Tag: taxes

Blinken In Surprise Visit To Kyiv Unveils $2BN More Aid Amid ‘Successful’ Counteroffensive

“In meetings with senior Ukrainian officials, Blinken said the Biden administration had notified Congress of its intent to provide $2 billion in long-term Foreign Military Financing to Ukraine and 18 of its neighbors, including NATO members and regional security partners,” the Associated Press writes.

The nearby countries “at risk” from Russian aggression were listed by the State Dept as follows: 

Pending expected congressional approval, about $1 billion of that will go to Ukraine and the rest will be divided among Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, the State Department said.

Earlier in the day, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced a freshly approved military assistance package to Ukraine of of $675 million. 

This brings US aid to Ukraine to $14+ billion, given that at the end of last month the Pentagon issued a statement saying security assistance to Ukraine since January 2021 has totaled $13.5 billion. At the end of August, the Pentagon reported that since January 2021, the United States has provided Ukraine with more than $13.5Bln in security assistance. Some reports are currently tallying the total at $15.2BN.

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UFO in Texas? Mysterious lights caught on camera in Round Rock

Did people in Central Texas see some UFOs in the sky?

That’s what many people are wondering after several videos captured some mysterious lights in the evening on September 1.

Video shared to FOX 7 Austin caught the lights in the Round Rock area of Brushy Creek.

Emily White, who spoke to FOX 7 Austin’s Rudy Koski, says, “It was mesmerizing, honestly. It was so silent because if it was one light, then I would have maybe thought, ‘Oh, a helicopter, a plane, something like that.’ But like there was so many of them together.”

When asked if she thought it was a close encounter, White said, “I’ll be honest, kind of. I don’t know if I believe in all that, but, I don’t know. Maybe, I hear a lot of it in like America that that kind of things happens. I think it’s just because of like it didn’t make any noise at all, which I just thought was really odd. But, yeah, definitely, definitely felt like it was like the alien invasion or something on the way.”

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Kansas Public School Pays $95K to Teacher Suspended For ‘Misgendering’ Trans Student

A Kansas public school system has agreed to pay a $95,000 settlement to a teacher who was suspended for “misgendering” a transgender student by using their birth name.

Fort Riley Middle School officials also forced the teacher, Pamela Ricard, to conceal the student’s social transition from their parents against her will.

Ricard had filed a lawsuit challenging the school district policy that forced her to use the student’s “preferred name” to address them in class while using their legal name when speaking to parents.

In the lawsuit, Ricard was represented by Alliance Defending Freedom and Kriegshauser Ney Law Group, who said in a statement that the policy “violated her conscience.”

“No school district should ever force teachers to willfully deceive parents or engage in any speech that violates their deeply held religious beliefs,” said ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer, director of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom. “We’re pleased to settle this case favorably on behalf of Pam, and we hope that it will encourage school districts across the country to support the constitutionally protected freedom of teachers to teach and communicate honestly with both children and parents.”

According to the statement, in May, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas allowed Ricard’s lawsuit to proceed. The court ruled that since she was likely to win the lawsuit on her her First Amendment free exercise of religion claim, a motion to halt enforcement of the parental communication portion of the district policy was granted.

“This case provides straightforward lessons for Kansas school boards: Schools shouldn’t lie to parents and teachers don’t forfeit their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door,” said Joshua Ney, partner at Kriegshauser Ney Law Group, in a statement.

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IRS Publishes Confidential Information of 120,000 Taxpayers Online, Then Blames ‘Human Coding Error’

On Friday, officials from Treasury Department announced that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had accidentally published confidential information pertaining to approximately 120,000 taxpayers’ retirement accounts on its website.

“This letter provides notice that the Internal Revenue Service recently identified an inadvertent and now-corrected disclosure of a subset of Forms 990-T,” Acting Secretary Anna Canfield Roth wrote in a letter addressed to Homeland Security Chairman Thompson.

“Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) requires this report to Congress “not later than seven days after the date on which there is reasonable basis to conclude that a major incident has occurred.” The IRS determined on Friday, August 26, that the inadvertent disclosure met this threshold,” the letter stated.

“Form 990-T is the business tax return used by tax-exempt entities, including tax-exempt organizations, government entities and retirement accounts, to report and pay income tax on income that is generated from certain investments or income unrelated to their exempt purpose,” the letter explained.

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Joe Biden Requesting $13.7 Billion More in Aid to Ukraine as $40 Billion Package Running Dry

President Joe Biden wants to spend $13.7 billion more in aid to Ukraine as his massive slush fund already approved by Congress earlier this year is running dry.

Biden’s request to Congress is part of an overall $47.1 billion emergency spending package of more funds to fight the coronavirus and monkeypox, according to the Associated Press, citing anonymous sources.

Biden has spent roughly three-quarters of the $40 billion approved by Congress in May, officials told the Associated Press, and he wants to spend $13.7 billion more.

The additional funds would not only fund equipment and intelligence support but “direct budgetary support for Ukraine,” the report notes.

Using the existing $40 billion, Biden continues announcing multi-billion dollar packages to fund weapons and ammo, surface-to-air missile systems, counter-drone technology, and drones.

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82-Year-Old Grandma Hand-Filed Taxes for Years – 1 Small Mistake Has the IRS Demanding $2.1M

The Internal Revenue Service is going after an 82-year-old woman for an outrageous $2.1 million in “penalties” because she didn’t use the right form to file her taxes.

The grandmother from the Boston area had spent decades going to her local library and diligently filling out her IRS forms by hand and sending them in. But eventually she made a serious error, though it was one she had no way of knowing that she was making, according to Reason Magazine.

After Monica Toth’s family left Germany in the 1930s to escape Hitler’s fascist empire, they landed in Argentina, where Monica was born in 1940. By age 22, she had moved to the U.S. to start a family. Ultimately, in the 80s she became a naturalized American citizen.

In 1999, Toth’s father left her $4.2 million in a Swiss Bank account. Not being a tax accountant or tax preparer, Monica was not aware of the arcane rule that Americans who own bank accounts in foreign countries must file an annual one-page form known as the Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts report (FBAR). This form basically alerts the federal government to the existence of the bank account and lists the assets therein, the New York Post reported.

Toth had no clue that this form even existed and so, she spent years neglecting to file the form.

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