Obamacare opponents have been raising red flags around this issue for some time, but today the IRS has finally issued preliminary guidelines for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The legislation is expected to cost America tens of thousands of jobs, while also sending some high-end industries overseas. There’s more from the IRS available at the links in text below. That it’s being released on a Friday afternoon is no coincidence.

On February 3, 2012, the IRS and the Treasury Department issued proposed regulations on the new 2.3-percent medical device excise tax (IRC §4191) that manufacturers and importers will pay on their sales of taxable medical devices starting in 2013. Additional information is available in the Medical Device Excise Tax FAQs.

The IRS and Treasury Department request comments on the proposed regulations by May 7, 2012. Comments may be submitted electronically, by mail or hand delivered to the IRS. The preamble to the proposed regulations provides instructions on how to submit comments.

Industry sources have already begun weighing in through press releases of their own. There’s also a detailed analysis of the implications of the proposed guidelines here. (more…)

WEST HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. – Bill Signorile has regularly attended West Hempstead school board meetings for the past two years, in hopes of getting board members to curb the district’s spending.

He says the board’s big-spending habits, particularly when it comes to union labor costs, are jeopardizing the financial futures of taxpayers and younger school employees, and threatening the quality of instruction for students.

Over the past decade, Signorile has watched his school property taxes increase by 232 percent – from $2,584.97 in 2001-02 to $5,994.71 in 2011-12.

During that same period, the West Hempstead Union Free School District’s budget has increased by 56.7 percent – from $34.7 million to $54.4 million – even while enrollment has dropped by 200 students.

Signorile says “runaway” taxes make it difficult for him to keep his home or send his children to college, while the ballooning school budget puts the jobs and pensions of district employees at risk.

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When the Democrats aren’t cheating on their taxes like Charlie Rangel or forgetting to pay them like Timothy Geithner, they’re busy lambasting Republicans for actually paying theirs—albeit at a rate unsatisfactory to them.

In yet another fantastic display of hypocrisy, the liberal mainstream media spent the week attacking Governor Mitt Romney for having a 15% tax rate.  Since the media is loath to engage in any actual investigative journalism when it comes to the Democrats, I decided to do a little of my own.  Here’s what I found.

Start with Senator John Kerry who is among the 400 richest Americans thanks to his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry’s, inheritance.  Their last publicly released tax returns in 2003 revealed that they paid a rate of 13.4% on a declared income of $5.5 million. This from the man who, just last year, tried to avoid half a million dollars in taxes by anchoring his yacht in Rhode Island rather than Massachusetts. Estimates pin Kerry’s net worth somewhere between $700 million and $3.2 billion compared to Romney’s lower net worth of $202 million.

Take a look at former Vice Presidential Candidate John Edwards’s 2003 tax returns, and you’ll find that he paid an astonishingly low rate of 5.1%.  Seems a bit low for a man with a net worth hovering around $54.7 million.

But, of course, Kerry and Edwards’ income tax rates were protected under lock and key by the mainstream media during the 2004 presidential race against President George W. Bush.   Speaking of Bush, you’ll also never hear anyone mention the fact that he paid a rate of 27.7% in the same year.

Tax rates aside, in yet another attempt to make something out of nothing, the media has been reporting relentlessly on Romney donating millions in cash and stocks to the Mormon Church, as if tithing to one’s church is somehow a negative.  Thanks to donations like Romney’s, the Mormon Church is able to sustain a large philanthropic network and send young men on two year missions that provide extensive humanitarian aid to a countless number of people in need.  If you call that bad, I’d hate to see what you call good.

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The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. It wants to ease your mind about compliance with the tax code and make April 15 as stress-free as possible.

Sound too good to be true? Of course it is. Their real goal is to extract more tax dollars out of your pocket without having to muster the political courage to advocate a tax increase, and to do so in the most cynical way possible—by taking advantage of the least-sophisticated and lowest-income workers.

Some of our elected officials and the revenue establishment are convinced that there is a $345 billion annual “tax gap” between what people actually owe or should be paying and what the IRS actually collects. Of course, in a voluntary compliance system—the alternative to which is a police state—there is always going to be some gap in compliance. Not surprisingly, the IRS doesn’t mention the certainty that many people actually pay more than they owe because they fail to take advantage of deductions available to them.

Does the revenue establishment fault the tax code’s inherent complexity and Congress’ failure to reform it as responsible for the supposed shortfall? Guess again.

Slowly, over the past several years, the IRS has been insisting that more and more information be submitted from employers and from the savings and investment industry directly to them. At the same time, they’ve been tightening down on who can and who cannot prepare tax returns. Have you noticed?

And today, the IRS will hold its second hearing on what they call the “Real-Time Tax System,” which they claim is intended to give the IRS the ability to identify tax non-compliance in real time. Of course, the Real-time Tax System will require even more information from taxpayers, employers, banks and brokerage firms, but of course it’s being done to “reduce the burden for taxpayers.”

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Let me build on Charles Krauthammer’s great Friday column, “The GOP’s Suicide March.” Krauthammer argues that just as President Obama’s class-warfare, soak-the-rich mantra started lagging in the polls, some Republicans on the campaign trail started making the case that Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital was involved in nothing more than vulture capitalism, looting companies, and destroying jobs. Keeping class envy alive.

I’m not going to name names, because everybody knows who these Republicans are. Instead, I want to go positive, and commend Mitt Romney himself. Romney did his best in the second South Carolina debate to fight for free-market capitalism and Adam Smith, and against the spread of Obama-style crony capitalism and class envy.

During the Thursday night debate, Romney launched this:

“You’ve got to stop the spread of crony capitalism. [Obama] gives General Motors to the UAW. He takes $500 million and sticks it into Solyndra. He stacks the labor stooges on the NLRB so they can say no to Boeing and take care of their friends in the labor movement. . . . He has to bow to the most extreme members of the environmental movement. He turns down the Keystone pipeline, which would bring energy and jobs to America.

“My view is capitalism works. Free enterprise works. . . . There’s nothing wrong with profit, by the way. That profit went to pension funds, to charities. It went to a wide array of institutions. . . . And by the way, as enterprises become more profitable, they can hire more people. I’m someone who believes in free enterprise. I think Adam Smith was right. And I’m gonna stand and defend capitalism across this country, throughout this campaign. I know we’re going to get hit hard from President Obama, but we’re gonna stuff it down his throat and point out that it is capitalism and freedom that makes America strong.”

Whoa. Tough stuff. The right stuff.

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“Why Are Obama’ Critics So Dumb?” That’s the question posed by Andrew Sullivan in the cover story of this week’s Newsweek.

But you’d have to be stupid, fanatical, and dishonest to argue–as Trig Truther Sullivan does–that Barack Obama’s failures are part of an ingenious “long game” that is destined to succeed.

If this is the best Obama’s supporters can do, Obama’s only hope for re-election is the weak Republican field.

Sullivan, who claims to care about national debt, begins by arguing, contrary to reality, that Obama’s massive $787 billion stimulus (actually, $862 billion) turned the economy around. He offers no proof other than the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy familiar from basic economics. Sullivan also ignores the composition of the stimulus, which shoveled cash to cronies and bloated big states with their massive public sector obligations.

In addition, Sullivan claims that Obama’s auto bailout succeeded–when in fact it pushed aside property rights and subsidized failed “green” cars, rather than allowing car makers to rebuild through normal bankruptcy. He also commends Obama for continuing George W. Bush’s bank bailouts–but does not mention the Dodd-Frank financial “reforms” that enshrine “too big to fail,” hurt small businesses and fail to address Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Next, Sullivan tries to defend Obama on taxes, pointing out that the president passed tax cuts as part of the stimulus. He ignores the numerous new taxes and tax increases that Obama signed into law–from higher cigarette taxes to the many ObamaCare taxes–as well as the glaring fact that Obama has been campaigning for the past several years on the promise to raise taxes on the rich, and would have done so if not for Congress. (more…)

In politics, as in life, there can be an overwhelming temptation to go along to get along; to be a team player; to do the easy thing even when it’s not the right thing.

For far too long, insiders from both parties have played these games. Talk up fiscal responsibility, but spend big. Talk about a federal government that fulfills its basic responsibilities, but then vote to expand it beyond all recognition so that it cannot possibly do so. Talk about doing what’s right, but then do what the establishment wants instead.

Americans deserve better—and they deserve to get to choose something better this year. In 2012, Americans have the opportunity to decisively move away from big government, built up over years and years by both parties in Washington, D.C.

As I said in Sunday’s NBC/Facebook debate, President Obama has thrown gasoline on the fire, but let’s be honest: The bonfire was raging well before Obama ever left Chicago.

Policies and spending served up by Washington, D.C. insiders, in several notable instances designed and written by Wall Street insiders to suit their needs, not ours, caused and then exacerbated this situation. In too many cases, these advocates of big spending and bad policy have used their positions of power to enrich themselves, both while in office and once outside of it. Republicans have been complicit in this scheme, just as Democrats have.

It is time for it to end.

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Message to my fellow conservatives: Please don’t blame the mainstream media for the improvement in jobs, unemployment, and economic growth. Reporters are not making this up. The economy is better. It’s going to give President Obama a leg up on the election. GOP beware, and come to your senses.

Take Friday’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nonfarm payrolls gained 200,000 and the unemployment rate slipped to 8.5 percent from 8.7 percent. It may well be that a seasonal quirk added 42,000 messengers and couriers to the totals, but that will be lost in the headline reporting. It will be given back next month. It’s inconsequential to the overall story. Likewise, a normal labor participation rate would yield much higher unemployment. But that’s academic.

Like any president, Mr. Obama will take credit for these economic gains. He’s doing that right now. And he has a case to make: A year ago the unemployment rate was 9.4 percent, and in 2011 it fell almost a percentage point. In the twelve months through December 2011, the economy produced 1.64 million new jobs, while in 2010, only 940,000 were created. On a monthly average basis, 137,000 new jobs per month were created in 2011, compared to only 78,000 a month in 2010. Things are getting better.

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We were so full of “hope” for “change.” No, I am not talking about the election of Barack Obama, one of the most effective Progressive presidents in American history. I am speaking of the excitement felt within the Conservative, Libertarian and Center Right and Left political communities after the 2010 election delivered the House and a non-filibuster proof Senate to the American people. Finally, most of us thought, some balance in the federal government. Maybe, just maybe, the Progressives and Liberal Democrats in federal government would be forced to the table of true and honest compromise; compromise fitting of a truly free people. But, as we look back over the year, what did we really get for all that so-called “compromise?”

With Republicans in control of the US House of Representatives, the body where – by the mandate of the US Constitution – all legislation relating to revenue is to begin, many on the Right and in the Center believed that the reckless and spendthrift fiscal actions of the 111th Congress would be constrained if not reversed. With a sizable number of new members identifying with the oft demonized TEA Party, there was high hope for a glimmer of fiscal sanity to emerge from the halls of Congress. And while the TEA Party members of Congress are to be congratulated for doing exactly what their constituents sent them to Washington to do, in the end, they were thwarted by establishment, inside the beltway Republicans and the despotic obstructionism foisted upon them by Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, D-NV, (to be fair, Reid was aided by a less than reform-minded Republican leadership in the senate, led by Mitch McConnell, R-KY).

The Budget
In absolute defiance of the fact that it is law that Congress must pass an annual budget for the federal government, Senate Democrats – once again, led by the indignant political disgrace that is Harry Reid – refused to abide by said law in passing, reconciling and advancing to the President an annual budget. It has been over 900 days – almost three years – since the last budget has been presented to the President for his signature or veto.

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In the year since the Tea Party arrived in Congress, the movement has managed to change the debate on Capitol Hill, but not the way Washington works.

The Tea Party has stopped President Barack Obama and the Democrats from bailing out profligate state governments, from passing new so-called “stimulus” spending, and from raising tax rates. It has even begun to win bipartisan support for major entitlement reform.

However, the Tea Party has failed thus far to stop the overall growth in the size and cost of government. It passed over a dozen bills that would accelerate economic growth and create new jobs, only to see those bills languish in Harry Reid’s Senate.

In both the debt ceiling and the payroll tax debates, the Tea Party saw its sensible bills rejected in favor of absurd compromises–then found itself being blamed for congressional gridlock.

The key to the Tea Party’s fortunes has been its relationship with the very establishment it dislikes. Where it has found common ground–for example, with House budget chair Paul Ryan–it has been able to promote its agenda of limited government. But when the Tea Party has clashed with Republican leaders–starting with key Senate races in 2010–Democrats have won by dividing conservatives from moderates, House from Senate. (more…)

MONROE, Ohio  – What a difference a month makes.

On November 8, over 60 percent of Ohio voters shot down SB 5, the law designed to save school budgets by limiting the collective bargaining privileges of school employee unions.

Like their Big Labor brethren, teacher unions rejoiced over SB 5’s demise. They knew that their expensive collective bargaining agreements – stuffed full of automatic pay raises, free or low cost health insurance, sick day payouts and retirement bonuses – were safe.

One month later, Ohio communities are beginning to see just what SB 5’s defeat means for their local public schools. With collective bargaining alive and well, school boards can no longer hope to control labor costs, which typically consume 75 percent of a district’s budget.

Instead, many school officials are left with only painful solutions to their districts’ budget woes: laying off young teachers, increasing class sizes, cutting academic programs, and raising pay-to-play fees on students who wish to participate in extracurricular activities.

In other words, Ohio’s families can soon expect to pay more in school taxes and fees, for less education. That’s the reality of Big Labor’s victory over SB 5.

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Thanksgiving is a time for reuniting with family and friends, but Uncle Sam will be joining you again this year in the form of taxes.  So say Jacob Feldman and Mattie Corrao of Americans for Tax Reform, who have determined the government tax bite for several aspects of your Thanksgiving weekend.

Many of these items are subject to the costs of income taxes, payroll taxes, corporate income taxes, and other taxes on business activity. Government then includes additional fees and excise taxes that further increase the cost of providing specific items or services.

Your travel:  The average $376 Thanksgiving flight consists of $43.57 in taxes. If you are driving, 45.3% of your fill-up goes to taxes.

Once you arrive, you just might wish to unwind with your relatives (or cope with your in-laws) by opening a bottle of your favorite wine. Uncle Sam gets 32.8% of the purchase price in taxes.

The average cost of a Thanksgiving meal for ten is just under $50.  As you enjoy your bountiful meal, try to be thankful that the government gobbles up “only” $13.68 of that total.

Now that you’re done feasting and the tryptophan is kicking in, it’s time to repair to the couch for some football. As you send your cousin Eddie out on a beer run, let him know the government tax bite on a case of beer is 44.3%.

Overall, of the $10 billion in overall spending that occurs during Thanksgiving weekend on gas and plane tickets, wine and beer, and the meal itself, government taxation consists of 35.9% of those expenses—approximately $3.6 billion.

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“I’ll say this plainly, I’ve said it before – Taxation is theft. It presumes the government has a higher claim on our property than we do,” says Judge Andrew Napolitano, the host of Fox Business’ Freedom Watch and the author of the new book, It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom.

Reason’s Nick Gillespie sat down with the outspoken libertarian commentator to discuss topics ranging from abortion (the judge is fiercely pro-life) to Occupy Wall Street (he welcomes the protest against corporatism) to Rep. Ron Paul (“the Barry Goldwater” of our moment) to the role of religion in the quest for freedom.

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We last week passed the $15 trillion national debt mark.  It continues hurtling upward, almost completely unabated.

We the People did our job and then some in the historic 2010 election, delivering more than 70 new Republicans to the Congress – on their promises to rein in out-of-control Washington spending.

We sent these folks to D.C. in large part to prohibit President Barack Obama and his Democrats from continuing to explode the budget – and the deficits and debt along with it – the way they had when exclusively in the Majority in 2009 and 2010.

So when President Obama campaigns asking for reelection and more D.C. Democrats – to undo this “do nothing” Congress – remember that stopping Obama and his Party colleagues was what We the People elected these “do-nothings” to do.

Serving as an impediment (modest though it may be) to the Democrat fiscal train wreck is, in fact, doing something.

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Faced with a $315 million budget shortfall, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has proposed serious changes to how county officials spend taxpayers’ money. She’s challenging the public employee union bosses to come to the negotiating table. She aims to utilize private sector contractors to keep costs low. These all are necessary and commendable steps. Less so are the tax increases she has proposed: hiking the vehicle tax, raising county taxes on beer, wine and liquor, and redefining certain tobacco products (like cigars and smokeless) so taxes could be levied on them.

Last Monday, the four Republican members of the county board signed off on increases and provided the necessary margin for passage in the finance committee. The package of fee and tax hikes will cost residents an astounding $51 million, even as taxpayers are still reeling from January’s state income tax hike.

Targeting politically incorrect products may seem easy, but that doesn’t make it right. When you buy a bottle of liquor in Chicago, you already pay eight taxes: a county sales tax of 1.25 percent, county excise tax of $2/gallon, city sales tax of 1.25 percent, city excise tax of $2.68/gallon, state excise tax of $8.55/gallon, state sales tax of 6.25 percent, federal excise tax of $13.50/proof gallon, and a transport tax of 1 percent. Add these all together and it turns out a whopping 58 percent of the average bottle cost goes to taxes and fees. One sip for Uncle Sam, one sip for you.

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If Congressional Republicans want to know why people call politics the “second oldest profession” and view politicians with similar regard to used car salesmen, they need only look at the new mantra of Republican super committee members: “We will not raise your taxes as much as the other guys.” Congressional Republicans, who railed against President Obama for raising a trillion dollars of new taxes in the Obamacare legislation and professed that raising taxes in the middle of a recession is the surest way to prolong it, have pledged to raise half a trillion dollars in new taxes as their opening gambit in the super committee negotiations.

Congressional Republicans who refused to be sucked into the Marxist rhetoric of President Obama and the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd by voting down tax increases on millionaires and billionaires, have proposed raising taxes on families and small businesses making a fraction of that amount. Congressional Republicans who reminded us that we have a “spending problem” and not a “revenue problem” have thrown their lot in with Congressional Democrats. These Democrats mocked Republican Presidential candidates for refusing to accept a 10:1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases while being unwilling to accept the recommendation of the President’s blue ribbon commission when it proposed a 4:1 ratio of tax cuts to spending increases. While this is terrible economic policy, the political implications for Congressional Republicans and the Republican Presidential candidate are even worse.

Republican super committee members have reportedly proposed eliminating or scaling back itemized deductions for mortgage interest, state and local taxes and charitable deductions in exchange for the permanent extension or a slight reduction in the Bush era income tax rates. Make no mistake, this will be a NET TAX INCREASE at the federal level. Whether taxing income or property, most states levy taxes in the neighborhood of at least 5-10%. Reducing the highest income tax bracket by no more than 10% would likely result in a net tax increase for most Americans in this income tax bracket, especially when combined with the elimination of the deduction for mortgage interest.

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Gov. Rick Perry stated at the outset of his presidential campaign that he is running for president based on his principles and leadership accomplishments, not his oratorical skills. Media focus on his debate missteps deliberately ignores Perry’s record and charisma.

Six months ago discussing Perry’s possible candidacy, a top conservative leader privately said, “Rick is a great leader. But he’s not a greater debater. And he knows it. The question would be whether he overcomes it.”

Technology regularly creates new challenges for presidents. Debating skill was a non-issue for many consequential presidents, but some are trying to make it an automatic disqualifier for the Texas governor.

America’s third president—Thomas Jefferson—was a lousy public speaker. He was literally a genius, and his singular eloquence as a writer is seen in his prose in the Declaration of Independence and other writings.

But Jefferson was no speaker, so much so that he only gave a couple speeches in his entire two-term presidency. He was so bad that he fulfilled his constitutional requirement to give an annual State of the Union by sending a written document to Congress.

The media would pan Jefferson’s radio and television performance today. Does America regret electing such a lackluster orator?

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From Sean Hannity’s show:

Latest update on the lack of progress for Dems and Republicans to reach a tax deal. Yesterday Democrats of the Super Committee rejected Republicans’ offer to “raise federal tax collections by nearly $300 billion over the next decade.”

Senator Rand Paul exclusively has JUST told Sean that not only are Democrats rejecting offers put on the table, but now they won’t even continue to negotiate and have “walked away from the table…refusing to talk to the Republicans.”

Paul warns the American people that this is all about Obama’s reelection, and the taxpayers livelihood is of no concern to Obama and the Democrats.

Audio verbate: Senator Rand Paul (KY) on the Sean Hannity radio show Nov. 9, 2011:
P:Sean can I make it up to you by giving you a scoop, that maybe people don’t know yet?

S: Yeah what you got it

P: I have news straight from sources close to the SuperCommittee that the Democrats have walked away from the table and they’re refusing to talk to the Republicans about a deal and they will not counter any offers and basically there’s an impass and it’s starting to look like they don’t want any deal at all.

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As lawyers say, lets stipulate that the political system is broken. We have, in the past, railed against special tax incentives for business that are often outmoded, ill conceived, and are generally ineffective. These, more often than not, merely distort the marketplace at great expense to the taxpayer and the American consumer. Elected officials in Washington have become so locked into doctrinaire philosophical positions that compromise has eluded their reach, and common sense has become as rare as the two-dollar bill. Democrats and the left point to growing gaps between the middle class and those they refer to as millionaires and billionaires (people who earn over $250,000 per annum) and who they say must pay their “fair share” in taxes.

And while it is widely acknowledged that the top 5% of earners pay over 50 percent of federal taxes, there has been a growing concentration of wealth within that top 5% of income earners during the last 20 years. Politicians love to define issues in a debate to gain popular advantage. The country is in desperate need of economic growth, which the Obama Administration has failed effectively to address. So, the White House has made increased taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” the cornerstone of their 2012 election strategy. Excessive spending, the growth of the federal deficit and the accumulated debt of the country threaten to snuff out economic growth in America just as it surely is doing in Europe. When Barack Obama became President, the federal debt was slightly over $10 trillion dollars. It has grown to more than $14 trillion dollars under his watch. If spending is not reined in, and/or revenues do not increase, servicing the nation’s debt will crowd out vital resources for private investment (where new jobs are created).

Elected officials are not leading; they talk past one another. The way out of this mess might be in changing the vocabulary of the debate so both sides can claim a victory. The Democrats could hoist the GOP on their own petard by shifting the debate away from tax increases, to cutting corporate entitlements and benefits. Note that the right complains about spending only when the beneficiaries are those who rely on government to help with retirement payments, medical benefits, or to finance their children’s education. Cutting specified corporate entitlements that really provide no economic benefit to the country would be easier for conservatives to swallow than increasing tax rates, which would retard economic growth.

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From #OccupyWallSt:

On November 23rd, the Congressional Deficit Reduction Super-Committee will meet to decide on whether or not to keep Obama’s extension to the Bush tax-cuts – which only benefit the richest 1% of Americans in any kind of significant way. Luckily, a group of OWS’ers are embarking on a two-week march from Liberty Plaza to the Whitehouse to let the committee know what the 99% think about these cuts. Join the march to make sure these tax cuts for the richest 1% of Americans are allowed to die!

More information:

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