Tag: taxes

Joe Selvaggi engages in a conversation with Pioneer Institute’s Eileen McAnneny, Senior Fellow for Economic Opportunity, to analyze the status of the 2024 budget. They compare actual revenue and spending with pre-July 1 estimates, investigating potential reasons for any surpluses or shortfalls. They also dive into policy implications for legislators as they approach fiscal 2025.

 

Keeping a Tax Clash from Going Out of Bounds

 

For the past few years, many progressives have made it a high priority to impose on the superrich an annual wealth tax that takes hold even on those whose wealth declines in a given year—or, failing that, to impose a tax on unrealized income (i.e., simple accretions of wealth by people who have not sold or otherwise disposed of their property). These proposals looked to be off the table until the decision of the Supreme Court to hear Moore v. United States (2023) put the matter into high relief.

Moore started out as a technical tax dispute when the government sought to collect $14,729 in taxes from Charles and Kathleen Moore under the mandatory repatriation tax (MRT) part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 on income trapped in a corporation by the MRT’s regulations. But the case quickly attracted greater attention because the Moores claimed that the MRT tax was unconstitutional because gain had not been realized—that is, distributed from the corporation to the Moores. They stated that the case presented this question:

Whether the Sixteenth Amendment authorizes Congress to tax unrealized sums without apportionment among the states.

Joe Selvaggi discusses the cost and consequences of the $1.5 trillion decade-long subsidies in the farm bill with Chris Edwards, Chair of Fiscal Studies at the Cato Institute. These subsidies have the potential to negatively impact incentives for consumers, producers, and those concerned about the environment.

Joe Selvaggi talks with Pacific Legal Foundation’s state legal policy deputy, attorney Jim Manley, about home equity theft, a practice that has taken 350 properties in Massachusetts, dispossessing homeowners of more than $50 million in equity. They discussed the case that the PLF took to the Supreme Court and won, rendering the laws in the 21 other states that practice it unconstitutional.

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Join Jim and Greg as they cheer the impending resignation of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, whose years in power were most notably marked by draconian COVID policies and unilaterally outlawing the right to own many different weapons. They also shake their heads as some House Republicans propose a national 30 percent sales tax to replace all other federal taxes. They appreciate the effort to simplify the code and hope discussions continue but fear this plan will only be used by Democrats to hammer Republicans. Finally, they respond to former Vice President Al Gore bellowing about boiling oceans and a billion climate refugees.

This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards about the new report he co-authored entitled, “Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors 2022.” They discuss how Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s fiscal stewardship compares with other states, and explore whether higher tax rates and spending correlate with better state performance and resident satisfaction.

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DeSantis-Crist Debate: Used Car Salesman Available

 

The debate the other night between Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Gov. Charlie Crist offered actual meat coming from Gov. DeSantis, with the new fake plant-based meat coming from Crist. We’ve lived in Florida long enough to have lived under both governors. DeSantis delivered answers that belong to a real governor. He answered questions directly, based on real-life issues, both state and national, and his policies. For example:

He believes in teaching children the basics — math, reading, writing, history — and not distorting their young, fragile minds with confusing gender ideology, race-baiting, planet-worshiping, or any of today’s trends that young children should not be subjected to. He made it clear that parents decide their child’s health, which includes vaccines, their mental and emotional well-being, and their gender identity.

Schools are for teaching skills and all history — not selective, as it has always been. He rejected Common Core elements that left math and other skills more complicated than teaching needed to be, and heard teachers who wanted to teach and not be bound by countless tests — and a specific, nationally dictated curriculum. Teachers want to teach children, and share their gifts of enthusiasm for our country and all that it has to offer. I spoke to teachers and they told me so, and how they’ve been hampered by Common Core.

We Are Watching, Citizen…

 

It started innocently enough. A Facebook friend (and an actual friend) given to occasionally posting memes of a political nature, chose to post one I have seen countless times before. I am sure you have as well. It is the one that makes light of the “fact” that the federal government took over operation of the Mustang Ranch for back taxes and failed in the process. This time, however, Facebook was offended, blocking the view because “independent fact checkers” had declared it false.

Well, maybe. This particular meme has circulated for some time. It is amusing and innocuous whatever the accuracy. One more posting will not push civilization off a cliff. Nor is it the fact that Facebook chose to block it this time around. One can hardly criticize them for wanting to keep false claims off their website. No, it is the matter in which this meme, and one has to assume many other such items, was handled.

This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Rachel Greszler about the $80 billion investment in the Internal Revenue Service, focusing on the promise to limit enhanced enforcement to high earners and whether the IRS will likely need to expand its net.

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Quote of the Day: Taxpayers

 

“The taxpayer – that’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.” – Ronald Reagan

With the almost-certain passage of the Manchin-Schumer Bill, it appears they are raising our taxes again. But don’t worry, the new taxes will only be paid by people making more than $400,000 annually and corporations. Except it does not work that way. Those making more than $400K each year generally got there because they are smart. They will hire accountants and tax preparers to find ways to shelter that money and make less than $400K/year. As for corporations? They will pass the costs of the extra taxes to their customers in the form of increased prices. That results in inflation.

Join Jim and Greg as they find a glimmer of hope in Sen. Sinema’s silence thus far on the Manchin-Schumer bill. They also wince as another reports high inflation is here for at least several more months. And they shake their heads as Dr. Oz is polling at just 36 percent in Pennsylvania and is badly trailing an opponent who hasn’t campaigned in more than two months.

 

Join Jim and Greg as they cheer the latest announcement from Sen. Joe Manchin that he will not support the left’s climate agenda or tax increases in the latest attempt to revive what’s left of the Build Back Better agenda. They also dig into reports that text messages from Secret Service devices are missing from January 5-6, 2021, and that is sparking fierce condemnation from all political angles. And they hammer Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallegos for saying a congressional candidate in his state is not an authentic Latina because she took her husband’s last name.

 

This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with Greg Sullivan, Senior Fellow at Pioneer Institute and author of Back to Taxachusetts?, about the link between Massachusetts’s decision to reduce tax rates and a generation-long economic renaissance – and the reasons why new taxes such as the proposed, so-called “Fair Share Amendment” risk taking us back to economic stagnation or decline.

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[Member Post]

 

The wealthiest of the wealthy support Democrats. Not only voting for them, not only donating millions to them, not only funding dark money PACs to swing elections for them, but perhaps actually buying elections for them including the presidency. Now, the president they elected wants to stick them with a big tax bill. Dubbed the […]

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Join Jim and Greg as they cover President Biden’s State of the Union address, its contradictions, and Biden’s insistence on doubling down on failed policies. They also discuss the problems at the pump many Americans are facing and how the White House’s current strategy to bring down costs doesn’t work. And Ukrainian forces have eliminated an elite Chechen assassination unit, keeping President Volodymyr Zelenesky alive in the face of the imminent Russian siege of Kiev.

Join Jim and Greg as they cheer the decision of Americans to leave high-tax blue states like New York, California, and Illinois and move to free states like Idaho, Utah, Texas, and Florida. But they do have one request for these new arrivals! They also cringe as the evidence seems to pile up that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine early next year. And they discuss President Biden’s bewildering response to a question about whether his administration was unprepared for the Omicron variant.

Tax Schemes That Won’t Pay Off

 

Right now, Washington’s fevered political atmosphere is abuzz with taxation proposals to plug the funding gap created by President Biden’s slimmed-down $1.85 trillion Build Back Better program. Biden has no modest fiscal ambitions: he wants to introduce a huge new system of transfer payments to those at the bottom of the income scale, paid for by taxes that are imposed solely on the richest segment of the population, leaving just about everyone else untouched. His two major policy options—in an on-again-off-again fashion—appear to be a tax on the unrealized appreciation targeted to those who have more than $1 billion in assets or $100 million in income, and a 15 percent minimum corporate tax that Biden asserts will make big business pay its “fair share.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi touts this program as “something major, transformative, historic, and bigger than anything else” that Congress has ever attempted—which is exactly why a thumbs-down verdict is warranted, even before its details are laid out. One key classical liberal requirement for good government is the stability of key social institutions, including, prominently, taxation. Stability does not entail total stasis; after all, government must be able to respond to a changed global environment which, whether anticipated or not, may require rapid revisions in revenue needs. But stability does caution against making major structural changes in short time periods, without anticipating the range of complications bound to follow sudden social transitions.

The new system’s administrative costs, the high likelihood of technical error, and the nonstop, evasive maneuvers of targeted taxpayers to avoid or minimize the new tax regime make it a virtual certainty that tax revenues will fall short of projections. Overall economic growth, meanwhile, will likely falter, often with unanticipated distributional consequences that make both the rich and poor worse off.

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with Kyle Pomerleau, senior fellow on federal tax policy at American Enterprise Institute about the Build Back Better Act now in Congress, to understand how those new taxes will affect individuals, business, and the economy.

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