Free Republic

Pesident Biden is pushing for trillions in tax hikes during an election year, despite experts warning it would reduce economic output and have other dire effects. It may be popular with the anti-corporate elements of potential voters, but tax experts say it's a mistake. "The tax increases would substantially increase marginal tax rates on investment, saving, and work, reducing economic output by 2.2 percent in the long run, wages by 1.6 percent, and employment by 788,000 full-time equivalent jobs," according to a recent Tax Foundation analysis. "On a gross basis, we estimate Biden’s FY 2025 budget would increase taxes by...

President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget proposal contains nearly $4.7 trillion in new tax hikes on American individuals and businesses. Biden’s proposed tax hikes come just months after Democrats passed more than $700 billion in tax increases in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.Biden’s budget proposal is a direct violation of the President’s campaign pledge to not raise taxes on small businesses.Below is a list of tax hikes included in Biden’s budget proposal. This list will be updated as more details of Biden’s Budget become available.Highest Personal Income Tax Rate Since 1986. Biden’s budget calls for a top combined federal tax...

Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party has faced a raw deal as Tory voters leave the party, while a poll has revealed they may be headed elsewhere. A YouGov poll on voting intention showed a spike in Reform UK’s support now at nine points - up by four. This follows the Tories dropping three points to 22 per cent and Labour dropping one point to 47 per cent, a change apparently in favour of Reform UK. The Liberal Democrats have seen no change, with nine per cent of the vote. The poll, from November 29 to 30, also saw Keir Starmer’s lead...

A lot has been made of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s stock sales, but Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently sold a chunk of stock that is a much larger portion of his total holdings. Nadella sold about half his stake in Microsoft (ticker: MSFT), according to recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The CEO unloaded 838,584 shares on Nov. 22 and 23, netting him about $285 million. He has about 831,000 Microsoft shares left, worth roughly $280 million. It isn’t clear why he sold. Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the sales or to make...

You know, I'm beginning to suspect that someone who broke his promise not to strand thousands of American citizens, legal residents, and allies in a terrorist-controlled country may not be scrupulously committed to upholding mere campaign pledges about tax policy. And if he's willing to claim that trillions of dollars in new spending costs "zero dollars," his connection to reality and fealty to truth are manifestly not, shall we say, rigid. Nevertheless, this is shaping up to be a prominent breach of a high-profile vow. As a candidate, Joe Biden insisted that his planned tax increases would exclusively hit "wealthy"...

Congressional Democrats can’t quite cobble together the votes to pass a mammoth $3.5 billion-plus social-spending bill, which for now means the political system is working to reject dangerous radicalism. The few remaining Democrats who at least claim to lean to the center are in a game of legislative chicken with the more numerous left wing of the party, with the would-be centrists wanting to pass a separate $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill before being asked to commit to a final social-spending package. The extreme left wing wants just the opposite, saying they will block the infrastructure bill until they have a...

Social Security’s latest report on the status of the trust funds on which it relies to pay benefits has both good and bad news. The good news is that the funds have not been as hard hit by the Covid-19 as was initially feared, due the economic recovery that has taken place. The bad news is that the funds’ depletion dates have moved up sooner, prompting a chorus of calls for Congress to act swiftly to correct the problem. “If this report does not trigger a pretty serious and swift discussion on Capitol Hill among lawmakers about what needs to...

Senate Democrats have assembled a laundry list of possible tax hikes to help finance their $3.5 trillion spending bonanza, according to an internal committee document obtained by The Post. Many Democrats are eager to implement the host of corporate and individual tax hikes to fund the $3.5 trillion plan, but Beltway insiders are dubious the more controversial plans — like taxing share buybacks and hefty executive payouts — will make the final bill.... ...Sen. Mike Crapo, a Republican of Idaho, said in a statement to The Post that he had “serious concerns” about the Democratic “tax-and-spending spree.” He said the...

President Joe Biden’s proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year assumes that a hike in the capital-gains tax rate took effect in late April, meaning that it already would be too late for high-income investors to realize gains at lower tax rates, according to a Wall Street Journal report out Thursday citing people familiar with the proposal. Biden plans to increase the top tax rate on capital gains to 43.4% from 23.8% for households with income over $1 million, though Congress must OK any hikes and retroactive effective dates, the report added. Some analysts predicted any rise in capital-gains taxes...

Across Missouri, about 900 state road and highway bridges are rated in “poor” condition by Missouri Department of Transportation inspectors. In Southwest Missouri alone, that number is a little more than 200. MoDOT officials say the problem — money, or the lack there of — is not anything new. Without a big infusion of new money coming into the state’s road budget, the number of bridges with a “poor” designation likely won’t improve much. and while sources for new revenue are on state and federal tables, they still have obstacles that would have to be overcome. MoDOT officials say being...

What would happen if Biden got the tax hikes he seeks? A big set of questions and answers follows.Net Capital Gains Tax Would Approach a Whopping 60% As I noted on April 23, under Biden's proposal Net Capital Gains Tax Would Approach a Whopping 60%.Four Comments By Shortsighted ReadersI'll complain when I'm the one being taxed.Mish, tell me if it impacts someone with $60K in annual income and $12K in short-term capital gains. If it doesn't, go screw yourself!Great if the plan is passed! Party time for the Top .3% is over! Why should investment be advantaged over labor?The first...

Stocks erased earlier gains to trade sharply lower after Bloomberg report Thursday afternoon that President Joe Biden would propose increasing the corporate tax rate on wealthy individuals. The Dow dropped 250 points, or 0.7%, following the report, after trading just slightly lower earlier. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq erased gains to trade at session lows. Biden's plan would involve increasing the capital gains tax rate on the wealthy to 39.6%, according to the report from Bloomberg citing people familiar with the matter. This would apply to those earning at least $1 million. The current base capital gains tax rate is...

The Biden administration and some (but not all) of their Democratic allies in Congress want to raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent. They say this would help the working class and hurt Big Business, finally making corporations “pay their fair share.” But if that were true, giant corporations like Amazon wouldn’t be endorsing the change. Yet that’s exactly what Jeff Bezos just did.A message from Jeff Bezos. https://t.co/ZAcpnaRu6zpic.twitter.com/81AkgVyQke— Amazon News (@amazonnews) April 6, 2021“We support the Biden Administration’s focus on making bold investments in American infrastructure,” the Amazon CEO wrote in a public statement. “We recognize this investment...

Joe Biden on Wednesday delivered a speech on his Socialist “American Jobs Act” and less than 2,000 people watched him mumble on the White House YouTube live feed. Joe Biden has spent his entire adult life fleecing people and selling out his public office in countless international pay-to-play schemes but he pretended to be old middle class Joe from Scranton. Joe Biden is proposing the first major federal tax hike since 1993 to fund a plan to tackle climate change, infrastructure and other Socialist pet projects. Biden’s tax hike is unpopular but since we have no real media, he gets...

When Joe Biden unveiled his $3 trillion infrastructure bill, he told the American people that no one making less than $400,000 a year would have their taxes raised. He said, “No one making under $400,000 will see their federal taxes go up, period.”In the immortal words of Independence Day Defense Secretary Albert Nimziki, “That’s not entirely accurate.”On Friday, the president said that a two-partner family would be impacted if their combined income crosses $400,000. He also claimed that jacking up corporate and business taxes right at the beginning of the recovery from the pandemic “will not slow the economy at...

Former President Trump released a statement Wednesday regarding President Joe Biden’s $2.25 trillion infrastructure proposal. Trump criticized Biden’s “radical plan to implement the largest tax hike in American history” as a “massive giveaway to China” that will displace thousands of “factories, millions of jobs, and trillions of dollars to these competitive Nations.” “Biden promised to ‘build back better’—but the country he is building up, in particular, is China,” Trump stated before adding, “America is once again losing the economic war with China—and Biden’s ludicrous multi-trillion dollar tax hike is a strategy for total economic surrender.” Trump detailed how raising taxes...

After weeks of waiting with investors hanging on every new detail, President Joe Biden is expected to unveil the first part of his sweeping economic reform/redistribution plan on Wednesday afternoon.As Biden's press secretary Jen Psaki revealed over the weekend that Biden and his team are planning to unveil his sprawling "Build Back Better" plan in two parts: The first part of the "Build Back Better" plan, which will be officially unveiled later today, is expected to focus on rebuilding "roads and railways" while the second part, which will be released "in just a couple of weeks", will focus on "social...

President Biden will outline his massive $3 to 4 trillion infrastructure plan Wednesday, which will create four tax increases worth around $1.8 trillion, the White House revealed. The commander-in-chief’s “Build Back Better” proposal, a centerpiece of his post-COVID campaign message, will be split into two packages for Congress to pass. The first, the White House said, will focus on infrastructure investments specifically. The second will focus on funding domestic policy areas of Democratic concern, such as providing universal pre-kindergarten and tuition-free community college, as well as health care.

Not a single reporter questioned President Joe Biden during his first solo press conference for the administration's flip-flopping on its massive tax hike proposal. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a March 17 press briefing that “families” with household incomes totaling over $400,000 will see their taxes increase. The statement contradicted Biden’s indication that individuals — not families — would see taxes increased during an interview with ABC News that aired the same day: “Yes, anybody making more than $400,000 will see a small to a significant tax increase. If you make less than $400,000, you won’t see...

Three years after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act took effect, Democrats in Congress are ready to roll back some of the most critical reforms.The business tax cuts have been maligned as contrary to the interests of workers. In reality, the corporate tax cut succeeded at allowing new business investment, creating jobs, raising wages, and increasing the economy’s size.The economic history of the 2017 tax cuts should lead policymakers who are intent on raising the corporate income tax, or repealing parts of the individual tax cuts, to question their convictions.The tax cuts were intended to increase new investments in the...