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Posts tagged as:
Taxes
Obama Budget Seeks $1.1 Trillion in Tax Hikes
President would increase taxes on some businesses and wealthy individuals by a total of about $1.4 trillion over the next decade, while cutting taxes for workers and other businesses by about $330 billion.
While President Barack Obama is proposing to cut some taxes for companies that hire workers, his budget would raise a host of other taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals.
The budget proposal released Monday would extend Obama’s signature Making Work Pay tax credit — $400 for individuals, $800 for a couple filing jointly — through 2011. But it would also impose nearly $1 trillion in higher taxes on couples making more than $250,000 and individuals making more than $200,000 by not renewing tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush. Obama would extend Bush-era tax cuts for families and individuals making less.
Federal Government to Grow to 2.15 Million Employees in 2010
The Obama administration projects the number of employees on the government payroll will grow to 2.15 million this year, reportedly making it the largest federal workforce in modern history and fueling criticism over the size of government.
The Washington Times reported Wednesday that the bulk of the increase is on the civilian side, which is expected to grow by 153,000 workers in 2010.
The expansion means the workforce will top 2 million for the first time since President Clinton declared that “the era of big government is over,” according to the newspaper.
The expansion comes even as Obama calls for cutting the deficit and imposing a three-year freeze on some non-security spending.
Written By: Jake Tapper
President Obama veered off script – and away from the facts – when he spoke about the stimulus bill today in Nashua, NH.
“Now, if you hear some of the critics, they’ll say, well, the Recovery Act, I don’t know if that’s really worked, because we still have high unemployment,” the president said. “But what they fail to understand is that every economist, from the left and the right, has said, because of the Recovery Act, what we’ve started to see is at least a couple of million jobs that have either been created or would have been lost. The problem is, 7 million jobs were lost during the course of this recession.”
Um, it’s not true that “every economist” has said the Recovery Act has saved or created two million jobs.
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What Every American Should Know About the National Debt
Written By: Patricia Murphy
Q. Say America was a person, how much credit card debt would America have?
A. Let’s put it this way: Spending last year was about $3.5 trillion. The deficit was $1.42 trillion, which means that revenues were about $2.1 trillion. So $2.1 trillion is equal to their annual income.
The total national debt right now is $12.3 trillion. So we owe five to six times more than we make every year. But that’s not the big deal.
In addition to that, there is another $45 trillion to $50 trillion in unfunded obligations that are off the balance sheet, which I think you ought to count. Medicare is the biggest part of it by far, and Social Security is a large part, too. So in reality, we owe between 25 and 30 times what we make every year.
Q. Is that like a balloon payment for a person, looming out there and we know we’re going to owe it?
A. It’s kind of like the mortgage-related sub-prime crisis, where there were a lot of off-balance-sheet obligations and contingencies that manifested themselves. I draw a lot of analogies between the mortgage-related subprime and the government’s finances, in that we want to avoid a super-sub-prime crisis.
Q. For somebody going through their day, gassing up the car, dropping off the kids and going to work, why does the debt matter? How does it affect their lives?
A. We’re mortgaging the future of the country, and their children and grandchildren. At the same time, because of the growth of spending, we’re reducing the role of investments in our future because the budget on the discretionary side is getting squeezed at a time when America is facing growing competition in a global economy.
Also, there are two kinds of taxes: current taxes and deferred taxes. To the extent that we’re not paying our way now, somebody is going to end up having to pay down the road.
Q. When you say our children and grandchildren will pay for it, does that mean they will literally have higher taxes?
A. Much higher. If we don’t end up reforming our ways, federal taxes will have to double within the next 20 to 30 years, just to stop the bleeding.
Tax Cuts to Expire for Top Earners
Written By: MARTIN VAUGHAN
Taxes on high-income earners would rise by nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years, under the budget plan put forward by President Barack Obama on Monday.
The bulk of that increase comes as tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush expire at the end of 2010.
The top two income-tax rates, which affect people earning more than $200,000 a year, or $250,000 for married couples, will return to 36% and 39.6%, from 33% and 35% now.
Under the budget plan, capital gains and dividends would be taxed at 20%, up from 15% now, for people at those income levels.
Limits on upper-income people’s ability to claim personal exemptions and itemized deductions will also snap back next year, without any action needed from Congress.
But as in last year’s budget, Mr. Obama proposed Monday to go further by limiting the value of those benefits, which include deductions for mortgage interest and some charitable contributions. The highest-income earners under current law can lower their taxes by up to 39.6% of those deductions; under Monday’s proposal, that would be reduced to 28%.
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The New York Post’s Andy Soltis reports that “New Yorkers are fleeing the state and city in alarming numbers — and costing a fortune in lost tax dollars.”
More than 1.5 million state residents left for other parts of the United States from 2000 to 2008, according to the report from the Empire Center for New York State Policy. It was the biggest out-of-state migration in the country.
The vast majority of the migrants, 1.1 million, were former residents of New York City — meaning one out of seven city taxpayers moved out.
“The Empire State is being drained of an invaluable resource — people,” the report said.
What’s worse is that the families fleeing New York are being replaced by lower-income newcomers, who consequently pay less in taxes.
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Why all the moving vans?The center, part of the conservative Manhattan Institute, blames the state’s high cost of living and high taxes.
Please read the entire article here:
Tax refugees staging escape from New York
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Today, hundreds of thousands of Americans are participating in tea parties in cities all across our nation. They are moms and dads, teachers and students, businessmen and women. They are Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and Independents and they are all protesting the same thing – out of control government spending and taxes.
Complicated
Albert Einstein said, “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.” We can only imagine what he would say of the insanity that it has become today.
According to the Tax Foundation’s 2009 Survey of U.S. Attitudes on Taxes, Government Spending and Wealth Distribution, 85% of adults say the federal tax code is complex and 82% say that the tax system needs to be completely overhauled.
In 1913, Form 1040 and instructions were four (4) pages long. In 2008, Form 1040 Instructions alone (without the actual tax forms) are 161 pages long.
The U.S. Tax Code contains upwards of 70,000 pages. Every year it gets more complex. In fact, the burden of compliance has become a tax of its own. Compliance costs are estimated at $300 billion a year. An estimated 60% of Americans use paid tax preparation services.
According to the IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service 2008 Report to Congress:
U.S. taxpayers and businesses spend about 7.6 billion hours a year complying with the filing requirements of the Internal Revenue Code.2 And that figure does not even include the millions of additional hours that taxpayers must spend when they are required to respond to an IRS notice or an audit.
If tax compliance were an industry, it would be one of the largest in the United States.
To consume 7.6 billion hours, the “tax industry” requires the equivalent of 3.8 million
full-time workers.
It’s clear to everyone but our elected officials that the American Tax Code needs and enema.
Alternatives
Today, there are three alternatives to our current federal income tax. They are, in no particular order: the Fair Tax, the Flat Tax, and No Tax.
You can find more information about each alternative at the following links:
“The difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.” – Will Rogers
According to the Tax Foundation, Tax Freedom Day in 2009 is on April 13th.
This is eight days earlier than in 2008, and a full two weeks earlier than in 2007, for two reasons: (1) the recession has reduced tax collections even faster than it has reduced income, and (2) the stimulus package includes large temporary tax cuts for 2009 and 2010. Nevertheless, Americans will pay more in taxes than they will spend on food, clothing and housing combined.
Source: The Tax Foundation’s Tax Freedom Day Report
Here is a chart that lists Tax Freedom Day by state.
Other interesting tax facts and commentary:
Glenn Beck Shorts 04-14-09 Tax Code Being Used as a Weapon
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