A fresh Op-Ed this morning by IRS head Steven Miller reveals the lengths to which the IRS and the White House are going to spin the on-going scandal. “The agency was simply trying to manage the explosive growth in applications for 501(c)(4) status that started pouring in to the IRS in 2010. The Internal Revenue Service recognizes that we should have done a better job of handling | Read More »
With all the reports coming in fast and furiously from different news agencies, here’s a pieced-together timeline of events. The information below is a timeline of events taken from numerous media outlets with their links provided. Early 2010: WSJ: The report [Inspector General’s report due out this week] indicates that in 2010 and 2011, some IRS workers weren’t just singling out groups because their names | Read More »
It is an outrage that Gov. Andrew Cuomo is spending up to $140 million of taxpayer money and funds received for disaster relief, to publicize the advantages of conducting business in New York. New York is indisputably one of the most unfriendly business states, with a Legislature that piles huge administrative burdens onto businesses and a Department of Taxation that is among the most aggressive | Read More »
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s website proudly proclaims “as the mother of two young children, Senator Gillibrand knows that working families are struggling in this difficult economy.” But Sen. Gillibrand’s positions regarding the economy don’t support such a statement. When Gillibrand appeared on Meet The Press on April 21, she stated that she refuses to support even the trivial chain “CPI” adjustment of Social Security benefits “because | Read More »
Arthur Laffer wrote a decent article recently in the WSJ regarding the merits of the internet sales tax being considered this week in Congress. He is correct when he asserts that “the principle of levying the lowest possible tax rate on the broadest possible tax base is the way to improve the incentives to work, save and produce—which are necessary to reinvigorate the American economy | Read More »
In a twist of irony, “Big Government” Bloomberg has admitted that NYC is at the edge of a fiscal precipice. “There is no practical ways to pay our workforce given the current environment, current tax structure, current other obligations we have more than what we have been doing, with the possible exception of dramatically raising taxes”. Bloomberg points to public service unions as being among | Read More »
A couple of weeks ago, I spoke at a gathering of higher-income earners. The bulk of the discussion was a comparison of what this bracket of folks just paid in 2012 vs what they will pay in higher taxes in 2013. Some of those taxes had to do with the implementation of Obamacare and the new taxes associated with it. However, many do not realize | Read More »
April 29, 2013 marks four years without a true operating budget for our country. 1461 days and running. In the realm of budget history, April 29 is an historic day. First, an interesting juxtaposition exists between April 29, 1909 and April 29, 2009. On April 29, 1909, the world’s biggest Superpower — Great Britain — introduced the “People’s Budget”, which is famously noted for being | Read More »
John Steele Gordon’s recent Op-Ed in the WSJ opened with following observation: “The question of how to fairly and equitably tax capital gains has been a political problem since the modern personal-income tax was adopted in 1913”. Being a business/financial historian, he gives an adequate overview of the history of capital gains and how it has reached its present state. But because he is not | Read More »
Peter Ferrara pens a fantastic Op-Ed in Forbes this morning. He documents the myriad inaccuracies claimed by the Obama Administration regarding his new budget, the staggering amount of spending contained therein, and the additional taxes to be levied. He also does some cost comparison to Ryan’s budget and dispels the myth of the tax cut vs tax credit, (a point I have made many, many times as | Read More »
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}