Taxes

Where The Biggest Corporate Handouts Come From

April 7, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Artkillingapathy.com Educate! Corporate Welfare, Taxes

As tax day looms, most of us are grumbling and griping about the joyless task of shelling out hard-earned wages to the Empire. Regardless of political perspective, the people are overwhelmingly aware of the fact that whatever taxes they’re paying out, they’re not getting a lot back. In theory, I support taxation. The basic idea being that when people live in a community that requires upkeep and services, the people of that community should all pitch in to make sure those services are of good quality, readily available and reliable. We want good schools, public libraries, healthcare, road maintenance, etc. In other words, we want our family and our neighbor’s families to have what they need to not only survive but to thrive. The problem with our system is that unless your neighbor is one of the Forbes 400 or an F-35, your tax dollars aren’t going to support your neighbors.

Inside The Tax Bill’s $25 Billion Oil Company Bonanza

March 29, 2018 Antonia Juhasz, Psmag.com Educate! Oil, Taxes

Last month, during a retreat in West Virginia, congressional Republicans set out their 2018 party goals. Their primary objective is to hold onto their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and the key mechanism for doing so is to ride the coattails of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. "The tax bill is part of a bigger theme that we're going to call The Great American comeback," said Representative Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. "If we stay focused on selling the tax reform package, I think we're going to hold the House and things are going to be OK for us." More than 50 percent of the tax bill's benefits will go to the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, and more than 25 percent to the wealthiest 1 percent, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Time To Eliminate Your Wall Street Tax?

March 21, 2018 Rudy Avizius, Endtheillusion.wordpress.com Educate! Public Banks, Taxes, Wall Street Tax

As we get older, and hopefully wiser, we generally start to become more discerning on how we view the world and the problems we face. Many of us who seek to make the world a better place try to look at the problems, analyze them, and do what we can to correct them. However, because there are so many different problems facing us, this approach often overwhelms us and can instill a sense of hopelessness in our ability to create positive change. Looking more deeply into this situation, we discover that many of these difficulties are SYMPTOMS of much deeper problems, and that attempts to address these SYMPTOMS are not an effective or efficient way to bring about the changes we desire.

Flawed Assessments Caused $2 Billion Shift In Property Taxes

March 20, 2018 By Jason Grotto, Propublica.org Educate! Chicago, Property, Taxes

In the first effort to measure the cost of Cook County’s error-ridden assessment system under Assessor Joseph Berrios, a new study estimates that at least $2.2 billion in property taxes was shifted from undervalued Chicago homes onto overvalued ones between 2011 and 2015. Because the county’s assessment system is skewed in favor of high-priced homes, the errors amount to a staggering transfer of wealth that benefited Chicago’s most affluent homeowners at the expense of people who own lower-priced homes. The study, released Thursday by the Municipal Finance Center at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, was conducted by Professor Christopher Berry, a critic of the assessor’s office who testified at a County Board hearing in July about flaws in the county’s assessment system.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Made $29 Billion Off Republican Tax Cuts

March 3, 2018 By Emily Stewart, Vox.com Educate! Electoral Politics, Tax Reform, Taxes

Warren Buffett’s multinational conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, made an extra $29 billion in 2017 thanks to the Republican tax bill, the billionaire investor said in his annual letter to shareholders released on Saturday. For reference, that’s nearly half of the conglomerate’s entire net gain last year. “A large portion of our gain did not come from anything we accomplished at Berkshire,” Buffett, 87, wrote. Of the $65 billion the company made last year, $36 billion was from its operations. The rest was thanks to the GOP tax cut, passed in December, which dropped the corporate income tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent. That the tax bill would make such an enormous difference for Berkshire Hathaway, which as of 2017 has $702 billion in total assets, is not a surprise: That is largely how it was designed.

Big Banks Got Huge Tax Cuts, Then Hiked States’ And Cities’ Interest Rates

March 2, 2018 Staff, Publicbankinginstitute.org Educate! Banks, Big Banks, New Economy, Taxes

The monster banks get monster tax cuts … then turn around and hike interest rates for states and cities. The hikes could translate into millions of dollars of extra costs for cash-strapped municipalities. Creating Public Banks would cut these middlemen — along with the enormous soaring drain of interest payments and fees — out of public budgets. Bloomberg: “It takes away from money that would help the state’s reserve, or it takes away from money the state may appropriate for other statewide public purposes,” said David Erdman, the capital finance director for Wisconsin, whose payments on a $279 million loan will jump by about $750,000 next year.

From Billions To Bombs & Our Gun Problem

March 1, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Occupy.com Resistance Report Bombing, Guns, Taxes, Wars and Militarism

We’ve heard the anti-gun and pro-gun conversation. But that’s not a complete conversation - by any stretch of the imagination. scott crow discusses the very real gun problem we have in this country and why neither the liberals nor the conservatives have the answer. His latest book, “Setting Sights” shares histories and present-day examples of community armed self-defense in an effort to de-romanticize, educate and engage readers in the conversations we need to be having - in order to save lives and collectively work for justice.

The Tax Scam Is Starting To Sink In

March 1, 2018 By Josh Hoxie, Otherwords.org Educate! New Economy, Taxes

While billionaires fund a PR push for the tax law, most ordinary workers report seeing no increase in their take-home pay. It’s no fun being scammed. I distinctly remember looking for my first big city apartment and finding an ad that looked perfect. Beautiful picture, cheap rent, great location. It sounded too good to be true and, sadly, it was. Just send a check in the mail, and don’t forget to send over your Social Security number, they said. We’ll mail you a key. Fortunately, I didn’t take the bait. I’ve also managed to dodge the countless “Nigerian royalty” looking to make me rich via e-mail, and the endless robo-calls about lowering my utility bills. Not everyone is so lucky. If there’s one constant of scams, it’s that given enough opportunities, they’ll get somebody to give up the goods.

How Workers Would Spend Corporate Tax Cut

February 1, 2018 Thomas Kochan, Theconversation.com Educate! Tax cuts for the rich, Taxes, Workers

Over 200 CEOs have said they will raise wages or give bonuses as a result of the large corporate income tax cut passed late last year by Congress. Some view their plans as simply a public relations move, others as a response to tighter labor markets or worker pressures. Pretty much everyone hopes that it might signal a new era in which corporate leaders share earnings with workers in ways they have not done in the past. I’m among those who hold such a hope. Only if such profit sharing becomes the norm will the long-term trends in widening income inequality and wage stagnation be reversed. But why should this decision be left to CEOs? Don’t workers have a legitimate claim and stake in what is done with the profits they help produce? New research I’ve been leading at MIT finally gives workers a voice on these issues and many others.

St. Paul Companies Spend Tax Breaks On Super Bowl Sponsorships

January 30, 2018 By Rachel M. Cohen, Theintercept.com Resist! Super Bowl, Taxes, Teachers

WITH MORE THAN a million people headed to the Twin Cities over the next 10 days for the Super Bowl, local corporations, St. Paul school district officials, and civic leaders are bracing for what may be a public relations nightmare: the first teachers strike in St. Paul in over 70 years. The St. Paul Federation of Teachers, nine months into its contract negotiation, authorized a strike vote for January 31. The move comes amid the union’s unconventional strategy of linking declining school funding to corporate tax cuts and narrowing in on local companies on the Super Bowl Host Committee as a potential source of funding for the cash-strapped school system. The argument the teachers are making in their contract negotiations is straightforward. Cuts, they say, are not the answer.

No Taxpayers’ Nickel Is Spared In Washington’s Military Adventures Worldwide

January 29, 2018 By Martin Berger, Journal-neo.org Educate! Military, Taxes, US Imperialism

Special Operations Forces have been deployed to three quarters of the nations on the planet. Furthermore, according to this researcher there is little or no transparency as to what they are doing in these countries and whether their efforts are promoting security or provoking further tension and conflict. This data is confirmed by the publication in the notorious Western alternative media source Tom Dispatch, that features a map showing the locations of 132 countries where America’s elite troops were deployed. According to the International Business Times, the countless wars that the US government has been waging on other states ever since 9/11 resulted in the costs of 1.46 trillion dollars, which amounts to 250 million dollars a day for 16 years consecutively.

Tax Reform’s Higher Purpose

December 29, 2017 Thea Lee and Hunter Blair, democracyjournal.org Create! New Economy, Tax Reform, Taxes

Progressive tax reform needs to raise enough revenue to honor our current commitments to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other social insurance programs, as well as to finance expanded public investments and income supports that ensure opportunity for all. Rising inequality and the threat of “secular stagnation” make a solid foundation for the case that this revenue should be raised progressively, as taxing wealthy households with large savings does not drag heavily on growth of aggregate demand. Net tax cuts for high-income households and corporations won’t help our demand problem. A number of specific progressive measures are available that can raise revenue, many of them included in recent years’ editions of the budget proposals forwarded by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), with some technical assistance from the Economic Policy Institute.

Help For Struggling Millionaires Is On The Way

December 28, 2017 By Chuck Collins, Otherwords.org Educate! Ruling Class, Tax Reform, Taxes

If you're struggling to get by on $20 million, the GOP is looking out for you and your heirs. It isn’t easy being a millionaire these days, especially if you’ve got less than $20 million. Fortunately, Congress is watching out for you. Yes, the Republican tax cut bonanza targets lower end millionaires for special relief. Now those struggling to scrape by with $15 million or $20 million can breathe more easily. And even lowly billionaires will be able to keep more of their wealth. Why? Because Congress just increased the amount of wealth exempted by the estate tax, our nation’s only levy on inherited wealth. In the bad old days, a family had to have $11 million in wealth before they were subject to the tax. This exempted the 99.8 percent of undisciplined taxpayers who, in the words of Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, had squandered their wealth on “booze, women, and movies.”

Journalists Who Relayed GOP’s Deficit Moaning Owe Us Apologies

December 27, 2017 By Adam Johnson, Fair.org Educate! Journalism, Tax Reform, Taxes

Now that the Republicans’ brazen tax bill that the CBO predicts will add $1.4 trillion to the deficit has passed, yet again exposing “deficit concerns” by congressional Republicans as an empty marketing ploy, will those in the media who pushed the Deficit Doom narrative during the early Obama years admit they were wrong? Suddenly deficits—something Every Serious Person cared about—are a total nonissue. The Beltway orthodoxy for decades—especially in the years following the 2008 economic crash—that deficits would crush our economy and render the United States insolvent is mysteriously absent from the Republicans’ plan to increase the deficit by equivalent of the GDP of Russia.

Tax Bill Just Opened A New Front In The Class War

December 24, 2017 Miles Kampf-Lassin, inthesetimes.com Educate! Austerity, Corporate duopoly, Taxes

The current economic status quo—with stock markets soaring while wages remain flat and inequality widens—is both unstable and unsustainable. The coming shock will only accelerate these trends in order to benefit the wealthy, and it’s being delivered in the form of tax “reform” by a Republican Party dead set on pleasing its donor class while hanging working people out to dry. As many economists have pointed out, at its core, the GOP’s tax bill represents a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom of society up to the top. The rich will benefit enormously, while half of all taxpayers will actually see their taxes increase over the next ten years.

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