Archive for the ‘Taxes’ Category

When you’re a Democrat congressman just tapped by That One to be his Chief of Staff, one does not worry about IRS audits for abuse of the home based business laws.

However, Illinois Review shows Emanuel and Amy Rule own a home in Chicago, claim their entire home as the headquarters of a non-profit of which they operate and are the sole contributors. One of the few recipients of the charity’s funds is the private school which their children attend. Funneling the funds through this charity front, Emanuel and his partner are avoiding anywhere from $3500 to over $7000 per year in Cook County property taxes.

On top of that could the soon to be White House Chief of Staff be taking IRS business deductions illegally which others were prosecuted for abusing the deductions for “home based businesses”?

A major theme in Obama ads is the accusation that McCain support “tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas” and that Obama will “end them”. What exactly is this tax break? To listen to the Obama campaign you would think that there is a line on the corporate tax forms labeled “How many jobs have you shipped overseas” with a multiplier to make a tax break.

You will not see that line on a corporate tax form. What the Obama campaign is referring to is a policy called “deferral”. Deferral allows corporations to defer paying taxes on profits earned and being used overseas. Taxes are paid when (sometimes if) those profits are “repatriated”—i.e. brought back to the United States. If I read the information correctly, this provision has been around since the early 1960’s.

Obama is simplifying here. This is understandable, but we really need to know a couple of things. First, are these “tax breaks” actually causing jobs to go overseas? Second, what does he mean by ending these “tax breaks”? Third, what would be the implications of ending these “tax breaks”?

The answers below the fold: (more…)

Seems like simple economics to me.  (Btw, you can pass this on too.)

Figure out how much your taxes will go up when Barack Obama allows the Bush tax cuts to expire.

Hat tip: The Campaign Spot.

So if McCain’s reference to Joe the Plumber is desperation, what is this?

From a reader in Lynchburg, Virginia:

FYI—just a few moments ago I received an automated call at home from “Joe the Plumber” asking me to vote for O’Bama. He referred to the talk about Joe the Plumber in the debate—obviously trying to have me link “Joe Sellers (I think that’s the name), a plumber from Falls Church, Virginia” with the Joe the Plumber everyone is talking about. Easy to think ‘Hey, Joe the Plumber wants us to vote for O’Bama.’

Dishonest? Yes. But about what you’d expect out of Washington.

Sounds like desperation to me.

Just desperation from a different campaign than McCain’s.

Found on FreeRepublic, posted from KTOK

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3 The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

(Click “Read More”) (more…)

The smearing by the left of Joe the Plumber is amazing and disgusting to behold. Here you have a guy who was out on his lawn playing with his kids when Obama decided to go door-to-door. Obama approached him, not vice-versa, and the two had an exchange.

There’s nothing in that exchange that is telling when it comes to Joe the Plumber. It doesn’t matter whether he’s a licensed plumber (residential plumbers in Ohio do not have to be licensed), nor does it matter that he has a tax lien. Such political anal probes are irrelevant.

What’s telling, and what is relevant, Barack Obama’s response to Joe the Plumber.

It says everything you need to know:

It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance at success, too. And I think that when we spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.

(Read more after the leap) (more…)

Unless you’re a Bright House subscriber awaiting the return of WISH-TV and WNDY-TV to your channel lineup, or lived under a rock like Patrick the Starfish in SpongeBob Squarepants then you’ve endured the spamming of airwaves with ad after ad after ad after ad about a “Tax Cut for the Middle Class”.

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece about this “Tax Cut for the Middle Class”. Here’s one piece that I find interesting:

“A “clean car” tax credit of up to $7,000 on the purchase of certain vehicles.”

Clear car tax credit? I take my diesel truck to Mike’s Carwash regularly so it’s clean does that count??

(See my logic below the fold)

(more…)

 Baron’s been exceptionally transparent with his phony pandering of late, and the Indiana Daily Student calls him on it:

Lately, Baron Hill has been looking more like a populist than an economist. This was evident in his support of the Commodity Markets Transparency and Accounting Act, which recently passed through the U.S. House of Representatives.

The bill is supposed to increase regulation on oil speculators and lower the price of gasoline. The problem is that speculators aren’t to blame for the dramatic rise in oil and gas prices.

Hill would have us believe that this bill will significantly lower the price of oil, but almost any economist would disagree.

(Read more after the leap) (more…)

Posted in Another Baron Lie, Baron Hill, Congress, Energy, Gas Prices, Taxes | 1 Comment » | Read more..

Via CBS News:

“We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people,” Biden said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Noting that wealthier Americans would indeed pay more, Biden said: “It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”

Be patriotic - give more money to us!

Is Joe Biden TRYING to lose the election?

More importantly, does Baron Hill agree that raising taxes is patriotic?

For the first six years that he was in Congress, the Republican majority effectively allowed Baron Hill to hide his liberal policy views from Hoosiers.

For the fourteen years they controlled Congress, the Republicans never once raised taxes, so the only votes Baron Hill had to cast were in opposition to tax cuts.

And, make no mistake, Baron Hill voted plenty of times in opposition to keeping taxes low or to lowering them further.

In 2001, he voted twice (here and here) against the tax cuts passed in 2001 (and also against making them permanent).

As early as 1999, Baron Hill voted twice against (here and here) the Financial Freedom Act of 1999, which included (PDF warning) a 10% across-the-board cut in income tax rates, the abolition of the Alternative Minimum Tax, lower the marriage penalty in the tax code, cut capital gains taxes, abolish the Death Tax, and a 100% tax deduction for personal (non-employer-provided) health insurance costs. The bill also expanded Medical Savings Accounts, included deductions for long-term care insurance, and a deduction for anyone having to take care of an elderly family member.

Remember all of those health care tax deductions the next time that you hear Baron Hill talking about how he wants to help Hoosiers pay for the rising costs of health care. Nine years ago, when costs were much less, he could have voted to help keep them low. He didn’t.

(Read more after the leap) (more…)