Free Republic

In various tax proposals Mr. Obama has set the definition of rich at levels of $100,000, $200,000 and $250,000 in annual income. He has vowed, for example, to erase the Bush tax cuts not only for those who make more than $250,000, but to end the cap on Social Security taxes, which amounts to a tax hike on anyone who makes more than $100,000 in income. All of this has caused some heartburn among certain Democrats in high cost-of-living states. New York Rep. Joseph Crowley says a couple with earnings of $100,000 could be "a police officer and nurse." "In...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Attention U.S. companies: If you "ship jobs overseas," a Democrat is going to try to bring them back. As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama take their battle for the Democratic presidential nomination to manufacturing states including Ohio and Pennsylvania, the senatorial rivals are both touting plans to bring change to the corporate tax code. Namely, "ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas." That's how Sen. Clinton, D-N.Y., puts it in her campaign literature. Obama's language is virtually identical. Clinton and Obama don't go into many specifics. But they're both taking aim at a decades-old part...

The candidates for South Dakota's lone U.S. House seat debated again Sunday night, and, for the most part, refrained from direct attacks and addressed questions from citizen panelists. The forum, at the South Dakota Public Broadcasting studios in Vermillion, was broadcast on radio and television. It featured five panelists and audience members asking questions of Democrat Rick Weiland, Republican John Thune and independents Stacey Nelson and Kurt Evans. Most of the questions dealt with economic matters. One panelist, noting that the net worth of the three richest people in the nation is three times the value of all of South...

Guess Who Really Pays the Taxes By Stephen Moore From the November/December 2007 Issue Yes, income in America is skewed toward the rich. But taxes are skewed far, far more. The top 5 percent pay well over half the income taxes. STEPHEN MOORE has the numbers. 1. Are income taxes fair?That depends on who is offering the opinion. Democratic candidates for president certainly don’t think so. John Edwards has said, “It’s time to restore fairness to a tax code that has been driven badly out of whack.” Hillary Clinton laments that “middle-class and working families are paying a much higher percentage...

Oh goody. Barack Obama wants to cut taxes. Well. Not really. Resurrecting the phoniest of all Bill Clinton’s campaign promises, Obama is calling for a middle-class tax cut, which will be accompanied by a repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the group Obama calls “the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.” Why give a break to one group while socking the other? Because, Obama says, the current tax code “rewards wealth instead of work.” Oh my. Where to begin? Let’s put aside, for a moment, the question of how wealth is produced, or conversely, what results from wisely directed work....

Exposing an Imposter! Bush is a Sham Conservative! by Ryan Setliff Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy by Bruce Bartlett. Hardcover: 320 pages. (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2006) Amazon Price: $16.38. An Imposter, a Pretend Conservative!! Bush came into office riding on a tide of popular backlash directed at the scandal-plagued Clinton administration. Bush even went so far as to present himself as the consummate Reaganite. Nonetheless, G.W. Bush’s last few years of leadership from foreign policy to domestic issues have been uninspiring and characterized by a profound increase of government spending, record...

Republican and Democratic big government advocates whine about President Bush's proposed tax cuts, particularly cuts in the capital gains tax. They say it's a $70 billion giveaway to the rich. Listening to demagoguery about the rich, I've sometimes wished that we could find a humane way to get rid of the rich so that we might better focus on what's in the interests of the other 99.44 percent of us. Creating more equipment, whether it's earthmovers, computers or technical innovation, is called capital formation. The capital gains tax is a tax on capital formation, and when anything is taxed, one...

In case you were wondering what that giant "whoosh" emanating from Washington was, it was the sound of the people on the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform swinging and missing at the easy underhand toss that George W. Bush sent their way. The commission was announced during the president's 2005 State of the Union address; its instructions were to overhaul a federal tax structure described in the speech as "archaic" and "incoherent." But rather than taking the president's broad mandate for fundamental, comprehensive reform, the panel recommended preserving the basic elements of the "archaic, incoherent" monstrosity already on...

The flat tax--the same tax rate for everyone, without all the deductions that now complicate the tax code--is an idea with a decades-long pedigree. Politically its high-water mark in the U.S. came in 1996, when Steve Forbes ran for the Republican presidential nomination against Bob Dole and a tired GOP establishment. Mr. Forbes single-handedly thrust revolutionary ideas into the political headlights--ideas about health insurance and Social Security, for instance, but most famously about the tax code itself. The GOP establishment hated his message, but the conservative rank-and-file loved it. Mr. Forbes was suddenly the talk of the town. There he...

Ask any politician about the possibility of having a flat tax in Britain, and they furrow their brow and say: "Hmm. Interesting idea. But it's just a tax cut for the rich isn't it? That's a tough sell." If they are a Conservative, they then descend into discussing the party's interminable leadership election (stay awake at the back). Such a parochial attitude may soon be dispelled. The flat tax - where all exemptions and allowances are abolished and everyone pays the same rate - is marching across Europe, just as other ideas have conquered the Continent once every generation or...

Better than expected. That is the headline being given to the progress of the US economy. Last year the deficit was a humiliating 3.6 per cent of gross domestic product. The deficit this year, new numbers suggest, will be 2.7 per cent of GDP - acceptable. The difference? Extra revenues. It seems federal revenues for this year will be $85bn (47bn Pounds) higher than anyone was predicting as recently as March. Growth, too, may be stronger than expected, remaining above 3 per cent. Unemployment? Some forecasters now believe it will dive deep into the mid-4 per cent range.These data are...

In Kelo v. New London, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that that Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution did not bar the city of New London, CT, from using its eminent domain power to transfer ownership of land from homeowners to economic developers so long as the transfer furthered a valid “public purpose.” The Court accepted the argument of New London that transferring the property from the current homeowners to private developers would increase the number of jobs in New London and increase the tax revenues available to the city. This, in the Court’s mind, was enough to satisfy the...

A private company that provides health care services for the federal government received more than $300,000 from the Treasury last year. That is unremarkable. What is remarkable, however, is that the company owes more than $18 million in back taxes. And at the same time the company was cheating taxpayers, its owner bought several multimillion-dollar properties and a fleet of luxury cars. Another contractor, which last year provided security guards for the Department of Homeland Security at a cost of $200,000, owes more than $400,000 in unpaid taxes. Its owner has repeatedly failed to file individual income taxes and has...

TAX CUTS--especially the supply-side tax cuts of May 2003--were the controversial center of the Bush administration's first-term economic policy. Most Democrats opposed most of the tax rate reductions. John Kerry promised to repeal many of them if elected president. The president, and Republicans running for the Senate and House, promised to make them permanent. (For reasons having to do with artificial out-year budget calculations, most of the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire over the next few years.)Bush won and Kerry lost. Republicans increased their margins in Congress. So a bill to make the tax cuts permanent should be...

The other day, I was at a meeting of conservative activists and a young woman addressed the group asking for support in opposing plans to tax cosmetic surgery. Assuming taxes have to be raised somehow, taxing cosmetic surgery sounded like a pretty good idea to me -- the tax is essentially voluntary and falls mainly on the well-to-do. But everyone else in the room agreed that it would be a travesty to tax fake boobs. It occurred to me that conservatives have increasingly become just like liberals on tax policy in an important philosophical way. Neither liberals nor conservatives really...

Today’s Social Security system is in dire condition. Most people will concede that something needs to be done to protect the benefits of today’s elderly. But, it should be equally important to all Americans to ensure that the younger generations get a return on the billions of dollars that are being withheld from them every pay period. With many Americans rapidly approaching retirement age and living longer, the income that Social Security currently collects will not be able to provide similar benefits to the masses of Americans who will be under that system in the very near future. Some of...

Gov. Bill Owens of Colorado is used to praise from conservatives. National Review dubbed him "the best governor in America" on its cover (illustrating a profile by John J. Miller). Conservatives lauded him for, among other things, his record of cutting taxes and spending. In recent weeks, however, Owens has announced a budget deal with Democrats that has some conservatives furious. Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, accuses Owens of "betraying" taxpayers. The editors of the Wall Street Journal have zapped him. Owens's critics say that he is not only raising taxes, but weakening his state's constitutional...

If Beltran is looking to save a couple hundred thousand dollars, he also might want to sign before Jan. 12 and load up his contract in signing bonus money. That's because a 46-year-old loophole on signing bonuses will be closing next Wednesday. For the rest of the American public, signing bonuses count as wages earned, with both the employer and employee having to pay taxes under FICA (the Federal Insurance Contribution Act). But in 1958, baseball players -- the exclusion for other athletes later became understood -- were exempt from FICA taxes on their signing bonuses because it was determined...

POLICYTax Advice for Mr. Bush: Consider the VAT The logic of a value-added tax is compelling and may soon be overwhelming. FORTUNE Wednesday, December 1, 2004 By Bruce Bartlett President Bush has pushed through some delightful changes in the tax code over the past four years: lower income tax rates, rebates, and increased business depreciation allowances, to name a few. It's been great. Except for one thing: When you consider those measures as a whole, they don't make much sense. Bush's tax policy--although "policy" may be stretching the meaning of the word--is a haphazard mess. What's scary is that the...

Bush taps Kellogg Co. CEO Gutierrez to head Commerce Corbett B. Daly WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- President Bush announced Monday that Carlos Gutierrez, Kellogg Co.'s chief executive, would replace Don Evans as Commerce Secretary, making the first of what are expected to be many changes in his economic team. "Carlos Gutierrez is one of America's most respected business leaders," Bush said at the official announcement in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. (...) Gutierrez, 51, has been CEO at Battle Creek, Mich.-based Kellogg (K) since April 1999. Kellogg shares fell 51 cents immediately after news broke that the cereal maker...

The Bush tax cuts (which Congress just voted to extend) are an affront to the most fundamental principles of fairness. They are skewed in favor of those who already pay less than their rightful share of taxes and shift the burden even farther onto the shoulders of the most overtaxed. In other words, the Bush tax cuts are unfair to the rich. I know there's a lot of hype to the contrary, but look at the numbers. If you and your spouse have a taxable income of $60,000 a year, you've had almost a 24 percent income tax cut since...

THE NEW YORK TIMES SHADES THE TRUTHClaims Kerry Voted For Only One Tax Increase?  That's A Stat Only The Kerry Campaign Would Use___________________________________________________________________"In truth, Mr. Kerry essentially voted for one large tax increase, the Clinton tax bill of 1993, which mostly imposed additional income taxes on the wealthy but did include an increase in taxes on Social Security benefits for middle-income retirees." (Elisabeth Bumiller, "In A New Offensive, Bush Rearms His Stump Arsenal," The New York Times, 10/11/04)KERRY HAS VOTED 98 TIMES FOR AT LEAST$2.3 TRILLION IN TAX INCREASES 2003 Vote To Raise Income Taxes By $90 Billion. (S. 1689,...

ARLINGTON, VA -- Today, Bush-Cheney '04 announced the release of the campaign's newest television advertisement, "Clockwork."  The ad notes that John Kerry and the liberals in Congress have voted for higher taxes an average of once every three weeks for 20 years.  Kerry and the liberals have voted to raise taxes on gasoline, Social Security benefits and middle class parents.  The ad will run on national cable and in select local markets. Script For "Clockwork"Voiceover:They voted to raise our gas taxes 10 times. And raise taxes on Social Security benefits.          Higher taxes on middle class parents 18 times.                                         John Kerry and...

Memorandum From: BC '04 Policy DepartmentThis memorandum reviews and responds point-by-point to John Kerry's column about the economy that appeared in the September 15, 2004 edition of the Wall Street Journal.  It provides a quote from the Kerry op-ed and then factual responses.OverviewJohn Kerry continues to dismiss the fact the President Bush inherited a tired and crippled economy that then experienced the most extraordinary confluence of shocks that has occurred in any business cycle in modern U.S. economic history.  In December of 2003, John Kerry said, " ...we haven't been creating jobs to some measure because of the overhang of...

"Another drag on our economy is the current tax code, which is a complicated mess -- filled with special interest loopholes, saddling our people with more than six billion hours of paperwork and headache every year. The American people deserve -- and our economic future demands -- a simpler, fairer, pro-growth system. In a new term, I will lead a bipartisan effort to reform and simplify the federal tax code."-President Bush, 9/2/04 President Bush's Agenda For A Fairer, Simpler Tax CodeMaking the Tax Code Fairer, Simpler, and Pro-Growth.  President Bush will work with Congress to make the tax code...

COLUMBUS, OH – U.S. Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) today issued the following statement: "Access to quality health care and the growth of small businesses are two of the most important issues facing Ross County and the state of Ohio today. Yet, time and again, John Kerry and John Edwards have opposed common-sense health care reforms designed to provide greater access for rural communities and instead, supported their trial lawyer friends and the junk lawsuits that are overwhelming America's courts. Time and again, John Kerry and John Edwards have supported, and continue to support, higher taxes and increased regulations on small...

This paper provides an Empire State perspective on federal income tax cuts enacted since 2001. It estimates the resulting decrease in New Yorkers’ tax payments and describes the implications for New York of proposed future changes in federal tax policy. Principal findings include: Through 2004, New York State’s share of the income tax cuts will total nearly $36 billion, including $15 billion in savings for New York City residents. In 2004 alone, New York State residents will save nearly $14 billion in federal income taxes, including nearly $6 billion in savings for City residents. This amounts to a 2.7 percent...

"John Kerry promises not to raise taxes, but the reality is that he has cast 98 votes for tax increases, including voting ten times to raise gas taxes on the middle class. Kerry points to the largest tax increase in American history as the blueprint for his economic plan, which advisor Bob Rubin says Kerry won't reveal until elected. Kerry's credibility problem is only expanding as more and more Americans see the gap between what Kerry says and what Kerry does." - Steve Schmidt, Bush-Cheney '04 Spokesman John Kerry's Votes For Higher Taxes Kerry Voted 98 Times For Tax...

Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR): "Measure 30 Is The Kind Of Thing That John Kerry Would Have Been Four-Square For."During John Kerry’s visit to Oregon today he’s likely to talk down recent economic gains while promoting his own economic plan which includes raising taxes. Oregonians understand that tax increases are not the way to create jobs and spur the economy. That's why they rejected Ballot Measure 30 (which would have been the largest tax increase in state history) by a 17-point margin. As Sen. Gordon Smith noted in yesterday's Bush-Cheney '04 conference call, "Oregonians are people who on tax issues are...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- A report Monday that in his upcoming book House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., endorses the elimination of the Internal Revenue Service and replacement of the current tax code with a national consumption tax or flat tax as a top GOP priority in a second Bush administration should come as no surprise, considering that conservative Republicans have been pushing such ideas for years. The Drudge Report's brief on Republican plans for eliminating the federal revenue-collection agency and the laws it enforces in favor of a national sale tax, value-added tax or even a flat tax rate...

Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series. (Part one can be read here.) BERLIN – In two days of closed-door meetings recently, an international bureaucracy of industrialized nations—whose membership is dominated by “old Europe”—was attempting to “persuade” low-tax nations to raise taxes and eviscerate financial privacy. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which receives some $50 million annually from U.S. taxpayers, has for six years pushed for eliminating what it calls “harmful tax competition”—which can be best described as any policy that undermines the ability of welfare states like France, Belgium, and Germany to...

Options For Dealing With Same-Sex Marriage Licenses Mar. 3, 2004 Phyllis Schlafly Congress overwhelmingly passed and President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996, and there it rested peacefully on the law books until this year. Recent events are now placing the monkey squarely on the back of President George W. Bush to do his constitutional duty to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." It's not enough that he is "troubled" about the marriage licenses that have been issued to over 3,000 same-sex couples in San Francisco and 26 in New Mexico, and may...

STAFFORD -- This city has 55 religious institutions over seven square miles, and local leaders say enough is enough. "Nobody wants to send a message that we're against religion because we're not," said Leonard Scarcella, who has been mayor for 34 years. Yet Stafford's City Council is considering a zoning ordinance that would ban construction of new religious buildings or expansion of old ones in about half of the city. Congregations would have to get specific use permits from the council to build or expand in the city's other half. Scarcella said the problem is that the churches are in...

I am an engineer so I love a good problem and illegal immigration certainly fits that bill. First, let me say that I believe that those who do venture to this country are among the brightest and hardest working individuals that the world has to offer. Certainly it takes a special person to consciously decide to make such a radical change in their life. Having said that, the idea of being in opposition to the law tends to make such an individual operate in a manner that seeks to avoid detection. Accordingly, such a person would be hesitant to register...

Thank you for the opportunity to address your commission on the future of tax policy in California. I would like to focus on two general themes - one is the natural limitations that operate upon any system of taxation, and the other is a few general principles that I believe would produce great improvements to the state's overall structure of finance.Let me begin with the natural limitations that act upon our tax system. I know that there is a great deal of pressure on this commission to raise revenues to deal with the state's budget deficit. But it is important...