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U.S. President Barack Obama speaks as he unveils his plan on climate change June 25, 2013 at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. President Obama laid out his plan to diminish carbon pollution and prepare the country for the impacts of climate change. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) When President Obama leaves office three years from now, the major policy story of his second term — barring some kind of unforeseen invasion — is likely to be climate change. I made this argument at feature length last year, and the evidence continues to mount. Coral Davenport reports today about Secretary of...

It's hard to keep all the new Obamacare taxes straight, but there's one that some couples won’t see until they file their 2013 taxes next April, and bizarrely it could mean a surprise tax bill or a refund. It's the 0.9 percent Medicare surtax on wages and self-employment income (not to be confused with the separate new 3.8 percent net investment tax on capital gains, dividends and passive income). **SNIP** The surtax -- or additional Medicare tax (it is levied on top of the Medicare tax you already pay) -- is effective Jan. 1, 2013 and applies to wages and...

Talk about expensive real estate: A House seat can easily cost millions. Every cycle, a few wealthy candidates dig into their deep pockets to fund their own campaigns. This cycle is on track to be no different — except that Republicans dominate the ranks of potentially self-funding congressional candidates. Democrats constituted some of the richest candidates of 2012, including Reps. John Delaney of Maryland, Suzan DelBene of Washington and Scott Peters of California. All three made Roll Call’s 50 Richest list this year. But in 2014, Republicans boast far more self-funders among their recruits — at least nine so far....

More than 8,000 French households' tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echos reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data. The newspaper said that the exceptionally high level of taxation was due to a one-off levy last year on 2011 incomes for households with assets of more than 1.3 million euros ($1.67 million). President Francois Hollande's Socialist government imposed the tax surcharge last year, shortly after taking office, to offset the impact of a rebate scheme created by its conservative predecessor to cap an individual's overall taxation at 50 percent of income. The...

A crafty, millionaire identity thief will spend at least four and a half years in prison after admitting today that he paid waiters at some of Manhattan's fanciest restaurants to skim the AmEx cards of wealthy customers. Between 2010 and 2011, some 265 diners had their Black and Platinum AmEx card information stolen by waiters at Smith & Wollenski, Capital Grille, Wolfgang's Steakhouse and JoJo, all thanks to Luis Damian Jacas, who pleaded guilty on the brink of opening statements in his now-scuttled enterprise corruption trial at Manhattan Supreme Court. Jacas, 42, of Manhattan, paid waiters $500 per Black card,...

DRIVE through almost any neighborhood around the country, and class divisions are as clear as the gate around one community or the grittiness of another. From the footprint of the house to the gleam on the car in the driveway, it is not hard to guess the economic status of the people who live there. Even the landscape is carved up by class. From 15,000 feet up, you can stare down at subdivisions and tract houses, and America’s class lines will stare right back up at you. Manhattan, however, is not like most places. Its 1.6 million residents hide in...

A common argument you hear from conservatives is that raising taxes on the rich is a joke of a deficit reduction proposal, because it hardly makes a dent in the deficit. According to CNBC, reverting to Clinton-era levels would just get you about $40-$45 billion in the first year. GOP Congressman Tom Price has gotten a lot of attention for saying it would only fund government for 8 days... So what is the point? Well, it's not really about deficit reduction at all. Zachary Goldfarb at The Washington Post has a great piece on how Democrats once vehemently opposed the...

Kerry Has Investments in Companies Accused of Violating Iran Sanctions Daniel Halper December 21, 2012 12:59 PM John Kerry, who will be nominated later today to be the next secretary of state, is the richest member of the U.S. Senate. His estimated net worth is, at minimum, $198.65 million, according to disclosure forms. Kerry's disclosure forms also reveal that he has invested in companies accused of doing business with Iran. One of the companies Kerry is invested in is called Petroleo Brasileiro SA Petrobras (Petrobras), it's a Brazilian-based oil and gas corporation. Disclosure forms reveal that Kerry has between $150,000...

The scariest thing about lies is that if they are repeated often enough, people eventually assume that they are true, especially when they go largely unchallenged by the victims of those very lies. The president of the United States has lied so often about “the 1 percent” that even House speaker John Boehner, and some wobbly Republicans, have swallowed Obama’s toxic fiction that “fairness” requires the rich to surrender more of their money to Washington — albeit through narrower deductions rather than higher tax rates. Washington’s problem is not a paucity of revenues but a nicotine-like addiction to blowing through...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While Republican leaders in the House of Representatives insist that raising tax rates on the rich is an impossibility, some Republican lawmakers now see it as inevitable to avoiding the "fiscal cliff" of severe tax hikes and spending cuts set to start January 1. Congressional aides, who asked not to be identified, said Republicans are losing the public relations battle over keeping low tax rates for the rich and are getting battered by President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats in Congress following their November 6 election victories. On Capitol Hill aides often play an important role...

Well, that $80 billion a year will come in handy, no? That's the impression that six in ten Americans have as a solution to the trillion-dollar deficits in the latest Washington Post/ABC poll — and 39% of Republicans, too. The result demonstrates the political leverage of Democrats in the fiscal-cliff fight, and perhaps the leeway for the House GOP to compromise as well: Sixty percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll support raising taxes on incomes more than $250,000 a year, long a popular option overall, but also a divisive one: While 73 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of...

An article in the Wall St. Journal paints a gloomy picture for the future U.S. companies are scaling back investment plans at the fastest pace since the recession, signaling more trouble for the economic recovery.Half of the nation's 40 biggest publicly traded corporate spenders have announced plans to curtail capital expenditures this year or next, according to a review by The Wall Street Journal of securities filings and conference calls. Nationwide, business investment in equipment and software—a measure of economic vitality in the corporate sector—stalled in the third quarter for the first time since early 2009. Corporate investment in new...

Unless Congress intervenes, taxes are set to rise significantly on January 1st, when we hit the "fiscal cliff." Most of the focus of this tax increase has been on income taxes. Income taxes for incomes over ~$388,351, for example, are set to revert back to the Clinton-era 39.6% from the current 35%. That's a relatively modest increase, and a 39.6% tax for the top bracket is still historically low. Capital gains taxes are also set to rise, from 15% to 20%. That's a bigger percentage increase, but the resulting capital-gains rate will still be historically low. Screams about how these...

<p>“You’ve heard of the New Deal, the square deal, the fair deal. Mitt Romney’s trying to sell you a sketchy deal. You don’t need a sketchy deal,” Obama said. “The last time this sketchy deal was tried was when the previous administration made the same sales pitch.”</p>

One of the most pernicious myths in the current political debate is that the rich don’t pay much tax. This is nonsense, as even a cursory analysis of the official statistics reveals. The top 1pc, who earn £156,000 or above, will pay a whopping 24.2pc of all income tax this year, a much higher contribution than their 10.8pc share of all income. The top 10pc of earners – those on at least £50,500 – will pay 55.3pc of all income tax, also far more than their income share. The most astonishing figure of all is that for the very wealthy:...

Speaking in Wisconsin on September 22, 2012, Barack Obama called for tax increases once again, as usual, this time tellingly stating his belief that "I can afford to pay a little bit more… and Mitt Romney sure can afford to pay a little more." Obama is hoping against hope that he can turn back the clock, back to the days when he convinced a majority, of more than enough states, that he and he alone could clean the air, make the oceans recede, brighten the body politic, and fix what was broken in Washington. He hopes to turn back the...

Cutting taxes for the wealthy does not generate faster economic growth, according to a new report. But those cuts may widen the income gap between the rich and the rest, according to a new report. A study from the Congressional Research Service -- the non-partisan research office for Congress -- shows that "there is little evidence over the past 65 years that tax cuts for the highest earners are associated with savings, investment or productivity growth." In fact, the study found that higher tax rates for the wealthy are statistically associated with higher levels of growth.

Millions of people would be forced to disclose the value of their homes, investments and assets under Liberal Democrat plans for an emergency tax on wealth. The Deputy Prime Minister believes that the proposed tax, which would see an annual levy of about half a per cent on the value of a person’s total wealth, could raise billions of pounds to prevent deeper public spending cuts. Experts warned that it would prove “impossible to administer” and other countries were abandoning similar taxes because of the complexities involved. George Osborne said it might also “drive away wealth creators”. The Chancellor said:...

The presidential election has given us two myths about the rich. First, that their incomes, and income inequality, are at all-time highs. Second, that the wealthy pay less in taxes than ever, and lower taxes than the rest of us. A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office, however, suggests that both may be false. Let’s consider income first. Between 2007 and 2009, after-tax earnings by Americans in the top one percent for income fell 37 percent. On a pre-tax basis they fell 36 percent in the same period. That may sound like a minor haircut for One Percenters compared...

The Top 20% Paid 94.1% of Income Taxes in 2009 The chart above is based on data in the recently-released CBO report "Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2008 and 2009," showing the share of federal income taxes paid by income group in 2009.  In 2009, almost all (94.1%) federal income taxes collected were paid by just one-fifth of Americans (top quintile) and the top 1% paid almost 39% of all taxes collected.  In contrast, the lowest and second quintiles were net "tax collectors" because that 40% of Americans received more in refundable tax credits than they paid...