Why not abolish all foreign aid?

  Americans who object to the Israeli government’s military campaign in Gaza rightly object to the massive amounts of money and armaments that the U.S. government has provided — and continues to provide — the Israeli government to wage its campaign. Why should American taxpayers who oppose the Israeli government’s actions be forced to fund a military campaign to which they object?

  But doesn’t that principle apply to all foreign aid? The question that every American should be asking, especially in the context of foreign aid to Israel, is: Why should American taxpayers be forced to fund any foreign regime whatsoever?

Rebuilding the IRS improves customer service and reduces the tax gap

  As the 2024 tax filing season begins, the IRS continues to build on the improvements made possible by the infusion of funds from the Inflation Reduction Act. The added support reversed more than a decade of disinvestment in tax administration and enforcement by appropriating $80 billion to modernize the IRS over 10 years. The infusion of long-term funding allows the IRS to invest in new technology and the staff needed to rebuild the agency, improve customer service, and ensure that the nation’s tax laws are enforced effectively.

IRS is using $60B funding boost to ramp up use of technology to collect taxes − not just hiring more enforcement agents

  The Internal Revenue Service is getting a funding boost thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022.

  That legislative package originally included about US$80 billion to expand the tax collection agency’s budget over the next 10 years. Congress and the White House have since agreed to pare this total by about $20 billion, but $60 billion is still a big chunk of change for an agency that until recently had about $14 billion in annual funding.

House Ways and Means proposal would hurt honest tax filers and reward tax avoidance

  H.R. 3937, which recently passed out of the House Ways and Means Committee on a party-line vote with Republican support, would undermine efforts to narrow the tax gap—the amount of tax that is legally owed but not paid—and would make it harder for honest tax filers to track the income that they need to report on their tax returns. It would do so by reversing changes to third-party settlement organization (TPSO) reporting requirements made by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA). 

$1 trillion in the shade – the annual profits multinational corporations shift to tax havens continues to climb and climb

  About a decade ago, the world’s biggest economies agreed to crack down on multinational corporations’ abusive use of tax havens. This resulted in a 15-point action plan that aimed to curb practices that shielded a large chunk of corporate profits from tax authorities.

  But, according to our estimates, it hasn’t worked. Instead of reining in the use of tax havens – countries such as the Bahamas and Cayman Islands with very low or no effective tax rates – the problem has only gotten worse.

Tax cuts would benefit Alabama more than a one-time rebate

  Tax cuts would benefit the state more than one-time rebate checks, Mississippi Center for Public Policy President and CEO Douglas Carswell recently explained. This call for permanent tax cuts rather than rebates comes despite the Mississippi Legislature’s 2022 passage of the largest tax cut in state history.

  Alabama’s government finds itself in a similar situation to Mississippi. Mississippi lawmakers expect to have about $3.9 billion in surplus funds available this year. Alabama, meanwhile, has the largest revenue surplus in state history—more than $3 billion between the Education Trust Fund and State General Fund budgets.

Will the Inflation Reduction Act actually reduce inflation? How will the corporate minimum tax work? An economist has answers

  The U.S. is about to spend US$490 billion over 10 years on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving health care, and reducing the federal deficit. Where’s all that money coming from?

  We asked University of Michigan economist Nirupama Rao to examine how the new law will raise enough revenue to pay for clean energy tax credits, Affordable Care Act subsidies, and incentives for manufacturers to use cleaner technologies, among other initiatives. We also wanted to know, given its name, will the Inflation Reduction Act actually bring down inflation?

Taxpayers should expect serious delays from the IRS this year – a tax scholar offers tips but says only Congress can fix the underlying problem

  No one likes tax season. It’s complicated, it’s stressful, and it’s getting worse.

  Last year was already the “most challenging year taxpayers and tax professionals have ever experienced,” according to the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent part of the Internal Revenue Service. According to the agency’s annual report, taxpayers had trouble reaching the IRS, tax returns took months to process, almost a quarter of refunds didn’t go out until 2022, and collection notices were sent out even after the tax owed was paid.

‘Tax the rich’? Democrats’ plans to make the wealthy pay a little more will barely dent America’s long slide from progressive taxation

  Demanding tax increases on the rich is back in fashion – both in the corridors of the House of Representatives and on the red carpet of the Met Gala.

  The House Ways and Means Committee outlined plans on Sept. 13, 2021, to move the top marginal income rate up a couple of notches to 39.6% and to introduce a 3% surtax on incomes above $5 million. That proposal would fall short of calls to really “tax the rich,” as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s dress demanded at a glitzy New York bash just hours later.

IRS budget cuts let wealthy tax cheats get away with it

  Over the past decade, Congress dramatically cut the IRS’ budget and with it, the agency’s capability to enforce the nation’s tax laws. New data released by the IRS, as well as reports from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), underscore the toll that IRS budget cuts have taken. The reports and data provide even more evidence that the IRS needs to be substantially rebuilt, with its priorities directed toward policing tax cheating by wealthy individuals and corporations.

Coercion and charity are opposites

  The entire welfare-state way of life is based on the concept of force. Through the threat of arrest, prosecution, incarceration, and fines, the American people are forced to be good, caring, and compassionate to others.

  Here is how the process works. People are forced to deliver a percentage of their income to the federal government, which in turn delivers the money to others. It’s not a 100 percent turnover, of course, because some of the money is used to cover the expenses associated with performing this service, such as salaries for bureaucrats in the IRS and in the federal departments, and agencies that distribute the money.

Who actually pays tariffs?

  Donald Trump’s economic ignorance knows no bounds. And especially when it comes to the subject of trade.

  Trade is always a win-win proposition. In every exchange, each party gives up something valued less for something valued more. Each party to a transaction values differently the goods or services being exchanged. Each party anticipates a gain from the exchange or there would be no commerce between the two parties. And each party will repeat the exchange again if its estimated gain has proved to be satisfactory.

When Americans get their tax refunds, they go to the dentist

  Megan, who currently lives in Pittsburgh, was hospitalized in September for pneumonia. It was just a one-day stay, and she had health insurance, but even so, the bills piled up, eventually totaling $6,500.

  The only thing that made paying them realistic, she said, was that she received a $4,200 tax refund this year.

  “I would have put off my medical payments [without the refund],” she told me via email. “Between rent and day to day expenses, I don’t have the income to pay both. … Even with insurance, the numbers seemed insurmountable until I got my refund. If it wasn’t for that I would have had to reapply for payment plans with the risk of being sent to collections.”

Five reasons why strengthening the EITC and CTC is the kind of tax reform America needs

  As Americans filed their taxes this season—a process filled with confusion for many and startlingly small refunds for some—Democrats in Congress offered a sharp contrast to President Donald Trump’s unpopular tax law in the form of two ambitious tax plans that actually work for working families. While Trump’s 2017 tax law rewrote the tax code to further enrich millionaires, billionaires, and wealthy corporations, congressional Democrats’ proposals—the American Family Act (AFA) and the Working Families Tax Relief Act (WFTRA)—would double down on two of the tax code’s most effective income boosters for working and middle-class families: the earned income tax credit (EITC) and the child tax credit (CTC).

So you want to tax the rich: A how-to guide

  Taxing the rich has been a hot subject of late thanks to a few Congressional Democrats. First, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez floated the idea of raising the top marginal income tax rate to 70 percent. Then Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed a “wealth tax” on those who have at least $50 million in assets. And last week, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders proposed increasing the estate tax for those who inherit more than $3.5 million.

  These ideas have been met with predictable consternation from conservatives. CEOs and Wall Street-types gathered at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos even had a good laugh when asked about Ocasio-Cortez’s idea.

  But raising taxes on the rich isn’t a joke. It’s an economic necessity.

Three takeaways from the New York Times’ bombshell Trump investigation

  Last week, The New York Times published a bombshell investigative report alleging that the Trump family engaged in “outright fraud” and other schemes to dodge federal taxes over many years. Through these schemes, the Trump family may have avoided or evaded as much as $500 million of taxes on the transfer of wealth from President Donald Trump’s parents to him and his siblings.

  If true, the revelations in the 14,000-word story are shocking. They bear on Trump’s personal finances, his credibility, his greed, and—perhaps most importantly—his policies. The revelations include:

Taylor Dawson: It’s time for New Year’s resolutions

  Ah, January, the make-or-break month for New Year’s resolutions. Don’t you think that our elected officials—members of the legislature, state school board, executive branch, and others—should adopt some resolutions? I’ve got a few ideas for them.

1. Commit to protecting taxpayers.

  Want to raise taxes? Meet them with an offset elsewhere. Want to accept additional federal funding? Ask your constituents what they think, and make sure the program for which you’ll be accepting funding won’t put the taxpayers on the hook for an additional financial burden down the road. Want to help more Alabamians find jobs and start businesses? Consider doing something about burdensome occupational licensing restrictions. Fiscal responsibility and standing strong against policies that hurt taxpayers requires resolve, but it isn’t difficult.

Five reasons communities of faith should be alarmed by the tax bill

  President Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), and many other GOP lawmakers have continually referenced faith and religion when referring to public policy. President Trump’s public remarks have increasing been laced with religious rhetoric—from invoking the Lord to support his declaration of opioid addiction as a national health emergency to his appeal to God to bless the world after launching military strikes in Syria. Similarly, when a policy crisis on gun violence reemerged in the wake of the Sutherland Springs, Texas, massacre, Speaker Ryan immediately reverted to religious rituals urging prayer for the community, but stopping short of a call for legislation to address gun violence—something he is well positioned to do.

Laurence M. Vance: Will tariffs make America great again?

  If there is one issue that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is outspoken about, it is U.S. trade policy.

  He says:

       You only have to look at our trade deficit to see that we are being taken to the cleaners by our trading partners. We need tougher negotiations, not protectionist walls around America. We need to ensure that foreign markets are as open to our products as our country is to theirs. Our long-term interests require that we cut better deals with our world trading partners.

       Our country is in serious trouble. We don’t win anymore. We don’t beat China in trade. We don’t beat Japan, with their millions and millions of cars coming into this country, in trade. We can’t beat Mexico, at the border or in trade.

Craig Ford: Republicans are trading in that 'Jobs, jobs, jobs' slogan for 'Taxes, taxes, taxes'"

  After five years of passing millions of dollars in tax cuts for big businesses and billion-dollar, out-of-state corporations that, in some cases, pay zero state income taxes, Republicans in the Alabama House of Representatives are about to raise taxes on working men and women.

  Only six months after campaigning on a pledge to create more jobs and never raise taxes, House Republicans have traded in that “jobs, jobs, jobs” campaign slogan for “taxes, taxes, taxes.”