Tag: taxes

IN-DEPTH: Losing Your Home Over a Missed $588 Property Tax Bill—In 12 States Government Can Seize Your Home and Keep All Proceeds

It was a dream come true—or rather about to come true—when the Halls bought their forever home. It had everything they needed and more: five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a family room, a dining room, a roomy garage, good schools, and a good neighborhood. Sure, a fixer-upper, but they felt up to it. Prentiss Hall, a home improvement contractor, made it his life project, and everybody lent a hand—his wife, Tawanda, and six children, cousins, and friends.

“We were really excited,” Tawanda told The Epoch Times.

They negotiated the price down to $67,000—a bargain, perhaps, but the home demanded a daunting amount of “tender love and care.”

“The house had been sitting there for a while. I guess it had mold in it, and it needed new windows and doors and electric,” Tawanda said.

“The city made us get all kinds of permits to get the house up to code. So we went in there and just started working.”

It took about a year before they were able to move into the home in the quiet Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan. And it was several years before they felt “comfortable” with it, she said.

The result was worth it.

“It was a dream home. It was big enough … for our family to be there, we had plenty of rooms, big enough to have our holiday dinners, and everyone can come and be comfortable,” she said.

For a Detroit girl, it was nice to have a peaceful place to live, away from all the noise and hustle.

“We just hoped and planned to stay and grow and raise grandchildren and, you know,” she paused.

“But—,” her voice trailed into a sigh.

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Big Banks, Corporations Getting 90 Percent Of Biden’s Green Energy Credits: Congressional Study

Most of the green energy tax benefits provided by President Joe Biden’s $750 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 are going into the coffers of big banks and billion-dollar corporations, according to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.).

“While President Biden’s supercharged IRS is warming up to target working Americans, his administration is getting ready to spend those tax dollars to subsidize special interest green energy projects of billion-dollar companies,” Smith said in a statement based on a new congressional analysis issued by the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT).

Smith was referring to the Biden administration’s controversial plan to double the size of the IRS workforce by adding 87,000 new tax investigators and auditors. House Republicans want to defund the IRS expansion plan.

“Many of the same companies getting a green corporate welfare check have shed their American identity to do business with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and, as a result, our tax dollars are being funneled to Chinese entities that manipulate our key supply chains,” Smith continued.

“While House Republicans are fighting for working families struggling to pay their gasoline and utility bills, House Democrats are prioritizing foreign nations and sending as many taxpayer-funded handouts to corporations as possible. With big banks pocketing three times more of these special interest tax breaks than any other industry, it’s clear Democrats are rewarding their friends on Wall Street that push their partisan ESG agenda,” the Missouri Republican said.

The JCT includes members from both the Senate and House of Representatives, and the chairmanship and vice chairmanship positions are rotated between the two chambers from one Congress to the next. Smith is the chairman this year, while Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the most senior senator on the panel, is the vice chairman.

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PENTAGON REQUESTS $36 MILLION FOR HAVANA SYNDROME

HOUSE SPEAKER KEVIN McCarthy’s debt limit bill unveiled Wednesday would slash $130 billion from a broad range of domestic programs, including clean-energy subsidies and student loan forgiveness. But one thing the bill would not cut is the military, which last month requested an $842 billion budget.

Buried in the Pentagon’s sprawling budget request is an ask for at least $36 million to respond to Havana syndrome, the mysterious symptoms alleged by U.S. spies and diplomats. Initially blamed on microwave weapons wielded by foreign powers like Russia, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded there is “no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or collection device that is causing” the symptoms — opening the possibility that they may be psychogenic in nature.

The amount represents an increase of $2.1 million over the previous fiscal year and “ensures that individuals affected by anomalous health incidents receive timely and comprehensive health care and treatment,” according to the Defense Health Program’s proposed operation and maintenance budget, released on March 13. “Anomalous health incidents,” or AHIs, is the U.S. government’s term for Havana syndrome, named after the CIA officers and diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba who, in 2016, reported symptoms like headaches, nausea, and hearing loud noises. Since then, U.S. Embassy personnel who served in other countries have reportedly been affected, including China, Colombia, France, Georgia, India, Poland, Serbia, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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