taxes. The claim that nearly half of Americans pay no income taxes is based on a 2011 finding from the Tax Policy Center, a joint tax research arm of the centrist Urban Institute and center-left Brookings Institution.

The selection of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate sent a powerful message - that the economy will be the key issue of this election. As I go back and forth arguing with my lefty pals we naturally disagree over what ails our economy. Their arguments are that we're not doing enough to tax the wealthy and put it in the hands of our government to spread the wealth around and get our economy moving again. I always point out things like our trillion dollar debt, looming entitlements collapse, ever increasing regulation, and continuous threats of higher taxes from...

Back in August 2010, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wrote an Op-Ed titled "Welcome to the Recovery." Two years later, most Americans would be right to ask: What recovery? Yes, the economy is technically growing, and corporate profits are up. But the pace of growth during the Obama "recovery" has been so slow that it's leaving most Americans further behind. The latest sign: Real median household income has fallen 4.8% since the so-called recovery officially began in June 2009. That's a steeper decline than occurred during the recession itself.

Economy: Obama is touting "a new vision of an America in which prosperity is shared." But Obama's been promising to deliver on this "new vision" for years, while his policies have produced the opposite. After securing the Democrats' nomination in June 2008, for example, Obama said he'd bring "fiscal responsibility and shared prosperity." In 2009, he said his just-enacted economic strategy "is about far more than just recovery — it's about sustained growth and widely shared prosperity." And in 2011, he was touting a "framework for shared prosperity." So what has Obama actually delivered? Precious little prosperity and it sure...

President Barack Obama released his recent personal finance records in 2008, which included his 2004 U.S. Individual Income Tax Return and Senate Annual Finance Report. President Obama's records for 2004 do not reconcile with the State of Illinois Comptroller's Office. There are inconsistencies in the total compensation received as an Illinois State Senator. The largest error likely is President Obama's omission of a "Leadership Stipend" of over $8,000. This stipend should have been recorded as income. According to the Illinois Comptroller's office, then-State Senator Obama received: 2004 State of IL compensation: $ 52,817.38 (salary) $ 8,040.01 (leadership stipend) Stipends of...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans report spending $151 on food per week on average. One in 10 Americans say they spend $300 or more per week and, at the other extreme, 8% spend less than $50. Gallup has asked a version of this question as far back as 1943, but has not asked it since 1987. In 1943, an average of $15 per week was spent on food. The final 1987 estimate was $106. But the increases in weekly food spending over time largely reflect the impact of inflation. On a relative basis, after adjusting prior years' data for inflation to...

On this day in 1861, Lincoln imposes the first federal income tax by signing the Revenue Act. Strapped for cash with which to pursue the Civil War, Lincoln and Congress agreed to impose a 3 percent tax on annual incomes over $800.

that the gap is growing between America’s richest and poorest are built on a foundation of flawed research, according to a report published today by the Laffer Center for Supply-Side Economics. “The principal research supporting claims of dramatic income inequality in America is unsound and misguided,” said Laffer Center Senior Fellow Brian Domitrovic, Ph.D. “This focus on ‘the 1 percent’ takes no account of any absolute increase or decrease in living standards on the part of the lower classes. Studies have shown that in every recent interval of American history, and certainly from 1980 to the present, living standards and...

There must be something in the water in Oslo: Nobel laureates, from our president to Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, all agree that high levels of inequality are a serious problem, if not the problem, facing our weak economy. According to this liberal thesis, either the 2008 financial crisis and its attendant recession, or the sluggish recovery — and maybe both — can be attributed in large part to the high level of economic inequality in the United States. Further, in this view, inequality is an economic malady on its own, even in times of prosperity. Liberal commentators, of course,...

Economy: A Bloomberg poll out this week purports to find that "Americans say they're better off since Obama took office." Don't believe it. Fact is that by most measures, Americans have fallen behind under Obama.

The Democrats in Mudville were ecstatic when they took control of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate in 2007. But since 2007, family incomes and net worth has both declined. According to The Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) for 2010 provides insights into changes in family income and net worth since the 2007 survey. The survey shows that, over the 2007–10 period, the median value of real (inflation-adjusted) family income before taxes fell 7.7 percent. The decline in median income was widespread across demographic groups, with only a few groups experiencing stable or rising incomes. Median...

Mitt Romney has been citing an interesting economic statistic lately about the economy under Barack Obama: “Well, let’s look at what happened. What you’re not going to hear is that during his term median income in America has dropped by $3,000.” Here he is on “Hannity,” repeating the same number. That’s a pretty striking figure. Is it true? The answer depends somewhat on what numbers you use — there are more and less charitable options available — but the answer is arguably yes.

Each year in the United States, an estimated 6.1 billion hours are spent complying with the federal tax code. I'm pretty sure at least half of those hours are spent by me. With less than two weeks remaining before this year's tax returns are due, I've barely made a dent in my stack of forms, receipts, and instructions. Each year the prospect of doing my taxes looms more daunting and dismal than the year before. Each year I wonder where I'll find the time, never mind the patience, to get it done. Each year's tax ordeal seems to require more...

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released the Personal Income and Outlays report for February. The Good: Personal income increased $28.2 billion, or 0.2 percent in February and Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $86.0 billion, or 0.8 percent (mostly consumer durables like autos and computers). Real Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) increased 0.5 percent in February, compared with an increase of 0.2 percent in January. Personal income rose 0.2% in February. The Bad: REAL personal income fell 0.1% in February. So, personal spending increased 0.5% while personal income FELL 0.1%. That means that households … are boarding the Debt Train again!...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said on Fox News Sunday that he wants to maintain “the progressivity” of the tax code so that as Americans make more money they are required to surrender increasing percentages of their earnings to the federal government in taxes. Romney has a long record of opposing a flat tax--even investing more than $50,000 of his own money during the 1996 presidential campaign to run newspapers ads attacking then-presidential candidate Steve Forbes’s flat-tax proposal as a “tax cut for fat cats.”

The Sacramento Bee website is reporting that the number of top-income taxpayers in California has declined by a third. In an article in its Capitol Alert section, the Bee says that those Californians with $500,000 and up taxable incomes have declined from almost 150,000 in 2007 to slightly under 100,000 in 2009. The article also notes that the 100,000, representing just over a half percent of the 14.6 million returns, accounted for 18.8 percent of total income reported, but paid 32 percent of all income taxes in 2009. If Governor Jerry Brown wonders where a whole bunch of those making...

According to a Jan. 31 Associated Press report, the notion of eliminating or dramatically reducing state income taxes is gathering steam. The AP reported that in Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Carolina — all but one of which elected a Republican governor in 2010 — this idea is getting a serious look. Currently, only nine states lack an income tax. Until 1991, Connecticut was income-tax-free as well. Considering what has happened in the Constitution State since then, one really can't blame those considering repeal. In '91, Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. and the legislature enacted Connecticut's first...

In 2010, the median household income in the United States was $49,445, which was down from the $49,777 that had been recorded in 2009. Meanwhile, average household income in the U.S. was $67,530 for 2010, which was likewise down from 2009's figure of $67,976. Both figures for 2010, along with the rest of the cumulative distribution of household income in the United States for 2010, are presented in the following chart, which shows the U.S. household income distribution in terms of percentiles:

Obama and other Democrats are constantly harping on taxing the "rich" or the "wealthy," but their proposals are all about taxing income. Well, income is not wealth, and the wealthy often have little income. The reality is that all income taxes do is punish the productive and job creators. Income taxes also are very useful for the wealthy and powerful to keep their club exclusive by making it nearly impossible for most people to become wealthy.In other words, income taxes are class warfare by the mega-wealthy against the middle and upper middle class. They want to keep their club exclusive.As...

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle gave $10,772 of the $1.2 million they earned from 2000 through 2004 to charities, or less than 1 percent, according to tax returns for those years released today by his campaign. The Obamas increased the amount they gave to charity when their income rose in 2005 and 2006 after the Illinois senator published a bestselling book. The $137,622 they gave over those two years amounted to more than 5 percent of their $2.6 million income. Romney charitable contributions Tax year Taxable income Charitable donations Donations as % of income 2010 $21.7...

So Mitt Romney thinks his effective tax rate is about 15%. That prompts many people to express disbelief: "What?! Most people pay a higher rate than that, don't they?" ,,,, But assuming he's correct, here's why his effective rate is probably higher than most people's: The effective tax rate is always going to be lower than one's top income tax rate. And the top rate for roughly four-fifths of Americans is 15% or less, said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. In other words, 80% of Americans have an effective rate below 15%.

Washington (CNN) - Former president Bill Clinton enjoyed his most lucrative year ever on the speaking circuit in 2010, capping a decade of paid speaking events that has earned him $75.6 million since leaving office in 2001, according to a CNN analysis of federal financial records. Clinton received $10.7 million for 52 paid speaking engagements last year, a sizable increase from the 36 paid speeches he delivered in 2009 for a total of $7.5 million. The most the former president had previously earned in one year was in 2006 when he earned $10.2 million for 57 events. His 2010 speaking...

For years, the Left led by President Obama and aided by the robots in the media have continued to say there is a growing income gap in America. They say the rich are getting richer and the poor are being left behind. President Obama recently stated in his weekend address to the nation, “Over the past three decades, the middle class has lost ground while the wealthiest few have become even wealthier.” The recent flurry of news stories came as a result of a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that concluded: “From 1979 to 2007, real (inflation-adjusted) average household...

Barack Obama is entirely predisposed to claiming that he inherited a an economic mess, and it in truth, he did. He did assert that he could fix the economy in three years and implied that he perhaps ought to be limited to one term if he did not deliver. [VIDEO AT SITE] Back then he said he should be held accountable but today wants to be accountable for absolutely nothing save for killing Bin Laden. As democrats controlled the entire Congress for the first two years of Obama's term and were able to shove pretty much anything they wanted...

As we listen to President Obama, Occupy Wall Street, and much of the mainstream media working themselves into a lather over inequality in America, one thinks of “Harrison Bergeron,� the 1961 short story by Kurt Vonnegut that posited a society based on perfect equality, “not only equal before God and the law . . . equal every which way.� The government employed a “Handicapper General� to ensure that no one was smarter, more athletic, or more productive than anyone else. Beautiful people were forced to wear masks, athletic people had to carry weights, and intelligent people wore radios in their ears to interrupt...