Elon Musk only takes big leaps. It’s a reasonable bet that there’s no laddered, tax-free, municipal bond aspect to his investment portfolio. Musk is an enemy of government waste, not a subsidizer of it. As he recently posted on X, when all is said and done he’ll account for $500 billion in federal taxes […]
It’s Truly Sad to Contemplate Elon Musk Paying $500B In Taxes Read More »
“And on the tax front, it’s time for rich people like me to pay more.” As some may know, but exponentially fewer than he surely hoped, that’s what 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wrote recently in the New York Times. Romney seemingly missed that “Rich Republican apostasy on taxes” is nothing new. Paraphrasing
Please Mitt Romney, Do Not Pay More In Taxes Read More »
Taxes are routinely awful, and annually unearth dread in all of us as we cower before Congress’s outsourced tax collector (the IRS). We do so while trying to grasp the meaning of a tax code that attains its lucrative vitality for congressmen and senators via its total incomprehensibility to us. Despite that, taxes paid
Taxation Is Easily the Least Harmful Aspect of Government Spending Read More »
The Illinois Policy Institute’s Brad Weisentein wrote at RealClearMarkets last week that there are at least 32,000 former government workers in the state of Illinois who can claim $100,000+ income from the state’s pension systems. Of the state’s 239,384 pensioners, Weisenstein reports that their average annual retirement income amounts to $93,558. It’s worth adding that according
$100,000+ State Retirees In Illinois Speak to the Urgency of a SALT Credit Read More »
Do Bagladesh, Haiti and Peru have Medicare-style programs soon to cost $1 trillion annually? Hopefully the question quickly answers itself. Ideally it also answers Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell’s puzzling lament that “The GOP’s recent tax-and-spending bill is a huge transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.” Without defending the vastly overrated tax and
Without Billionaires, There Would Be No Medicare and No Debt Read More »
Government spending amounts to the central planning of precious resources by politicians. Worse, it amounts to the warping of the people and businesses on which it’s spent precisely because no one spends the money of others as carefully as they spend their own. That’s one reason why West Virginia remains poor despite decades of
Excessive Federal Taxes Foist California and New York Onto All of the U.S. Read More »
People in Texas pay taxes too. So do workers in Florida, Tennessee and other states that don’t impose an income tax. This has seemingly been forgotten in the ongoing debate about state and local taxes (SALT), and the deduction of those payments against federal taxes paid. It’s a reminder that when the Tax Cuts
SALT Shrinkage Is Bad for Red State Taxpayers Too Read More »
“Carried interest” is extraordinarily misleading. It implies a fixed and very certain income stream in the way that interest bearing accounts at banks do. Which is the problem. Carried interest is the opposite of certain, and it’s not even income. It’s a share of the “profits” on an investment that is paid to the
‘Carried Interest’ Is the Opposite of Income, and Shouldn’t Be Taxed Like It Read More »
“Another bad decision is that I didn’t move any of my money from a traditional 401(k) to a Roth 401(k). Neither did my husband. So we have to take more withdrawals than we need right now and pay taxes.” Retirement expert Alicia Munnell said the latter in a recent Wall Street Journal interview. It’s no reach
Get Ready For Delayed and Lower Taxes on 401(k) Withdrawals Read More »
“We seem to be having an arms race. It’s emblematic of the complete breakdown of any kind of responsibility about the budget.” Cal-Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach said the latter in a recent Wall Street Journal interview. Auerbach was lamenting what he deems the unhappy fact that presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are persistently one-upping
It’s Responsible for Trump & Harris to Promise the Tax Moon Read More »
