Tag Archives: taxes

What’s the Mayan Word for “Cliff”?

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Boy, I’m good. I finished Wednesday’s column with: “Plan B might not pass, but Plan C or D, or Q will find its way to the floors of the two Chambers before December 31 and will pass.”

Plan B is not going to pass as last night the House Republican Conference…

SIDEBAR

You might have noticed over the past 14 years that I refer to the assemblage of the GOP in the House and Senate as the “Republican Conference” and the Democrats as the “Democratic Caucus.” That’s what they call themselves. Continue reading →

President Obama on the Fiscal Cliff

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

For a ‘constitutional scholar’, President Obama sure doesn’t act like he knows who holds the cards in any negotiations on budget matters in Washington, DC.

Who does hold the cards?

The House of Representatives. Period. ‘All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House’ from Article 1 of the Constitution. There are multiple Committees on Authorization and Appropriations in the House and the Senate. None in the White House. Continue reading →

Soak the Rich

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

My friend, the smart Senate staffer, sent me this missive this morning. I thought I would share it with you:

“There is clearly a Democratic obsession with taxing the rich. Let’s go through a little fiscal arithmetic and take the Democrats’ tax increase obsession out to its logical conclusion.

From a purely political power acquisition perspective, it makes all the sense in the world. It’s been a constant theme of Democrats for many years. Not all, but most, tell the American people that all of our fiscal problems can be Continue reading →

High vs. Low-Income Earners

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

Income disparity is not as big as you may think, believe it or not.

Everyone is talking about ‘taxing the rich!’, ‘redistributing the wealth!’ and ‘income inequality!’ as if it is something from a fairy tale or something. If you didn’t know better, you would think you were reading history from the French Revolution (‘Off with their heads!) or the writings of Leon Trosky and the others who brought ‘income-equality’ (as in ‘low’ income for everyone but the rulers) in Soviet Russia for almost a century. Continue reading →

My Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

We were somewhat amused by President Obama and his political consultant David Axelrod ‘accusing’ Mitt Romney of ‘exploding the deficit’ with his ‘$5 trillion tax plan!’

Well, they should know, shouldn’t they? President Obama and his Administration have broken the world records for the accumulation of debt over the past 4 years. They are veritable experts at ‘exploding the deficit!’

President Obama and David Axelrod accusing Mitt Romney of ‘exploding the deficit’ is like Chicago mobster Al Capone ‘accusing’ squeaky-clean G-man Eliot Ness of illegally running bootlegged liquor during Prohibition. Continue reading →

Abusing Government Institutions: Part III

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

“The word is out. He hasn’t paid taxes for 10 years. Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t.”

Those were the words of the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, Harry Reid, speaking on the Senate Floor, leveling an accusation against Gov. Mitt Romney that he could not prove, for which he offered no evidence, and had every reason to believe was not true.

Reid’s attack on Romney was clearly calculated to goad the Governor into releasing more income tax returns. The tactic is pretty transparent. A person of Romney’s wealth has to have something in his income, or his tax deductions or his charitable contributions to the Mormon Church, or something else that the Democrats could exploit. Reid, who is a wealthy man, of course, has never released his. Continue reading →

Where’s Good News?

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Let’s start with Europe and work our way back.

The Greeks held elections last week and they have not been able to form a government since.

The leader of the “Leftist” party (read, Communist), Alexis Tsipras, has told the rest of the European Union that he believes Greece should ignore the promises it made to be bailed out and, in essence, go off on its own.

According to the New York Times, “European leaders have warned that if Greece does not keep its promises, Europe will stop financing it, which would quickly lead to Greece defaulting on its debts and leaving the euro zone, as the countries who share the common euro currency are known.”

I’m not exactly sure what the Greek version of “nanny-nanny-boo-boo” is, but Tsipras appears to be chanting it. If a coalition government cannot be formed, new elections will be called and polls indicate the anti-bailout candidates will gain strength. Continue reading →

Federal Retirement Reform Right Way

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

In the mid-1980’s, Social Security was going broke, as was the Federal government. And the retirement program for all Federal employees was in the cross-hairs of voters who thought it cost too much and was too generous to retirees.

I was thinking about the transition to the current Federal Employee Retirement System as I picked up a letter sent to my wife from the Thrift Savings Program.

The TSP was a part of the reform effort from that period in history when Ronald Reagan was President, Bob Dole was Majority Leader, and Tip O’Neill was Speaker of the House.

I ran across a fascinating history of that period written by Jamie Cowen in a back issue of the Employee Benefit Research Institute magazine. Cowen was a staff member of former Senator Ted Stevens, a driving force behind the reform initiative at that time, and his insights into how a major reform of an entitlement program is informative. Continue reading →

Apple, Corporate Taxes, and Common Sense

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple (neé Apple Computer) “is the most valuable company” in the world. On the heels of its quarterly report last week, stock in Apple reached nearly $620 per share before settling back to end the week at $602.

The WSJ reported that Apple “posted a 94% profit jump to $11.6 billion and a 58.9% revenue increase to $39.2 billion.”

This is not a stock picking column, and that is about everything I know about the stock market, but I wanted to tell you that so that what follows made more sense.

The New York Times published a long piece looking at how Apple cleverly, but legally, has built a tax strategy that saves it billions of dollars. The Times reported that “the company paid cash taxes of $3.3 billion around the world on its reported profits of $34.2 billion last year, a tax rate of 9.8 percent.” Continue reading →

Medicare Paid For?

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

You know the ad we are talking about. The one where the burly-looking senior looks in the camera like John Wayne and intones something to this effect:

‘You mess with our Social Security and Medicare benefits…and we are gonna kick your butt!’

How is that for ‘thoughtful, rational civil discourse’ in America today, huh? We wouldn’t want to face that guy in a showdown death match on the golf course or the shuffleboard court. Continue reading →

The Man Behind The Last Balanced Budgets We Will Ever See

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus

I had the distinct honor and privilege recently to introduce two talented men with high levels of expertise in the private sector who willingly straddled the line between private and public life early in their political careers and then devoted themselves completely later to serve our state and nation, former North Carolina Governor Jim Martin and Congressman Alex McMillan.

The event was the First Annual Mecklenburg GOP Martin-McMillan Day which is a fitting title given that both men served on the Mecklenburg County Commission before Mr. McMillan followed Mr. Martin as the Representative of the 9th Congressional District when Martin ran for Governor in 1984 and served for 2 successful terms.

The lists of the accumulated achievements of both men would take too long to recount here. Suffice it to say: ‘We were all fortunate they chose to take their private sector expertise into the political arena and serve us in the public trust.’ Continue reading →

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from Mullings.com

The Popular Press is swooning over what they consider to be the new-found potency in President Barack Obama’s demands that the Congress pass his Jobs Bill.

For reasons which I cannot understand, the President decided to make his case for his bill by leading with who was going to pay for it, notwithstanding we have no idea how the first job will be created by the jillions of dollars of new taxes he is proposing.

You want people who make millions of dollars a year to pay more in taxes? Ok. I don’t have an answer to that.

But somehow, in the translation, anyone with a family income north of about $250,000 (husband and wife each making a little over $10 k per month) becomes the equal of Warren Buffett’s income and needs to be penalized for the family’s success. Continue reading →

Taxes Paid, Benefits Gained

BY FRANK HILL

Reprinted from telemachus.com

Have you ever sat down and really thought about the amount of money you pay in taxes versus the direct benefits you receive from the government?

Alan Simpson’s rather salty but descriptive comment about Social Security could be politely amended to read: ‘The US federal government has 310 million teats on it to milk!’.

Depending on how many programs a person derives benefits from or tax preferences he or she uses, the number could be 1 billion for all we know.

Do this little exercise right now. Add up all the taxes you pay on one side of the ledger on a piece of paper or Excel spreadsheet. And then add up all the taxes that you saved from any tax deductions you use each year on your tax form and grants you received from the federal government in any form and put them in the other column. Continue reading →

Small Business Engine Stalled

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON        

Reprinted in part from washingtonexaminer.com

            “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

            In the 20 years I’ve known him, Jeff has never uttered words like that about the wholesale-distributor business he built from scratch over the past 25 years in Maryland, D.C. and Delaware. He’s had ups and downs like every small business, but he’s always seemed to know instinctively what to do, either to sustain existing business, or, in good times, expand into new areas and new brands.

            We were talking about the frustrations of small business, his and others like it all across the country, that can’t hire, invest and expand because there is so much uncertainty about what the future holds.

            Jeff ticked off just a few of his concerns: health care mandates; new and higher taxes and fees; the cost to the consumer of new financial services regulations; new workplace rules, and new rules and regulations that may come from environment and energy reform. The list goes on.

            There is always uncertainty in times of recession, but this time it’s different.  The uncertainty is rooted in politics as well as economics.

            Continue reading →