Taxes

Colorado Looks To Rental-Car Fee To Fund Passenger Rail Projects

March 19, 2024 Trains.com. Create! Colorado, Railroads, State Legislatures, Taxes

Denver, Colorado - Colorado legislators plan to introduce a bill that will increase the state fee on rental cars by $2 to $3 per day to help pay for proposed passenger rail service along the Front Range and to Craig, Colo., the Colorado Sun reports. The fee would generate as much as $50 million annually, which the state would use for matching funds for federal grant programs — specifically targeting the $60 billion for rail projects in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. “I really want to make sure Colorado gets some of that money,” state Senate President Steve Fenberg (D-Boulder) told the Sun.

Corporations That Pay Their Executives More Than Uncle Sam

March 16, 2024 Sarah Anderson, William Rice and Zachary Tashman, Inequality.org. Educate! Capitalism, Corporatism, Finance and the Economy, Tax Cuts, Tax Evasion, Taxes

Corporate tax dodging and CEO pay have both gotten so far out of control that a significant number of major U.S. companies are paying their top executives more than they’re paying Uncle Sam. Tesla is perhaps the most dramatic example. Over the period 2018-2022, the electric car maker raked in $4.4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. Meanwhile, Tesla CEO Elon Musk became one of the world’s richest men. When it comes to fleecing taxpayers while overpaying executives, Tesla is hardly alone. A new report we co-authored for the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness analyzes executive pay data for some of the country’s most notorious corporate tax dodgers.

How $9 Billion From Taxpayers Fueled Plastics Production

March 15, 2024 Sara Sneath, DeSmog. Educate! Environment, Louisiana, Plastics, pollution, Taxes, Texas

Through billions in tax breaks and subsidies, taxpayers in Louisiana, Texas, and other states have supported the construction or expansion of dozens of facilities manufacturing plastics in the United States since 2012. However, many of these plants have also repeatedly exceeded legal limits on the air pollution they release into surrounding communities, disproportionately affecting people of color. That’s according to an Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) report published on Thursday. For instance, in 2015, then-Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal welcomed Indorama Ventures — one of the world’s biggest producers of single-use plastic — to the state.

The ‘Ghost Budget’: How America Pays For Endless War

January 8, 2024 Linda Bilmes, Scheer Post. Educate! Debt, Pentagon Budget, Taxes, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

The post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were enabled by a historically unprecedented combination of budgetary procedures and financing methods. Unlike all previous U.S. wars, the post-9/11 wars were funded without higher taxes or non-war budget cuts, and through a separate budget. This set of circumstances – one that I have termed the “Ghost Budget” – enabled successive administrations to prosecute the wars with limited congressional oversight and minimal transparency and public debate. I adopted the name “Ghost Budget” because the term “ghost” appeared frequently in post-9/11 government reports in reference to funds allocated to people, places, or projects that turned out to be phantoms.

That New Hunter Biden Indictment

December 14, 2023 Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post. Educate! Burisma, Hunter Biden, Legal System, Taxes, Ukraine

Before wading through the latest indictment of Hunter Biden, this one for nine counts of assorted tax violations, we must consider briefly the record of David Weiss, the special counsel who signed the 56–page document made public last Thursday. Only then can we read the grand jury findings unsealed last week for what they are and are not. David Weiss is the Justice Department attorney in Delaware who has run the DoJ’s lengthy (as in slow-walked) investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged violations of tax and gun laws. Among much else, David Weiss appears to have connived with other Justice officials to cover up a Federal Bureau of Investigation finding that Hunter and President Biden accepted bribes of $5 million each from Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter sat on the board from April 2014 to April 2019.

Share The Wealth Vs. Waste The Wealth

October 14, 2023 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Educate! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, IRS, Taxes, wealth inequality

In 2020, the Trump team’s last full year, U.S. households annually making over $1 million faced fewer tax audits than households with incomes low enough to qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit. That had never happened before. But the blame for this plutocratic about-face, a new Americans for Tax Fairness report makes clear, doesn’t belong to the Trump crew alone. Rich people-friendly members of Congress gave Donald Trump his tax-cutting playbook. Ever since 2010, they had been squeezing the IRS budget big-time, forcing the agency “to drastically pull back on auditing the ultra-wealthy.” How drastically?

Time To Start A Conversation About How We Tax Wealth

August 11, 2023 Peter Lazenby, Morning Star Online. Create! Class Struggle, Taxes, United Kingdom (UK), wealth inequality

United Kingdom - The TUC has condemned a “tale of two Britains” which sees working people suffering “the longest pay squeeze in modern history” while bankers’ bonuses are at eye-watering levels and chief executive pay is surging. The damning criticism came as the TUC launched a blueprint to squeeze Britain’s multimillionaires for a “modest” proportion of their wealth and end the country’s “increasing wealth inequality.” The blueprint would raise £10 billion for the public purse and should be the “start of a national conversation about taxing wealth,” said TUC general secretary Paul Nowak. It would affect only 140,000 individuals — 0.3 per cent of Britain’s population.

Momentum For New And Expanded Child And Earned Income Tax Credits

August 7, 2023 Samantha Waxman and Amelia Minkin, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Create! Child Tax Credit, Economic Security, State Legislatures, Taxes

2023 legislative sessions saw strong momentum toward creating and expanding child tax credits. Three states created a new permanent child tax credit, one created a one-time child tax credit payment, and seven states improved existing child tax credits. These efforts build on the success of the federal Child Tax Credit in reducing child poverty and improving outcomes for children in the near and long term. Many states this year have also improved their earned income tax credits (EITCs). State EITCs, like the federal EITC, boost incomes for people paid low wages and provide greater support for people caring for children, helping them better make ends meet and thrive in the long run, research has found.

The Federal Debt Trap: Issues And Possible Solutions

July 13, 2023 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Bubble, Debt, Economic crisis, Finance and the Economy, Pentagon Budget, Taxes

“Rather than collecting taxes from the wealthy,” wrote the New York Times Editorial Board in a July 7 opinion piece, “the government is paying the wealthy to borrow their money.” Titled “America Is Living on Borrowed Money,” the editorial observes that over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), annual federal budget deficits will average around $2 trillion per year. By 2029, just the interest on the debt is projected to exceed the national defense budget, which currently eats up over half of the federal discretionary budget. In 2029, net interest on the debt is projected to total $1.07 trillion, while defense spending is projected at $1.04 trillion.

Big Companies Earned Over USD 1 Trillion Of Profit In 2022

July 9, 2023 Abdul Rahman, People's Dispatch. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Greed, Hunger, International Monetary Fund, Profits, Taxes

A recently published joint study conducted by Oxfam and Action Aid claims that the total windfall profit of the world’s 722 top companies crossed USD 1 trillion for the second consecutive year in 2022. The study notes that this figure, which is higher than the GDP of a majority of countries in the world, reflects an “obscene” and “immoral” quest for higher profits by the rich, who have exploited the global crisis of energy and food price inflation and higher interest rates in the last two years caused by multiple factors including the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Debunking The Five Major Myths About Wealth Flight

July 9, 2023 Kurt Wise, Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. Educate! Massachusetts, Outmigration, Taxes, Wealthy Class

Recently, multiple news articles, op-eds, and think tank reports have asserted that Massachusetts is suffering an exodus of households, particularly high-income households, fleeing to states with lower taxes. A closely related claim is that outmigrants are taking billions of dollars out of the Massachusetts economy when they leave. These claims about income migration are both overblown and based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the available data. The scary portrayals of population flight are typically connected to calls for tax cuts that overwhelmingly would benefit the wealthiest households.

Could We Actually End The CEO Defense Contractor Gravy Train?

June 6, 2023 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Create! CEO Pay, Military Industrial Complex, Taxes, wealth inequality, Weapons makers

Could corporate CEOs anywhere in the universe have a deal much sweeter than U.S. defense contractor chiefs? The CEO at CybeCys, Inc., a Texas-based defense contractor, might quibble with that question. He isn’t feeling all that much sweetness these days. Last month, federal prosecutors announced a deal that will have this CEO and CybeCys pay over $283,000 in penalties and damages for cheating on two Covid-era federal loan programs. The CybeCys CEO seems to have transferred hefty chunks of taxpayer dollars into his own personal investment accounts and used those dollars, prosecutors charge, to buy up “securities, exchange-traded funds, and cryptocurrency.”

Training Center Costs Call Years Of Promises Into Question

June 5, 2023 Riley Bunch and Brian Eason, Atlanta Journal Constitution. Educate! Atlanta, Cop City, Georgia, Police, Taxes

In the spring of 2021, the Atlanta Police Foundation announced an attractive deal for city taxpayers. If the city put up $30 million for a public safety training center, the nonprofit and its philanthropic partners would handle the rest of the project’s $90 million price tag. That promise was repeated month after month, year after year, by one mayor and then the next. Today, the Atlanta Police Foundation still asks for donations to the project on a fundraising page that says the city will only contribute $30 million to the cause. But that’s not true. And it hasn’t been true for years.

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