Free Republic

Nineteen-year-old college student Garrett Kliewer got up Saturday, put on a black tuxedo, black top hat and dark sunglasses, and strolled over to the state Capitol for a protest. With a cigar hanging out of his mouth, he looked like a Blues Brother, but he actually had intended to look like a capitalist. “I didn’t wanna make a sign,” he explained. He was among roughly 150 people who were angry enough about government spending to descend upon the Nebraska capitol for a “tax freedom tea party.” They were there to protest federal stimulus legislation and runaway government spending, but the...

State and local governments may be able to tax certain aspects of Internet use under an existing federal law designed to ban such fees, government auditors said this week. The comments came in a new Government Accountability Office study (click here for PDF) commissioned by Congress to examine a law known as the Internet Tax Freedom Act. First passed in 1998 and renewed after some debate in 2004, the law prevents state and local governments from taxing "a service that enables users to access content, information, electronic mail or other services offered over the Internet." Services like voice over Internet...

WASHINGTON - For 60 years, American workers have received job-sponsored health-care benefits that are excluded from income and payroll taxes, but now they're in danger of taxation. An odd coalition of groups from both the right and left wants to tax those benefits, and a special presidential commission is weighing whether to recommend ending their tax exemption when issuing its report Sept. 30 on how to overhaul the tax system. On Capitol Hill, aides to tax-writing committee chairmen said ending the exemption had become "background chatter" in both chambers of Congress, where lawmakers are meeting privately in search of consensus...

ALBANY, May 26 - As they move to thwart the illegal trade of cigarettes over the Internet, state officials have joined colleagues from around the nation in persuading the major credit card companies to stop processing payments for online cigarette sales. Additionally, the state has enacted a law prohibiting the shipment of cigarettes to its residents and banned private carriers, like FedEx, from shipping cigarettes. But as state officials fight illegal online cigarette sales, one operation is not falling into line - the United States Postal Service, which officials say delivers the bulk of illegally purchased cigarettes to New Yorkers....