TAX POLITIX
The Politics of Taxes
Measuring Income Inequality: It Doesn’t Add Up
Romney’s Returns: Phantom Income and Phantom Reporting
While Mitt Romney's tax rate has been calculated to be around 14%, there are a few unreported factors that account for the small percentage. Additionally, as will be detailed below, Mitt Romney paid taxes on $1 million + in income that does not exist. As a lifelong CPA, I was asked to review it for several media outlets. First, let me say that his return is standard, normal, well prepared, and detailed, with nothing unusual given the scope of his assets. That being said, his tax return is 203...
Hedge Fund Hypocrisy
Yes, there is something terribly wrong with taxation in the hedge fund industry -- but it is not the perceived evil that the defeated Baucus/Grassley bill was attempting to "fix". According to them, the problem was that the hedge fund operators get part of their compensation from (relatively low-tax) capital gains income. However, the proposed changes to "carried interest loopholes" is for political gain only, creating a problem that isn't there, in order to solve some mythical inequality....
1000 Days Later
Land of the Free (Market)?
The Heritage Foundation just released its 2012 Index of Economic Freedom. The United States is ranked....10. Top 10 Countries world rank country overall score change from previous 1 Hong Kong 89.9 0.2 2 Singapore 87.5 0.3 3 Australia 83.1 0.6 4 New Zealand 82.1 -0.2 5 Switzerland 81.1 -0.8 6 Canada 79.9 -0.9 7 Chile 78.3 0.9 8 Mauritius 77.0 0.8 9 Ireland 76.9 -1.8 10 United States 76.3 -1.5 SEE ALL RANKINGS For over a decade, The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation, Washington's...
Pandering: Regulating Oil Profits?
It's another egregious example of the Democrats wanting to overreach boundaries in an effort to appeal to voters: The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a "windfall profit tax" as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit. The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of...
Where Is the Outrage on the Left?
The White House recently named Jack Lew his new Chief of Staff after the departure of Bill Daley. While Obama championed Mr. Lew's work in the State Department as the chief budget officer and deputy secretary of state, he omitted the fact that prior to the State Department, Lew was the chief operating officer at Citibank during the height of the housing boom. His job was directly tied into the mortgage industry. In fact, he received nearly a million dollar bonus shortly after the government...
Why the Republicans Must Win the White House
The “unconstitutional power grab”, which rightly describes Obama's (non) recess appointments on Wednesday is another alarming move in a string of examples as to why we need to make sure we do not re-elect him the the presidency Quite frankly, as a lifetime CPA, I welcome a split government: a president from one party and Congress from another. Laws don't get passed except in the occasion that they have true bipartisan support. This type of inaction is actually quite good for the economy –...
Social Security — A Tax or Retirement Plan? (But Not Both)
One of the most common means by which politicians deceive their constitutents is by referring to Social Security as a either a tax or as a retirement system -- but usually only as the politics or issues of the day suit them. We have politicians who stand strongly behind the concept that Social Security must be maintained because it's a retirement system that people pay for. I certainly believe, as FDR did when he started Social Security, that this is a forced retirement system. As such, it is...
Forbes: Harry Reid, the Mythmaker
Forbes had a wonderfully scathing expose on Senator Harry Reid's millionaire tax myths. Senator Reid declared on December 6th, Millionaire job creators are like unicorns. They’re impossible to find, and they don’t exist… Only a tiny fraction of people making more than a million dollars, probably less than 1 percent, are small business owners. And only a tiny fraction of that tiny fraction are traditional job creators…Most of these businesses are hedge fund managers or wealthy lawyers. They...
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