Free Republic

From Art Laffer, economist and inventor of the Laffer Curve, comes an excellent and timely piece explaining why we should all care about the death tax, its effect on society and on people's behavior: Spend it in Vegas or Die Paying Taxes President Barack Obama has proposed prolonging the federal estate tax rather than ending it in 2010, as is scheduled under current law. The president's plan would extend this year's $3.5 million exemption level and the 45% top rate. But will this really help America recover from recession and reduce our growing deficits? In order to assess the pros...

I've been seeing commercials on Fox News TV about this website. So thought I'd go over there and check it out. Notwithstanding the site seems to want to sell services to the public, the analysis there looks pretty reasonable, and their coverage "fair and balanced": Jeepers, they'll sell you a Obama/Biden bumper sticker!!! LOL! The editorial stance on this site struck me as favoring low taxes and small government. FReepers, if you have the time and interest, please go over there, then come back and tell us what you think.

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....

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...