TAX POLITIX
The Politics of Taxes
Disparate Impact Cases Will Now Become More Commonplace
For months now, I have written about “disparate impact”. The idea of “disparate impact” holds that “a defendant can be held liable for discrimination for a race-neutral policy that statistically disadvantages a specific minority group even if that negative “impact” was neither foreseen nor intended. Loretta Lynch, the new Attorney General, recently signaled a strong interest in making “disparate impact” a priority of her term. Disparate impact is rapidly being expanded into other sectors such...
Puerto Rico Proves Liberal Policies Destroy the Economy
If a higher minimum wage, higher regulations, the Jones Act, and other protectionist rules are actively destroying Puerto Rico's economy, how can those same policies not also be harming the United States? Can Puerto Rico be considered the experiment proving this? On June 28th, Puerto Rico announced that it was unable to pay back the $72 billion in public debt that it owed, money that was borrowed repeatedly to bolster an anemic economy for the last decade. Puerto Rico's GDP has contracted an...
Pension Fund Crisis Ballooning in Major Cities
Bloomberg did a feature this week on the long-term outlook on pension funds for several major cities, and found that it is swiftly becoming a fiscal tsunami in several places. Part of this stems from severe under-funding of pension plans over many years, while the other part is accounting tricks. As Bloomberg notes, "Moody’s, which in 2013 began using a lower rate than governments do to calculate future liabilities, has estimated that the 25 largest U.S. public pensions alone have $2 trillion...
More Record Tax Revenue For the Feds
From CNS News: "The federal government raked in a record of approximately $2,446,920,000,000 in tax revenues through the first nine months of fiscal 2015 (Oct. 1, 2014 through the end of June), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today. That equaled approximately $16,451 for every person in the country who had either a full-time or part-time job in June. It is also up about $178,156,270,000 in constant 2015 dollars from the $2,268,763,730,000 in revenue (in inflation-adjusted...
Loretta Lynch on Disparate Impact
I have written about disparate impact many times over the past couple of years. I was gravely concerned about Loretta Lynch's nomination to be the next Attorney General because of the huge role she has played in civil asset forfeiture cases. Now that the disparate impact case has been decided by the Supreme Court, I am concerned that she will now take up the mantle of disparate impact, much in the way Thomas Perez, the Labor Secretary, has done (and don't forget, Perez was the original front...
Government Legal Debt Limit Now Frozen For Four Straight Months
March 13, 2015, was the first day that the Daily Treasury Statements showed a closing limit at 18,112,975,000,000. This number has now been frozen for 4 straight months. The latest Treasury statement on July 13, 2015 also showed $18,112,975,000,000 at its closing. This repeating amount is a portion of the federal debt that is subject to a legal limitation, currently sitting about $25 million less than the legal debt limit allowed by Congress. Every day since March 13th, the Daily Treasury...
CNN Tries to Blame Republicans For The Recent Government Data Breach
On Friday, Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta resigned in disgrace after the magnitude of the recent government data breach was revealed. Of course, she should never have been hired in the first place; her prior job was a political director for the President's reelection campaign, Obama for America. So how does one avert blame from the White House for this catastrophic privacy breach? Why, blame Republicans of course. CNN stated that Archuleta had never been properly...
Obama Admin. Admits Medicaid Expansion Costs More Than Projected
From my friend, Michael Cannon: It appears that Medicaid-expansion enrollees are going to cost states a lot more than they thought. According to a just-released “2014 Actuarial Report on the Financial Outlook for Medicaid” from the Department of Health and Human Services, ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion is costing significantly more than projected: "In 2014, the average benefit costs of newly eligible adult enrollees are expected to have been substantially greater than those for non-newly...
The Government’s IRS Document Protector Is Now the Government’s Benghazi Document Protector
How is it not a complete conflict of interest to have a person working for the State Department oversee both the IRS scandal documents for the current Administration and now the Benghazi documents for an important Presidential candidate? Or, looked at it another way, how is it that a current State Department employee has complete oversight of the documents of a former Secretary of State embroiled in a State Department scandal? Where is the impartiality? Unfortunately, this is the scenario that...
The Long-Term Effects of the Obamacare Decision
During oral arguments of the Burwell v Obamacare case before the Supreme Court, the U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli made the case that the “court should defer to the interpretation of the Internal Revenue Service, which said the tax credits apply nationwide.” When the Obamacare decision was announced, it is clear that SCOTUS did apply deference, which was absolutely the worst possible solution. The idea of “deference” refers “ to “Chevron deference,” “a doctrine mostly unknown beyond...
TAX
Tips
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.