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President Joe Biden plans to launch a raid on the super rich, hiking taxes for corporations and billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. White House officials said the steps were part of a proposed 2025 budget to be released next week, and aimed at reducing the federal deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years. The tax plans are expected to form a core part of Biden's re-election campaign, contrasting markedly with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, whose 2017 'Tax Cuts and Jobs Act' slashed taxes on companies and the wealthy.

People and businesses are moving out of Illinois, New York and California because of their far-left policies. These high-tax states are running out of things to tax to support their big spending policies. So they resort to lawsuits to get more money since they can't print it. Lawyers are some of the biggest Democrat supporters. Chicago is now suing oil companies for their supposed damage to the climate. Mayor Johnson, City Of Chicago Sues Oil And Gas Companies For Climate DeceptionTaxpayer protection, climate justice at heart of complaint.These lawsuits have been going on for a while. Six years ago New...

Take it from someone who has a hoard of legal accordion files stashed away in a hope chest: It’s a good idea to keep your tax records. However, if you’re going through a phase of trying to get rid of everything, the IRS is (sort of) clear on how many years to keep the paper trail. How Long To Keep Your Tax Records Let’s go in descending order: Forever: If you never filed a return, or if you filed a fraudulent return (neither of which is recommended) 7 years: If you file a claim for a loss from worthless securities...

Academy Award-nominated actor Terrence Howard has been ordered by a federal judge to pay nearly $1 million in back taxes, including interest and penalties, after saying that it was “immoral for the United States government to charge taxes to the descendants of slaves.” The judgment comes after the IRS spent a year trying to collect $578,000 in income taxes that Howard, 54, had not paid between 2010 and 2019, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The Justice Department sued the “Empire” star in 2022 over the issue, but the actor’s only response appears to have been an angry voicemail he left...

Actor Terrence Howard reportedly said it is "immoral for the United States government to charge taxes to the descendants of slaves" after being ordered to pay nearly $1 million in back taxes. According to a report from the Philadelphia Inquirer on Thursday, a federal judge in Philadelphia ordered the Academy Award-nominated actor to pay $903,115 in back taxes, penalties and interest. "For more than a year, the 54-year-old star of the TV hit ‘Empire,’ whose last listed address was in Plymouth Meeting, rebuffed IRS efforts to collect $578,000 in income taxes it says he failed to pay between 2010 and...

DARLINGTON, Penn.—Kim Nalesnik was shocked to receive a 1099-MISC tax form from Norfolk Southern railroad. She never worked there, but her household received $2,500 from the company in 2023. A Norfolk Southern train derailed in neighboring East Palestine, Ohio, in February last year, spilling 1.1 million pounds of toxic vinyl chloride. Adding to the disaster, officials started a controlled release and burn from overturned rail cars days later, creating a fireball and large plume of black smoke filled with chemicals that could be seen for miles. Locals say the smoke dropped poisons into their land and water and that they...

Oscar Wilde wrote that “moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” Justice Arthur Engoron took that line to heart with his absurd imposition of $455 million in fines and interest against Donald Trump and his corporation. ... Engoron then combined that unprecedented application with an equally extraordinary penalty, which is greater than the gross national product of some countries. He disgorged hundreds of millions in a case where not one dollar was lost by anyone. Indeed, the “victims” wanted to get more business from Trump and are now being prevented from doing so by Engoron. ... Nothing succeeds...

Wealth taxes are like a specter in search of a host, and an already overtaxed New England state may be the first to succumb. Vermont lawmakers want to tax residents’ unrealized gains, hoping to finally break the barrier that’s kept them from draining asset values year after year. The state’s top tax legislator has spent recent weeks pushing bills that would dial up taxes on high earners. The biggest reach is a proposal to tax the paper gains from assets above $10 million. The plan would slap Vermont’s 8.75% top income-tax rate on half of those gains. That means a...

Millions of Americans awaiting their refund checks could be disappointed, as early data shows that average workers are receiving 29 percent less in tax refunds from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) this year. The average refund check through February 2 is worth $1,395, according to statistics published by the IRS on Thursday. This amount is significantly less compared to the $1,963 received on average last year. Despite the noticeable reduction in the average refund issued this year so far, the IRS does not appear alarmed, noting that the average refund amount is likely to change in the coming months. The...

As Americans file returns this season, some worry about IRS audits amid agency efforts to ramp up service, technology and enforcement. Recent IRS enforcement has targeted high-income individuals, large corporations and complex partnerships. But everyday filers could still face an audit — and certain issues are more prone to IRS scrutiny, experts say. You don’t want to face the “audit lottery,” warned Ryan Losi, a certified public accountant and executive vice president of CPA firm Piascik. Audit rates of individual income tax returns decreased for all income levels from tax years 2010 to 2019, largely due to lower IRS funding,...

Although the Ivies and other elite colleges and universities in the U.S. are financial titans, they are registered with the Internal Revenue Service as 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit organizations. As a result, their vast property holdings are exempt from taxation in all 50 states. The rationale for this status is that higher education is an inherent public good. At least that has been the assumption under which this country has long operated. But this argument has increasingly been called into question by events over the last few years, culminating in the headline-making responses by university presidents to a recent congressional panel....

The average refund so far this tax season is ringing in at $1,395 compared to $1,963 last year... Tax refunds so far this year are markedly smaller than the same time a year ago, according to the earliest tax season data from the Internal Revenue Service. The average refund amount was $1,395 as of Feb. 2, down 28.9% from $1,963 for the same period last year, the IRS reported. That’s based on nearly 2.6 million refunds disbursed so far versus 7.9 million refunds disbursed by this point last year. The statistics for this year are based on five days of...

The Supreme Court supposedly put an end to “home equity theft” last year. But some state and local governments have found a loophole.In Arizona, citizens can still lose their houses over minuscule tax bills, despite a unanimous 2023 Supreme Court ruling that was supposed to paralyze the practice nationwide. A disturbing chasm is growing between the letter of the law and the spirit of justice. Christine Searle, a 70-year-old retiree, faces the loss of her home—valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars—over a mere $1,607.68 in back taxes. Sadly, her story is not uncommon in Arizona. For nearly two decades,...

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced a reduction in DMV and Parks & Recreation services Friday to help the city deal with the influx of migrants after the failure of a bipartisan immigration bill in Congress. "This is a plan for shared sacrifice. This is what good people do in hard situations as you try to manage your way to serve all of your values. Our values are we want to continue to be a city that does not have women and children out on the street in tents in 20 degree weather," Johnston said in a Friday morning news conference....

Mayor Eric Adams said he’d consider property tax breaks for middle-class co-op and condo owners who have to pay for pricey building upgrades when a new “green” mandate icks in. Hizzoner said he was open to tax abatements as anxious residents brace for the costs of Local Law 97, which covers 800,000 co-op and condo apartments. “My second apartment was a co-op,” Adams said during testimoney in Albany on the state budget last week.

The cost of the Inflation Reduction Act’s energy and climate provisions is now expected to be significantly higher than previously projected, at least partially because of greater-than-anticipated investment in climate-friendly technology. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revised its projections this week, greatly increasing how much it believes the law’s energy tax credit-related provisions will cost. “The costs of energy-related tax provisions are much higher than the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation originally projected,” CBO Director Phillip Swagel said. One of the factors the agency cited is a greater number of people expected to claim tax credits for electric...

A new bill making its way through the legislature in Columbus could change how much you bring home on payday. And lawmakers are hopeful it could bring a new frontier to Ohio. The proposed bill would slowly cut state income tax before completely getting rid of it in 2030. The lawmakers who introduced the bill told Dayton 24/7 Now reporter Malena Brown it's worked in many other states and can work in the Buckeye State. Those states include Texas, Florida, Nevada and Tennessee. The Volunteer State axed its income tax three years ago. Poll reveals dissatisfaction and mistrust in government...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) intends to raise its enforcement personnel by 40 percent by the end of this fiscal year, with revenue agents seeing the largest workforce increase.For fiscal year 2024, the IRS plans to boost enforcement staff by a net 5,462 employees, according to a Jan. 29 report by IRS watchdog Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). This would take the total number of enforcement personnel at the tax agency to 18,960 by the end of fiscal 2024, which is 40 percent higher than the staffing at the beginning of October 2023.Out of the 5,462 net additions,...

The bill also requires a pet animal owner to designate a caregiver for the owner’s pet animal. The caregiver is responsible for the care and safekeeping of the pet animal during an emergency that incapacitates the pet animal owner. First responders will use the system to identify the designated caregiver of the pet animal and notify the caregiver of the incapacitation of the pet animal’s owner. A caregiver must agree to be responsible for the pet animal. If a caregiver later refuses to take custody of the pet animal or cannot be located, a first responder will place the pet...

On Friday, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) said that the fact that they cut taxes and “kept things open during COVID” has helped the state grow its population and the state has managed to balance its budget because it has attracted more people to the state. On CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Lamont stated, “We inherited a $2 billion deficit. The first thing thing I wanted to do five years ago was make sure we didn’t raise taxes. That’s what the five previous governors had done. Now, it’s five years later, we’ve got our budget balanced. We’re making investments. And we’re able...