Free Republic

Just because the government raises taxes, doesn’t necessarily mean it will raise more revenues. The Biden administration is discovering that the hard way. In August 2022, President Joe Biden signed the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act into law, which included a new tax on companies’ financial statement income, new IRS funding to increase audits, an excise tax on stock buybacks, and more taxes on natural gas, oil, and coal. To top it off, certain Trump administration business tax cuts simultaneously have been phasing out. On paper, that adds up to more than $60 billion in tax hikes in 2023. Yet, as...

President Joe Biden loves to brag about the masterful job he’s doing managing the nation’s economy, as he did on Tuesday when cheering the latest inflation news – which saw food prices up almost 7% from last year – and “our historic economic progress.” The day before that, the Treasury Department released its monthly financial statement, which shows that the federal deficit for this fiscal year has already topped $1 trillion and that’s a big factor behind this is a sharp reduction in federal tax revenues from last year. Wait, you say. If the economy is “strong” and “historic” as...

California’s fiscal wildfire is here. The flames are licking the highest levels of the state capitol in Sacramento. The flames surround the Democrat super majority-run legislature. Democrats’ profligate spending, greed, and lack of imagination on how to run America’s most populous state have been disastrous. An investment research group says California’s “tax policy is killing the Golden Goose in the Golden State.” And that’s not the only problem. Governor Gavin Newsom sent billions of Joe Biden’s specially printed, inflation-causing Covid money to voters for “inflation relief” before his latest election. He teed up “free” kindergarten for four-year-olds, and gave out...

New York state’s income tax take is dropping rapidly, but its leaders don’t seem interested in truly facing the implications. Projected income tax revenues for the year just dropped $2.3 billion, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Comptroller Tom DiNapoli announced Monday — and that’s after falling $500 million in December. Cuomo partly gets what’s going on: “‘Tax the rich! Tax the rich! Tax the rich!’ We did. Now, God forbid, the rich leave,” he said. He noted that the top 1 percent of New York earners provide 46 percent of the state’s personal income tax revenues, and cited anecdotal evidence that...

Stan Druckenmiller ... when I look at the current picture of expected tax revenues combined with benefits promised to future generations, this is the most unsustainable situation I have seen ever in my career. The disaster that Druckenmiller sees coming for the United States is all about changing demographics and entitlement spending. They don’t add up to a sustainable situation. In 1940, entitlement payments, which include everything from disability payments to Social Security to Medicare, amounted to just over 20% of annual government spending in the United States. Today, entitlement spending has swelled to nearly 70% of the annual federal...

Even as the Fed continues to pretend that keeping interest rates at zero for what is now becoming apparent will be an infinite amount of time is an appropriate substitute for the absence for the elimination of actual cash flows, we once again get a reminder that life in the real economy, there were people can not just print their way out of trouble, practical issues such as reality still matter. One such example comes to us by way of California which just announced that state tax revenue plunged in July, falling more than 10% below expectations, and as the...

HELENA, Mont. (AP) -- States again saw sharp declines in tax collections in the last quarter of 2009 -- a record fifth straight quarterly drop, according to a new report that predicts more looming spending cuts or tax increases. Overall, revenue from state tax collections dropped 4.1 percent for the quarter compared to the same quarter in 2008, the Rockefeller Institute of Government reported Tuesday. For some governors and lawmakers already grappling with painful budget decisions, the latest figures -- while offering more evidence of the grim economy -- weren't all that surprising. "It is topic number one," said Montana...

Tuesday, August 14, 2007 Two recent tragedies -- in Minnesota and in Utah -- have held the nation's attention. The implications of these tragedies also deserve attention. Those politicians who are always itching to raise tax rates have seized upon the neglected infrastructure of the country as another reason to do what they are always trying to do. Those who live by talking points now have a great one: "How can we fight an expensive war and repair our neglected infrastructure without raising taxes?" Plausible as this might sound, tax rates are not tax revenues. The two things have moved...

KPMG avoided the fate of Arthur Andersen yesterday... over the marketing and sale of "abusive" tax shelters. But the price of survival was high. The accounting firm will pay $456 million in fines and restitution and has agreed to let a federal monitor look over its shoulder. At the same time, no fewer than eight former KPMG executives and an outside lawyer were indicted on conspiracy charges for designing and selling the shelters.... KPMG will survive this "deferred prosecution" by admitting wrongdoing. But it's easy to forget amid the righteous indignation over tax shelters with names like FLIP, BLIP, OPIS...

Sept. 26, 2003, 11:43PMAs incomes of rich slid, tax take fell By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON New York Times The incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans fell 18 percent in 2001, as did their income taxes, shaving $66 billion off revenues and showing how dependent the federal government has become on its wealthiest citizens. Overall, Americans had 2.8 percent less income in 2001 than in the previous year. But federal tax revenues fell 9.4 percent because the incomes of those at the top, who pay the highest tax rates, dropped so much more than the average. The top 1...