Taxes
March 31, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
There is widespread support for using federal money to improve the nation’s infrastructure. Donald Trump favored doing so, but never put forth legislation. Now, Joe Biden has unveiled an infrastructure bill of sorts. Unfortunately, his proposal is so bad that even the Washington Post has noticed. The first problem with Biden’s bill is that it isn’t much about infrastructure. The Post reports: Many economic experts agree that significant investments in
»
March 17, 2021 — John Hinderaker
At the federal level, traditional small-government conservatism is on life support. Even before the “Biden administration’s” $1.9 trillion money-printing spree, the forces of limited government hadn’t been heard from in Washington for quite a while. Things are different at the state level, however. State governments can’t print borrow money from the Fed, and most have constitutional balanced budget requirements. So if you want to control state taxes, you also have
»
October 23, 2020 — Steven Hayward
After a certain point it becomes wanton cruelty to keep dunking on California’s slow motion suicide, but some stories are too good to pass unremarked. Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that rocker Gene Simmons is KISS-ing California goodbye and moving to no-income tax Washington state, and in high KISS-my-ass style: [Simmons] is now putting the property, which they later redeveloped into a sprawling European-style mansion, on the market for $22 million.
»
October 1, 2020 — Steven Hayward
A few days ago a liberal columnist for the Seattle Times wrote a good column about the collapse of small business in the downtown core of the Emerald City: “Self-inflicted wounds make Seattle’s business losses worse.” Someone in Seattle’s media is finally getting it: Shops were looted, in some cases repeatedly, this past summer. It sullies the cause of social justice protests to link the two together. The looting was
»
September 28, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Have you heard—Donald Trump admits that he takes advantage of the tax code to minimize his taxes! And he’s even admitted it to the New York Times! Here’s the scoop: Donald Trump Acknowledges Not Paying Federal Income Taxes for Years Donald J. Trump explicitly acknowledged for the first time during Sunday’s debate that he used a $916 million loss that he reported on his 1995 income tax returns to avoid
»
September 18, 2020 — Steven Hayward
As we never tire of saying, if liberals didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all. And the best exhibit of this right now is that if Biden and the Democrats sweep the election, one of the first things they will do is . . . deliver a big tax cut to the rich. Don’t believe me? Then perhaps you’ll believe the . . . (checks notes)
»
November 17, 2019 — Steven Hayward
The New York Times today took after FedEx for the sin of having a low corporate tax bill. Sample: FedEx reaped big savings [from the Trump tax cut], bringing its effective tax rate from 34 percentin fiscal year 2017 to less than zero in fiscal year 2018, meaning that, overall, the government technically owed it money. But it did not increase investment in new equipment and other assets in the
»
November 2, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Elizabeth Warren has come up with a plan to pay for her “Medicare For All” proposal, which has a price tag in the tens of trillions of dollars. Part of the plan is a “wealth tax,” which means taxing unrealized capital gains at ordinary income rates. Combined with other elements of her plan, this implies that unrealized capital gains will be taxed at more than 50%. Megan McArdle wonders whether
»
November 1, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Elizabeth Warren — United States Senator, Democratic presidential candidate, fake Indian, fake victim of pregnancy discrimination — recently counseled billionaire hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman via Twitter: “Leon, you were able to succeed because of the opportunities this country gave you. Now why don’t you pitch in a bit more so everyone else has a chance at the American dream, too?” Warren was responding to Cooperman’s dissent from the substance
»
October 17, 2019 — John Hinderaker
One of the ironies of contemporary politics is that Democrats and the press (to repeat) maintain a constant hysteria over President Trump’s “lies,” most of which are simply disagreements, while their own utterances bear little or no resemblance to the truth. A case in point is Ilhan Omar, Minnesota’s far-left Squad member. Omar, like all of her fellow Democrats, constantly accuses President Trump of “lying.” Here is one of many
»
June 2, 2019 — Steven Hayward
The White House has announced that President Trump will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Arthur Laffer, one of the principal pioneers of supply-side economics. Naturally the usual suspects are upset, like the Washington Post and Slate, both of whom offer up some of their best ventriloquist journalism: The so-called “mainstream” of the economics profession will never forgive Laffer (and his precursors and collaborators such as Robert Mundell and Jude
»
April 24, 2019 — Steven Hayward
It is a commonplace of Illinois politics that each new governor has a prison cell fitted out for him along with his election certification. And sure as the swallows return to Capistrano, Illinois’s new Democratic Governor Jay Pritzker is under investigation for tax evasion. But this story is important for more than just illustrating the usual Illinois chronic political corruption. Pritzker comes from one of the wealthiest families in America,
»
February 26, 2019 — Steven Hayward
There are days when I note that I was way ahead of the Progressive curve. For example, six years ago I mused here twice about why liberals should advocate for a wealth tax ( here and here), noting in the first post: An excise tax of 1 percent on Buffett’s assets would yield something like $350 million a year. Throw in Gates, the founders of Google, Apple, and Facebook, and the
»
February 9, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The good people of Virginia are about to get a reward for enduring the sh*tshow that has been playing out in the Commonwealth. They are going to get a tax cut. I’m not sure they deserve it. After all, Virginians elected the Northam-Fairfax-Herring slate. But they did so with imperfect knowledge about the trio, so let’s not be churlish. The tax break affords Virginians $1 billion in relief. According to
»
February 9, 2019 — Steven Hayward
It used to be that liberals cried foul if you accused them of indulging is class warfare, but day by day it becomes apparent that the left has shed this faux bashfulness and has decided that it must demonize billionaires as a class. In a previous Loose Ends I noted how lefty agitator Marshall Steinbaum had offered up clear hate speech for rich people, which apparently cost him his Twitter
»
September 7, 2018 — John Hinderaker
I spent the day in Washington yesterday. The city is roiled by the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing, where the Democrats are disgracing themselves with fantastical assertions against a superb, mainstream jurist. Beyond the Kavanaugh hearing, the city’s main obsession is an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times by a person who may or may not exist and may or may not be a senior executive branch official. The gist
»
August 11, 2018 — John Hinderaker
Paul Krugman is a partisan hack, so I don’t take anything he says seriously. Still, it is interesting, as Dan Mitchell points out, that Krugman subscribes to the Laffer Curve: I’ve been writing about the Laffer Curve for decades, making the simple point that there’s not a linear relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. To help people understand, I ask them to imagine that they owned a restaurant and
»
