Free Republic

Just yesterday, Joe Biden’s official Twitter account posted that the great American road trip is going to be fully electrified and that citizens can receive a tax credit of up to $7,500 for a new electric vehicle (EV).Along with the message was a photo of Biden driving a GMC Hummer EV. On my watch, the great American road trip is going to be fully electrified. And now, through a tax credit, you can get up to $7,500 on a new electric vehicle. pic.twitter.com/n3iZ9etL4A — President Biden (@POTUS) January 30, 2023 This was part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022...

Should American taxpayers stop subsidizing big oil companies? How about abortions? There seems to be a lot of confusion on the issue. In part, that's because there's a lot of confusion about what a subsidy really is. To hear liberals talk, it's scandalous that Americans are forking over their hard-earned tax dollars to prop up Big Oil. Former Virginia Gov. and DNC chairman Tim Kaine, now running for Jim Webb's Senate seat, last week called on his opponents to join him in opposing "government giveaways for big oil companies," as he put it. "Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) Defends Fairness of...

It appears that Delta Airlines gave up a $40 million tax break over a mere thirteen passengers, according to a Friday report. A spokesperson for the Atlanta based company revealed that only 13 passengers had used their National Rifle Association membership to purchase tickets with Delta Airlines, reports USA Today The airline company confirmed that number to The Daily Caller News Foundation Friday afternoon. Georgia Republican lawmakers passed a bill Thursday that removed a tax break on jet fuel that would have heavily benefited Delta in response to the cancellation.

Tax Reform: What do you call a tax break that delivers 88% of the benefits to upper-income families and subsidizes rich states at the expense of poor ones? If you're a Democrat, you call it a sacred cow. One provision of the Republican's tax-cutting plan that has drawn intense opposition from Democrats is the elimination of state and local tax deductions for those who itemize. ... Fewer than 22% of tax filers even claim the state and local tax deduction, and the vast majority of these are higher-income families. While 78% of those with incomes above $200,000 claim the deduction,...

In many ways, Donald Trump's political talking points are Orwellian at best. His constant insistence that the U.S. is not "winning" is being repeated with such pneumatic regularity that voters believe it. Or if they don't yet, they may soon. Whether we are getting killed on trade or being flooded with illegal immigrants, Donald Trump has been making arguments that were, in part, true thirty years ago, but most certainly not today. The "INGSOC" slogans in Orwell's epic dystopian novel, "1984": "War is Peace" "Freedom is Slavery" "Ignorance is Strength" Would fit nicely among Trump's litany of incongruous phrases: "The...

When I fretted to my friend and colleague Jay Nordlinger that the Republicans may learn the wrong lessons from success in 2014, he noted sagely that he prefers to wait until the results are in before drawing any lessons. While that ought to have stayed my hand, I think some contours are discernible, and so I plunge in! The 2012 election was essentially a protracted exercise in character assassination. Democrats painted Romney and Republicans generally as extremist cretins who held rigid views on abortion, were hostile to the point of combat towards women, engineered the financial crisis to benefit their...

Steve Ballmer paid $2 billion for the Los Angeles Clippers. But a new report from the Financial Times said he might get about half of what he paid back in the form of tax benefits over the next 15 years.Ballmer's purchase was a record for NBA franchises, coming at nearly four times the next-highest amount ever paid for an NBA team.But the FT found that using a goodwill tax exemption allowed for sports teams, Ballmer could get back $1 billion in taxes.Here's how the FT lays it out:Under an exception in US law, buyers of sports franchises can use...

A state program created to redevelop polluted areas is doling out tax breaks for companies that lease offices in downtown high-rises, build on pastureland and open restaurants on busy highways, even when there is no proof they are on contaminated land. From January 2011 through April 2012 alone, about $11 million in tax refunds have been approved for dozens of businesses, according to a database accidentally released in June by the state Department of Economic Opportunity.... .....Companies are getting the breaks largely because Florida's brownfield initiative has a major loophole, critics say. To be eligible, there is no need to...

In November, Accuracy in Media released my report regarding a company known as CH2M Hill, an engineering firm that claimed nearly $2 billion in stimulus awards. Most of their work concentrated on one division - the CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company (CHPRC) - which operated one of the world’s largest environmental cleanup projects—the Central Plateau on the Hanford Nuclear Site in Richland, Washington. New information shows that despite their claims, the Energy Department says the company actually received $1.38 billion from the stimulus, but had an additional $3.1 billion in annual budget appropriations. Furthermore, they are receiving $2 million in...

A state tourism board gave preliminary approval Monday for a religious theme park to apply for up to $37 million in state tax incentives. The Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority also gave final approval Monday for the Kentucky Speedway to collect up to $20.5 million in sales tax breaks over 10 years. The deal will allow the Northern Kentucky race track to recoup up to 25 percent of the $82 million it is spending on an expansion that will allow it to host a NASCAR Sprint Cup race.

China Axes Foreign Companies' Tax Break, by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong Last updated 3 hours ago | Tuesday, October 26, 2010 The Chinese ministry of finance has announced that foreign companies’ current tax exemptions on the 1985 urban maintenance and construction tax and the 1986 education surcharge will be removed as of December 1, 2010 under a Notice issued by the State Council. The Ministry of Finance announcement said that the differentiated tax system had played an important role in reforming and opening up the economy by attracting foreign investment and introducing foreign technology but now a unified tax...

The nation's trial lawyer group, the American Association for Justice, revealed Tuesday that it expects the U.S. Department of Treasury to soon give its members a tax break on contingency fee lawsuits. The tax break could be similar to proposed legislation that didn't make it through Congress last year. That proposal, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., would have allowed attorneys to deduct fees and expenses up-front for filing contingency fee lawsuits. John Bowman, the Director of Federal Relations for the AAJ, said in response to a question from a state delegate regarding recruiting new members that an administrative...

The jobs legislation would also extend highway and mass transit programs through the end of the year and pump $20 billion into them in time for the construction season. Economists say the tax breaks could create perhaps 250,000 jobs.

December 6, 2009 Charities Rise, Costing U.S. Billions in Tax Breaks By STEPHANIE STROM The number of organizations that can offer their donors a tax break in the name of charity has grown more than 60 percent in the United States, to 1.1 million, in just a decade. Experts say nonprofits are skillfully exploiting the tax code’s broad and elastic definition of what constitutes such a charity, making it difficult for the Internal Revenue Service, which must bless them, to say no. The agency approved 99 percent of the applications for public charity status last year, according to a new...

Federal legislation that would afford trial lawyers a special tax break faces an uncertain future, says one of the chief lobbyists for the nation's trial lawyers. The proposal would allow attorneys to deduct fees and expenses up-front for filing contingency-fee lawsuits. The proposal amounts to about a $1.6 billion tax break for plaintiffs' attorneys, estimates indicate. "Everyone wants to do it, but the problem is there is not a tax vehicle yet," said Linda Lipsen, American Association for Justice (AAJ) Senior Vice President of Public Affairs. Lipsen was speaking to the Birth Trauma Litigation Group at the annual meeting this...

President Barack Obama has undertaken the expansion of health care to the roughly 45 million Americans who do not currently have health insurance. Having about one American in seven with no health insurance is undeniably an undesirable situation which deserves our attention and concern. This is not just a matter of compassion either, but also of practicality. About the most expensive way imaginable to deal with routine illness is to provide it in hospital emergency rooms, yet this is the only alternative for millions of people. In addition, the uninsured commonly defer getting needed treatment, and with the looming threat...

The goal of the Obama White House is to come up with a health care plan that can attract bipartisan support. The president has told visitors that he would rather have 70 votes in the Senate for a bill that gives him 85% of what he wants rather than a 100% satisfactory bill that passes 52-48. There is good reason for that preference. When you are changing the way one-sixth of the American economy is organized and altering life for patients, doctors, hospitals and insurers, you need that kind of a strong launch if it is to survive the inevitable...

President Obama's drive for government health care began in earnest last Saturday, in thousands of neighborhood house meetings where his supporters listened to his sales talk via a video on the Internet and participated in a live conference call. Those who attended were given their orders to reach out to neighbors, knock on doors and build a grass-roots network to force Congress to pass the legislation "the same way we won the election, building support one block, one neighbor, one conversation at a time." Obama's promise that government health care will produce "reduced costs, guaranteed choice and quality care for...

The Texas Legislature gave final approval on Monday to a cut to its business margins tax aimed at reducing the burden the tax places on small businesses.The legislation, House Bill 4765, raises the exemption to the tax from $300,000 to $1 million. The margins tax was passed in 2006 as a replacement to the outmoded franchise tax, which was so ineffective that five out of six Texas businesses were not paying it. But the new tax soon became a large burden on small business. Calls to reform it were so great that a key Democrat shoved aside multiple Republican bills...

RICHMOND (AP) — Virginians already have been excused from paying sales taxes on back-to-school supplies and energy-saving appliances. Now it's hurricane-preparedness supplies. The state's first Hurricane Preparedness Sales Tax Holiday begins Sunday and continues through May 31. During that week, sales tax will not be collected on generators costing $1,000 or less, or on nearly two dozen other items ranging from flashlights to duct tape. State officials hope the 5 percent savings will encourage shoppers to stock up on items they would need if the state gets slammed by another storm akin to Hurricane Isabel, which in 2003 left about...