by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ECONOMY, IRS, TAXES
Mike Hiltzik’ s article, “Proof the IRS targets the poor for tax audits while leaving millionaires alone” is either economically ignorant or intentionally misleading. He asserts that the IRS disproportionately audits lower income households for some biased reason, but that is simply not the case. Hiltzik takes his data from a non-profit called TRAC which reviews IRS reports that are generated as part of an ongoing FOIA request.
Hiltzik ignores the fact that the IRS audits taxpayers based upon sophisticated analyses that tell them where the taxpayer errors are. It is simply the case that low income taxpayers claiming the complex earned income and other credits have a huge error rate – leaving the IRS no alternative but to go after them. He even complains that 82% of those audited claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) – ignoring that error rates on these tax returns are around 50%, and improper refunds involving EITC claims is more than $17 billion each year. Hiltzik goes so far to state that “pursuing low-income taxpayers won’t do anything to close the tax gap,” nearly suggesting that low-income earners shouldn’t be audited at all – though anyone can see that the combination of erroneous credit claims, and the also quite common situation of people claiming low income because of work in the underground economy are significant contributors to the tax gap.
Even though higher-income tax returns would seem to have more money to go after, they are most often either 1) relatively straightforward, with full statutory tax rates being paid, or 2) complex requiring services of qualified tax professionals who are quite competent to see that the letter of the law is being followed. It’s egregious that Hiltzik claims, with no evidence whatsoever, “the rich keep more of the money they owe to the federal government.” He misconstrues this audit data as part of his screed against millionaires and billionaires by offering the tired old trope about them not paying their fair share; in reality, roughly 57% of U.S. households paid no federal income taxes for 2021. How is that actually fair?
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ECONOMY, GOVERNMENT
Katherine Blunt’s WSJ article, “Why Your Electric Bill is Soaring — And Likely To Go Higher” absolutely ignores (or just possibly misses) that soaring gas prices are caused as much by Biden production restriction policies nationally. They are further exacerbated by policies like the New York State pipeline and fracking prohibitions just as much as they are by recent Ukraine issues. She should know that gas prices (unlike oil) are a local, not global market. Furthermore, most of New York increases are from a vast push into incredibly more expensive wind and solar mandates. Her own editorial board writes about this all the time, and she would do well to read it.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, EDUCATION, FED, GOVERNMENT
Recently, a young PhD student came to terms with the fact that academia was no longer based on merit. Rather, as a scientific researcher interested in procuring grant funding, he was dismayed to learn that certain terms such as “equity,” “diversity,” and “inclusion” were not only social goals, but now also scientific ones; in other words, they were increasingly being used in descriptions of actual scientific work.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awards millions in grants each year and the agency which renders their decision does so on two accounts: intellectual merit and broader impact. It is within the broader impact realm that the aforementioned social terms, among others, were being applied and interpreted. The appearance of particular terms related to identity politics in award abstracts, including “equity,” “diversity,” “inclusion,” “gender,” “marginalize,” “underrepresented,” and “disparity” increased substantially over the last thirty years.
In 1990, only 3 percent of award abstracts contained one of the terms, while in 2020, 30 percent of all award abstracts included at least one of those terms. Notably, the category which changed the most was Education and Human Resources, which went from 4% to 54% during that time span.
The problem with scientific research playing politics means that social causes as a scientific end are being elevated while intellectual merit and other similar criteria are being diminished.
This reminds me of the observation Rasmussen made, that “the more that scientific institutions are viewed as conduits for promulgating ideology, the less capable they will be of swaying public opinion on important issues.” Science and science funding should stick to being concerned with searching for truth among empirical evidence, not social activism.
by | BLOG, ECONOMY, FED, GOVERNMENT, POLITICS, TAXES
It’s kind of disgusting that when Congress talks about raising tax revenue, all the CBO thinks about and includes in their analyses is gross revenue. They don’t think about the costs of what the IRS, agencies, businesses, and taxpayers need to do to implement the policies that were created in order to raise that revenue. Those costs should always be factored in the computation and subsequently deducted to arrive at net revenue raised..
What’s happening now is that the compliance costs are not being considered. Congress says, for instance, that something will raise “$50 billion dollars” but then ignores that the complications, regulation issuance costs, compliance and other implementation expenses that will arise may cost $30 billion. So only $20 billion is actually raised. These hidden but true costs have to be included and come out of the CBO revenue forecast if we are to craft realistic, equitable, and efficient tax policy
by | BLOG, BUSINESS, ECONOMY, GOVERNMENT, POLITICS, TAXES
Have you ever heard any progressive who claims that the wealthy are not paying their “fair share” actually say what fair share is? Neither have I. It is probably because the wealthy in the US already pay a far higher percentage of income taxes than in any other developed country. Therefore, anyone who says the wealthy are not paying their fair share is either being a hypocrite or lying.
However, there is a group that is absolutely not paying their fair share. These are the vast number of the taxpayers who actually pay nothing. The Tax Policy Center’s newest report released in August 2021 found that in 2020, about 60.6 percent of households did not pay income tax, up from 43.6 percent of households in 2019; This closely mirrors the IRS preliminary estimate of 61.1 percent of households not paying income tax in 2020. It should be noted that much of the 2020 increase was due to pandemic-related factors, but the growing share of households paying no income tax should be kept in mind when evaluating the progressivity of the federal income tax system and proposed tax hikes on higher earners. There is virtually no other developed country in the world where this is the case.
This scenario reminds me of a true story from many years ago. When I was getting divorced, I was making about 75% of the money that my ex and I earned together. As part of our agreement, I asked her to pay 10% of the costs when our two kids went to college. At first she agreed; later on, however, she began to protest on the premise that if she got remarried and stopped working, she didn’t want to have to be responsible for having to pay the 10%! The fact that my ex had a responsibility to contribute toward college costs for her own children was totally lost on her. That’s what’s going on here. If the lower income earners don’t have any skin in the game, how can they be a responsible member of society? When they vote for new programs are they assuming that they have no obligation to pay any part of it?
The wealthy already pay a disproportionately high proportion of taxes. And yet Congress wants to fleece them more. They just assume that gullible taxpayers (I mean constituents) will just continue to vote for free stuff that others will pay for.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, CONSTITUTION, ECONOMY, GOVERNMENT, TAXES
Capital gains are the profits realized from the sale of an asset and are included as part of taxable income. A handful of states have favorable rates toward capital gains (or don’t tax them at all because they do not have an income tax).
Other states tax capital gains as ordinary income. Among the most offensive states are NY, NJ, and CA. These states have concentrations of high income individuals and businesses who pay tax at high state tax rates. And they give no rate reduction for capital gains.Such tax policy discourages the sale of less productive assets and thereby reduces investment opportunities and economic growth.
Furthermore, taxes on capital gains (just like dividends) are subject to double taxation. This means every dollar of capital gains taxed to an individual has already been taxed at the entity level. No other major country double taxes this income. And for states to not even give a rate break for this double-taxed income is as mean-spirited as it is egregious.
High capital gains taxes are inequitable, destructive, and detrimental to the economy. They should be lower, not higher.
by | BLOG, FREEDOM, MEDIA
Whenever anyone talks about George Floyd, we are immediately reminded that he was a black man unjustly killed by a white policeman and that he is now a symbol of racial justice. The problem is that racism was not even a factor in Floyd’s death — but you won’t ever hear about it.
This past April, the Attorney General for Minnesota, Keith Ellison, declined to pursue a hate crime charge against Derek Chauvin. During a CBS News interview when Ellison was asked on the matter, he stated, “I wouldn’t call it that because hate crimes are crimes where there’s an explicit motive and of bias. We don’t have any evidence that Derek Chauvin factored in George Floyd’s race as he did what he did.” It’s worth it to note that Ellison himself is black. When pressed further by Scott Pelley, Ellison explained “we only charge those crimes that we had evidence that we could put in front of a jury to prove.”
George Floyd’s death was unnecessary and cruel. It was an act of police brutality. It’s unfortunate, therefore, that no one has bothered to take an interest in whether (or not) the Floyd killing had anything to do with racism.
by | BLOG
How is it that serious economists and lawmakers want to follow FDR’s economic policies as some sort of model to follow? People who want to revive his ideas are absolutely insane. FDR took a recession that was ending (it was already four years old when he took office in 1933) and he single-handedly created the longest depression in the history of the United States that virtually lasted ten full years! Furthermore, the only reason it ended was not anything FDR did, but it was economic growth related to WWII.
(One might argue that technically we were not in a depression for the full ten years because some parts of the economy were growing. But going from 18% unemployment to 14% unemployment is still depression in my book.
There is a real concern with Biden mimicking FDR’s playbook. After all, that’s what Obama did — and Biden was his Vice President! Obama’s policies resulted in the poorest recovery since FDR’s New Deal by doing what FDR did: raising taxes, over-regulating businesses, giving organized labor excessive power, instituted policies that discouraged people from working and hurt international trade.
What is Biden doing? Ending Trump tax cuts, raising the top federal income-rate back to 39.6%, raising the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 26.5%, increasing regulation, expanding energy policy and has even created a Civilian Climate Corp for jobs, reminiscent of the old FDR Civilian Conservation Corp. With low unemployment and many areas struggling to find enough workers to fill open positions — like the service industry and manufacturing. As the economy is well underway recovering from COVID, the last thing we need to do is to spend billions of dollars on a new big government program that provides climate-related jobs.
Choosing to model FDR is only going to cause serious economic problems for this country, yet Biden doesn’t seem to think that’s a problem. Like FDR and Obama, continued government interventions and expanding government programs -far less productive than the private sector – will stifle economic growth. Because of this, we face an unnecessarily prolonged economic recovery.
by | BLOG
We have a certain tax rate that exists today because we have to raise a certain amount of revenue. Remember, the only reason we have taxes is to pay for things that the government needs to do under the provisions of the Constitution.
The revenue from the income tax is derived from applying a certain tax rate to the net profit of what people are making. The higher the rate, the more it will stifle economic activity and disincentivize earning more in order to avoid paying a high tax rate.
It seems that Pro Publica doesn’t actually understand how the tax system works. The problem with their latest analysis is that they argue high income earners are somehow getting away with something by not paying taxes on unrealized earnings or gains, but this is something completely different and should be treated as such. If your tax is based on net profit, as discussed above, that should be one rate. But if you decide that the tax should be based on gross receipts — you must actually make the rate lower because it is taxing a broader base.
In other words, Pro Publica is looking at the situation completely backwards. If tax collection is based on a base that includes unrealized income, the rate would be confiscatory. For instance, the death tax is already a double tax; you are paying taxes on income that you already paid taxes on when you earned it. To suggest that we should tax the unrealized gain on a death tax would actually be the equivalent to a triple tax — and from an equity point of view, it completely mocks the concept of fairness.
by | BLOG
Though I try to stick with taxes, politics, and economics, the recklessness and stupidity with which Anthony Fauci is directing Covid health policy can’t be ignored. One of the most incompetent and sad actions ever taken by this country has been to put Fauci in charge of messaging during this pandemic. The person in charge should have been a public health expert, someone who weighed pros and cons of pandemic decisions and made informed recommendations.
Fauci showed himself worthless for the job when, early on, he demanded lockdowns for the safety of people — but when asked if he weighed the negative health consequences of the lockdown against the negative health consequences of the virus he acknowledged he never thought of that.
He should have been fired then and there. Someone should have weighed all the health angles. If that wasn’t bad enough, not only is he ignorant as a public health expert, he is also political. How else can you explain his singling out of the South Dakota Motorway event last year as an example of a spreader event, (despite the fact that it had been held last year with minor consequences) while he hypocritically ignored events such as Obama’s birthday party and Chicago’s Lollapalooza.
