Category: Taxes
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Friday, June 19, 2015
Tax Havens the Worlds Last Economic Alamo / Personal_Finance / Taxes
Jeff Thomas writes: “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” – Luke 2:1, New Testament
“Since the beginning of recorded history, the business of government has been wealth confiscation.” – Ron Holland
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
The Police State and Property Taxes… What You Can Do About It / Politics / Taxes
By Nick Giambruno
A police officer pulled over Floyd Dent for a routine traffic stop.
A violent altercation followed.
The officer dragged Dent out of his car, appeared to put him in a chokehold, and punched him in the head. He then used his stun gun.
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, June 06, 2015
How Governments Keep You and Your Money From Leaving / Politics / Taxes
Ryan W. McMaken writes: The IRS reports that more people renounced their US citizenship during the first quarter of 2015 than during any other quarter in history. Notably, a sizable portion of those renouncing their citizenship are doing so to escape heavy taxation. The United States one of only a handful of OECD nations that imposes a "worldwide" tax on its citizens and residents-- and is the only country other than the military dictatorship of Eritrea that taxes its citizens living abroad on literally all forms of income.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Is It Illegal To Not Pay Taxes? / Politics / Taxes
Human beings have a major cognitive dissonance problem when it comes to taxes. For some reason they don't see it as an armed extortion racket. Some even think it is "voluntary"... but as we'll show, it is far from voluntary.
Some people may fail to file taxes for numerous reasons, like personal or business problems, feelings of hopelessness or fear due to the burdensome tax process, anti-theft sentiments, or beliefs that the penalty won’t be worse than the expense and trouble of filing.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, May 06, 2015
Those Gruelling U.S. Tax Rates: A Global Perspective / Politics / Taxes
The Tax Foundation released its inaugural “International Tax Competitiveness Index” (ITCI) on September 15th, 2014. The United States was ranked an abysmal 32nd out of the 34 OECD member countries for the year 2014. (See accompanying Table 1.) The European welfare states such as Norway, Sweden and Denmark, with their large social welfare systems, still managed to have less burdensome tax systems on local businesses than the U.S. The U.S. is even ranked below Italy, the country that has had such a pervasive problem with tax evasion that the head of its Agency of Revenue (roughly equivalent to the Internal Revenue Service in the United States) recently joked that Italians don’t pay taxes because they were Catholic and hence were used to “gaining absolution.” In fact, according to the ranking, only France and Portugal have the dubious honor of operating less competitive tax systems than the United States.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Is Legal Tax Avoidance Extinct in the UK? / Politics / Taxes
Simon Wilson writes: In the context of the financial crisis, and the government’s ever expanding fiscal deficit, it is perhaps no surprise that the issue of taxation has become one of the most hotly debated topics in the United Kingdom’s upcoming election. Nor is it surprising that the establishment has successfully avoided any discussion of what makes dealing with the deficit so imperative, namely, the taxpayer bailout of the banking system.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, April 09, 2015
The Tax Collector’s Puzzle - WAIT: Don't File Those Taxes Just Yet! / Personal_Finance / Taxes
Those of you in the US know that it’s the least wonderful time of the year: tax time.
Hopefully you haven’t filed your tax return just yet. Maybe you rushed it in because you feel ever so grateful to your government for letting you keep some of your hard-earned cash. Or maybe—like most of us—you wait 'til the very last day out of principle.
Either way, chances are you’re leaving money on the table. We want to show you how to get most of it back.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, April 03, 2015
More Unofficial U.S. Capital Controls: PFIC Rules / Politics / Taxes
By Nick Giambruno
It ranks at the very top of potential tax nightmares, especially if you invest internationally.
This nightmare could become a reality if you happen to invest in what the IRS deems a Passive Foreign Investment Company (PFIC), which are taxed at exorbitant rates and have highly complex reporting rules. Most foreign mutual funds are PFICs, as are certain foreign stocks.
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Fear of IRS Tax Audits Diminish / Politics / Taxes
The announcement that Federal government’s tax-take hits all-time high as the federal government collected a record amount of taxes in fiscal year 2014, topping $3 trillion in revenue for the first time in its history, has the tax man taking a bigger bite than ever. Yet, the take that the collection bureau seems un-phased from all their scandals to put the taxpayer through their third degree audits are easing up. Why? The answer may surprise when the ledger is tallied up.
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Self Assessment Tax Return Filing Deadline Today, Last Chance to Avoid £100 Fine / Personal_Finance / Taxes
Britians' self assessment tax payers have just 12 hours left to go (Midnight 31st Jan) in filing online returns and paying any taxes due to avoid the automatic £100 fine and interest due on outstanding tax that could easily see the total penalty mushroom to over £1000!. Whilst those who have put off filing returns maybe thinking it is now too late to start need to realise or recall just how easy it has become to file online returns with the HMRC that includes as you go input validation and automatic calculation of tax due.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, January 30, 2015
An Often Overlooked Predator: State Governments and Income Taxes / Politics / Taxes
Nick Giambruno writes: International Man is all about making the most of your personal freedom and financial opportunity around the world. To do this, by definition, you must minimize the amount of money any government takes from you.
Unlike every other country in the world, the US successfully taxes its nonresident citizens on their global income. This means Americans living abroad have to not only deal with the tax system in the foreign country in which they live, but also with the multiple layers of tax bureaucracy from the US. It’s a uniquely American burden.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, January 19, 2015
People Have More Money? Let’s Tax It! / Politics / Taxes
John P. Cochran writes: As highlighted by David Henderson and Peter Boettke, markets and competition are like weeds, not delicate flowers. Economies recover even from severe boom-bust episodes and despite growth-retarding regime uncertainty. Even burdensome regulation, per Pierre Lemieux, causes a “slow-motion collapse” or stagnation, not a crash. But one thing can be counted on, as innovation or recovery begin to deliver additional spending power to the productive class of the economy, the “unmet needs” crowd will just as quickly be out clamoring for a heightened government share of the ‘bounty’ for some imagined greater public good.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, December 03, 2014
Judge This Country by Its Enemies / Politics / Taxes
By Nick Giambruno
Pop quiz: can you name this free-market jurisdiction in the Western hemisphere?
Here are some of its attributes:
- Personal income tax: NONE
- Corporate income tax: NONE
- Capital gains tax: NONE
- Taxation of dividends: NONE
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Preventing Taxpaying Milk Cows from Seeking Greener Pastures / Politics / Taxes
By Nick Giambruno
It’s undeniable that the window of opportunity is getting smaller… especially when you connect all the dots and see the big picture.
To help connect those dots, it’s important to understand the things that make being an American citizen uniquely burdensome.
First, Americans are the only people in the entire world who effectively suffer under an inescapable, worldwide system of taxation.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, September 25, 2014
The Best Hope for Reducing Taxes… Isn't What You Think / Companies / Taxes
Michael E. Lewitt writes: It appears that the move by Warren Buffett-backed Burger King Worldwide Inc. (NYSE: BKW) to buy iconic Canadian fast food chain Tim Hortons Inc. (USA) (NYSE: THI) and relocate to Canada to lower its corporate tax rate was the straw that broke the camel's back when it comes to tax inversion deals.
One has to wonder whether the wily Mr. Buffett was not only trying to make money but doing his best to accelerate much-needed tax reform when he agreed to finance BKW's expansion into the northland...
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Economic Reality of a Wealth Tax / Economics / Taxes
Proponents of big government, from both the left and right, share one important trait; namely, both spend their waking hours dreaming up new schemes to tax wealth. Only a blind, deaf and dumb observer of economic imbalance would deny that the massive accumulation of worldly assets into the hands of the smallest number of robber barons in all of history is at the core of most social unrest and global instability. However, adopting a Marxist outlook on the evils of the bourgeoisie simply confuses the nature of the financial magnates, while blaming the hard pressed merchant class for conducting beneficial business. Creation of tangible wealth is the greatest achievement in the uplifting and improvement of the human condition, when that stream of riches flows between and among entrepreneurs and business proprietors.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, September 03, 2014
I Didn’t Believe the IRS Anyway / Politics / Taxes
Lois Lerner’s emails are back from the dead—sort of. The former IRS official’s BlackBerry, however, is still long gone. The IRS intentionally destroyed it in June 2012 (after congressional staffers interviewed Lerner about the IRS targeting conservative groups) as the Deputy Assistant Chief Counsel acknowledged in a recent sworn declaration.
We’ve all met someone we just don’t trust but don’t know why. There’s often a pretty good reason to feel that way.
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Corporations Join Droves of Americans Renouncing US Citizenship / Politics / Taxes
Nick Giambruno writes: Don't be surprised to lose if you don't make an effort at being competitive.
And if you go out of your way to make yourself less competitive, expect to lose.
If that sounds like simple common sense, that's because it is.
But it's also exactly what the US has been doing for years-enacting tax policies that sabotage its global economic competitiveness.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Only the Powerful Get Tax Cuts / Politics / Taxes
Crosby Kemper writes: Ninety-seven years ago, a small but ruthlessly determined band of revolutionaries set out to prove that it would be possible to achieve material happiness— and social justice — by replacing free markets with economic planning.
In his classic work Socialism, produced in 1922, just five years after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, Ludwig von Mises predicted the failure of Soviet communism. He pointed out that the planners would be flying blind — lacking the vital information that comes from free-market pricing. In his words, the marketplace acts as “a daily referendum of what is to be produced and who is to produce it.”
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, May 29, 2014
The End of Federal Taxation as We Know It / Politics / Taxes
The way we tax is obsolete.
It’s safe to say, in the century since the federal income tax was instated, the system has become broken. The complex, voluminous tax code (included in the 70,000+ page CCH Standard Federal Tax Reporter) needs a revolutionary overhaul.
The current system doesn’t raise nearly enough money, Social Security is nearing insolvency, the administrative cost is exorbitant, and economic growth is actually impeded.
Read full article... Read full article...