Taxes and the IRS

Note:  All the material related to high gas prices has moved here.  Some of the problem has to do with events like Hurricane Katrina, but a lot of it results from high taxes, as well as ordinary supply and demand.

The subsection about cigarette taxes is located here.

The subsection about the proposed Value Added Tax (VAT) has moved here.


The Stupid Lies Democrats Believe.  [Scroll down]  Here are some examples:  "The rich don't pay taxes."  False.  For the 2007 tax year (the latest income tax data year released by the IRS), the top 1 percent of income earners, those making over $410,000 a year, paid 40 percent of all federal income taxes.

Thief-in-Chief.  When taxes become involuntary, they become theft.  When a majority votes for an involuntary taking of private property, the government becomes an instrument of gang-theft.

Tax Hike Planned For Lame-Duck Session.  Liberals in Congress have a plan to raise your taxes after the elections this fall, something they must do to continue feeding the Obama Administration's spending addiction.  Watch for them to act after the midterm elections under the cover of the report from the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.  You don't need a commission to see that President Obama's policies have led to out-of-control federal spending and a growing federal government.

Toward a coarser, ruder culture.  For earlier generations of Americans, it was absolutely none of the government's business how much your income was, as long as you came by it legally.  The 16th Amendment changed all that.  In the succeeding decades, more and more parts of our formerly private financial lives were subject to the prying eyes of the IRS. ... Worse, though, are the effects of government redistributing our money.  Contemporary democratic politics in America has degenerated into a sordid scramble to see who can use the political process to extract the most wealth from one's fellow citizens.

Raising Your Indirect Taxes.  There are currently two pieces of tax legislation that have been introduced into Congress that will affect virtually every person in the United States.  These new bills are very deceptive, since they tax the chemical and petroleum industry; however, what EPA and the sponsors of the bill do not mention is that these taxes will be passed back down to the consumer level.

Obama Commission Will Call for Trillions in Tax Hikes.  Obama debt commission member, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, launched a scary trial balloon on ABC News.  Gregg suggested the debt commission will likely recommend a massive $26.7 trillion tax increase.

Hawaiians Loudly and Successfully Object to Proposed Tax Increase.  [Scroll down to page 8]  Hawaii's General Excise Tax (GET) is a multilevel sales tax on all goods and services, including food and medicine.  Because of its compounding nature on the gross income, receipts, or proceeds of all business activities, the GET, at a base rate of 4 percent, is comparable to at least an 11 percent sales tax.  In addition, Hawaii's GET is more regressive than most sales taxes, as many states and local governments exempt items such as food and medicine but the GET does not.  Currently the GET rate in Hawaii is 4 percent except for the island of Oahu, which charges 4.5 percent to fund a $5.3 billion commuter rail project for the island.

The Great Escape.  Oregon voters decided in January that it was a good idea to raise taxes on the wealthy to increase revenues.  The result:  Tax revenues are actually down.  The lesson:  Envy doesn't pay.

Middle Class — Not the Rich or the Poor — Pay Majority of Federal Taxes.  Middle-class Americans — not the rich or the poor — pay the majority of annual tax revenues taken in by the federal government, according to data released in a new Congressional Budget Office study.  Households earning less than $34,300 per year, meanwhile, actually pay a negative average federal income tax rate.

Plastic Bags:  Untapped Tax Gold Mine?  Only one US city — Washington, D.C. — has successful instituted a plastic bag tax, but at least 13 other states are considering one.  In its first month, the 5-cent bag tax brought the city about $150,000.  Revenues have increased each subsequent month, reaching $226,000 in May, and totaling $942,000 from January through May.  The funds have all gone towards efforts to clean up the Anacostia River, which runs through Washington.

The Left and Progressively Higher Taxes.  Liberals have a very amorphous definition of fairness, and a very ambiguous definition of who should pay them.  That is something that should leave us all very nervous.  How much, for how long, and to what end should taxes be paid?  The left can not answer these questions.  If they were to be honest, they would admit they have never even considered them.  Still they are unshaken in their certitude of "fairness:"  a progressive tax system.

Democrats' budget plan:  Tax and spend more.  House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Tuesday [6/22/2010] that Democratic congressional leaders have opted not to propose a budget this year.  "It isn't possible to debate and pass a realistic, long-term budget until we've considered the bipartisan commission's deficit-reduction plan, which is expected in December," he said.  This means Congress won't pass an annual budget plan for the first time since enactment of the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

Democrat 'Suicide Bombers'.  [Scroll down]  Let's just think this through, which the Democrats obviously haven't.  Both the Cap-and-Trade bill, and a VAT imposition, would raise taxes on everyone in the country. ... These new taxes are not the type that can be withheld from a paycheck, or tacked discreetly on everyone's phone bill.  They are the type that will be paid every day.  They will be paid at the gas pump.  They will be paid at the checkout line in every store in the country.  They will be paid every single day.

Death tax cometh.  The federal death tax may be coming for more New Yorkers, a well-placed Capitol Hill source tells The [New York] Post.  The tax will jump to 55 percent next year on all estates valued at $1 million and up — unless lawmakers can reach a compromise to raise the threshold amount or cut the rate, or both.

Checking Chumps.  Hollering about "fairness," Democrats vowed to punish U.S. banks by passing new laws to micromanage their businesses.  As a result, free checking may soon be dead.  So who's really paying for all that "fairness"?

Dick Durbin's Dastardly Plan for Your Debit Card.  While you were preoccupied with the oil spill, the Middle East crisis, the unemployment rate, and everything else in the news, the Senate has been trying to slip a fast one by you.  This time, it has to do with your everyday purchases that you make on your debit cards. ... The amendment would make the Federal Reserve Bank dictate debit card "interchange rates."

In Canada:
 New eco fees catching consumers by surprise.  Checking her receipt as she left a downtown Canadian Tire, Chris Colorado noticed a new charge.  Her $1.99 bottle of dish soap was accompanied by a 13-cent "eco fee."  The levy for thousands of new products, from pharmaceuticals to fire extinguishers, quietly came into effect July 1, the same day as the harmonized sales tax.

Low Taxes Are an American Tradition.  Except in times of war, the effective tax rate imposed by all levels of government in the U.S. seldom rose above 5 percent prior to 1916.  During the past century, unfortunately, the U.S. has moved far away from the low-tax views of the Founders.  Today, total tax burden stands at 31.6 percent of personal income, with the national government imposing a tax burden of 21.0 percent and state and local governments imposing an additional 10.6 percent.  The typical taxpayer must work 116 days a year just to pay his taxes.

Five ways Obama may tax you to pay for the government's 'reinvention of journalism'.  Translated, "reinvention of journalism" is codespeak for "Repeal the First Amendment's prohibition on Congress doing anything to abridge the freedom of the independent press to find and report all of the facts about what politicians, bureaucrats and their allies in the private sector are doing, are planning on doing, did in the past, or are thinking about doing to the rest of us and with our tax dollars.

Fix Is On by Obama and Congress in Union Fight.  [Scroll down]  To fund his reordering of power in the midst of a steep economic downturn, Obama has signed into law 25 tax increases totaling $670 billion over the next ten years, according to a report issued by the House Ways and Means Committee.  And Paul Volcker and Nancy Pelosi — reacting to the reality that increased income taxes cannot save the country from going broke — are pushing a Value Added Tax, the most pernicious of levies that will empower the IRS to enter places of business unannounced to demand records and enforce compliance.

Big Spenders, Cronies Stack Budget Watchdog.  President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is supposed to come up with ways to slash the budget deficits and shrink a public debt expected to hit $20 trillion at the end of this decade.  But its chief purpose is to propose a laundry list of new taxes to pay for Obama's costly vision of a far bigger government than we have now, and to give him and the Democrats political cover while they continue to spend our money like there's no tomorrow.

Fee!  Fie!  Foe!  Fum!
 Creepy Pennsylvania Tax Agency Ad Goes Big Brother.  A threatening TV commercial appearing in Pennsylvania has residents of the state spooked by its "Orwellian" overtones, and critics are calling it a government attempt to scare delinquent citizens into paying back taxes.  In the 30-second ad, ominous mechanical sounds whir in the background as a satellite camera zooms in through the clouds and locks onto an average Pennsylvania home.

12 Taxes in Health Care Law Violate Obama's Pledge.  As many as a dozen taxes in the new health care law violate President Barack Obama's campaign pledge not to raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000 and on individuals earning less than $200,000.  At least seven of these taxes directly affect health consumers regardless of income, such as the individual mandate to buy insurance, the employer mandate, the tanning tax, and limits and penalties on health savings accounts.

The Global-Warming Tax.  Never has a public-policy agenda been pursued with so little regard for scientific fact or public opinion.  In March, 48 percent of Americans agreed that global warming, while real, is exaggerated.  When Gallup first asked this question in 1997, only 31 percent thought the threat exaggerated.  Despite this shift in sentiment, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and John Kerry (D., Mass.) and President Obama insist upon ramming a new global-warming tax (called a "fee") through the Senate.

'If you tax them, they will leave'.  [New Jersey Governor Chris] Christie has a powerful motive for not sugarcoating the state's troubles.  His program is radical, at least for New Jersey.  He wants to slash $10.7 billion from a 2011 budget projected at $38 billion, reduce taxes, cut regulations, and privatize enterprises such as the state-owned TV network and parking garages.

Obamacare will make every day feel like April 15th.  New taxes on investments, taxes on medical supplies, taxes on drugs and health insurance, and taxes on you if you are just breathing... the list of taxes Americans will face just got a lot longer thanks to ObamaCare.  The health overhaul plan just enacted represents the largest tax hike in U.S. history — $569 billion over 10 years through a dizzying array of taxes and fees that promise to frustrate taxpayers at every turn.

More about the high cost of Obamacare.

Lower and Simplify Taxes!  It's that joyous time of year:  income tax time.  So I spend time with my accountant.  I don't want to see him, but I must.  I could not do what he's doing.  The tax code has grown so complex that today most Americans hire someone to do their taxes.

Emergency Bill to Close Tax 'Loopholes' Includes $46 Million Tax Loophole.  A bill titled "The American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010" that will add $115 billion to the federal deficit between now and October 2011, and that the Democratic leadership intends to push through Congress before they leave for their week-long Memorial Day recess, includes a special $46 million tax loophole for Hollywood movie and television producers.

The President is delusional.
 Obama 'amused' by Tea Party rallies.  President Barack Obama struck a hyperpartisan note Thursday [4/15/2010], telling Democrats that he was "amused" by the Tax Day Tea Party rallies.  Obama, addressing a Democratic National Committee (DNC) fundraiser in Miami, did little to endear himself to the Tea Party groups protesting around the country, saying "they should be saying thank you" because of the tax cuts he has signed into law.

How Dumb Does He Think They Are?  Does Obama seriously not understand that most voters — not those who show up for his rallies, but voters of normal competence — are well aware of the tax increases in Obamacare, the tax increases in cap and trade, the tax increases when the Bush tax cuts expire next year, and the looming VAT tax that will impact every American family?

Obama's new tax on... Rainwater!?  Would President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency really force Americans to pay a tax on "rainwater runoff" from homes and small businesses?  You bet they would.  In fact, the EPA, under radical environmentalist Lisa Jackson, is proposing regulations to do just that.

Why 70 Million Americans Don't Pay Uncle Sam a Dime.  While you struggle to meet your deadline, consider that although the law requires you to file a tax return, more than 70 million of your fellow filers will not owe a single penny to Uncle Sam.  As the latest news from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center shows, a record 47 percent of tax filers will have no federal income tax liability this year.

Redistributing Our Earnings To Freeloaders.  Income tax day, April 15, now divides Americans into two almost equal classes:  those who pay for the services provided by government and the freeloaders.  The percentage of Americans who will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009 has risen to 47%.  That isn't the worst of it.  The bottom 40% not only pay no income tax, but also the government sends them cash or benefits financed by the taxes dutifully paid by those who do pay income tax.

Fair Tax Distraction.  Every April, as the due date for individual income tax returns rolls around, I watch for two inevitable events.  One is reports of various U.S. attorneys all across the nation issuing indictments for tax fraud.  The typical targets are local citizens prominent enough to make sure that the story gets media attention just before the annual peak in filings.  The other is articles promising a quick political fix to the labyrinth known as the Internal Revenue Code and the entire industry that has grown around it.  The most commonly proposed solutions being promoted are some variation on a flat tax or a national sales tax.

Nearly half of US households escape fed income tax.  Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it's simply somebody else's problem.

Obamacare Violates Obama's Pledge Not to Increase Taxes.  As many as a dozen taxes in the new health care law violate President Barack Obama's campaign pledge not to raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000 and on individuals earning less than $200,000.  At least seven of these taxes directly affect health consumers regardless of income, such as the individual mandate to buy insurance, the employer mandate, the tanning tax, and limits and penalties on health savings accounts.

Opposing An Intolerable Act:  The history of the United States begins with a rebellion against unfair taxation. ... The punishment for that first Tea Party was a series of intrusive laws so oppressive that they were described as the "Intolerable Acts." ... Obamacare is today's "Intolerable Act."  It too should be opposed and repealed.

Internet taxation is on the way.  The Obama Era has become a protracted, nightmarish Whack-A-Mole game of tax increases and bureaucratic self-enlargement.  In sector after sector of American life, another scheme to expand government and wrench more earnings from Americans' pockets pops up.  Its next targeted sector?  The Internet.

The Coming Tax Rebellion:  There is widespread understanding that the American people cannot win back control of their government until the federal tax system is either repaired or ripped out by the roots and replaced.

Obamacare Dystopia.  [Scroll down]  In one of a bazillion little clauses in a 2,000-page bill your legislators didn't bother reading (because, as Representative Conyers explained, he wouldn't understand it even if he did), Congress voted to subject the 28 percent tax benefit to the regular, good, ol', American-as-apple-pie corporate tax rate of 35 percent.  For the purposes of comparison, Sweden's corporate tax rate is 26.3 percent, and Ireland's is 12.5 percent.  But just because America already has the second-highest corporate tax in the OECD is no reason why we can't keep going until it's double Sweden's and quadruple Ireland's.

The ObamaCare tax hike that loses five times what it brings in.  We turn to the Wall Street Journal for the math on what it will cost to raise taxes on corporations' retiree prescription drug coverage.  This is the provision that has caused several corporations to take markdowns recently.  The bottom line:  by closing this "loophole" — which was originally created to dissuade companies from dumping retirees' prescription costs into Medicare Part D — the government could lose more than five times what it brings in.

States may hold onto tax refunds for months.  Residents eager to get their state tax refunds may have a long wait this year:  The recession has tied up cash and caused officials in half a dozen states to consider freezing refunds, in one case for as long as five months.

A Misleading Sales Pitch.  [Scroll down]  The FairTax sounds too good to be true.  It is.  The campaign for the FairTax is deeply misleading, and much more likely to set back the cause of tax reform than to advance it.  The FairTaxers give a misleading answer to the first question everyone asks about their idea:  How big will the tax be?  The FairTaxers say they want a 23 percent sales tax.  Most people will assume that a product that costs $100 before the tax is added would cost $123 with the tax.  Actually, the tax would be $30 and the total price $130.  They call it a "23 percent" rate because $30 is 23 percent of $130. ... It is not at all clear that this 30 percent sales tax would raise enough revenue to eliminate income and payroll taxes.

Politicians Smother Cities.  Cleveland, once America's sixth-largest city, has been going downhill for decades.  Why do some cities thrive while others decay?  One reason is that some politicians smother their cities with the unintended consequences of their grand visions, while others have the good sense to limit government power.  In a state that already taxes its citizens heavily, Cleveland's politicians drown businesses in taxes.

Charging residents for calling 9-1-1?  As if California taxes weren't exorbitant enough the town of Tracy, California, hoping to generate "extra revenue while it suffers a $9 million budget deficit," is requiring residents to "pay every time they call 9-1-1 for a medical emergency."

Obama Endorses New Wealth Taxes, More Drugmaker Fees.  President Barack Obama, seeking to break an impasse over health-care legislation, proposed a plan that includes the first Medicare tax on capital gains and higher fees on companies such as Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co. to help cover millions of uninsured Americans.

The United States of Argentina:  Obama's Pension Grab.  Barack Obama's money train has steamrolled uncontrollably across the country, compiling record-breaking budgets, deficits, and debt along its path.  Now, the train is running out of fuel, and the nation's retirement money may find its way on board, to keep the train on the tracks.

Class Warfare's Next Target:  401(k) Savings.  You did the responsible thing.  You saved in your IRA or 401(k) to support your retirement, when you could have spent that money on another vacation, or an upscale car, or fancier clothes and jewelry.  But now Washington is developing plans for your retirement savings.

Goodbye 401(k)
 Administration Advances Plan to Federalize Private Pension System.  In February, the U.S. Treasury and Labor departments jointly announced they were seeking public comment on proposed design changes to employer-sponsored 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts that would centralize the private pension system under structures created and administered by the government.

Beware of Congress's Threat to Tax 401Ks.  With the bear market red in the claw, with an equal opportunity bear market taking out solid stocks right and left, with panicked investors feeling like every headline is an explosion, comes this impenetrable stupidity:  Some Democrats in Congress have held hearings that included discussions of new proposals to tax 401K money.  Specifically, the idea would be to eliminate most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive. Which means a nearly $80 billion tax hike.

Targeting Your 401(k).  You may have heard about Argentina's plan to nationalize private retirement accounts.  Some Democrats on Capitol Hill are inspired, and with their big election victory they may get the chance to test Peronist ideas in America.

Killing 401(k)'s?  It's still more than two months before the Obama administration takes office, and we are already seeing signs of just how the Democrats intend to govern.  One proposal being floated by Congressional Democrats aims to abolish the tax incentives for individual 401(k) retirement plans.  With the recent financial meltdown having hit a lot of people's funds heavily, those lawmakers think that the time would be ripe to end the private system and fold it into an expansion of Social Security.

When the Chips Are Down, All Democrats Are Liberals.  [Scroll down]  Second, the Obama tax pledge — no tax hikes on families making less than $250,000 — has been eviscerated by the bill.  There are no less than seven categories of taxes on the supposedly non-rich and they are not insignificant.

Unlearned Lessons.  Last week, the Newark Star-Ledger reported that New Jersey lost $70 billion in wealth over the past five years.  The reason?  Affluent people have moved to states with a lower tax rate or no income tax at all.  The findings are from a study conducted by the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College, the first study on interstate wealth migration in the country.

Deer hits car, 'crash tax' hits driver.  [Scroll down]  The Westchester resident suffered only minor injuries, a few cuts and scrapes from the damaged windshield.  What hurt far more was a $350 bill from the Glenside Fire Protection District, a fee critics refer to as a "crash tax."  Locklin, a nurse who was on her way to work at nearby Glen Oaks Hospital, said emergency crews arrived quickly.  Locklin said she declined treatment and signed a waiver at the scene.  Weeks later she was billed by the Glenside Fire Protection District.

Obama and the Government Employees:  [Scroll down]  Meanwhile, Big Brother, like many big brothers, has become a bully.  The Internal Revenue Service is on a hiring binge to crack down on taxpayers; fees on candy, plastic bags, iPod downloads, sugar, and many other things that make life fun are going up and up; our tax rates are inflating; and studies show that there has even been an explosion in parking tickets and fines for every picayune sort of "violation" that the bureaucrats can dream up in all their spare time — phantom taxes, they have been called.  The leviathan must be fed.

Obama Begins His Assault on Your Life Savings.  The welfare state and your life savings are two cars heading down a one-lane road in opposite directions.  One must yield, or there will be a crash.  For Americans who believe in the old-fashioned virtues of hard work, self reliance and respect for private property, the solution is obvious.  The welfare state must yield.  For politicians who believe in the welfare state and redistributing wealth, the solution is equally obvious.  Your savings must yield.

Nutter proposes 2-cent-per-ounce sweet-drink tax.  [Philadelphia] Mayor Nutter wants to treat the city's weight and wallet problems in his 2010-11 budget with the same remedy:  the nation's highest tax on all sweetened beverages including soda, energy drinks, ice tea, even chocolate milk.  Nutter's plan would put Philadelphia at the front of the movement to tax sweet drinks, an effort that the beverage industry already opposes and that could encounter resistance in City Council.

What 'population control' really means:  Again and again I see examples of people voting to the left of their actual convictions. ... The classic case is "tax the rich."  Very few people are in favour of having their own taxes raised, or their own spending regulated.  But if a politician will assure them that he is going to put taxes up on everyone above a certain income, he is sure to generate some enthusiasm among those below it.

What Obama and the Media Aren't Telling You about Taxes.  Even if Barack Obama does adhere to his income tax plan, his promise that he won't raise taxes on the common man is still a lie.  A continual theme of the Barack Obama campaign has been his vow that no one making less than $250,000 a year would get a tax increase.  Now he has provided more details, pointing out that to qualify for a tax cut you must earn less than $200,000.  Then, on Tuesday, Joe Biden said during an interview that tax breaks should go to "people who make $150,000 a year."  My, my, when Obama said he was the candidate of change, he never mentioned that it applied to figures and campaign promises.

The Secret Plan to Pass a Global Tax.  With President Barack Obama attacking "fat cat bankers on Wall Street," left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) see a great opportunity to pass a global tax on financial transactions that could generate at least $700 billion a year from the U.S. and other "rich" countries.  They are expecting Obama's support.

List of Taxes Proposed to Pay for Health Care Reform.  The U.S. Senate recently released its long-awaited proposal for a government-run hostile takeover of the entire U.S. health care system.  Predictably, it includes a barrage of higher taxes to pay for the bill's immense price tag.  [They include]
 •  A value-added tax, which would tax the value added to a product at each stage of production,
 •  An excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages including non-diet soda and sports drinks,
 •  Higher taxes on alcoholic beverages including beer, wine, and spirits,
 •  A tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage of up to 2.5 percent of their adjusted gross income.

Obama's 2011 budget will include phantom cap-and-trade revenue.  A trade publication is reporting this afternoon [1/29/10] that President Obama's 2011 federal budget proposal will assume receipt of billions of dollars in revenue generated from the cap-and-trade program even though that proposal appears now to be all but dead in Congress.

Cash-strapped states avoid word 'taxes'.  Faced with severe budget shortfalls after a steep economic recession, state legislatures and governors are trying to raise money without raising taxes — at least not technically.  A fee hike, an increased penalty or fine, the elimination of a tax exemption — none of these technically counts as a tax increase, as far as many state lawmakers are concerned.

The Quarter-Percent Solution?  The sponsors of HR4191 are either so naïve as to have no conception of the operations of modern-day financial markets — and of the competitiveness which makes a single basis point a crucial cost advantage — or, more likely, so callous as not to care.  They see an opportunity to curry favor with a poorly informed electorate by trashing Wall Street while at the same time placing within their grasp trillions of dollars of future tax revenues to secure future political advantage.

War Against the Wannabe Rich.  There is class warfare going on in this country — but it's not against the established rich.  It's against those who are trying to become wealthy.  President Obama has declared that those who make over $200,000 will pay higher income taxes.  Caps on payroll taxes are supposed to come off as well for the upper class.  Envisioned estate taxes will take 45 percent of individual inheritances valued over $3.5 million.  Many states have also hiked their income taxes on the upper brackets.

Liberal Economic Illiteracy:  It doesn't matter one iota that there have been three major tax cuts initiated by three different presidents since the 1960s — and every one of them resulted in increased revenue flowing into federal coffers.  It doesn't even matter that the largest one was passed, not by a Republican president, but by Democrat John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Socialism's Greatest Lie:  Government Can Give You Everything for Free.  The idea that the government will take care of you is appealing, entire nanny states have been built on that proposition.  But the government can't take care of you, it can't even pay its own bills without you.  It can't run a television station, a toll bridge or even an off track betting service, or any venture that in private hands would be profitable, without using taxpayer funds to prop it up.  A legitimate enterprise never needs to fool its customers into thinking that they will receive something for nothing.  It is only the scammers that need to do that.

States hike taxes and fees to cover budget shortfalls.  Speeders doing more than 85 miles per hour in Georgia will soon pay an additional $200 in fines.  Racehorse owners in New York now must fork over $10 to enter their steeds in events.  And Massachusetts started charging a 5% tax on broadcast satellite service.  These measures are part of a record $23.9 billion in tax and fee hikes and $7.7 billion in other revenue increases enacted by states in fiscal 2010, according to a report released this week.

California Stealin'.  Desperation grabs for revenue are nothing new in politics, but California is once again leading the way in creative financing.  To help close yet another gaping budget deficit, now estimated to be $7 billion this year and reach as high as $20 billion next, Sacramento lawmakers have authorized a 10% increase in the amount of taxes withheld from worker paychecks starting November 1 and through 2010.

Time to Bury the "Death Tax".  Kevin Hancock simply wants to harvest trees — sustainably — and create jobs in the process.  The federal government may put a stop to all that.  His business, Hancock Lumber, has been in the family for six generations.  It owns 30,000 acres of Maine timberland and employs 550 people.  But Kevin already knows that when his elderly mother dies, he'll have to sell off huge swaths of his land to pay the ensuing tax bill.

How Do You Measure Integrity?  The term "kleptocracy" is applied to a government that extends the personal wealth and political power of its own officials and the ruling class via the embezzlement of state funds at the expense of the wider population, sometimes without even the pretense of honest service.  That sounds pretty close to what we have in America today.

Obama's false 'stimulus'.  President Barack Obama has little interest in, understanding of or affection for free markets, so he fails to understand that the fundamental relationship between government and the economy is that of parasite to host. ... [Although] government can consume wealth and redistribute wealth, it can't create wealth.  And unless wealth is created, there is nothing to consume or redistribute.  That's why — even when government is doing something we all agree must be done or most of us want to have it do — government is a parasite.  All it has is what it takes from the producers of wealth.

The Income Tax and Government Spending.  In 1913, We the People amended the Constitution to allow the federal government to punish "the rich" by seizing from them wealth the government did not need.  The government, as Reagan said, quickly found a way to spend that wealth on its priorities, without the consent of those who actually created it.  And so it has gone, from that day to this, with ever more spending, ever more taxing, and an ever-growing national debt.

A Tax To Grind.  The average tax rate assessed to corporations worldwide has fallen 10 years in a row, but the U.S. isn't driving the trend.  Policymakers in the most advanced economy continue to punish their constituents.

American Idea.  [Scroll down]  Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to tax and spend for the enumerated activities therein.  Every American is duty bound to pay his share.  Congress has neither constitution nor moral authority to take the earnings of one American for the benefit of another American.  What do you think will happen to you if don't comply, say with Congress' demand that part of your earnings be taken to bail out a failing business?  You'll see all the brute force that you want to see and if you resist too much, death is not off the table.

Democrats and Job Creation ... or Not.  I wonder what level of unemployment Democrats need before they start considering actual rate cuts.  A cut in the payroll tax would stimulate the economy instantly by cutting the cost of employing people.  Is that really too hard to understand?

Progressives Back Obama Push for Global Tax.  While policymakers debate a few million dollars for ACORN and a few hundred billion dollars more for health care reform, those committed to one-world government are moving ahead with plans for a global tax that could extract trillions of dollars out of Americans' already depleted IRAs and stock holdings.  One can't exclude the possibility of such a tax being slipped into a health care or cap-and-trade bill that the Congress or the public could not have time to read before passage.

Liberals never learn.  Michigan is an economic basket case.  As noted in the Wall Street Journal, the Democratic governor pushed through a tax increase on business in 2007.  This is standard liberal practice — pretending that a tax on business has no effect on the taxpayer.

Don't Increase Federal Gasoline Taxes — Abolish Them.  Many experts believe that gasoline taxes should be increased for a variety of reasons.  Their arguments are unpersuasive.  Oil is not disappearing, and when it becomes more expensive, market agents will substitute away from gasoline to save money.  The link between oil price shocks and recessions, although real in the 1970s, has been much more benign since 1985 because of the termination of price controls.  Market actors properly account for energy costs in their purchasing decisions absent government intervention.  Pollution taxes, congestion fees, and automobile insurance premiums more closely related to vehicle miles traveled are better remedies for the externalities associated with automobile travel than a simple fuel tax.  Gasoline consumption does not necessarily distort American foreign policy, impose military commitments, or empower Islamic terrorist organizations.

In Praise of Lobbyists.  Raising taxes on the overseas profits of American firms has been a central plank of Barack Obama's agenda since his campaign for President in 2008. ... The U.S. is one of the few developed countries that even tries to tax corporate overseas profits.  Most operate on a territorial system, in which business profits are taxed in the country in which they are earned.

Transfer Machine.  The theory of government I was taught says that government provides benefits, primarily security, to the entire population.  In return we pay taxes.  But lately the government has been a distributor of special privileges, taking money from some and giving it to others.  America is now about evenly split between those who pay income taxes and those who consume them.

47% will pay no federal income tax.  Most people think they pay too much to Uncle Sam, but for some people it simply is not true.  In 2009, roughly 47% of households, or 71 million, will not owe any federal income tax, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Court clears suit to affirm voluntary Medicare, Social Security.  A federal judge has cleared the way for consideration of a class-action lawsuit in which plaintiffs — including former House Majority Leader Dick Armey — are asking for a ruling upholding an existing law that declares participation in Medicare and Social Security to be voluntary, not compulsory.

Let's do some detective work.  Today's White House proposes and Congress taxes and spends for anything they can muster a majority vote on.  My investigative query is:  Were the Founders and previous congressmen and presidents, who could not find constitutional authority for today's bread and circuses, just plain stupid and ignorant?

Getting back our liberties:  We all have a moral obligation to pay our share for constitutionally mandated functions of the federal government, but we have no such obligation to have Congress take the earnings of one American and give them to another American.  Forcing one American to serve the purposes of another is one way slavery can be defined.

Revenge of the Golden Goose.  As taxes increase, and inflation brings bracket creep, expect tax avoidance and outright tax cheating to soar in America.  President Obama's "soak-the-rich" economic populism grows increasingly obvious and the initial promise of no tax increases for those earning less than $250,000 is clearly history.  Soon-to-arrive inflation guarantees tax bracket creep so today's "middle-class" $200,000 a year family will soon earn a quarter of a million with no jump in spending power while mandatory health insurance enrollment, cap and trade induced higher energy costs, increased regulatory burdens, among other Obama policies, will be new de facto tax increases.

Land Of The Fee.  To keep ObamaCare alive, Montana Democrat Max Baucus has proposed a Rube Goldberg scheme of fees and fines on insurers and the uninsured designed to forcibly bring everyone into the loving and protective arms of the nanny state.  To help finance his Plan B, Baucus would impose annual fees of $6 billion on health insurers, $4 billion on medical-device makers, $2.3 billion on drug manufacturers and $750 million on clinical laboratories, among other taxes.

Baucus Healthcare Revenue Options:  This report is from May 20, 2009.  Nevertheless, it is still revealing what means the Senate Finance Committee and Mr. Baucus are considering to pay for their healthcare reform plans.

Paying for Obamacare.  Much of the discussion to date about health care reform has understandably focused on the contents of the reform plan itself.  But with the plan expected to cost $1-1.5 trillion over the first ten years, an equally important question is how the president and congressional Democrats plan to pay for it.  While we won't know for certain until we see the final bill, it looks like the answer is going to be higher — much higher — taxes.  And many if not most of those taxes will fall squarely on the middle class.

More about Socialized medicine.

Congress, president overstep authority.  A president has no power to raise or lower taxes.  He can propose tax measures or veto them but since Congress can ignore presidential proposals and override a presidential veto, it has the ultimate taxing power.  The same principle applies to spending.  A president cannot spend a dime that Congress does not first appropriate.  As such, presidents cannot be held responsible for budget deficits or surpluses.  That means that credit for a budget surplus or blame for budget deficits rests on the congressional majority at the time.

Taxing Off A Runway.  Hard to say which is worse.  From the U.S., the Democrat-led Congress is mulling the misnamed "Travel Promotion Act" to hit travelers with a $10 tax for visiting the U.S. under the visa waiver program.  High-spending Europeans will take the hit.  The aim?  To promote more tourism through a "nonprofit" company staffed by political cronies and set up to buy advertising.  From the U.K., a government advisory Committee on Climate Change is recommending a $10 tax of its own on every airline ticket sold.  The purpose here is to compensate Third World countries for global warming, turning every business trip into a guilt trip.

Smoke gets in your ice.  Many Americans find the debate in Washington over adopting a "cap-and-trade" program to reduce carbon dioxide a bit confusing.  That's understandable.  Put simply, it's a tax on energy consumption.  In fact, it would be a huge tax.  If enacted, cap-and-trade would be one of the government's largest revenue sources within the next decade.  It also would break one of President Obama's promises.  In his speech before Congress in February, he said, "If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime."  Unless you use energy, apparently.

Brace yourself for higher taxes.  President Obama had said in September, 2008:  "I can make a firm pledge.  Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.  Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."  This pledge has already been broken, at least with respect to federal tobacco taxes.  But the White House has, until very recently, maintained the fiction that the promise is still in effect with respect to the taxes everyone pays.  Then, in a television appearance on Sunday [6/28/2009], White House advisor David Axelrod refused to re-commit to Obama's pledge.

More about President Obama's numerous flip-flops and broken promises.

The U.S. Treasury — A Once and Everyman's Oyster.  Not having access to their own money press, our elected bandits are relegated to stealing money from the sweat equity of citizen taxpayers who must send checks into the treasury each year.  That and the automatic collection of taxes from virtually any known transaction creates enough chump change for them to fight over at the end of each year; the latter coming from the Accounts Receivable Tax, Building Permit Tax, CDL License Tax, Cigarette Tax, Corporate Income Tax, Dog License Tax, Federal Income Tax, Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA), Fishing License Tax, Food License Tax, Fuel Permit Tax, Gasoline Tax, Hunting License Tax, Inheritance Tax, Inventory Tax, IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax), IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax), Liquor Tax, Luxury Tax, Marriage License Tax, Medicare Tax, Property Tax, Real Estate Tax, Service charge taxes, Social Security Tax, Road Usage Tax (Truckers), Sales Taxes, Recreational Vehicle Tax, School Tax, State Income Tax, State Unemployment Tax (SUTA), Telephone Federal Excise Tax, Telephone Federal Universal, Service Fee Tax, Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax, Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax, Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax, Telephone State and Local Tax, Telephone Usage Charge Tax, Utility Tax, Vehicle License Registration Tax, Vehicle Sales Tax, Watercraft Registration Tax, Well Permit Tax, and a Workers Compensation Tax.  Not sure who first pulled this perpetual tax list together, buy my taxpayer sense tells me it's accurate.

The Editor says...
 I can think of a few omissions right away.  Even after your income is taxed by the IRS, you pay sales tax on everything you buy.  That's double taxation.  Here in Dallas, the annual license plate fee is accompanied by a County Road and Bridge Fee (which is what I thought the gasoline tax was for).  Most cities in Dallas County have a one-percent sales tax for the mass transit system.  Then there is the federal excise tax on new tires, and the "disposal fee" for your old tires.  I've never had to pay it, but there is also a gas guzzler tax on large vehicles.  Completing this list is left to the reader as an exercise.

Driving Taxes Upward:  During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama endeared himself to many voters with a promise that 95 percent of Americans would get a tax cut.  Those making under $250,000 "would not see a single dime of tax increase — not on anything."  Yet since Obama's victory, spending has skyrocketed.  It was only a matter of time before his pledge fell by the wayside.

More examples of Obama's flip-flops and broken promises.

Tax Man's Target: The Mobile Phone.  The use of company-issued mobile phones could trigger new federal income taxes on millions of Americans as a "fringe benefit," spurring efforts by the wireless industry and others to kill the idea.  The Internal Revenue Service proposed that employers assign 25% of an employee's annual phone expenses as a taxable benefit.

The IRS Phones Home.  With federal spending in 2009 at 28% of the economy and deficits heading north, Democrats are eyeing tax increases on everything from soft drinks to electricity to health benefits to charitable contributions.  But the palm for creativity goes to the Internal Revenue Service, which is contemplating a new tax on the use of business cellphones.

Once Considered Unthinkable, U.S. Sales Tax Gets Fresh Look.  With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo:  a national sales tax.

Here Comes the Internet Tax.  What is the single modern invention most responsible for enhancing peoples' freedom and standard of living across the world?  Arguably, it is the Internet.  Yet, Democrats from revenue-starved states and Congress are proposing to make it less free by taxing Internet commerce.  (Content regulation should be coming soon to a screen near you.)  This should not come as a terrible surprise.  After all, the Internet was just too good, too free, too easy, too innovative, and too favorable to small businesses for government to stay away.

Tax Increases, Coming To A Theater Near You.  In only 100 days and change, President Barack Obama has committed $6.5 trillion to waste, fraud and abuse.  That's $6,500,000,000,000.00, which is more than all the costs of World War I and World War II combined.  And you think it can't get worse?  Believe me, IT CAN.  Things have gotten so bad that, even in my home state of California, a Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is urging support for a massive $16 billion tax hike which is deceptively masquerading as a measure to put a lid on out-of-control government spending.  You read that right:  A massive tax-hike — Proposition 1A — is being peddled to the people as a measure to control spending.

Deferral: Why You Should Care.  President Obama proposes to increase taxes on American companies — already the second highest-taxed in the world — by eliminating the deferral of double taxation on income earned abroad. ... Obama's proposal is a terrible idea that will damage our economy and cost American jobs.

Voting with Their Feet.  New Hampshire has discovered a good way to boost its economy during these troubled times.  Unfortunately, it's not a solution that lends itself for application elsewhere.  It involves having one's state located next to another state that is being run by economic idiots.

Entitlements crisis? No problem, just raise taxes.  As things now stand, according to the trustees, Medicare's Part A will run out of money for reimbursing hospitals for elderly care in 2017, while the Social Security shelf goes bare in 2037.  Spending on the two programs exceeded $1 trillion last year and is now increasing at an annual rate that will double it in 2050.  With Barack Obama determined to add trillions in new health care and social welfare spending, there is simply no way — short of slashing benefits for the old and infirm — for the government to generate sufficient revenues to cover its promises without massive tax increases on productive, working Americans.

A clear violation of the 4th amendment:
 Workers coming inside to assess a home's worth.  Don't look now, but that could be the Norfolk real estate assessor at your door.  Not content with merely taking a gander at the exterior of your abode, and factoring in building permits and sales of comparable houses, Deborah Bunn and her lieutenants want to snoop around inside to determine your castle's worth.

Soak the Rich, Lose the Rich.  With states facing nearly $100 billion in combined budget deficits this year, we're seeing more governors than ever proposing the Barack Obama solution to balancing the budget:  Soak the rich.  Lawmakers in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Oregon want to raise income tax rates on the top 1% or 2% or 5% of their citizens.  New Illinois Gov. Patrick Quinn wants a 50% increase in the income tax rate on the wealthy because this is the "fair" way to close his state's gaping deficit.

Hail the tea bag, weapon of terror.  "Tea-bag parties" erupted — and "erupted" is the correct verb — across the country on April 15, celebrated by joyous "progressive" taxpayers and loathed by everybody else as the day to report the intimate details of your life, along with cash, to the Internal Revenue Bureau (which the bureau insists that we call not a bureau but a "service").  Bureau or service, it's run by bureaucrats, not servants, and always the target of April ire.

Prosperity Lost.  If a tax is levied on a corporation, and if it is to survive, it must raise the price of its product, or lower dividends or lay off workers.  In each case, it is people, not some legal fiction called a corporation, who bear the burden of any tax levied on the corporation.  An important subject area in economics called tax incidence says that the entity upon whom a tax is levied does not necessarily bear the burden of the tax.  Some of the tax burden can be shifted to another party.  That's precisely what corporations do and as such they are merely government tax collectors.

Prescription for Poverty.  Barack Obama's press conference last night claimed economic recovery is "inseparable" from a proposed budget that offers charity for none, malice toward many, and debt for generations to come.  In a conference replete with bad ideas, his most egregious proposal is reducing tax deductions for charitable donations.  Currently, those in the top two tax brackets can deduct 33 and 35 percent of charity, respectively.

Doubling Down on the Welfare State.  The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything.  The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you're rich.  You may be surprised to discover you're rich, especially if you're broke.

The Tax Story Media Invariably Bury  One of the assertions that the media make most often about the U.S. economy is that President Bush's tax cuts didn't do what he promised.  But the data clearly show nothing could be farther from the truth.

What other subjects are being avoided by the news media?

How Democrats Make Millionaires.  Even in these hard economic times, Democrats across the nation are working on plans that will turn some of you into instant millionaires.  There's only one catch.  You're not actually going to be bringing in a million-dollar income.  ... To pay this ["millionaires'"] tax, you won't have to make anywhere near a million dollars.  If you make even $300,000 a year, the cash-strapped Empire State will consider you a millionaire.

Oregon Governor Proposes Increasing Taxes, Fees.  The 2009 Oregon legislative session opened with a call from Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D) for $2 billion more in taxes and fees.  The $2 billion would come mainly from three sources, according to the governor's proposal.  One proposed source is a $1 billion per biennium tax increase through a 2 cent increase in the gasoline tax and big increases in vehicle registration fees (200 percent), title fees (100 percent), and license plate fees (100 percent).

Dems Use Homestead Exemption to Avoid Taxes.  Democrats love taxes. So much so that Joe Biden claimed paying higher taxes is a patriotic act, which must make April 15 some kind of utopian version of Flag Day.  The problem is that Democrats don't like paying taxes.  Over the past several weeks we've learned enough to make the words "Obama Cabinet" and "taxes" a running punchline.

Parking meter rate hike sparks a rebellion.  I spent last week staring at parking meters.  And wondering if I was witnessing the beginnings of a boycott.  Boycott is probably too strong a term.  Quiet rebellion may be more like it. ... What's up is that a month ago, when the City of Chicago privatized parking meters, rates were immediately jacked way up, and you now have to feed 28 quarters into the meter to park a car in the Loop for two hours.  In exchange for a 75-year lease, the city got $1.2 billion to help plug its budget holes.

There's tax revolt in the air.  Long ago, if you wanted to put on a good taxpayer revolt, you marched in the streets, waved flaming torches, and maybe dumped a load of British tea into the harbor.  Today, you go on the "John and Ken Show."

Is All "Fair" With the Obama Agenda?  [Scroll down]  The richest of the rich in 2006 paid nearly double the proportion of their income in income taxes.  Such a disproportionate burden makes it tough to argue that the tax system is rigged to benefit the rich.  Perhaps more striking is the burden placed on the 13.8 million earners who represent the top 10 percent of Americans.  In 2006, the top 10 percent earned almost half of all the income (47.3 percent) but paid a full 70.8 percent of all income taxes.  Put differently, 13.8 million taxpayers paid almost three-quarters of the entire income tax bill in 2006.

Democrats Introduce Retroactive Tax Increase.  Taxes for [Connecticut]'s wealthiest residents would rise retroactively under a new plan unveiled Thursday [4/2/2009] by Democratic legislators.  The current highest rate on the state income tax of 5 percent would increase to 6 percent for couples filing jointly who earn more than $250,000 annually.

Senate Democrats to scrap Obama's $400 tax credit.  A top Democrat in the Senate announced a budget blueprint Tuesday that would scrap President Barack Obama's signature tax cut after 2010 and blends sleight of hand with modest restraint on domestic programs to cut the deficit to sustainable levels.  Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., promises to reduce the deficit from a projected $1.7 trillion this year to a still-high $508 billion in 2014.

Taxpayers consider cheating.  The high-profile tax missteps of three of the Obama administration's key nominees could make it more difficult for the IRS to enforce the law, tax preparers and academicians say.  Numerous studies have shown that taxpayers are less likely to comply with the law if they believe other taxpayers are cheating, says Jason Mazzone, associate professor of law at Brooklyn Law School.  "Taxpayers don't like to be suckers," he says.

US Companies Pay the Highest Taxes in the World.  American businesses, large and small and across all industries pay from 35% to 41.6% of their income in combined state and federal taxes.  The 41.6% maximum rate is scheduled to rise to 46.2% in 2010 when President Obama's promised tax increases are implemented.

Package stimulates socialism, not economy.  According to Scott A. Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, Exxon-Mobil paid or remitted $29.3 billion in taxes in just the first quarter of 2008, almost three times the net profits the company earned for its shareholders.  Government benefits more from Big Oil than Big Oil shareholders do.  But it doesn't stop with Exxon-Mobil.  Take the taxes Wal-Mart, Ford Motor Co., Coca-Cola, and then the thousands upon thousands of other businesses across the nation pay.  Then factor in the income taxes collected on the salaries they pay, everybody's property taxes, the sales taxes and on and on.  In other words, for 2008 the various federal, state and local governments collectively took in $4,925,500,000,000 (that's just under $5 trillion) in taxes.

Talk of state's 'millionaires' tax' expands to not-so-rich.  Just how much money does it take to be rich in [New York]?  What started as a debate over whether to hit the wealthy with higher income taxes to help balance the state budget has expanded to talk of a "millionaires' tax" on households with annual incomes exceeding $250,000.  That means a tax plan originally focused on 36,000 of the state's wealthiest residents would extend to nearly 300,000 additional households, according to 2006 state tax figures, the most recent available.

Here's the real story behind the Tea Party Protests.  "Tea Party" protests have sprung up in multiple cities across the country since Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed the economic stimulus bill into law as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  As much as I rejoice in the sight of legions of fed-up Americans taking to the streets to protest the central government's colossal waste of the first fruits of their labors, it is important that people The Problem With 'Nationalization' understand that the original Boston Tea Party was neither spontaneous nor a mere lark.

$1 Trillion in Taxes is Hell to Pay.  Big government is back — and so are big taxes.  President Obama unveiled a mammoth, $3.6 trillion budget yesterday that would dramatically boost federal spending almost across the board — and pay for it with tax hikes of $1 trillion on individuals and businesses over the next decade.

Drove my Chevy to the ($4.8bn) levy.  President Obama has proposed squeezing $4.8bn out of the mobile network operators with a levy on the spectrum for which they have already paid, or thought they had.  The levy starts at $50m in 2009, rising to $200m in 2010 and eventually hitting $550m a year per company — raising $4.8bn over the next decade, which could go some way towards addressing America's $1.7trn budget deficit.

What Will Obama's Budget Cost You? $25,573.48... Each!  Obama is about to unleash a $3.552 TRILLION budget on this poor nation.  So, if we each of us were expected to fork over our share of that tab, what would it cost us?  Well, according to Toby Harnden, blogger for the Daily Telegraph, it would amount to $25,573.48 each.  I don't know about you but, I just don't have it.

Rent car in suburbs, pay Chicago?  How would you like to rent a car in Waukegan or St. Charles, only to be slapped with the 8 percent "transaction tax" that applies to Chicago car rentals?  Brace yourself.  With a burgeoning $50.5 million budget gap, Chicago is reaching into suburban pockets.  And Enterprise Rent-a-Car has filed a lawsuit challenging the Daley administration's effort to collect the tax from drivers who rent cars in the suburbs.

It's Time for American Freedom Fighters to Unite.  If one taxpayer refuses to pay for their Marxist spending spree, he will go to jail.  However, if ten million taxpayers refuse to pay, we have a whole new ball game here... Legitimate tax revolt organizations are popping up all over the country in response to the massive Pelosi-Reid-Obama power grab of 2009.  Two organizations worth looking into are Freedom Works and The American Taxpayers Union.  There are many others forming, so I recommend doing a little individual research into which ones offer the highest odds of collective success.

The Editor says...
 Yes, but if there were ten million people who had such strong convictions about taxes, who were willing to organize and collectively refuse to pay up, then Obama probably wouldn't have won the election.  There are ten of millions of others who just don't care about the IRS, as long as the IRS leaves them alone.

They tax horses, don't they?  With government revenues hobbled, cities and states are dreaming up ever more exotic excise taxes, which are targeted taxes on goods rather than on income.  Chicago has a now-famous bottled water tax.  Ski lift tickets, veterinary bills, and tattoos are entering the realm of taxable commodities.  You may remember we fought a revolution over the question of the state's right to impose such taxes.  Maybe we will again.

Too Taxing.  We're tempted to say America needs a Treasury secretary who is smart enough to figure out his own taxes.  But such a cheap shot would be beneath us.  Instead, we are going to make a serious point:  America needs a tax code simple enough for the Treasury secretary to figure out.

Feel like a chump?  Like all of my fellow citizens, I do not understand what is in the 65,000 or so page Internal Revenue Code that everyone is supposed to obey.  If the leaders of Congress and Treasury agree the tax law is too complex for anyone to be able to comprehend it, and thus people like [Timothy] Geithner should not pay fines for not reporting all of their taxable income correctly, what possible justification do they have for insisting that those who are not politically connected (and not as well trained in tax law) pay taxes on all their income and pay fines on errors and omissions?  Does not the U.S. Constitution say all must be treated equally under the law?

Tiny Tims:  Timothy Geithner isn't the only government worker with a tax problem.  According to data from the IRS and the Office of Personnel Management, nearly 100,000 current federal employees are behind on their taxes.  Not all of them are big offenders, but they are delinquent to the tune of nearly $1 billion — an average of about $10,000 each.  If retirees collecting federal pensions and military personnel are included, the number is about 267,000, and they owe a total of about $3 billion.

Treat Us All Like Charles Rangel and Timothy Geithner.  Longtime Texas Lt.-Gov Bill Hobby was locked up one night for driving under the influence, but immediately released when his attorney came down to point out the high status of the fellow. ... Ever since, Texas lawyers have been showing up to spring their inebriated clients by exercising this previously unknown "Hobby Rule."  It's standard legal procedure to this day. ... American taxpayers could win the same get-out-of-jail-free pass, thanks to the ongoing legal saga of my friend and colleague, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-Harlem), and new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Did someone mention Congressman Charlie Rangel?

The grim tax reaper.  "Death and taxes" are often linked as life's two certainties.  Yet, in the United States, there's a third link to this — "Democrats, death and taxes" — one can always count on Democrats to levy or maintain a tax, if it is in their power, even at death's door.

Global Taxes and Global TV Now on the Agenda.  President Obama's pick for Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, is being urged to lay the foundation for "global governance" by considering "international taxation" measures to loot more money from U.S. taxpayers.

RINO alert!
 California governor wants to tax golf, auto repairs.  In California, Schwarzenegger wants to help close a nearly $42 billion budget deficit by taxing rounds of golf, auto repairs, veterinary care, amusement park and sporting event admissions and appliance and furniture repairs.  Democratic Gov. David Paterson in New York has proposed levies on MP3 downloads, taxi rides, movies, concerts, sporting events, and personal services such as haircuts, manicures and massages.  Schwarzenegger's fellow Republican in Utah, Gov. Jon Huntsman, has shelved a proposal to tax attorney and accounting services but promises to bring it back next year.

The Editor says...
 Why not tax illegitimate children, illegal immigrants, and those hubcaps that rotate backwards?

Why Does Your Devalued Home Have Such a High Tax Rate?  Are your property taxes rising while the value of your house falls?  Join the multitudes of Americans in the same predicament.

First Page Funnies.  The headline read:  "Home tax won't fall very much."  The article explained that, although housing costs have fallen substantially (the word used was "plunged") the property tax will drop little, if at all.  And why not?  Here's the mirth-inducer:  "...news reports of double-digit drops in housing prices are mostly irrelevant, county officials say."

Socialist Republic.  Consider what we are about to do.  Bush in 2008 spent 21 percent of GDP.  States, counties and cities spent another 12 percent.  Thus, one third of GDP is spent by government at all levels.  Obama and Co. propose to raise that by another 10 percent of GDP.  We may soon be north of 40 percent of gross domestic product controlled and spent by government.  That is Eurosocialism.

Scrap the Code.  The U.S. Tax Code has 17,000 pages of tax regulations, 5.5 million words, many inconsistent with each other, 569 different income tax forms requirements, billions of dollars spent on tax lawyers and accountants to understand tax regulations, and the presumption of guilt until innocence is proven.

Benedict Arnold.  Just over five years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger swept into power in California, vowing to crush the "spending addicts" responsible for the state's crushing budget deficit and to thwart Sacramento Democrats who saw taxpayers as ATMs.  "The people of California have been punished enough.  From the time they get up in the morning and flush the toilet, they are taxed.  Then they go and get a coffee, they are taxed.  They get into their car, they are taxed.  They go to the gas station, they are taxed. ..."

States to levy a bevy of new taxes.  As a tumultuous year limps to an end, state governors are planning to deliver more hits to our already battered pocketbooks.  More taxes are coming our way.  You may not recognize them because, transparency and honesty be damned, many of them will come disguised as fees, assessments, and whatever euphemisms can be pulled from a government thesaurus to obscure the truth.

Commission Urges 50 Percent Hike in Federal Gas Tax.  Motorists are driving less and buying less gasoline, which means fuel taxes aren't raising enough money to keep pace with the cost of road, bridge and transit programs.  A federal commission created by Congress to find a way to make up the growing revenue shortfall in the program that funds highway repairs and construction is talking about increasing federal gas and diesel taxes.  A roughly 50 percent increase in gasoline and diesel fuel taxes is being urged by the commission until the government devises another way for motorists to pay for using public roads.

San Francisco Studies Fees to Ease Traffic.  Following the lead of other congested cities like London and Singapore, officials in San Francisco are considering a plan to ease traffic by charging drivers a fee upon entering notoriously clogged sections of the city.  Using $1 million in federal funds, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority is studying various "congestion pricing" options.  If approved, such pricing would make San Francisco the first American city to charge cars a fee to enter certain neighborhoods at certain times.

'If I had a nickel for every bag,' sez Mayor Bloomberg.  Mayor Bloomberg wants to nickel and dime you at the grocery store -- taxing you an extra 5 cents for every plastic bag you take home.  The controversial charge could raise at least $16 million for the cash-strapped city while keeping tons of plastic out of landfills, city officials said Thursday [11/6/2008] -- but some outraged shoppers aren't buying it.

15 Percent NYC Income Tax Hike On the Way?  Mayor Michael Bloomberg is going to cut the city work force by 3,000, but that's just the beginning of the pain New Yorkers will feel as part of the fiscal crisis.  A slew of new taxes are also on the agenda.  There will be 1,000 fewer cops, but the city will hire 200 more traffic agents to give out $60 million a year in new block-the-box tickets.

One Life to Give the IRS.  This week, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden unleashed the most absurd remark of his illustrious career, claiming that taxes are "patriotic."  Biden claims that wealthier Americans should pay more in taxes because "it's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut."  Oh, the injustice of American society!  When, exactly, did taxation transform into a form of charity?

Taxes could get sky-high with aerial technology.  A new high-tech aerial photography system that can spot an illegal porch from 5,000 feet is being marketed to tax assessors as a way to grow revenue.  Pictometry International Corp. says it offers tax assessors 12 different views of every square foot of building or land in a jurisdiction that buys their system.  They call it "sophisticated visual intelligence."  State Sen. Jeff Van Drew has another name for it.  "It's Big Brother," said Van Drew, D-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic.

America's Tax Bill Tops $26,738 Per Household.  Americans paid about $3 trillion in taxes in 2004, totaling $26,738 per household, according to a new study released March 26 by the Tax Foundation.  "Which Taxes Weigh Most Heavily on Americans with Different Incomes?" shows $17,338 of that amount went to the federal government, with $9,400 going to state and local governments.

Investors Flee From 'Change' Obama Hypes.  Are Barack Obama's proposed tax increases adversely affecting our financial markets?  We say yes, unambiguously.  The senator has done a masterful job distracting attention from his tax increases with his $500-per-worker tax credit supposedly for 95% of Americans. ... With the bottom 40% of income earners not paying any federal income taxes, such tax credits would not reduce any tax liability for these workers.  Instead, since they're refundable, they would involve new checks from the federal government.  These are not tax cuts as Obama is promising.  They are new government spending programs buried in the tax code and estimated to cost $1.3 trillion over 10 years.

Taxing Times.  The two months between the time of a presidential election and the time when the new president takes office is an eternity in terms of how much money can be transferred out of the country electronically before any new high-tax laws can be enacted. ... Much wealth from Third World countries flows out to richer countries like Switzerland or the United States, where it is safer from confiscation.  Jack up the capital gains tax rate in the United States and more Americans can be expected to send their capital elsewhere.

Obama tax cut 'refunds' those who don't pay.  To pay for his middle-class tax cuts, Mr. Obama would raise the top marginal tax rate on Americans earning more than $250,000 to 35 percent from 30.6 percent.  According to the IRS, the top 5 percent of all income earners in 2004 paid 57.13 percent of all income taxes.

Obama's Tax Cut is Actually a Spending Increase, Says Non-Partisan Group.  The heart of Obama's tax cut proposal is in his use of refundable tax credits, which the [Tax Policy] Center describes as "credits available to eligible households even if they have no income tax liability" — in short, refunds available even to those who don't pay taxes. ... These refunds have the ability of reducing a taxpayer's liability below zero, meaning they can get a refund without actually paying taxes.

Obama's 95% Illusion.  Once upon a time we called this "welfare," or in George McGovern's 1972 campaign a "Demogrant."  Mr. Obama's genius is to call it a tax cut.  The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year.

Searching for Obama's 95 Percent.  If Barack Obama can effectively claim that his plan cuts taxes on 95 percent of Americans, then the term "tax cut" has no meaning.

The Case Against Barack Obama, Part 1.  Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama promises to "cut taxes for 95 percent of American workers."  That's not possible.  Why?  More than 30 percent pay nothing in federal income taxes.

In Defense of "The Rich":  The top 5 percent (those making more than $153,542 — the group whose taxes Obama seeks to raise) pay 60 percent of all federal income taxes.  The rich (aka the top 1 percent of income earners, those making more than $388,806 a year), according to the IRS, pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes.  The top 1 percent's taxes comprise 17 percent of the federal government's revenue from all sources, including corporate taxes, excise taxes, social insurance and retirement receipts.

Memo to McCain:  Take the Gloves Off.  Obama says, without rebuttal, that his plan lowers taxes on "95 percent of working families."  This is flatly impossible because 32 percent of income tax returns filed (some 43 million Americans) pay absolutely nothing in federal income taxes.  Obama makes his claim by offering a $500 "Making Work Pay" tax credit to everybody ($1,000 per family), by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, and creating other credits.  If your tax credit is more than your tax liability, you receive a check from the Treasury and you pay no taxes.  That is not a "tax cut."

Monsieur Obama's Tax Rates:  Celebrity chef Alain Ducasse changed his citizenship this month from high-tax France to no-income-tax Monaco.  He says it wasn't a financial decision but an "affair of the heart."  Of course.  Nonetheless, plenty of other Frenchmen have moved abroad to escape their country's confiscatory taxes.  Americans should be so lucky: Ours is the only industrialized country that taxes its citizens even if they live overseas.

Good Money After Bad.  While gas prices are at record highs and American families are feeling the economic pinch, Congress may just decide to boost gas prices even higher.  Their reason will be to save jobs.  As the Associated Press reported on July 20, "Now, lawmakers quietly are talking about raising fuel taxes by a dime from the current 18.4 cents a gallon on gasoline and 24.3 cents on diesel fuel."

Benchmarks of bondage:  The average American worker toils from Jan. 1 to the end of April, and has no legal claim to the fruits of his labor for that period.  Federal, state and local governments, through tax codes, take what he produces.  A small portion of the fruits of his labor provides for the constitutional functions of government.  Most of what is taken, up to two-thirds, is given to some other American in the forms of farm and business subsidies, Social Security, Medicare, welfare and hundreds of other government handout programs.  As in slavery, one person is being forcibly used to serve the purposes of another person.

Taxachusetts, RIP.  Massachusetts was home of the Boston Tea Party, but in recent years the commonwealth's voters have tended to docilely accept whatever level of taxation the robber barons on Beacon Hill deem appropriate.  When the tax issue is put directly on the ballot, however, Bostonians momentarily regain their tax-resisting, tea-dumping spirit.

Texas Treats Phone Use Like a 'Sin'.  Texas consumers who buy electronics or yard equipment pay a combined state and local sales tax rate of 8.25 percent.  For cars, it's 6.25 percent.  Only mixed beverages (14 percent) and cigarettes (35.6 percent) are in the range of telecom taxes.  Taxes and fees for local telephone service total almost 29 percent, putting telephone use in Texas in the "sin tax" category.

Bottled Water Tax Brings Only a Trickle of Revenue.  The city of Chicago's bottled water tax, which went into effect in January, may bring in less than half of what revenue forecasters first said it would raise.  Consumers appear to be buying their water anywhere but in the city.

Cook County President Gets Earful from Angry Citizens.  Hundreds of residents of Cook County, Illinois gave County Board President Todd Stroger (D) an earful over a 1 percentage point sales tax increase that is forcing county shoppers to pay the highest sales tax burdens in the nation.  Groans and derisive laughter greeted comments by Stroger and his staff as they defended the tax increase at a meeting at a local college in Palatine in June.  Applause greeted many people who spoke against the county's tax-grabbing, high-spending ways.

New York's Snatch-and-Grab:  New York tax officials are looking to fill budget shortfalls by looking beyond state borders.  As part of its budget, New York passed a first-of-its kind law that saddles sales tax collection burdens on catalog and online retailers in every state of the country. … Needless to say, this new sales tax law has glaring constitutional problems.

New tax shocks business owners.  Wayne Bronner, president of Michigan's iconic Bronner's Christmas Wonderland in Frankenmuth, doesn't feel much Christmas spirit these days for the new Michigan Business Tax.  Compared with what his company paid under Michigan's hated Single Business Tax, Bronner's will pay about 500% more now under the new Michigan Business Tax, a supposed improvement over the SBT that took effect Jan. 1.  The increase includes a surcharge approved late last year so the state wouldn't go broke.

Virtual Steamroller.  New York recently finished 50th in Chief Executive magazine's survey of the best states to do business.  Respondents cited high taxes, regulation and Governor Eliot Spitzer's "hostile image toward business."  The Governor, for his part, seems to have decided that if he can't convince companies to move to the Empire State, he'll simply have to govern them from a distance.  Eager to fund his proposed 4.8% budget increase this year (last year's was 6%), Mr. Spitzer is attempting to force out-of-state retailers such as Amazon.com to collect New York state sales taxes.

Windfall-Profit Nonsense:  Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama want to raise the price of oil, as well as most everything else, and lower the value of the pension and mutual funds that union members and retirees depend on.  Of course, they don't describe their plan that way.  Instead, they call for a windfall-profits tax on the oil companies.  But it's the same thing.  Taxing a "windfall" sounds appealing, but stock prices are based on expected profits.

Paying at the Pump:  Gasoline Taxes in America.  Early gasoline taxes in the states were explicitly created in an attempt to charge road users for the privilege of using roads.  However, from the very inception of gasoline taxation, public officials have faced temptation to divert gasoline tax revenue to projects that are only tangentially related to transportation and that are often purely politically motivated.

What the "Alternative Minimum Tax" Really Means for American Families:  By its name, many taxpayers might assume the AMT is a good thing.  A simpler "alternative" to the complicated and overly burdensome tax code would be welcome news. … To the contrary, the AMT denies taxpayers many important deductions, so that middle class families subject to AMT actually pay higher taxes.  To make matters worse, Congress failed to index the AMT for inflation.  So the AMT has not been adjusted to keep pace with the rise in income and cost of living.

Bush signs $555 billion spending bill.  Mr. Bush also signed into law a bill that places a one-year freeze on the alternative minimum tax.  Without such legislation, more than 20 million taxpayers would have faced this tax for the first time this year and it would have cost each an additional estimated $2,000 at tax time.  Last year, 4 million paid the AMT; this year, it was expected to hit 25 million.

Tide turning against toll hike plan.  Gov. Jon Corzine's plan to cut state debt and fund transportation projects by sharply hiking tolls ran into deep political trouble yesterday, with every Republican in the Legislature and a key Democratic senator vowing to oppose it.

NJ:  High Price For Rotten Government.  When New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine announced his slimmed-down budget recently, he said that the state could no longer afford the government that it now has.  What he didn't say is that this government isn't just expensive, it's also mismanaged and ineffective.  That is, New Jerseyans pay some of the country's highest taxes to get one of the country's worst governments.

Why business is fleeing New Jersey:  It's like watching a car wreck in slow motion.  What the Democrats are doing to the state's economy, I mean.  Pieces are flying off in all directions.  In terms of taxes and regulation, New Jersey was once a relative haven, a cheap place to do business.  But for most of this century, we've been slowly losing high-income residents and high-income jobs. … The primary source of job growth in recent years has been in government, not private industry.  And that represents a death spiral.  Public employment creates higher taxes, which in turn discourage private employers from locating or expanding in New Jersey.

N.J. struggling under tax burden.  Between 2002 and 2007, property-tax collections went from $16 billion to $22.1 billion -- a 38 percent jump caused largely by the ballooning costs of running schools and towns.  That increase was more than double the inflation rate in the same period.

New Jersey Lawmakers Consider Tax On Fast Food.  The sputtering economy has caused an increase in prices of many staples including gasoline, rice, ice cream, even beer.  Now some lawmakers in New Jersey are considering taking food taxes a step further and install a proverbial "sin" tax on fast food.  Yes, the idea of marking up your favorite fast food burger or pack of fries is actually being tossed around, and it's not settling well with many residents.

New Jersey Has the Nation's Worst Business Tax Climate.  The Tax Foundation's 2009 State Business Tax Climate Index, the sixth annual report ranking the 50 states on the business-friendliness of their tax codes, finds New Jersey has the worst business tax climate in the nation ... for the second year in a row.  The organization released the index in October in Trenton, New Jersey to highlight the Garden State's earning the worst overall score.

Cash-strapped states resort to odd taxes.  Need a few million dollars to fill a budget deficit?  Lease a toll highway, like Indiana and Virginia did, or cash in on future lottery profits as a half-dozen states are considering.  You could slap a tax on pornography as six states already have, or tax strip joints like they do in Texas, where they call it a "pole tax."  Some states take a slice out of pumpkin sales at Halloween.  And most states tax Shaquille O'Neal and Barry Bonds when they visit, using a "jock tax" on professional athletic events.

Taxman may come for Wake's cats and dogs.  Wake County [NC] wants to put a tax on dogs and cats of up to $30 a year — an idea that is making some veterinarians, pet owners and animal advocates bristle.  Under a proposal that county commissioners still must approve, the annual tax would start in July and be levied on every dog and cat.  The licensing tax would be $15 for a dog or cat that had been spayed or neutered; $30 for non-fixed canines and felines.

Raising Taxes is Not the Answer.  American businessmen, American families, and the individual American taxpayer deserve another way to pay for Washington's annual budget.  Raising taxes is not the answer.  It is a temporary solution to the permanent problem of government overexpansion.  We simply must stop finding ways to pay for an ever bigger government.

Tax Day is every day in Chicago.  Bears fans pouring into Soldier Field on Sunday may not notice as they wait with anticipation for the kickoff against the Minnesota Vikings, but City Hall will have its hand in their pockets.  The price of their tickets includes a hefty 8 percent "amusement tax."  But then, it's not easy to keep track of all the times the city dings you because it has about two dozen different — and sometimes obscure and stealthy — ways to do it.

Live and Let Live.  When the Salvation Army asks you for a donation, you are free to say no, and you suffer no consequences.  When the U.S. government demands a tax return and a check on April 15, you can't say no and go about your business.  You comply or face fines or imprisonment.  Yes, you get to vote for candidates periodically.  But having an infinitesimal say in who will coerce you doesn't change that fact that they are using force.

5-cent gas tax hike proposed for bridges' repairs.  House Democrats feuded with Republicans and the Bush administration Wednesday [9/5/2007] over raising gasoline taxes to pay for safer bridges.  A month after an interstate bridge collapsed in Minneapolis and killed 13 people, the government is struggling to develop a long-term way to pay for repairs and new construction.

The Editor says...
 First of all, the existing gasoline tax is supposed to have already paid for highways and bridges over the last fifty years.  Secondly, there would be plenty of money for highway and bridge maintenance if the government would stop spending money on the exploration of other planets, football stadiums, and hundreds of other pork barrel projects.

Eliminate the Gasoline Tax?  The Greens have, as long as my memory serves, hated gasoline as much as DDT.  We instinctively know that taxing gasoline "will not discourage highway congestion and reduce accidents on the roadway."

Why Liberals Spread Poverty:  It's called a "surcharge."  You and I would call it a tax increase.  One more way and reason for the political class to take even more of the money that you and I slave for by slugging it 9 to 5 everyday.  In their funny little semantic sideshow this "surcharge" would be their answer to resolving the problem of the "alternative minimum tax."

The Real Reason For Federal Corruption:  The increased role of the federal government opens the door to federal corruption.  As long as the federal government spends millions of taxpayer dollars on purely state and local projects, lobbyists would be fools to stay away.  As long as the federal government spends cash on bridges to nowhere and structures named after senators, political interest groups will lurk in the shadows, offering pay-for-play.

Kill this monster.  What politician would rail against the country's irrational, insufferable, infernal Internal Revenue Code today, except perhaps for ceremonial purposes?  Some in Congress have made distinguished careers leading the innocent and unwary through its byzantine ways and byways, occasionally constructing secret passages to favor the special interests they represent.  Whole industries like accountancy and tax law have been built on it.

The People who Brought you Tax Day.  Taxes are too complex for the good of the economy, too complex for families, and too complex for small businesses.  For big business and for Washington lobbyists, complexity means profit.

The 'Tax Gap' Myth:  The "tax gap" is the difference between what the Internal Revenue Service thinks taxpayers should be paying and what it collects.  The IRS currently estimates this at about $290 billion a year.

Let the backlash begin.
 Election Earthquake Rattles Pennsylvania Legislature.  "Earthquake" is one of the words politicians are using to describe the ouster of numerous incumbent lawmakers in the May primary elections by voters who were angered and outraged over tax hikes, spending increases, and boosts in legislative pay.  The epicenter of this electoral earthquake was Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where at least 47 lawmakers will leave office. … Before the May primary election, 30 other incumbents had announced they would not seek reelection, most because they believed they would lose, according to Pennsylvania political observers.

The pan-partisan "debt, debt, and more debt" plan:  Politicians of both parties like to spend.  Both like to increase taxes.  Both want to "do more things."  It's gone out of style to just keep the old services going; the general consensus seems to be:  progress.  By which they mean:  debt. ... The four-letter word of politics.

IRS Wants E-Commerce Data.  The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) is sounding an early warning on a proposal in the president's 2008 budget that would require Internet businesses such as Ebay and Amazon.com to collect personal data on their customers and share it with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).  The move is part of an effort by the U.S. Treasury Department to track down unreported small business income generated by the sale of personal property on such sites.

Internet Sales Tax Looms.  Online shoppers in more than 20 states may soon pay sales taxes on their purchases if Congress passes pending legislation.  Under the proposed Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Act, out-of-state merchants and online vendors must collect sales tax on goods shipped to some states.

The Fair Tax:  America's Last Best Hope.  I think there is one last chance for America to regain its past glory and, perhaps, to turn back the tide of socialism that threatens our future prosperity.  This last chance comes in the form of a single piece of legislation which, if passed, will cure almost all of what is ailing America.  I know that seems like an extreme position but I think it can be argued persuasively.

Why I'm a Conservative:  A Conservative is not opposed to all taxation, but rather sees taxes as a necessary evil, and therefore wants to encourage only the level of taxation that will support the necessities of limited civil government.  Tax policy shouldn't be used as a means to punish economic social classes that have benefited from the America Dream, nor as a wedge to promote envy, discontentment and coveting.

Democrats and high taxes go hand in hand.
 Minnesota Senate OKs $1 billion tax increase.  The bill would create a top Minnesota tax rate of 9.7 percent, giving the state the highest top income tax rate in the nation.

Holiday Season 'Tax Holidays' are No Break for Taxpayers.  This year, South Carolina lawmakers have enacted a gimmicky, two-day "sales tax holiday" to follow the real holiday, but it will only remind us of their unwillingness to let taxpayers keep more of their money year round.

New Jersey Has Highest Property Taxes in U.S.  New Jersey has the highest property taxes in America — a burden that is alarming young couples and retirees alike and deepening public cynicism in a state with a long and rich history of graft and self-dealing.  The average property owner in the Garden State pays about $6,000 a year in property taxes, twice the national average.

Corporate Income Tax Rates in U.S. Are Among the Highest in the World.  Amid growing concerns about U.S. economic competitiveness, policymakers are awakening to the fact that America has one of the world's most inefficient corporate income taxes.  Rep. Charles Rangel (D-New York), chairman of the U.S. House tax committee, has proposed reducing the federal corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 30.5 percent.  Henry Paulson, secretary of the Treasury, is also promoting a corporate tax rate cut.

Stealth tax hike slips through Senate.  On May 23, as the Senate raced toward passage of the comprehensive immigration bill before the Memorial Day break began, Sen. Charles Grassley moved the adoption of a new Title III to the measure.  It passed easily without anybody mentioning that the amendment raises revenue, which was a violation of the U.S. Constitution's requirement that all such measures originate in the House of Representatives.

Blanco administration looking at possible tolls on Interstates.  An idea floated by Gov. Kathleen Blanco's transportation chief to turn Interstates 10 and 12 across south Louisiana into toll roads ran into opposition Thursday [8/10/2006] from Louisiana's two U.S. senators.  U.S. Sen. David Vitter, who released information on the proposal, said it would unduly tax thousands of people who use the highways and asked Blanco to scrap any proposals to put toll booths on Louisiana's interstates.

It attacks a village.  A Congress that maintains the death tax isn't just attacking families like the Hannays, it is also attacking the villages where they live.

Taxes, Spending, and Debt are the Real Issues.  The question to ask yourself is this:  What would I do with the money withheld from my paycheck each month?  The answer is simple:  you would spend, save, or invest the money, all of which do more for the economy and society than sending it to Washington.  Thanks to the deception of income tax withholding, however, some people actually look forward to tax time and a much-anticipated refund.  Imagine how quickly Americans would demand lower taxes and spending if they had to write the federal government a check each month!

At Tax Day Rally, Conservatives Want Taxpayers to 'Get Mad and Stay Mad'.  Edward Hudgins, executive director of the Objectivist Center thinks Americans are too dependent on politicians for handouts.  The tax system is immoral because it makes free Americans beggars, "dependent on crumbs thrown to us by politicians," he says.

Florida Wants to Double Local Car Rental Tax.  The Florida legislature voted in May to allow local governments to increase the current car rental tax surcharge from $2 to $4 per rental.  Now only Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and November referenda in localities that want to increase the tax stand in the way of car rental tax hikes. … Bush has indicated misgivings about allowing higher car rental surcharges, telling news-press.com the biggest problem with the measure is that people who would pay the higher tax "can't vote on it."

[Well, Governor Bush, that's because we live in a democratic republic, not a direct democracy.  When the voters elect certain types of people, they have voted to raise taxes.]

Flat-Out Smart.  Imagine a law that affected everyone in the country but was so confusing that only a select few could understand it.  And those select few didn't even include the people who enforced the law.  That may sound like a recipe for disaster.  Actually, it's a description of our current tax policy.  Almost 900 tax forms are in use today.  It takes more than 60,000 pages of laws, regulations and IRS rulings to explain how we are supposed to fill out those forms.

A dangerous obsession.  Can you imagine anything more dangerous than allowing politicians to decide how much money each of us can earn?  Of course, such political control of incomes is usually advocated only to deal with "the rich."  But, when income taxes were imposed in the early 20th century, they applied only to "the rich" and they took a very small percentage of their income.  Once the floodgates are opened to this kind of political power, however, we have seen with the income taxes that they not only spread far beyond "the rich," they took a serious share of even middle class incomes.

The Number of Americans Outside the Income Tax System Continues to Grow.  Economists estimate that for tax year 2004, a record 42.5 million Americans who filed a tax return (one-third of the 131 million returns filed last year) had no tax liability after they took advantage of their credits and deductions.  Millions more paid next to nothing. … In addition to these non-payers, roughly 15 million individuals and families earned some income last year but not enough to be required to file a tax return.

The Top 1% Pay 35%.  The wealthiest 1 percent of tax filers paid a remarkable 35 percent of all individual income-tax payments [in 2004].  Some will claim that this merely shows that the Bush tax cuts made the rich richer.  In fact, the Statistics of Income data reveal that there were more Americans filing taxes in every income category from $50,000 and up in 2004.

The top one-hundredth of one percent.  Collecting taxes is not as easy as it sounds.  And taxes don't redistribute income — they just reduce income.  Means-tested federal transfer payments account for little more than 10 percent of federal spending, and more taxes won't change that because the poor don't lobby or contribute to campaigns and rarely vote.

Millions Hit by Tax Intended for the Wealthy.  Millions of middle-income Americans are about to be hit by the alternative minimum tax (AMT), enacted nearly 30 years ago to ensure the nation's wealthiest citizens pay income taxes.  Congress failed to act on the AMT in 2005, leaving more than 15 million Americans to feel its bite this year.

[Are there really 15 million wealthy people in the U.S.?]

Whatever the Question, the Answer is Not Raising Taxes.  Each year when budget time rolls around in the states, there are questions of how to pay for government functions.  Often, there are more hands outstretched to lawmakers than tax dollars to dole out.  Rather than raiding taxpayers' wallets each year, fiscally responsible legislators and state officials have turned to several key strategies to prioritize and control state spending.

Are We Being Taxed to Death?  Governments in the U.S. take approximately 40 percent of the country's total income in taxes.  In other words, nearly half of all the income generated each year is sent to governments to spend.  The good news is that a growing number of people pay no federal taxes at all. … The bad news is that people who do pay taxes much pay more to make up for those who pay nothing.

Liberty in Our Lifetime.  Are you frustrated at the loss of freedom and responsibility in America, while the growth of government and taxes continues unabated?  Do you want to live in strong communities where your rights are respected, and people exercise responsibility for themselves and in their dealings with each other?  If you answered "yes" to those questions, then the Free State Project has a solution for you.

58 Million Wage Earners Pay No Federal Income Tax.  According to the Washington, DC-based Tax Foundation, "a record 44 million tax returns filed in 2005 will be correctly demanding the return of every dollar (or more) that is being withheld from their paychecks during 2004."

Interesting chart:
 Who Pays Income Taxes?  See who pays what.  Half of the US taxpayers pay 96.5% of all taxes.  The other half get a free ride.

History of Federal Individual Income Bottom and Top Bracket Rates.

Update:
 The Top 50% pay 96.54% of All Income Taxes.  This is the latest data for calendar year 2003 just released in October 2005 by the Internal Revenue Service.  The share of total income taxes paid by the top 1% of wage earners rose to 34.27% from 33.71% in 2002.  Their income share (not just wages) rose from 16.12% to 16.77%.  However, their average tax rate actually dropped from 27.25% down to 24.31%.

Who pays the taxes?  A few weeks ago, the Internal Revenue Service released data on tax year 2003.  They show that the top 1 percent of taxpayers, ranked by adjusted gross income, paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes that year.  The top 5 percent paid 54.4 percent, the top 10 percent paid 65.8 percent, and the top quarter of taxpayers paid 83.9 percent.

Washington's Governor Wants to Spend an Additional $503 Million.  With a $1.45 billion ending fund balance projected for the remainder of the 2005-07 budget biennium, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) is proposing $503 million in new spending in her 2006 supplemental budget request. … "We are right back on board the tax and spend merry-go-round.  This year's spending will inevitably lead to higher taxes down the road," warned outgoing state Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance.

The Editor interjects...
 [State and federal governments don't just spend what they need and refund the rest.  If they can create even a momentary perception of a surplus, they'll spend every dollar they can get.]

On the other hand...
 Georgia Governor Gives up Tax 'Windfall'.  The governor's tax cut follows a one-month moratorium on the state sales tax on gasoline that was implemented after hurricanes Katrina and Rita hurt supplies.  That moratorium was ratified by the General Assembly in a special session and saved motorists an estimated $77 million.

When taxation is obviously theft:  The New York Times reported on utilities that collect taxes from their clients, but don't pay those taxes to the government.  And get away with it.

The Bad Tax Bill Within the Bad Energy Bill:  The tax provisions are little more than a collection of old ideas that have never worked, new ideas unlikely to work, and a lot of pork for the energy industry.

Fixing America's Tax Code:  With all its mind-numbing complexity and wrong-headed rules, the tax code is emblematic of the entire body of federal laws and regulations on every subject imaginable.  Thus, the stakes riding on successful tax reform are enormous.

The top one percent:  Because most people now accumulate most capital gains and dividends in ways undetectable on tax returns, tax data wrongly suggest that only the very rich (whose investments exceed the caps on 401k and Keogh contributions) still appear to be realizing many gains.  This creates a statistical illusion that only those at the top appeared to benefit much from the 1982-2000 boom in stocks and bonds.

Feeding the kitty for Katrina.  The tax increase proponents seemingly cannot grasp that taxes reduce our economic vitality.  When taxes rise, the economy slows.  When taxes are reduced, job creation and economic growth accelerate.  Those who do not understand the role of incentives are always surprised when tax revenues increase, as they did after the Reagan and recent Bush tax cuts, and fall or stagnate when tax rates increase.

The Facts About Federal Spending.  Including the President's fiscal year 2003 proposal, the Congress will spend almost $800 billion more between 2000-2003 than it did during the period of 1996-1999.  This escalation in spending will raise the total four-year cost of the federal government to an egregious $73,373 per household.

The Government's Endless Appetite for Spending.  Last December, Congress approved a $290 billion increase of the debt limit to support the government's borrowing through February.  This lifted the total amount the federal government can borrow to $12.4 trillion.  But today Congress wants to go into even more debt.

The Editor says...
 Please take a moment to recall which party is in control of the Congress while all this is going on.

"View tax" triggers revolt in rural New Hampshire.  The one-room cabin David Bischoff built in a cow pasture three years ago has no electricity, no running water, no phone service and no driveway.  What it does have is a wide-open view of the surrounding hills — a view valued at $140,000, according to the latest townwide property revaluation.

The Editor asks...
 Are blind people exempt from the view tax?

More information on taxes in general:

50-State Table of Individual Income Tax Rates.

State and Local Tax Burdens by State, 1970-Present.


The 108-year-old Telephone Tax

Time for a Truce in the Spanish-American War.  One-hundred and seven years ago, the United States went to war with Spain.  Because at that time telephones were still a luxury item owned largely by the rich, Congress decided to create a special, 3 percent excise tax on telephone service to finance the war.  Although the war ended pretty quickly, the tax endured and, in fact, is still assessed on every American's phone bill.

Three Percent Fee On Cell Phones Started 107 Years Ago.  Anybody who has ever tried to decipher a cell phone bill knows how tough it can be.  One of the charges is a 3 percent fee on every cell phone bill in America.  The origin of the tax predates the invention of the cellular phone by nearly a century.

Phone Taxes are Cell Hell.  You can't hang up on the taxman.  Eleven federal, state and city levies add as much as 33 percent to the cost of New Yorkers' cellphones, a [New York] Post analysis found.

Courts Strike Down Phone Tax.  The IRS is having to defend itself against lawsuits from large telecom consumers because of its refusal to stop collecting the "temporary" federal excise tax (FET) on telephone services the federal government imposed to help fund the Spanish American War, which ended on December 10, 1898.  Telephone service then was in its infancy, and only some wealthy people and businesses had telephones.  The tax stayed in place, however, as telephone use spread, and it was expanded over time to cover other telecom services.

Finally!
 The Phone Tax is Laid to Rest at Age 108.  Bowing to changes in technology and pressure from taxpayers and phone companies, the Treasury Department said yesterday that it would scrap the 108-year-old federal excise tax on long-distance phone calls.  The move will bring consumers and businesses about $15 billion in refunds on next year's tax returns.

Consumers Will Get Refunds for 1898 Phone Tax.  More than 100 years after the Spanish-American War ended, the 3 percent telephone tax that was imposed to pay for the war is about to end.  The U.S. Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service announced on May 25 they plan to stop collecting the tax on long-distance phone calls beginning August 1.  Consumers will receive about $15 billion in refunds on their 2006 income tax returns, filed in 2007.

After 100 Years, Telecom Tax Is No More.  The U.S. Treasury Department will stop collecting the 3 percent telephone tax, more than 100 years after the end of the Spanish American War, the conflict the tax was levied to fund.

Update:
 IRS Failed to Refund $4 Billion in Improper Taxes.  The Internal Revenue Service has failed to refund about $4 billion in improperly collected taxes, according to a Treasury Department audit.  The IRS collected $8 billion while an outdated tax on long-distance telephone calls was being challenged in court, according to a federal report that states "a significant amount" of the tax "may never be refunded."


Telecom Taxes Are Unduly Harsh, Regressive:  Study.  Taxes and fees imposed on cable TV and phone services in 59 U.S. cities cost the average household approximately $264 a year, according to a new report from a team of researchers at The Heartland Institute and Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University.  On average, communication services are taxed at 13.32 percent, twice the average rate of other products, the study found.

Cook County Eyes $4 Phone Tax.  A Cook County, Illinois proposal to impose a $4 tax on all wireline and wireless phone lines has drawn fire from all sides, including the local phone company, consumer advocates, and the local utilities watchdog group.

Congress Considers Beer a Luxury — But Not Mink Coats, Private Jets, or Yachts.  President George H.W. Bush and Congress in 1990 raised a host of excise taxes on "luxury" items including expensive cars, fur coats, jewelry, yachts, and private airplanes.  Included in the list of luxury items was beer, which at the time saw a doubling of the federal excise tax, from $9 to $18 a barrel.  Fifteen years later, the taxes on expensive cars, fur coats, jewelry, yachts, and private airplanes have been rolled back.  The beer tax remains, even though the main purchasers of beer are lower- and middle-income consumers.  Taxes make up an astounding 44 percent of the retail price of beer, according to the Beer Institute.

Tax Group Targets Spanish-American War Tax.  Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) announced on March 10 [2005] that it would make repeal of a 107-year-old federal excise tax on telephone service a major priority in the current session of Congress.  Since then, support for the proposal has been increasing.  The tax — a flat 3 percent on every telephone bill — was enacted in 1898 to fund the Spanish-American War.

Don't Tax My iPod!  Anyone who has ever taken the time to inspect a landline or wireless phone bill will know that, on top of the price of service, the government heaps taxes:  the telecom excise tax, universal service fee, and various others.  The combined state and local tax rate for wireline telecom services averages 14 percent and can be as high as 30 percent, putting communications in the sin-tax bracket along with alcohol and cigarettes.  For a country that claims to value free speech, it's ironic that the tax system is so regressive, favoring communication for the rich.

Evidence, evidence and more evidence.  An opinion piece by reporter Anna Bernasek in last Sunday's New York Times actually argues that there's no real evidence that lower tax rates spur economic growth.  Bernasek finds a couple of economists to back up her idea before concluding that tax "reform based on a notion that taxes are bad for the economy is just that:  a notion not backed by strong evidence."  Let me beg to differ in a very strong way.


The Smoking Section:

The War on Cigarettes.  [Scroll down]  Just last month in Virginia, for example, a contraband cigarette smuggler pleaded guilty in court of hiring a hit man to murder two people that he suspected of stealing his bootleg cigarettes.  According to media reports, the man's gang was hoping to make a cool $1 million by selling nearly 400,000 cartons of cigarettes in New York City — where taxes alone on a pack of smokes are $4.25.  Amazingly, New York lawmakers are seeking to add another $1 to this already obscene amount, an increase which will only fuel additional bootlegging — and additional violence.

Obama's First Tax Hike.  President Obama approved his first tax hike today [2/4/2009].  The bill he signed to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program contains a provision to increase taxes on tobacco by a whopping 155 percent.  That means the federal taxes on cigarettes have gone up an additional 61 cents a pack.  This brings federal taxes on a pack of cigarettes to $1 per pack total.

Lawmakers consider $1.50-per-pack cigarette tax hike.  For years tobacco companies have successfully fought off attempts by California lawmakers and health groups to increase the cigarette tax.  But next month, as the state grapples with the worst financial crisis in recent history, that may change.  Lawmakers will consider a proposal to hike cigarette taxes by $1.50 per pack and raise $1.2 billion annually.  During the last decade, cigarette makers have spent tens of millions of dollars to kill 14 straight attempts to make smokers pay more.

Smokers face a hit as tobacco taxes spike.  However they satisfy their nicotine cravings, tobacco users are facing a big hit as the single largest federal tobacco tax increase ever takes effect Wednesday [4/1/2009].  Tobacco companies and public health advocates, longtime foes in the nicotine battles, are trying to turn the situation to their advantage.  The major cigarette makers raised prices a couple of weeks ago, partly to offset any drop in profits once the per-pack tax climbs from 39 cents to $1.01.

Obama Breaks Tax Pledge, Signs SCHIP.  Barely two weeks after assuming the presidency, Barack Obama signed into law a bill expanding a health insurance subsidy and breaking one of the central promises of his candidacy.  Obama's February 4 signing of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) expansion bill more than doubled the federal cigarette tax, even though he had pledged he would not raise taxes on Americans earning less than $250,000 a year.  Taxes on various classes of cigars also increased.

$10 a Pack! Now That's a Drag.  If this doesn't make you quit, nothing will.  With a new 62 cent federal tax on cigarettes added this week with the passage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program law, the new price of a pack of cigarettes will soar past $10 in Manhattan.

Texas House Approves $1 Increase in Cigarette Tax.  A pack-a-day will cost Texas smokers an extra $365 a year under a cigarette tax increase approved in the House on Thursday [4/27/2006].

Update:
 Texas smokers face tax increase.  Smokers in Texas are bracing themselves for a $1 tax increase per pack of cigarettes next month, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

Sides square off in fight to hike tax on tobacco.  Come November, Californians will be asked to impose the biggest tax increase ever on tobacco products, a change that healthcare advocates believe will reduce cigarette consumption, but some officials think will increase cigarette smuggling.

Cigarette Taxes Are Fueling Organized Crime.  Come July 1, New York City's smokers will be paying on average $9 a pack for legal cigarettes.  But if history is any guide, most cigarettes sold will actually be trucked up from Virginia, or shipped in from China, by "butt-leggers" who can make over $1 million on each tractor-trailer load of smuggled smokes.  The blunt fact, which politicians of both political parties are determined to ignore, is that high cigarette taxes in New York have led to a bloody, decades-long smuggling epidemic.

Cigarette Smuggling:  While it's politically popular to impose confiscatory taxes on America's 40 million tobacco smokers, there are a number of consequences one might consider, but let's start out with a quiz.  If a carton of cigarettes sells for $160 in New York City, and $35 in North Carolina, what do you predict will happen?  If you answered tons of cigarettes will be going up I-95 from North Carolina to New York City, go to the head of the class.

N.Y. Smokers Face Highest Tax In Nation.  New Yorkers start paying the highest cigarette taxes in the nation Tuesday [6/3/2008] with the latest $1.25 spike per pack that officials expect to bring in $265 million a year.  Convenience stores across the state and the smokers who will be paying the price are angry about the change, but health officials hail the tax increase as a success.

New York Sets Record Cigarette Tax.  New York's state cigarette tax climbed from $1.50 to $2.75 a pack in June, the highest state cigarette tax burden in the nation. … New York City charges its own $1.50 a pack tax, for state and local taxes totaling $4.25 a pack, said Jeff Lenard, spokesperson for the National Association of Convenience Stores.  The federal excise tax on cigarettes adds 39 cents a pack.

Cigarette Tax Hike:  'Gold Mine' for Smugglers.  The proposed tax hike on cigarettes in the state budget would create a "black market gold mine" for smugglers and force New York smokers to pay the highest taxes in the nation, experts warn.  Facing a $5 billion budget gap, state lawmakers see doubling the state's cigarette tax, to $3 a pack, as a way to help weather a difficult economic period.

Higher Cigarette Taxes Mean More Smuggling.  Here's a puzzle for lawmakers:  If the same percentage of Texans smoke as nationwide — 20 percent — why are sales of tax-paid cigarette sales so much lower in Texas?  The answer:  Texans are smoking millions of bootleg cigarettes smuggled into the state to avoid the tax of 41 cents per pack.  A tractor-trailer holds 200,000 packs, so the profit margin is awfully tempting.

Cigarette Tax Hikes:  A Feeble Attempt to Cut Smoking Rates and Balance the Budget.  Last week, the Kentucky House of Representatives approved a 25 cent increase in the state's cigarette tax in an effort to help eliminate the state's budget deficit. … Higher cigarette taxes are needed, some legislators say, to avoid "deep cuts" in the state's budget.  They find it is easier to balance the budget on the backs of smokers than to cut wasteful spending.

Are Cigarette Taxes Becoming Obsolete?  Social and economic changes force us to ask whether excise taxes are obsolete.  If they are, governments will increasingly find that excise taxes do more harm than good.  Cigarette taxes, because states have raised them precipitously during the past 10 years, provide a good test of the obsolescence theory.

Butt Taxes Go Up in Smoke.  The city hauled in $123 million in cigarette taxes last year — but lost about $40 million to tax-evading smokers, according to a study released yesterday [10/19/2007].

Tobacco Tax Increase Will Cost Wisconsin.  On January 1, the tax for a pack of cigarettes in Wisconsin increased by $1 bringing it to $1.77 per pack. … A tobacco tax, aside from being dramatically regressive, is a thoroughly unreliable stream of revenue for health care expansion; at the end of the day, you will need more smokers or the imposition of higher taxes on workers and consumers.

Indiana Nearly Doubles Its Cigarette Tax.  Hoosiers will pay an additional 44 cents per pack, with about 33 cents of that tax going directly to [Governor Mitch] Daniels' plan to subsidize health insurance for lower-income Indiana citizens.  Hoosiers will pay a total tax of 99.5 cents per pack. … "Increasing the tax on cigarettes does not answer our objects of an overall health plan for Indiana," said Craig Ladwig, president of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation.  "In fact, it just adds the onus of socialized medicine to legislative moralizing."

Drop in Smoking Means Less Tax Revenue.  Across the country, states are putting their treasuries under pressure by adopting smoking restrictions as well as higher cigarette taxes, which appear to be discouraging people from lighting up, as many health activists had hoped would happen.

Cook County Doubles Its Cigarette Tax.  The Cook County, Illinois tax on cigarettes has doubled to $2 a pack, giving the city of Chicago the highest cigarette tax in the nation.  County, city, state, and federal taxes on cigarettes now total $4.05 a pack in Chicago.

[Remember, $4.05 per pack is just the tax, not the total price.  The stores also charge an additional fee for the cigarettes themselves.  It's no wonder that cigarettes are used as money in prisons.

Cigarette Tax Doesn't Live Up to its Promise.  The $1.425 state excise tax [in the state of Washington] is now one of the highest in the nation.  There comes a point when taxes on a product will eventually stunt the overall volume of sales — therefore negating a once-promised high source of revenue.  The evidence suggests this has been happening with cigarettes for quite some time.

NYC Seeks to Tax and Fine Online Cigarette Buyers.  New York City residents who purchased smokes over the Internet are facing huge fines and garnishment of their wages for failing to pay city cigarette taxes. … New York City has the highest cigarette taxes in the nation.  The state tax on one pack of cigarettes is $1.50.  The city tax adds another $1.50.  The federal tax is 39 cents a pack, for a total tax of $3.39 per pack.

Harm's a two way street.  The largest losers of America's anti-tobacco crusade aren't tobacco companies and smokers, it's the American people who are incrementally giving up private property rights.

Cigarette Smuggling:  Diverse state tobacco taxes are a key reason for cigarette smuggling, in which organized crime and terrorist groups increasingly are involved.  A July 21 article in the Detroit News quoted John D'Angelo of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as saying, "There is no doubt that there's a direct relationship between the increase in a state's tax and an increase in illegal trafficking."

Cigarette Tax Lessons from Oregon:  The Governor should be wary of increasing cigarette taxes, or any tax for that matter, in light of the election night results from Oregon.  Oregon voters were asked to increase their cigarette tax by $0.845 to $2.02 per pack from $1.18 per pack in order to fund expansion of the State Children Health Insurance Program-commonly referred to as SCHIP. … The ballot measure was rejected by a resounding 60-40 margin.

Smokers Head for the Border to Avoid Cigarette Tax Increase.  Guy Arrans, chief operating officer at St. Joseph-based Primar Petroleum, said the tax increase is going to hurt business at the 14 area convenience stores and gas stations Primar owns and the 30 other independently owned stations it supplies.  "They're building more and more of the budget on smokers but they keep saying they want people to quit," he said.  "Why would they build a budget on what they hope will be a vanishing tax base?"  Arrans also pointed out that, since Michigan charges sales tax atop the cigarette tax, the real tax is $2.12 [per pack, compared to a 55.5 cents per pack in Indiana.]

States Blow Tobacco Funds on Budget Smorgasbord.  States spent two-thirds of tobacco settlement money on government programs unrelated to health care in 2005, according to an annual survey released [in April 2005] by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

How to identify American totalitarians:  In America today, two groups are most actively engaged in falsifying history:  the ACLU and the anti-smoking movement.  The ACLU is suing cities and counties to remove crosses from their city and county seals. … Examples of anti-smoking fanatics doctoring photographs [to remove cigarettes] are so legion that I can only offer a few examples in the space of a column.

Cigarettes are one possible motive for crash burglaries.  The price of a pack of cigarettes is apparently enough to prompt a group of thieves to steal cars, ram them into Twin Cities convenience stores after hours and scoop up packs of smokes and other goods to sell on the street.

The government often plays the role of a heavy-handed nanny, not just a tax collector, when it goes to great lengths to discourage smoking.  That discussion is on another page.

Illinois Brothers Charged with $10 Million Cigarette Tax Scam.  Two brothers from the Chicago suburb of Burbank, Illinois were arrested June 6 for allegedly diverting millions of dollars in taxes on sales of tobacco products.

Cigar Tax Up 6,000% to Pay for SCHIP.  The increase in federal tobacco taxes that congressional Democrats are proposing to fund their new healthcare initiative is being praised by anti-smoking advocates as an effective way to discourage tobacco sales. … The tax hikes would include raising the federal cigarette tax from 39 cents to one dollar.  Additionally, the tax cap on cigars would be raised from five cents to three dollars, a 6,000 percent increase.

Did someone mention SCHIP?

Taxes on Smokeless Tobacco are Unfair and Ineffective.  In recent years, controversy in many state legislatures has erupted over the right way to tax smokeless tobacco.  It is not immediately clear why some states outside the South tax smokeless tobacco so heavily and some so lightly, nor why some base their tax on weight and others on price.  Assuming the role of government is to prevent individuals from harming one another, and not to prevent individuals from harming themselves, then special taxes on tobacco products should exist only if those products impose significant costs on third parties.

Get ready for $11 a pack cigarettes.  New York City smokers already pay the highest cigarette taxes in the nation, but a new state law will push those taxes even higher this summer.

Smokers, cigarette sellers fuming over tax.  No butts about it — smokers and shopkeepers are not fans of New York's $1.60 cigarette tax hike.  In the space of three hours Thursday, four customers at a convenience shop called Candy Store in Times Square declined to buy a pack when they heard the price was up to $12.75.


A national sales tax:  Representative John Linder, a Georgia Republican, has a 133-page bill to replace 55,000 pages of tax rules.  His bill would abolish the IRS and the many billions of tax forms it sends out and receives.  He would erase the federal income tax system and replace it with a 23 percent national sales tax on personal consumption.

On the other hand...
 The national sales tax:  I have written many times before about what a dopy idea I think this is. … The national retail sales tax would tax 100 percent of services, including medical services and government services.  Every time you go to the hospital, you will have to pay 30 percent on top to the federal government.

A Hacksaw for Our Government Shackles:  The top benefit of a national sales tax would supposedly be reduced bureaucracy or even elimination of the IRS.  Don't bet on it.  Forty-three states with income taxes rely heavily on federal enforcement to ensure compliance.  With that enforcement gone, forty-three state bureaucracies would end up performing drastically more audits.  And for a national sales tax to correlate with existing state collections, the five states without sales taxes would have to create brand new agencies.

National sales tax:  There's no question that tax reform is needed, but tax reform is secondary to a much larger issue — federal spending.  From 1787 to 1920, except during war, federal spending was a mere 3 percent of GDP, compared to today's 20 percent.  If the federal government takes only 3 percent of the GDP, just about any tax system is relatively non-oppressive.

Okies Enjoy Largest Tax Cut in State History.  The tax cut package passed only months after Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, which they had last controlled in 1921-22.

Do you trust your neighbor to pay taxes?  Journalists invent sources.  Employees loot their employers to the tune of $50 billion per year.  Shoppers make off with about $13 billion worth of products through shoplifting every year.  No one obeys speed limits.  Are we then to believe that only a small minority of taxpayers, offered the opportunity to cheat such an impersonal entity as the U.S. Treasury, are declining to do so?

Scrap the tax code.  "There is nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule," is an old Texas axiom, and it applies to simplification of the U.S. tax code, which is outdated, overly complex and exceedingly resistant to reform.  The tax code now exceeds a staggering 60,000 pages, prompting Americans to waste 6.2 billion hours just completing their returns every year.  Deciphering it costs the country $203.4 billion a year, according to the Tax Foundation.  Its complexities generate additional job-killing distortions throughout our economy.


Tax Freedom Day

Now everyone works for the government.  While the number of Americans on the federal payroll has dramatically increased, so has the number of us who work for the federal government without being on a federal agency payroll.  Back in 1910, when Tax Freedom Day was first observed, taxes were just five percent of a person's income, and Tax Freedom Day came on Jan. 19.  Now we pay more than 26 percent of our income to the government, and we work until April 9 (three months later) just to pay our taxes every year.

How much taxation is enough?  Imagine for a moment that Tax Freedom Day was Dec. 31.  In other words, picture working 365 days a year for the government.  Now, the government would "give" you a place to sleep, food to eat and clothes to wear, but all your income would really be Washington's income to allocate as it saw fit.  Some romantics might call this sort of arrangement "socialism" or "communism."  But another perfectly good word for it is "slavery" or, if you prefer, involuntary servitude.

Now everyone works for the government.  While the number of Americans on the federal payroll has dramatically increased, so has the number of us who work for the federal government without being on a federal agency payroll.  Back in 1910, when Tax Freedom Day was first observed, taxes were just five percent of a person's income, and Tax Freedom Day came on Jan. 19.  Now we pay more than 26 percent of our income to the government, and we work until April 9 (three months later) just to pay our taxes every year.

How much taxation is enough?  Imagine for a moment that Tax Freedom Day was Dec. 31.  In other words, picture working 365 days a year for the government.  Now, the government would "give" you a place to sleep, food to eat and clothes to wear, but all your income would really be Washington's income to allocate as it saw fit.  Some romantics might call this sort of arrangement "socialism" or "communism."  But another perfectly good word for it is "slavery" or, if you prefer, involuntary servitude.

2009 Tax Freedom Day:  August 12.  Americans had to work from January 1 until August 12 this year just to cover the cost of government.  That is 26 days more than they had to work last year to cover the cost of government.

2005 Tax Freedom Day Falls on April 17.  That's the day when "Americans stop working to pay taxes and begin working for themselves."

"Our Taxes Are Too High," Americans Say.  Tax Freedom Day calculates the day each year when we stop working for government and start working for ourselves.  In effect, this measures taxes as a share of aggregate income.  Last year, taxes took 29.1 percent of income by this measure, down from a recent high of 33.6 percent in 2000.  In short, the tax burden is well above the level that at least two-thirds of Americans think should be the maximum and right at the level that 90 percent believe should be the absolute limit.

Chart shows Tax Freedom Day by State, 2006.

Tax Burdens and Tax Freedom Day.  Tax Freedom Day is the day when the nation as a whole has earned enough money to pay off its total tax bill for the year.  Tax Freedom Day provides Americans with an easy way to gauge the overall tax take — a task that can otherwise be daunting due to the multiplicity of taxes at various levels of government and "hidden" taxes and fees that are often buried in the cost of living.

Cost of government:  How about 231 labor days?  August 19th is the day the average American worker has finally earned enough to pay for his share of the government spending and regulatory burdens in 2010.  From now until December 31, he can finally keep the fruits of his own labor, according to an annual report by the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation.  It's eight days later this year than last.

The Costliest Day.  As Doug Bandow recently explained on this site, last Thursday, August 19, was "Cost of Government Day" (COGD), the date of the calendar year on which the average American worker has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of the spending and regulatory burden imposed by government at the federal, state and local levels.


Let's Scrap the Code!  Our tax system needs to be changed.  Every year, Americans spend 6.2 billion frustrating hours fighting forms and figures, digging for documentation, and checking and rechecking their math to make sure everything is right.  That's because our archaic 60,000 page tax code is mired in special interest loopholes.

The Law That Never Was:  In 1984, William J. Benson began a research project, never before performed, to investigate the process of ratification of the 16th Amendment.  When his year long project was finished at the end of 1984, Bill had visited every state capitol and knew that not a single state had actually and legally ratified the proposal to amend the Constitution.  Thirty-three states engaged in the unauthorized activity of amending the language of the amendment proposed by Congress, a power the states do not possess.

When It Comes to Taxes, We Need Some Real Pain.  Actually writing out checks to the government generates a lot more thinking and questions about the size and scope of government.  From 1913 to 1942, income taxes were paid in quarterly installments during the year after the income was earned.  Returning to such a system would mean that all income earners would have to sit down four times a year and write out a check to the government.

Study Finds Controversial Jock Taxes Spreading.  The jock taxes are so named because they require traveling professional athletes and other team employees to pay income taxes in every state where games are played.  "This is a real slippery slope," said Andrew Chamberlain, a Tax Foundation spokesperson.  "If jock taxes continue to be applied this aggressively, more and more professionals that travel to other states are going to be subject to them.  Eventually, a traveling executive would have to pay tax in every state that he visits during the year.  That creates an untenable level of complexity."

Government Workers: Working Hard or Hardly Working?  People who have waited on line or on hold or who have heard "that's not my area" too often wonder if anyone works in federal agencies let alone if those working know what they are doing.  Often they do not:  a 2003 study disclosed that the IRS gives incorrect answers or no answer at all 43 percent of the time!

Wireless Phone Costs Drop, but Taxes Skyrocket.  Taxes on wireless telephone service in the United States have climbed nine times faster than those on general business since January 2003, putting a damper on the growing use of wireless communications, according to Jim Schuler, director of policy at the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association.

Tax-free Internet Access Might End November 1.  If the 1998 Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) is not extended, consumers may pay taxes to access the Internet this fall.  Congress will either need to extend or make permanent the federal ban that expires on November 1 to keep Internet access tax-free.

Top 10 Wireless Tax States.  Since 1993 the average wireless phone customer's monthly bill has gone down almost 37 percent, while minutes of use have increased about 300 percent … but some state legislatures see wireless service as an easy target and are taxing it more and more.

Taxing Forests to Death.  Proponents of the estate tax claim it affects only the very rich.  However, forest owners, many of whom are cash-poor, are more likely to incur the estate tax than the general population.  Suburban growth has caused timber prices to rise; thus substantial increases in the value of forest acreage are not unusual.

Estate tax questions.  Financial advisers today tell middle class couples that they will need at least $1 million in financial assets to live comfortably in retirement.  And with the big run-up in housing prices in recent years, it is not at all uncommon for middle class families to live in $600,000 homes.

The IRS vs. Foreign Investment:  Foreigners have invested more than $1 trillion in capital in the United States since 1984, when Congress and the Reagan administration established a policy of not taxing interest they earn on U.S. bank deposits.  This influx of capital will be jeopardized if a proposed IRS rule is implemented.

Tax Cuts and the Rich:  High tax rates on the wealthy may make the promoters of economic class warfare feel good, but they do not raise revenue for the federal government.

Pennsylvania Voters Want Property Tax Reform; Legislators Ignore Them.  "This poll confirms what policymakers have known for years," said Matthew J. Brouillette, president of the Harrisburg-based Commonwealth Foundation.  "Pennsylvanians want the same protections that citizens in an overwhelming majority of other states have.  They want the power to approve or veto future school property tax increases."

What is the FairTax?  The FairTax, pending in Congress as HR 25 and S 1493, is a non-partisan proposal that would abolish all federal income taxes, including payroll, self-employment, alternative minimum, income, capital gains, corporate, and death taxes, replacing them with a simple, visible, federal sales tax.

They're gaining in the poles…
Wooden Telephone Pole Tax.  An attempt to raise taxes on New Hampshire phone calls.  The magic show where politicians claim businesses can make money appear from nowhere used to be convincing.  But today's economically savvy voters will no longer be fooled by this sleight-of-hand pick-pocket scam that has too often left them wondering where their money has gone.  Voters today know that, in the end, only people pay taxes.

 Editor's Note:   What would be the purpose of taxing telephone poles, and what good could result from this tax?  Is this just a way to compel people to switch to cell phones?  Or was this proposal cooked up by a tree-hugging liberal who opposes the harvesting of trees?  (Does the tax apply to metal poles, too?)  In any event, there aren't very many new telephone poles installed on a typical day, except after a storm, and there certainly aren't many poles which carry telephone lines exclusively — most carry power lines and other utilities as well.

The FICA slush fund:  This time each year, as we all go through the ritual torture of filling out our income-tax forms, we hear a crescendo of complaints from friends, neighbors and co-workers about how unfair, complex, onerous and contradictory the tax code is — and they're right.

Simplify the Tax Code with a Flat Tax:  The income-tax system began in 1913 as a two-page form backed by 14 pages of law. Today, we struggle with 742 different forms and 254 separate publications, backed by more than 17,000 pages of law.

The "progressive" taxman cometh.  In an ideal world, every person and every corporation would pay the same tax rate on their income, with no deductions for anything.  A universal flat tax rate would be fair, and for most people, the rate would be lower than the rate now being paid.  A single tax rate would reduce the IRS bureaucracy to a mere shadow of itself.  Tax attorneys and CPAs would need to find productive work.  First-time employees and low-wage earners could assume the same tax responsibility everyone else bears.  Tax returns could, indeed, be no more complicated than a postcard.

The U.S. Income Tax Burden: An Analysis of CBO Numbers.  An enormous percentage of taxes are payed by a minority of Americans.  The Top 1% of taxpayers pay 29% of all taxes.  The Top 5% of taxpayers pay 50% of all taxes.

Tax system punishes success:  According to tax data released by the IRS in 2000, the top 5 percent of wage earners pay nearly 57 percent of all income taxes collected annually; the top 10 percent pay 67.3 percent; the top 50 percent pay more than 96 percent of all income taxes.

High Tax Republicans Replacing "Tax and Spend" Democrats?  A new tax revolt may be in the works.  Only this time, the "bad guys" are Republicans.  Taxpayers in several states are complaining the GOP politicians they put in office are acting like Democrats when it comes to spending their hard-earned dollars.

Theft of your labors:  Americans collectively spend more on government today than they do on food, clothing and shelter combined.  Much of that biggest expense in their budget is based on this wacky notion of the sliding scale.  You pay one price, your neighbor pays another.  And those who pay the most get the least in return.

Winning The War Over Liberalism:  A review of "Let Freedom Ring — Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism", by Sean Hannity.  "Government spending is at an all-time high.  And the tax burden is at a record high, having skyrocketed during the Clinton-Gore years," Hannity writes.

Death to the death tax:  It's time for the Senate to join the House in repealing, once and for all, the socialistic death tax monster, whose only remaining purpose is to serve as ammunition for class warfare demagogues.

Does Bigger Government Help the Poor?  Higher tax burdens are associated with greater poverty.  Big government that is tax-financed is more likely to add, rather than subtract, from poverty rolls.

This next one is a broken link, but I'm trying to track it down somewhere else.
 Evaluating the Incentives to Stay in the Welfare System:  A family with $12,600 in earnings before taxes pays $1,251 in taxes but gets back an EITC of $2,247 for a total of $13,596.  [A negative income tax!]

What's the Worst Tax for Texas?  A new study unveiled in Midland finds that an income tax would be a drag on Texas' economy, and suggests that reliance on sales taxes and user-fees will harm economic growth the least.

Collection Contributions:  The IRS uses an illegal quota system that rewards agents for the amount of money they collect.

"Global Tax Police" Under Scrutiny:  House Majority Leader Dick Armey says a Paris organization is trying to initiate a "global network of tax police" targeting low-tax nations such as the United States.

Income Tax Withholding Called "Triumph of Big Government":  Americans are now in their 60th year of having income taxes withheld from their paychecks.  And the National Taxpayers Union, no friend of the Internal Revenue Service, is condemning the law for having created a "bloated" welfare state that lacks accountability and punishes taxpayers.

Maine tops in taxes per person:  Mainers paid 14.5 percent of what they earned to the state and local government for income, sales and property taxes, the New York Times reported recently.  New Yorkers came in second place at 14.2 percent.


"The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets."
— Will Rogers          


Part 1.1 — The Proposed "Odometer Tax"

Odometer tax proposal likely to stall:  Transportation chief says fees on miles driven would turn all roads into "toll booths."  (This is a very bad idea, but taxpayers are spending $700,000 to study it!)  "Fears about spying are unfounded, said David Forkenbrock, director of the University of Iowa's Public Policy Center.  The system would only track miles traveled, not destinations..., Forkenbrock said."

Similar story:  Big Brother eyes taxes by the mile:  State considers space-based technology to collect revenue.

Obama's transportation goal:  coercing people out of cars.  Liberals love Ray LaHood because he is the type of Republican who wants government to control more of American life.  When President Obama named him secretary of transportation, it was not so much an act of bipartisanship as an expression of ideological solidarity.  About a month into his tenure, LaHood told the Associated Press that the administration should consider taxing people for every mile they drive their car, a system that would require tracking people's movements.

State Tracking Of Auto Movements By GPS Called "Nutty":  If a proposal by an Oregon State task force becomes law, the government would be able to use satellite equipment to keep track of each driver's mileage and tax that driver accordingly in order to pay for road repairs.

The Wacky World of Oil:  Taxes — at every level — are the major component of gasoline.  All states tack on the standard Federal Excise Tax and a State Excise Tax, and many cities and counties throughout the USA add local sales, usage and consumption taxes.  New York, California and a dozen other states add a sales tax to top it off.  That's right, they tax the tax.  Add in the taxes … and perhaps 50% of the cost of our gasoline goes to the government.

More about odometer taxes.


Part 2 — The IRS:

Debate brews over expansion of Internal Revenue Service's work force.  Health reform may have finally become law, but the partisan wars over the bill continue to rage — and the latest flash point is a debate about whether the $940 billion overhaul means thousands of new government workers are about to bloat the federal payroll.  Republicans lawmakers are warning the law would put as many as 16,000 new Internal Revenue Service agents and workers on the streets.

Do as the IRS says, not as it does.  Important government documents are often shielded from Freedom of Information Act requests because of an exemption in the law that allows federal departments and agencies to withhold materials created before the issuance of an official policy.  It's known as the "internal deliberative process" exemption and it enables officials to withhold virtually all memoranda, e-mails, studies, or other documents created by agency employees or contractors as part of the policymaking process. ... But don't expect the government to extend the same privilege it demands for itself to private companies.

Obamacare's Hit Man.  Last week the Congressional Budget Office reported that it expects that the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Health and Human Services will spend up to an additional $200 billion over the next decade on administering Obamacare.  That's in addition to the estimated $1 trillion that will be spent in 2014-2019 under the new healthcare law.  Much of the money will go to hiring hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats to administer Obamacare over the next decade.

IRS Commissioner Can't Say How Many New Agents IRS Will Need to Enforce Obamacare.  Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman said at the National Press Club on Monday [4/5/2010] that the IRS cannot say how many new agents it will need to enforce the new health care law signed by President Barack Obama last month.

16,500 More Reasons to Vote Republican in November.  Thanks to the Democrats, the most hated agency in America, the IRS, just got 16,500 agents bigger.  By sprinkling in an additional 16,500 IRS agents into their health care mix, the Democrats may have just placed upon their own backs a backbreaking straw.

IRS chief:  Buy health insurance or lose your tax refund.  Individuals who don't purchase health insurance may lose their tax refunds according to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman.  After acknowledging the recently passed health-care bill limits the agency's options for enforcing the individual mandate, Shulman told reporters that the most likely way to penalize individuals that don't comply is by reducing or confiscating their tax refunds.

IRS Agent Didn't Report $41,842 in EBay Sales.  An Internal Revenue Service officer was found liable for back taxes and penalties for not reporting income on nearly 2,000 transactions on EBay Inc., the online auction site, according to the U.S. Tax Court.  Andrea Fabiana Orellana failed to report $41,842 in income in 2004 and 2005 from sales of designer clothing, shoes and other items, according to a Tax Court summary opinion.

Obamacare expands IRS authority, may cause greater tax non-compliance.  Not only does the Democratic health care bill include tax hikes, as reported by Americans for Tax Reform, it also would expand the role of the Internal Revenue Service.

IRSteroids.  As if the Internal Revenue Service doesn't have enough power, the agency says it will regulate tax preparers.  And ObamaCare gives it even more clout.

Small-Business Owners Fret Over Large IRS Fines.  Five years ago, car-wash owner Orman Wilson set up a pension plan for himself and six employees. ... Mr. Wilson, the owner of 19 coin-operated car washes in Houston, says he relied on four advisers, including a certified public accountant, to set up a plan that received approval from the Internal Revenue Service.  Then, in late 2007, the IRS found fault with the plan and assessed it $250,000 — plus special penalties of $1.2 million.

IRS fraudulent refunds total an estimated $318M.  Internal Revenue Service gave away $318 million in improper refunds this year because a computer program that screens tax returns for fraud wasn't working, according to a report released Friday [9/1/2006].

Long list of politically motivated IRS audits.  Anecdotes are evidence, when presented in sufficient quantity.

Apparently there is some evidence in the the Barrett Report that the IRS was used as a weapon by the Clinton Administration, which is why the report is being aggressively suppressed.  If the public ever finds out that the IRS has been used in such a manner, the fund-raising arm of the government would be in big trouble.  Politicians might have to stop spending money so recklessly.  Who knows what might happen then?

David vs. Goliath of Governmental Agencies.  One of the most hideous ways the Internal Revenue Service usurps power and control over Americans is through its oppression over nonprofits, especially religious groups.  Threatening to withdraw tax-exempt status and to levy penalties are just a couple of ways it exercises its tyranny.  For example, April 3, Catholic Answers, one of the nation's largest lay-run apologetic (or defense) ministries for the Catholic movement, filed suit in federal court against the IRS for violating its right to free speech.

Welcome To The Ministry of Propaganda.  Photo ops and access to the inner halls of government have become more and more a matter of providing favorable publicity to that government.  Asking hard questions and informing the public, is now in the back seat.  The press has found itself vulnerable to government coercion.  They can be excluded, their credentials revoked.  Then the IRS attacked World Net Daily some years ago, at the apparent instigation of the Clinton White House.  So much for honesty, transparency, and good government.

No Word From I.R.S. on Protest by Pastors.  Nearly seven months after defying a prohibition on endorsing candidates from the pulpit, 33 churches across the country are still waiting to learn whether the Internal Revenue Service will take action against them.

Lawyer gets 5-cent IRS bill, 4-cent refund.  James Howarth is a little confused by two letters he has received from the Internal Revenue Service.  The Detroit defense lawyer received one letter in November that said he owed the IRS money — five cents.  He was warned that he should pay "to avoid additional penalty and/or interest," the Detroit Free Press reported Saturday.  Howarth said he then received a second letter telling him the government owes him money — four cents.

The Editor asks...
 Is there no "sanity check" built in to the IRS computers?

IRS Workers Stealing Your Cash!  Think your income tax check is safe when you send it off to the IRS?  Think again. An ABC News investigation has uncovered case after case of checks being stolen, manipulated and cashed by contract employees responsible for processing them, resulting in delayed payments and heavily disrupted lives.

IRS, Justice Target Undisclosed Assets In Swiss Accounts.  A lawyer who specializes in tax cases, [Edward M.] Robbins thinks the government is gearing up to prosecute large numbers of Americans for failing to disclose foreign accounts on their tax returns and evading taxes on income generated by the accounts.  "If I were one of these guys with 10 to 50 million in my account, I'd be having an aneurysm," Robbins said.  "It's an extremely dangerous situation for these guys.

FBI Twist in Spitzer Probe.  Gov. Spitzer is being blamed for siccing the FBI on Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno — after earlier accusations that he unleashed the State Police, and tried to unleash the Internal Revenue Service, on him as well.

Scrap the tax code.  The tax code now exceeds a staggering 60,000 pages, prompting Americans to waste 6.2 billion hours just completing their returns every year.  Deciphering it costs the country $203.4 billion a year, according to the Tax Foundation.  Its complexities generate additional job-killing distortions throughout our economy.  Indeed, the tax code is so complicated and expansive that it now touches nearly every aspect of our lives.

I.R.S. Enlists Help in Collecting Delinquent Taxes.  If you owe back taxes to the federal government, the next call asking you to pay may come not from an Internal Revenue Service officer, but from a private debt collector.  Within two weeks, the I.R.S. will turn over data on 12,500 taxpayers — each of whom owes $25,000 or less in back taxes — to three collection agencies.  Larger debtors will continue to be pursued by I.R.S. officers.

Sick-Leave Abuse Prompts Calls to Compensate for Unused Time.  At the Internal Revenue Service, one employee over a two-year period took sick leave on 13 of the 14 Tuesdays after a Monday holiday.  That's an extreme case of sick-leave abuse, but the IRS employee had plenty of co-workers who also liked to take Tuesdays off, a report by the Inspector General for Tax Administration found.

The Editor says...
 Most private companies would fire an employee like that, but when you work for Uncle Sam, your job is safe no matter what kind of goldbrick you are.

1040 Checkmate?  On May 12, 2006 in Peoria, Illinois, the attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) begged the court to dismiss all charges against IRS victim Robert Lawrence in federal District Court.  The motion for dismissal came on the heels of a surprise tactic by Lawrence's defense attorney Oscar Stilley.  The tactic threatened exposure of IRS's on-going efforts to defraud the public.  The move put DOJ attorneys in a state of panic that left them with only one alternative:  beg for dismissal, with prejudice.

This was written in 1995:
 Why You Can't Trust the IRS:
• The IRS telephone taxpayer assistance program provides about 8.5 million Americans the wrong answers to even the most basic inquiries about the tax laws.

• This year roughly 10 million Americans will receive correction notices from the IRS assessing about $4 billion.  About half of those notices will be erroneous.

• About 40 percent of the revenues the IRS collects through penalty assessments are abated when citizens challenge the penalties.  In 1993 taxpayers were over-charged $5 billion.

• A General Accounting Office audit of the IRS in 1993 found widespread evidence of financial malfeasance and gross negligence.  The IRS could not account for 64 percent of its congressional appropriation.
Taming the IRS Pit Bulls:  As IRS agents scan the country looking for the truck driver or restaurant worker who might have cheated the government out of a few bucks, a loophole in the tax code allows major corporations to hide millions of dollars from their tax liability by opening sham offices in Bermuda.

Is the NEA a 'terrorist organization'?  Shortly after stepping off the stage that night to a standing ovation, I was given a message from an angry supporter of the liberal education plan I was opposing.  "You can count on an audit by the IRS," I was told.  I really did not take the comment seriously but, to my amazement, within a matter of a few short weeks, I had my IRS audit notice. ... And since I was not only being critical of the Clinton's education agenda, but also the NEA and PTA, should I have been shocked to be the recipient of extreme and untrue insults, much less the harassment of an IRS audit?

Did someone mention the Teachers' unions?

IRS Policies Result in Unnecessary Taxpayer Harassment.  The National Taxpayer Advocate's report confirms that being honest is simply not good enough when it comes to dealing with the IRS.  The reason is that in all but a few instances, the burden is on taxpayers to prove they do not owe taxes.  The IRS rarely has to prove a person does owe taxes.  The question, moreover, seldom has anything to do with whether the person is a cheater or not.

Top Half of U.S. Income Earners See Tax Burdens Grow.  As the annual tax filing deadline approaches, many public officials traditionally use the occasion to launch into a debate about the fairness of the nation tax laws. … IRS figures released late last year for Tax Year 2003 (for which returns were filed in 2004) show the richest Americans shoulder a disproportionate burden of the federal income tax, and the burden is getting heavier.

AMT Sending Tens of Thousands to Financial Ruin.  Tens of thousands of Americans face financial ruin because they voluntarily reported incentive stock options to the Internal Revenue Service.

When they audited the IRS.  A funny thing happened when the Treasury Department audited the Internal Revenue Service.  It discovered that the IRS was not treating all employers equally.

IRS Laptop Lost With Data on 291 People.  An Internal Revenue Service employee lost an agency laptop early last month that contained sensitive personal information on 291 workers and job applicants, a spokesman said yesterday [6/10/2006].  The IRS's Terry L. Lemons said the employee checked the laptop as luggage aboard a commercial flight while traveling to a job fair and never saw it again.  The computer contained unencrypted names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and fingerprints of the employees and applicants, Lemons said.

Did someone mention lost luggage?

Are your tax records safe?  The Treasury Department last month admitted investigating thousands of cases of IRS employees improperly snooping through taxpayer records.  And although this led to 1,600 "adverse personnel actions" and 126 criminal prosecutions, Treasury officials concede "there has not been a noticeable decrease" over the last eight years in the number of IRS bureaucrats who gain unauthorized access to confidential data.

IRS workers' online time not all work-related.  A sampling of Internal Revenue Service employees found that they used about half their online time at work to visit sex sites, gamble, trade stocks, participate in chat rooms and do other non-work-related activity, the Treasury Department's inspector general said.

Privacy in a Free Country:  In Search of Reasonable Principles.  When more than 500 Internal Revenue Service agents were caught illegally snooping through tax records of thousands of Americans in 1995, only five were fired.  After the IRS developed new privacy protection measures, hundreds more agents were caught doing the same thing again in 1997.

IRS Error Rate Still High.  The January 2004 report of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration confirms the IRS's error rate for advice it gives at its hundreds of walk-in Taxpayer Assistance Centers remains unacceptably high.  The report reveals the IRS provided "flatly incorrect answers 20 percent of the time."  In another 15 percent of the cases, the IRS provided a "correct" answer without first obtaining the background information necessary to provide a correct answer — a serious oversight when providing tax advice.

The Press And Scientology:  For years, Scientology fought a battle with the IRS because the government would not recognize its claim to be a religion.  The IRS finally granted Scientology its desired status under President Bill Clinton, the recipient of massive donations from the Hollywood glitterati.

Politics and IRS Audit Rates.  Congress created the IRS Oversight Board in 1998 after the Senate Finance Committee held public hearings, the first in twenty years, on IRS abuses.  For days the committee heard testimony from angry taxpayers who recounted horror stories of overly aggressive revenue agents exercising seemingly boundless power.  At the conclusion of the hearings the Finance Committee labeled the IRS a rogue agency, but took no direct responsibility for reining it in.

IRS Gives Tax Deduction For Sex Change Operations.  The Massachusetts-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders has recently won a complaint against the IRS over tax deductions for so-called "sex change" operations.  The IRS apparently bought GLAD's bogus argument that sex changes are medically necessary for individuals suffering from Gender Dysphoria.

The Rainforest Action Network:  Major corporations are in the crosshairs of the Rainforest Action Network.  This radical environmentalist group regularly resorts to illegal "direct action" tactics and even exploits school kids in order to intimidate and shake down its business adversaries.  So why does the IRS still grant RAN tax-exempt status?

Survey shows 96% of respondents want IRS Commissioner Rossotti brought to justice.  An overwhelming number of respondents believe that IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti should be criminally prosecuted for conducting politically-motivated audits for the Clinton Administration.  IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti conducted several audits of Clinton's opponents, including women associated with [Clinton] and several non-profit conservative organizations.

Corruption at the IRS:  IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti sued over criminal conflict of interest and cover-up.  "As IRS Commissioner, Rossotti has made decisions concerning a company he founded (and which he still owned stock) that is a major contractor with the IRS."

JFK used audits to silence critics:  In "Power to Destroy:  The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon," author John A. Andrew III presents new evidence for what he calls "the utilization of the Internal Revenue Service in what became a covert effort to discredit the right and undercut its sources of support" as part of "a broad assault on the right wing by the Kennedy administration."

Global reach of the IRS:  The tax burden on Americans living abroad is so great that many are renouncing their U.S. citizenship to avoid paying the IRS.  The United States is one of just four countries that taxes its citizens even if they are living and working abroad, and it is the only country that insists its citizens pay taxes on global income, capital gains and estates.

The Structure of the IRS:  Collection Division.  The IRS will not leave you alone until you pay up.  They know where you live.  They will bother, harass, nag and pester you until you pay.  They will write, call and visit you until they get their money.  They may even pursue your family after you die!

Reporter targeted by IRS?  Agency circulates in-house memo about "nasty" journalist.

What to Do When the IRS Comes Knocking.

Reference material:  Internal Revenue Manual.

Are you likely to be audited?  Report sees 30% lower chance in "politically protected" districts.

The IRS seems to be used occasionally as a weapon.  You may recall the story of Patricia and Glenn Mendoza, who were arrested for shouting at Bill Clinton in Chicago in 1996.  Of course they were later audited by the IRS.

SBSC Outraged by Calls to Increase Audits of Small Businesses:  The Small Business Survival Committee (SBSC) declared its outrage today [2/14/2003] at the suggestion made by the Sierra Club earlier this week that the IRS should "aggressively audit" businesses that purchase sport utility vehicles, or SUVs.

Juanita's Audit and America's Pravda Press:  Another compilation of dirty tricks.

Protect Your Church From The IRS.  Proposed legislation reverses a 1954 amendment by then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson that permanently extended the reach of the IRS into our nation's churches.  This bill says that the message a church preaches is answerable only to God and not to Caesar — the IRS.

Congress Will Hold Hearing:  Is Income Tax Legitimate? :  In less than two months, Washington may officially acknowledge that you could have been paying your income taxes all these years under a measure that is not valid.

Note:  These hearings were about to take place in the middle of September, 2001, but by then there were more pressing concerns in Washington.

"Walkaround" protest planned for IRS.  A group that says the 16th Amendment -- which ushered in the federal income tax -- was never properly ratified is planning a "walkaround" protest at the Internal Revenue Service building.  The tax-reform group says action aimed at educating Americans.

Stealth IRS changes mean millions of new tax forms.  The massive expansion of requirements for businesses to file 1099 tax forms that was hidden in the 2,409-page health reform bill took many by surprise when it came to light last month.  But it's just one piece of a years-long legislative stealth campaign to create ways for the federal government to track down unreported income.


The Barrett Report

The public needs to see the Barrett report.  [Sen. Byron Dorgan], along with several crafty Democrats, has been attempting to deny the public the contents of an Independent Counsel's report that is believed to contain evidence of serious corruption and misuse of the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department back in the Clinton Administration.  In this cover-up the Democrats have had assistance from a few dubious Republicans.  It is time to let the public see this report.

Publish the Barrett report now.  At issue was the publication of a report by David Barrett, an independent counsel who has spent the better part of a decade looking into some of the most hair-raising allegations of presidential malfeasance in American history.

Protecting the IRS:  The political significance is that the Barrett report's shocking allegations of high-level corruption in the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department are likely to be concealed from the public and from Congress.  A recently passed appropriations bill, intended to permit release of this report, was altered behind closed doors to ensure that its politically combustible elements never saw the light of day.

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