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Tag: taxes
Biden Sending $325 Million In More Military Aid To Ukraine
Biden Administration Announces Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine / For Immediate Release:
Today, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced critical new security assistance for Ukraine. This includes the authorization of a Presidential Drawdown of security assistance with more ammunition for U.S.-provided HIMARS, artillery rounds, and anti-armor capabilities essential to strengthening Ukraine’s defenders on the battlefield valued at up to $325 million.
Democrats join Patriotic Millionaires group to call for 90% tax on income above $100 million
Agroup of Democratic lawmakers and the Patriotic Millionaires, an organization of high-income and high net worth individuals favoring higher taxes on the wealthy, are calling on Congress to pass a 90% income tax on incomes above $100 million as fears of a recession are growing.
Abigail Disney, a documentary filmmaker who is the granddaughter of Roy Disney, cofounder of The Walt Disney Company, joined the lawmakers to call for higher taxes on “extremely high income.”
“My grandfather paid a 90% marginal tax rate on his income, and he amassed plenty of wealth in the process,” she said at a news conference on Tuesday. “That means rates of up to 90% on incomes over $100 million.”
The Patriotic Millionaires are also advocating taxing “all income over $1 million the same regardless of how it is generated, including capital gains income and inheritance income,” according to a press release about the organization’s latest tax proposal.
California Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez said his tax reform proposal, which Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders is sponsoring in the Senate, would raise estate tax or “death tax” rates. The Republicans implemented a phase-out of the estate tax.
“Our bill will help narrow the wealth gap and raise much needed revenue for investment in the benefits that help working families and our constituents who aren’t in line to inherit a fortune,” he said.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Progressive Caucus, is a cosponsor of the Gomez legislation.
How it’s going…
Nearly $500 million continues to sit in a bloated, unused government fund
As Americans rush to file their taxes by this year’s April 18 deadline, a sliver of them — less than 4 percent, if recent history holds — will check a little box that directs $3 to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund.
But that’s still millions of $3 contributions, year after year. And they’ve caused the Presidential Election Campaign Fund — a once-popular resource for White House aspirants that hasn’t been used regularly in 15 years — to swell past $430 million in value as of February 28, according to U.S. Treasury records reviewed by Raw Story.
With the untapped fund likely to continue growing after Tax Day en route to half a billion dollars, politicians and nonprofits have ideas for how to reform the nation’s obsolete public campaign financing policies and reallocate this resource at a time when, according to the Treasury, the country is facing more than a $1 trillion dollar deficit.
Among them is Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who told Raw Story the money could be used to help close the nation’s budget gap.
“It’s just sitting there … This is just a small effort on many other efforts that we have in trying to tackle this budget,” Ernst said. “You’ve just got to get out there and raise money if you’re gonna play, so why do we do this?”
Nonprofits could benefit from the money that’s sitting in the fund, said Rick Cohen, chief communications officer and chief operating officer for the National Council of Nonprofits. While the Council is focusing much of its tax policy efforts on getting the universal charitable deduction back after it expired in 2021, the hundreds of millions of dollars in the Presidential Election Campaign Fund could help numerous charities.
“Every dollar can make a big difference for people who rely on nonprofits,” Cohen said. “It may seem like a small amount when it comes to the government’s budget, but 90% of the sector has less than a $1 million budget every year. You could double the budget of 500 nonprofit organizations and still have more to go around.”
Cohen said it would be great to see a tax form checkoff box for donating to charities like Colorado has that allows taxpayers to donate their return to nonprofits.
Biden Regime to Change Definition of ‘Lawful Presence’ to Give Illegals Welfare
The Biden Regime has announced its plans to change the legal definition of “lawful presence” for the purpose of extending taxpayer-funded welfare programs like Medicaid and Obamacare to illegal aliens.
Under new plans unveiled by Joe Biden, illegal aliens enrolled in DACA, the massive amnesty program that was illegally enacted by executive order, circumventing Congress, during the Obama Administration, will become eligible to enroll in taxpayer-funded Medicaid and Obamacare programs. Biden says that his administration will implement the new definition of “lawful presence” by the end of this month.
In a pre-recorded video statement announcing his plans, Biden lectured actual American citizens while also referring to illegal aliens as “Americans” themselves, saying that “health care should be a right, not a privilege, and my administration’s worked hard to expand health care. And today, more Americans have health insurance than ever.”
“Today’s announcement is about giving DACA recipients the same opportunity,” Biden said at another point in the video, and added that he’s consulting with illegal aliens in his quest to redistribute American money into their pockets, saying that he’s working “alongside dreamers” to give them “the opportunities and support they deserve.”
Biden even used COVID to justify giving illegal aliens the hard-earned money of American citizens, claiming that “many” illegals “were essential workers on the front lines of the pandemic.”
Florida to investigate whether taxpayer dollars were used to purchase crack pipes for drug addicts – AG sues Biden admin for ignoring public records requests
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody announced a lawsuit on Thursday against the Biden administration after it ignored Freedom of Information Act requests seeking proof that taxpayer dollars were not used to purchase crack pipes for safe smoking kits provided to drug addicts.
A $30 million federal grant program, announced by President Biden in February 2022, was used to reimburse local governments that provided addicts with safe smoking kits. The program was touted as a harm reduction effort that advanced safer drug use and racial equity.
Some of the smoking kits found in Baltimore, Boston, New York, Richmond, and Washington, D.C., reportedly contained crack pipes and other drug-related paraphernalia; however, the Biden administration has maintained that crack pipes were not provided to drug addicts in taxpayer-funded kits.
A press release this week by Moody stated that Florida plans to investigate the controversy after Biden’s Department of Justice and Department of Health and Human Services ignored a February 2022 FOIA request.
IRS to Prioritize Enforcement Including Criminal Investigation for Certain Assets
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said it would increase enforcement in the area of digital asset transactions and listed transactions.
The federal agency identified certain transactions to have high-risk issues in noncompliance and vowed to ramp up enforcement in those transactions.
“The IRS tracks many known, high-risk issues in noncompliance, such as digital asset transactions, listed transactions and certain international issues. These issues arise in multiple taxpayer segments, and data analysis shows a higher potential for noncompliance,” the tax agency wrote in its newly-released funding plan (pdf).
“We will prioritize resources to increase enforcement activities, including criminal investigation as appropriate,” the agency added.
According to the plan, the IRS will develop the information platform to support digital asset reporting and analytics tools to increase digital asset compliance in the fiscal year 2024, which is between April 1, 2023, and March 31, 2024.
Digital assets include convertible virtual currency, cryptocurrency, stablecoins, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other digital representations of value, according to the IRS website.
The IRS treats digital assets as property and requires taxpayers to report taxable gains or losses from digital asset transactions.
As it’s difficult to identify the owners of digital assets, U.S. judges allow the IRS to use “John Doe summons” to seek the identities of taxpayers of interest.
NYPD officers brag about milking overtime, call detainees names in accidental recording
Jonathan Wohl’s arrest last September was about as routine as they come.
The 35-year-old construction worker was staging a one-man protest against his union, recording himself on his phone as he stood in the lobby of the Midtown offices of Laborers Local 79. When security asked him to leave, he refused and the building called the cops.
In a strange twist of technological fate, Wohl’s phone, which was at that point in the possession of the police, kept on recording.
For nearly eight hours, as Wohl paced around a holding cell in the Midtown South precinct, his phone picked up conversations among dozens of cops who did not appear to know they were being recorded.
The tape, which was reviewed by Gothamist, offers a rare window into the daily work of a police officer behind closed doors – and the ways that a number of recent criminal justice reforms have changed the way officers process arrests and collect overtime.
In contrast to comments from top NYPD officials, who have spent years lobbying against bail reform, rank-and-file officers offered another perspective, suggesting the additional paperwork required by the new law had been a boon to their paychecks.
“Bail reform sucks. But it’s also one of the best things that’s ever happened, too,” Wohl’s arresting officer, Shaun Enright, said to a coworker in the recording. “God is great, bro.”
The NYPD declined to make Enright available for comment on this story and declined to comment as an agency. The Police Benevolent Association, the union representing rank-and-file police officers, did not respond to a request for comment.
‘Self-serving’ North Dakota GOP boosts own meal allowance after axing free school lunch bill
Republicans in North Dakota are facing criticism this week after they voted to boost their own budgets for meal reimbursements, even as they blocked an expansion of a free lunch program for low-income school students.
The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reports that the Republican-dominated North Dakota Senate voted to ratify the boost to meal reimbursements for lawmakers and state workers just 10 days after the same institution narrowly blocked a bill that would have expanded the state’s free lunch program.
According to the Forum, the legislation had previously passed through North Dakota’s House of Representatives and would have “dedicated $6 million over the next two school years to cover lunch costs for K-12 students with family incomes below double the federal poverty level,” meaning that “children from families of four making less than $60,000 a year would have qualified.”
Hellbound and Down 
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