TAX POLITIX
The Politics of Taxes
Sebelius Blames $400M In Ads For Obamacare’s Unpopularity — Except the Administration Spent Nearly $700M to PROMOTE It
Last week, Kathleen Sebelius peddled the idea that Obamacare is merely “a very bad brand” and blamed misinformation via “a lot of paid advertising” for it; she also calculated spending on anti-Obamcare ads to be around $400 million: “So Obamacare no question has a very bad brand that has been driven intentionally by a lot of misinformation and by a lot of paid advertising and I think we may need to call it something, in the future, different. But it’s working and now people are getting...
Obamacare Users Will Need Extra Form From the Government Before They Can File Their Taxes
If you are an Obamacare enrollee, you will not be able to file your taxes next year until you receive a new Obamacare form, the 1095A. That means if the government is not on time getting the forms out, taxpayers who need the form could face a delay receiving anticipated refunds. The proposed deadline to send out the forms is January 31, 2015, which also coincides with the date that employers must issue W-2 to their employees. Form 1095A is necessary: filers need the forms to calculate whether...
Picking Winners and Losers in Higher Education
Friday before Election Day, the Obama Administration via the Department of Education released a "gainful employment" rule applicable to higher education, which singles out a particular type of learning institution: the for-profit school. The new regulation will prohibit students from being able to receive federal student aid "unless the program can show that their graduates’ annual loan payments do not exceed 20% of discretionary income, or 8% of total earnings." The Department of Education...
Another Obamacare Cost: The Penalty Fee is Coming
If you are one of the millions of Americans who declined health insurance and decided to pay the fee tax fine penalty, be aware that it will be a part of your 2014 tax calculations. The penalty for 2014 is relatively cheap, a means to transition Obamacare into your life, but next year and subsequent years, the penalty goes up swiftly -- pressuring you to get a health insurance plan or else pay a somewhat hefty price. Here's how it works: "Beginning in 2014, absent a qualified exemption, you...
The IRS-White House-Koch Brothers Link Comes Full Circle With The TIGTA Docs
Well, now we know something that has been long suspected for the past four years: the IRS and the White House are sharing taxpayer information. That has certainly been the suspicion since at least 2010, when a senior White House official, Austan Goolsbee, made a comment about the Koch Brother's business practices in August 2010. The Weekly Standard was one of the first to cover this indiscretion as part of an article about the growing practice of attacking the Koch Brothers by liberals. From...
IRS-White House Doc Link, Part II: Feds Site Privacy Laws Prohibiting Release
Last week, TIGTA revealed the existence of around 2500 documents "relating to investigations of the improper disclosure of confidential taxpayer information by the IRS to the White House." December 1st was the deadline for the Department of Justice's tax department to turn over those documents, as ordered by a judge. You can read more of that background story here. The group involved in the FOIA request for documents is called "Cause of Action", and they consider themselves a government...
Tax Inspector General Reveals 2500 Docs Link IRS to White House
As part of the IRS Scandal over the last 18 months, people have questions if, and how deeply, the ties exist between the IRS and White House. A group named "Cause of Action" sued to get access to any documents that show such communication. Last week, the Justice Department apparently sent an email over the matter, asking for more time to finish the request made by Cause of Action, due to a potentially large number of documents that fit the request. Here is the available text of the email from...
3415 New Regulations Announced, Yet Again At A Holiday Time
The White House released its latest regulatory agenda for the fall. This current amount contains 3,415 items for consideration. Did you miss the list? Most people did; the White House released the massive agenda on the eve of Thanksgiving. The Daily Caller notes that this latest document dump marked "the fifth time the Obama administration has released its regulatory road map on the eve of a major holiday". It follows the footsteps of last spring's agenda, when it was released right before...
Treasury Issues $1 Trillion in New Debt to Pay Off Old Debt, Despite Record Revenue
Even though the government is bringing in record revenue, its spending is still outpacing its intake. CNS News did an analysis of Treasury Statements, and revealed that the Department of Treasury is currently operating like a Ponzi scheme: "The Daily Treasury Statement that was released Wednesday afternoon as Americans were preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving revealed that the U.S. Treasury has been forced to issue $1,040,965,000,000 in new debt since fiscal 2015 started just eight weeks ago...
Keeping An Eye on Thomas Perez
Though Thomas Perez no longer looks like Obama’s pick for Attorney General to replace Eric Holder, it is necessary to keep a critical eye on his activities as Labor Secretary. In particular, Thomas Perez is the leading crusader of a notion called “disparate impact”, a concept which allows for charges of discrimination even when none has actually occurred. Though the idea of “disparate impact” has been around in the business world for at least a couple of decades , it has been vigorously pushed...
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