Tag Archives: Income Tax

Tax Foundation: Average American Works 109 Days to Pay All of His Taxes

Tuesday, 17 April 2018 05:47

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, April 16, 2018:

Tax Freedom Day, which “represents how long Americans as a whole have to work in order to pay the nation’s tax burden,” falls this year on April 19 according to the Tax Foundation.

With Americans focused on paying their income taxes by April 17, this year’s deadline, the release from the Tax Foundation last week likely gives them little comfort. The average American worker will have to work until April 19 — 109 days — to pay all of his taxes: federal, state, local and municipal. That’s just three days fewer than last year, thanks to Trump’s tax reform law. Put another way, the total tax bill of $5.2 trillion soaks up more than a quarter of the economy’s total gross annual output.

According to the foundation,

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Remembering Vivien Kellems as April 16 Approaches

Monday, 02 April 2018 04:40

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, March 30, 2018:

Vivien Kellems, American industrialist and tax...

Vivien Kellems, American industrialist and tax protester

Vivien Kellems, along with her brother Edgar, invented a specialized cable grip for electrical cables and founded Kellems Cable Grips in 1927. The company prospered.

But in 1943, during the Second World War, Congress passed the Tax Payment Act, which required the payers of wages, not the receiver of wages, to withhold estimated taxes and remit them quarterly to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (later called the IRS).

The injustice was apparent to Vivien and in 1948 she refused, declaring that “If they wanted me to be their agent, they’d have to pay me, and I want a badge.”

They didn’t, and instead simply seized the amount the agency thought she owed from her company bank account. She sued in federal court and finally got her money back.

Withholding has allowed the government to collect far more money far more efficiently with far less bleating from the sheep as explained by the U. S. Department of the Treasury:

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Why Would Anyone Move from California to Sheridan, Wyoming?

Saturday, 27 January 2018 06:36

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, January 26, 2018:

Specifically, from Paso Robles, California? It’s a pretty town of 30,000 people located in San Luis County a few miles north of San Luis Obispo, whose full name is El Paso de Robles(“The pass of the oaks”). It’s known for its hot springs, its abundance of wineries, its production of olive oil, its almond orchards, and is the home of Weatherby, Inc., the maker of high-end rifles, shotguns, and ammunition.

Its climate varies little, allowing its residents to enjoy long, hot, dry summers, long-lasting autumns, and early springs, which also makes it perfect for growing grapes, olives, and almonds.

It’s expensive to live there, but, hey, it costs to live like this!

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High-end Gun Maker Quits California, Announces Move to Wyoming

Friday, 26 January 2018 06:34

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, January 25, 2018:

Adam Weatherby, grandson of the founder of Weatherby, Inc. and president of the high-end custom rifle and shotgun maker currently located in Paso Robles, California, made a big announcement on Tuesday in Las Vegas — the company is moving its operations to Wyoming:

We wanted a place where we could retain a great workforce, and where our employees could live an outdoor lifestyle.

We wanted to move to a state where we can grow into our brand. Wyoming means new opportunities.

Wyoming also means that it isn’t in California,

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The Coming Avalanche of Repatriated Dollars

Saturday, 20 January 2018 06:58

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, January 19, 2018:

English: Historical GDP per capita for the Uni...

This is an old chart of US GDP. Get ready for the next leg up

On Thursday The New American speculated about the impact of Apple’s repatriation of its overseas profit hoard of some $250 billion and where Apple intends to invest some of it. It raised questions about the $2.5 trillion in profits that is still held overseas by American companies unwilling to subject those profits to the United States’ outrageously high income tax rates.

With Apple’s decision, and the repatriation tax rate of just 15.5 percent in the new tax law, some of those questions can be addressed.

First,

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Final Tax Reform Bill: The Goods Outweigh the Bads

Wednesday, 20 December 2017 06:28

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, December 19, 2017:

With victory over tax reform clearly in sight, President Trump on Sunday tweeted, “As a candidate, I promised we would pass a massive TAX CUT for the everyday working American families who are the backbone and the heartbeat of our country. Now, we are just days away.” From the White House came more details:

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What’s in the GOP Tax Bill?

Tuesday, 07 November 2017 07:06

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 6, 2017:

The GOP tax reform bill presented last Thursday attempts to be “revenue neutral” within 10 years. By giving most of the cuts to corporate taxpayers, there’s precious little left for the middle class to enjoy. The problem is not only the mathematics — trying to match the “give” with the “take” — but the politics: Democrats will work to scuttle any attempt to relieve fiscal pressure on entrepreneurs (i.e., capitalists) who are largely carrying the burden of supporting the government. Absent any attempt to cut spending — the tax bill’s 429 pages offer little help with that — what’s left, as has been said, is simply moving the chairs around on the deck of the Titanic.

First,

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The GOP Tax Reform Bill: Sausage-making on the Titanic

Tuesday, 07 November 2017 06:51

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, November 6, 2017:

John Godfrey Saxe. Library of Congress descrip...

John Godfrey Saxe

The oldest attribution isn’t to Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of Germany, but to an American poet, John Godfrey Saxe. Back in 1869, he said it best: “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire in proportion as we know how they are made.”

Imagine, then, making sausages on the deck of the Titanic just after it hit an iceberg on the glassy sea of the North Atlantic in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912. The wonderful smells might have distracted the passengers from the reality that within two hours and forty minutes the unsinkable ship would disappear beneath the surface of the icy waters, taking 1,550 passengers with her.

That picture may be too dramatic for our purposes. But

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Combined Social Security Spending for 2017 Tops $1 Trillion for First time

Friday, 27 October 2017 07:25

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, October 27, 2017:

The Monthly Treasury Statement issued on Wednesday from the Social Security Administration showed that total spending for the three social welfare programs administered by the agency — the Old Age and Survivors Insurance program, the Disability Insurance program and the Supplemental Security Income program — topped $1 trillion for the first time in history in 2017.

The program first hit $600 billion in spending in 1997, and it took nine years to hit the next benchmark, $700 billion. From there it took between three and four years to hit subsequent $100 billion spending benchmarks. Accordingly, the agency estimates that it will spend $1.6 trillion in 2026. From there it will be just a few short years before all funds are exhausted.

Most sensible observers have been warning for years that the program is in dire jeopardy, with all manner of schemes being proposed to rescue it from oblivion:

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China Forcing Private Businesses to Support Failing State-owned Enterprises

Thursday, 12 October 2017 05:28

China Unicom

China Unicom

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, October 11, 2017:

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The latest report from Caixin/Markit should surprise no one watching China’s continuing economic decline. On Monday Caixin/Markit announced that its purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for China’s services sector fell in September to the lowest level since December 2015, and close to the lowest recorded since the survey began in 2005.

Its PMI for China’s manufacturing sector also fell in September, causing Zhengsheng Zhong, a director at CEBM Group, to add that these numbers “suggesting downward pressure on [China’s] economic growth may re-emerge in the fourth quarter.”

Indeed they might. As The New American and others have noted,

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Tax Reform: The Sausage-Making Begins

Saturday, 30 September 2017 06:49

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, September 29, 2017:

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Otto von Bismarck is credited, rightly or wrongly, with two famous quotes about laws and sausages: “Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.” And “To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.”

One of the more insightful comments on the whole business in today’s Washington comes from the President’s son, Donald J. Trump, Jr., (shown above) who said:

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Tax-reform Plan Called “Tremendous” by Trump, “Fake Math” by Schumer

Friday, 29 September 2017 05:34

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, September 28, 2017:

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In unveiling the tax reform “framework” cobbled together by the Trump administration, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, President Trump called it “tremendous”: “This is a tremendous change, and the biggest winners will be the everyday American workers as jobs start pouring into our country, as companies start competing for American labor and as wages start going up [to] levels you haven’t seen in many years.”

On cue, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) expressed her concerns about deficits, perhaps for the first time in her political career:

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The IRS Continues to Hire Repeat Offenders

Thursday, 24 August 2017 05:29

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, August 23, 2017:

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Following its investigation in 2014, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA, shown above) concluded that the IRS was hiring previously employed thugs with known criminal backgrounds, including backgrounds of failing to file or pay their income taxes, falsifying documents, accessing private records of American taxpayers in order to harass them, disruption while at work, and taking time off without permission.

It made various suggestions to the IRS, which were ignored. When an unnamed Senator asked the TIGTA to do an update, the IG found that nothing had changed: thugs were still hiring thugs at the IRS.

From the update released in July:

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Inspector General Says the IRS is Rehiring People Who Were Fired for Illegal Behavior

Wednesday, 23 August 2017 05:34

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, August 22, 2017:

Seal of the United States Internal Revenue Ser...

Seal of the United States Internal Revenue Service.

The IRS ignored a report issued in December 2014 by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) that revealed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was rehiring people it had previously fired for misconduct. That misconduct included failure to file and pay their own income taxes, falsifying documents, and theft of and illegal use of sensitive taxpayer information. What’s to keep the IRS from ignoring that report’s update, released in late July?

The latest report from the TIGTA scorned the IRS for continuing the practice:

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Oregon’s New Bicycle Tax Proves Ronald Reagan was Right

Thursday, 20 July 2017 05:38

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, July 19, 2017:

President Ronald Reagan enjoyed excoriating liberals and big government advocates not with spears but with honey:

We should measure welfare’s success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.

Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face.

When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

But the one for which the former president is best known is this:

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The Wall Street Journal Tells Investors Not to Worry About Illinois. Really.

Saturday, 01 July 2017 05:33

This article was published by the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, June 30, 2017:

Seal of Illinois. Center image extracted from ...

Seal of Illinois.

The Journal declared that although the state of Illinois “is in deep trouble”, that shouldn’t be troubling to those investors holding billions of the state’s debt that is about to be downgraded to junk. On Saturday morning, barring a miracle, S&P Global will keep its promise and announce that Illinois’s debt rating is being reduced by at least one more notch, to junk status.

The Journal said that downgrade reflects the fact that the state faces “large uncertainties” and has “major exposure to adverse conditions.” But none of those need bother investors, said the Journal. Even though several bond mutual funds have bailed since the first of the year, offloading an estimated $2 billion of the state’s $25 billion in investor-owned debt, the Vanguard Group is standing firm. It has the largest exposure to Illinois in its seven mutual funds, holding $1.2 billion of its debt and claiming that it is “comfortable with (its) risk/reward”.

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Illinois Governor calls for “Unity,” Offers “Compromise” that is a “Capitulation”

Saturday, 24 June 2017 05:25

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, June 23, 2017:

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When politicians call for unity, they usually mean “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.” In the case of Illinois, Governor Bruce Rauner (shown)’s Tuesday night closed door compromise offer to intransigent Democrats to get them to agree to a budget before the June 30 deadline was called a capitulation by The Wall Street Journal:

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Illinois Governor Gives Tax Increases to Placate Democrats Before Deadline

Friday, 23 June 2017 05:44

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, June 22, 2017:

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Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner (shown), speaking briefly to a closed session at the state house on Tuesday night, urged “unity” in solving the state’s staggering and rapidly accelerating financial problems. Those present reported afterward that the governor declared, “Failure to act [on his budget proposal] is not an option. Failure to act may cause permanent damage to our state that will take years to overcome.”

The state has already suffered massive damage.

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Democrats Love to Tax the Rich – Except When it’s THEIR Rich

Thursday, 08 June 2017 05:15

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Tuesday, June 6, 2017:

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The Trump tax reform proposal has put the Democrats into a deliciously difficult position. He wants to eliminate state and local deductions for income and property taxes (but leave charitable and mortgage deductions alone) as part of his attempt to keep his proposal revenue-neutral.

The amounts involved are enormous. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates that, if passed, it would cost the rich $1.3 trillion over the next 10 years. The Tax Foundation ran the same numbers and came up with an even bigger number: $1.8 trillion.

The law currently allows state and local income and property taxes to be deducted in calculating an individual’s federal tax liability. But, as both tax groups noted, those benefitting the most from the deductions happen to live in liberal, Democrat-leaning and supporting states. This forces Democrats to face a conundrum:

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Aetna Next to Leave Connecticut for Better Business Climate

Wednesday, 07 June 2017 05:41

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, June 6, 2017:

Aetna Insurance Company and Aetna National Ban...

Aetna Insurance Company and Aetna National Bank, Hartford, Conn, from Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views

Aetna, the $50 billion health insurer that has had its headquarters in Hartford, Connecticut, since 1853, confirmed rumors last week that it was looking to move out of state. The company said, “We are in negotiations with several states regarding a headquarters relocation, with the goal of broadening our access to innovation and the talent that will fill knowledge-economy type positions … and hope to have a final resolution by early summer.”

Hartford’s Mayor Luke Bronin expressed his disappointment:

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