From a tax code that limits the free speech of churches, to a welfare state that destroys families, Zo tells you why the Democrats and the Great Society are agents of oppression.
Taxes
Prager U ~ Do High Taxes Raise More Money? (Tim Groseclose)
If you raise taxes does it automatically follow that you’ll raise more revenue? Is there a point at which tax rates become counterproductive? UCLA Economics professor, Tim Groseclose, answers these questions and poses some fascinating new ones.
Plug and Play Scam ~ When Government Chooses Winners, We ALL Lose!
(Reuters) – General Motors Co sold a record number of Chevrolet Volt sedans in August — but that probably isn’t a good thing for the automaker’s bottom line.
Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.
Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce….
Breitbart has this update on Obama’s ambitious, tax payer funded, plan to put electric cars on the road:
In 2011, President Barack Obama set a goal of putting one million electric cars on American roads by 2015. Currently, there are just 30,000 electric cars on U.S. roads.
The abysmal numbers are even more surprising considering the government’s efforts to prop up “green car” manufacturing. Electric luxury car manufacturer Fisker, for example, was approved for a $529 million taxpayer-funded government loan; the federal government cut off the funds at $193 million after sales fell woefully short of required targets. The struggling electric car maker recently recalled 2,400 of its Karma vehicles when one caught fire due to problems with its cooling fan.
In June, a CBS News report calculated projected electric car sales by Mr. Obama’s 2015 date at 310,663. That figure, while still less than a third of Mr. Obama’s goal, may still be overly optimistic. Reuters says industry experts predict that less than 200,000 electric vehicles will be on U.S. roads by 2015.
Further exacerbating the challenge of meeting Mr. Obama’s goal is the fact that taxpayer-funded electric car battery companies continue to flounder. Last month, for example, struggling U.S. electric battery maker A123 Systems, which received a $249 million taxpayer-funded government loan, announced its plans to sell a controlling stake to Wanxiang, a Chinese company, for $450 million.
Similarly, lithium-ion battery manufacturer Ener1, Inc., which received a $118.5 million taxpayer-funded grant, filed for bankruptcy. And Aptera Motors has already folded.
Our Energy Policy ~ Bankrupt
“Here at this site, Solyndra expects to make enough solar panels each year to generate 500 megawatts of electricity. And over the lifetime of this expanded facility, that could be like replacing as many as eight coal-fired power plants.” ~ Barack Obama
From video description:
This is pretty lame. I wonder how many people think this power just comes out of the ground? Perhaps these greentards think this is magic solar power that is leached from the sun and stored in invisible floating Tesla flywheels. Bet that went right over most heads. Anyway this is a real problem for shoppers at WalGREENS. Weather they are asked or not they are subsidizing this climate hoax and paying for the fuel that is getting these FARCE-CARS from point “a” to point “b.”
Redistributing `Wealth` [Grades] Is Not Okay
California Tax Revenue Plunges by 22% ~ Top 10 reasons Companies Are Leaving California
State Controller John Chaing continues to uphold the California Great Seal Motto of “Eureka”, i.e., ‘I have found it’. But what Chaing is finding as Controller is that California’s economy as measured by tax revenues is still tanking. Compared to last year, State tax collections for February shriveled by $1.2 billion or 22%. The deterioration is more than double the shocking $535 million reported decline for last month. The cumulative fiscal year decline is $6.1 billion or down 11% versus this period in 2011.
While California Governor Brown promises strong economic growth is just around the corner, Chaing proves that the best way for Sacramento politicians to hurt the economy and thereby generate lower tax revenue, is to have the highest tax rates in the nation.
California politicians seem delusional in their continued delusion that high taxes have not savaged the State’s economy. Each month’s disappointment is written off as due to some one-time event.
The State Controller’s office did acknowledge that higher than normal tax refunds for February might have reduced the collection of some personal income taxes. Given that 2012 has an extra day in February for leap year, there might have been one day more of tax refunds sent out. But the Controller’s report shows personal income tax collections fell by $325 million, or 16% versus last year. Furthermore, leap year would have added another day for retail sales and use tax collection, but those revenues also fell during February-by an even larger $813 million, 25% decline from 2011.
The more likely reason tax collections continue falling is that businesses and successful people are leaving California for the better tax rates available in more pro-business states.
Derisively referred to as “Taxifornia” by the independent Pacific Research Institute, California wins the booby prize for the highest personal income taxes in the nation and higher sales tax rates than all but four other states. Though Californians benefit from Proposition 13 restrictions on how much their property tax can increase in one year, the state still has the worst state tax burden in the U.S.
Spectrum Locations Consultants recorded 254 California companies moved some or all of their work and jobs out of state in 2011, 26% more than in 2010 and five times as many as in 2009. According SLC President, Joe Vranich: the “top ten reasons companies are leaving California: 1) Poor rankings in surveys 2) More adversarial toward business 3) Uncontrollable public spending 4) Unfriendly business climate 5) Provable savings elsewhere 6) Most expensive business locations 7) Unfriendly legal environment for business 8) Worst regulatory burden 9) Severe tax treatment 10) Unprecedented energy costs.
Americans for Prosperity exposes the outrageous cronyism and disregard for American taxpayers in the growing Solyndra scandal
Al `not so sharp` Sharpton Showing His Lack of Knowledge on MSNBC (Plus: Congressman John Campbell)
Forbes explains the gig
…[Romney’s] low rate is due to the fact that almost all of his income was in the form of dividends and capital gains, which are currently taxed at only 15%. (As he pointed out in the last debate, he would have paid almost nothing under his opponent Newt Gingrich’s proposal to not tax investment income at all.) He then used large charitable contributions and other deductions to further reduce his taxable income.
While this doesn’t apply much to those of us with earned income (which is taxed at higher ordinary income tax rates plus the FICA tax), there are lessons for how we can similarly minimize our taxes on our investments. Specifically, we can take advantage of the differences in how various investments are taxed. Qualified dividends and long-term capital gains are taxed at a maximum 15% rate while cash and bond interest are taxed at ordinary income tax rates, which can be as high as 35%. By keeping as many of our tax-inefficient investments like bonds and cash in retirement accounts as possible, we can pay more of our investment taxes at the 15% capital gains and dividend rate and less at the higher ordinary income tax rate.
Let’s take an example. Imagine you have a total investment portfolio of $500k and you want to have $300k of that in stocks and $200k in bonds and cash. Let’s say that you have a pre-tax 401(k) with $300k. To minimize your taxes, you would have the entire $200k of bonds and cash in the 401(k) plus an additional $100k of the money in the stocks. The remaining $200k in taxable investments would all be in stock so that most of your taxable investment income would be at the 15% rate for long-term capital gains and qualified dividends.
There’s another advantage of having stocks and stock funds outside of retirement plans. In this case, you can actually make the volatility of the stock market work for you. That’s because when we have an investment that loses value (and who didn’t have at least one over these last few years) we can sell it at the end of the year and write the loss off of our taxes. These capital gain losses can offset gains we have that year or even better, up to $3k of regular income tax if we don’t have any capital gains. You can carry losses over $3k to future years.
Sen. John Campbell explains the issue with how the press twists Romney’s tax return info to suit their needs:
Saving the California Dream: Los Angeles and California Chasing Business Away (Added Videos)
American Crossroads ad features Bill Clinton and Obama Standing Firm Against Obama`s Tax Increases
Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama “absolutely” considers himself to be the underdog in the 2012 presidential campaign “given the economy” and said voters aren’t doing better economically than they were four years ago.
“They’re not better off” than “before the financial crisis, before this extraordinary recession that we’re going through [Sept-Oct 2011],” Obama said in an interview with ABC News and Yahoo….
Of Mistresses and Mattresses-Larry Elder Takes A Call on Taxes and Rich People
Rich People and Mistresses from Papa Giorgio on Vimeo.
Who Is Right? Obama or Polls
In one story from the Hill, Obama intimates that 80% of people want tax hikes. While polling suggests this number is around 34%. Will rational thinking prevail?
Democrats Bringing Us to the brink of Carter Tax days?
From the Wall Street Journal:
Media reports in recent weeks say that Senate Democrats are considering a 3% surtax on income over $1 million to raise federal revenues. This would come on top of the higher income tax rates that President Obama has already proposed through the cancellation of the Bush era tax-rate reductions.
If the Democrats’ millionaire surtax were to happen—and were added to other tax increases already enacted last year and other leading tax hike ideas on the table this year—this could leave the U.S. with a combined federal and state top tax rate on earnings of 62%. That’s more than double the highest federal marginal rate of 28% when President Reagan left office in 1989. Welcome back to the 1970s.
Here’s the math behind that depressing calculation. Today’s top federal income tax rate is 35%. Almost all Democrats in Washington want to repeal the Bush tax cuts on those who make more than $250,000 and phase out certain deductions, so the effective income tax rate would rise to about 41.5%. The 3% millionaire surtax raises that rate to 44.5%.
But payroll taxes, which are income taxes on wages and salaries, must also be included in the equation. So we have to add about 2.5 percentage points for the payroll tax for Medicare (employee and employer share after business deductions), which was applied to all income without a ceiling in 1993 as part of the Clinton tax hike. I am including in this analysis the employer share of all payroll taxes because it is a direct tax on a worker’s salary and most economists agree that though employers are responsible for collecting this tax, it is ultimately borne by the employee. That brings the tax rate to 47%.
Then last year, as part of the down payment for ObamaCare, Congress snuck in an extra 0.9% Medicare surtax on “high-income earners,” meaning any individual earning more than $200,000 or couples earning more than $250,000. This brings the total tax rate to 47.9%.
But that’s not all. Several weeks ago, Mr. Obama raised the possibility of eliminating the income ceiling on the Social Security tax, now capped at $106,800 of earnings a year. (Never mind that the program was designed to operate as an insurance system, with each individual’s payment tied to the benefits paid out at retirement.) Subjecting all wage and salary income to Social Security taxes would add roughly 10.1 percentage points to the top tax rate. This takes the grand total tax rate on each additional dollar earned in America to about 58%.
Then we have to factor in state income taxes, which on average add after the deductions from the federal income tax roughly another four percentage points to the tax burden. So now on average we are at a tax rate of close to 62%.
Democrats have repeatedly stated they only intend to restore the tax rates that existed during the Clinton years. But after all these taxes on the “rich,” we’re headed back to the taxes that prevailed under Jimmy Carter, when the highest tax rate was 70%.