The Supreme Court is looking at a case that could have tremendous ramifications for property rights. Its ruling will determine whether the government is able to continue stealing from Americans using tax laws. When it comes to property rights, this one could be a game-changer.

This case will decide if it is constitutional for the government to seize and sell a person’s home to pay off overdue property taxes, without returning any excess proceeds to the homeowner. The practice, known as home equity theft, is legal in several states, including Minnesota, Michigan, and New York.

In each state, the process is different, but homeowners are usually bought out by private investors without their knowledge and receive letters after three years of overdue taxes, informing them that they have 90 days to pay their debts. If they fail to pay within that timeframe, the county treasurer gives the deed to an investor who takes the home, sells it, and keeps the profit.

“Look, I think you should be able to be a billionaire if you can earn it, but just pay your fair share,” Biden tweeted. “I think you ought to pay a minimum tax of 25%. It’s about basic fairness.” The tweet cited one of his quotes, “You know the average tax billionaires pay? Three percent. No billionaire should be paying a lower tax than somebody working as a schoolteacher or a firefighter.”

He thinks you should be able to be a billionaire. Well, isn’t that nice? He’s going to let you. //

Twitter Community Notes wasn’t going to let that Biden false statement go by.

“This is incorrect,” the note said. Citing the Tax Foundation, they explained, “Avg income tax rate in 2020 was 13.6%. Top 1% of taxpayers paid a 25.99% avg rate, more than eight times higher than the 3.1% avg rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers. It increased from 20.1%/2019 to 22.2%/2020.”

Translation? It’s the reverse of what Biden is claiming, it’s the bottom half paying that 3 percent number. //

Elon Musk
@elonmusk
·
Follow
I paid 53% taxes on my Tesla stock options (40% Federal & 13% state), so I must be lifting the average!

I also paid more income tax than anyone ever in the history of Earth for 2021 and will do that again in 2022.

@CommunityNotes, is the 3% number cited above accurate?
4:46 PM · Mar 18, 2023

Texas state Representative Bryan Slaton introduced a bill in the Texas state legislature that would cut the property tax bill of all married couples, especially those with children. //

I’m 100% in favor of the bill because I am biased toward large, two-parent families. And, like Ronald Reagan, I believe, “If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it.” I think we’ve gone out of our way to make family formation difficult for too long. In fact, the “means testing” of benefits seems calculated to produce single mothers with multiple children. As a society, we penalize families who prefer to have one parent at home and make subsidized child care available. Children who are homeschooled are, in most school districts, unable to participate in sports, extramural activities or even to use educational programs in the public library available to public school students. The federal tax code bakes in a “marriage penalty” that makes it more advantageous for a couple to live together than get married.

The US population is below the rate needed to sustain it without significant immigration. So in my mind, we should all get behind anything that encourages Americans to get married, stay married, and have kids. //

(c) A qualifying married couple with four or more qualifying children may substitute the following, as applicable, for 10 percent when computing the amount of credit to which the couple is entitled under Subsection (b):
(1) 40 percent, if the qualifying married couple have four qualifying children; //

(6) 90 percent, if the qualifying married couple have nine qualifying children; or
(7) 100 percent, if the qualifying married couple have 10 or more qualifying children. //

(2) “Qualifying married couple” means a man and a woman who are legally married to each other, neither of whom have ever been divorced. //

It seems to me that as long as we’re using tax codes to reward and punish behavior, limiting a property tax abatement to couples engaging in heterosexual behavior is justified; see the Reagan quote. //

Libs: "Oh you're pro-life?? Does that mean you also want to take care of children when they're born?"

Republicans: "Yeah absolutely. Here's a bill that would give tax relief to people who have big families."

Libs: "This is literally handmaid's tale shit!!" https://t.co/S3o9qg5jUa

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 2, 2023

My best understanding is that you need to file Form 843. The instructions for the form say that it can be used to request:

A refund or abatement of a penalty or addition to tax due to reasonable cause or other reason (other than erroneous written advice provided by the IRS) allowed under the law.

The "reasonable cause" here is a good-faith confusion about what Line 79 of the form was referring to.

In Form 843, the IRC Section Code you should enter is 6654 (estimated tax). For more, see the IRC Section 6654 (note, however, that if you already received a CP14 notice from the IRS, you should cross-check that this section code is listed on the notice under the part that covers the estimated tax penalty).

If your request is accepted, the IRS should issue you Notice 746, item 17 Penalty Removed:

We removed the penalty we charged you and we are reviewing your account. We will let you know the results

You can get more general information about the tax collection process, and how to challenge it, from the pages linked from Understanding your CP14 Notice.

Key Takeaways
The Fair Tax plan is a 23% sales tax that would replace the current U.S. income tax.
It would reduce the headache of annual tax preparation because it's simple, but it would raise the tax burden for 90% of taxpayers.
Only the top 10% of incomes would actually see a tax cut. //

William Gale of the Brookings Institute has noted that it isn’t accurate to refer to the Fair Tax as 23%. He indicates that the rate is actually 30%. Fair Tax defines the sales tax as "$0.23 out of every dollar spent," which means that a $0.23 tax is added to every $0.77, not to every dollar.6

Gale also points out that the tax rate would likely need to be raised even higher because states would have to abolish or significantly alter their income tax systems without the IRS to determine tax on wages. This lost state revenue would require an additional 10% sales tax to replace it.

Another 5% would have to be added to recoup revenue from those who have figured out how to avoid the sales tax.

These three adjustments push the sales tax to 45%. Many Americans would protest having such a high tax on essentials such as food and health care. The effective rate could skyrocket to 67% on other items if food and health care weren't taxed. ///

Anna thus voters would increase pressure on Congress to reduce spending and taxes, because they directly see the cost of their taxes, rather than the "hidden" income tax.

Almost everyone agrees that our current income tax system is too complicated. For that reason, it’s easy to get behind the idea that throwing out our current tax system is the only answer.

But tax reform is rarely so simple.

Everything’s bigger in Texas.

The state’s bean counters have recorded a historic $33 billion surplus in tax revenue this year — about the same amount as the combined annual budgets of Connecticut ($20B) Delaware ($5B) and Vermont ($8B). //

Texas’ unprecedented surplus also comes at a time when other huge states such as New York and California are staring down the barrel of $3B and $22B budgetary debts respectively.

I recently took a (chaperoned) tour of the Pipeline, which is usually off-limits to journalists. Imagine Willy Wonka’s secretive chocolate
factory, but instead of gumdrops and lollipops it’s … paper. Everywhere, paper. //

Ultra Journalist (Ret) - JOURN-L of Skrypton @Magnum_CK
·
Replying to @GlennKesslerWP
This would all go away if we abolished the current tax code and made doing one’s taxes as easy as filling out a post card.
4:02 PM · Aug 9, 2022 //

Jim W @plotpointradio
·
Replying to @GlennKesslerWP
Maybe a 70,000 page tax code gums up that antiquated system a bit
3:16 PM · Aug 9, 2022

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Tesla chief executive Elon Musk donated a total of 5,044,000 shares in the world's most valuable automaker to a charity from Nov. 19 to Nov. 29 last year, its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showed on Monday.

The donation was worth $5.74 billion, based on the closing prices of Tesla shares on the five days that he donated the stock. The filing did not disclose the name of the charity. //

He said on Twitter that he would pay more than $11 billion in taxes in 2021 due to his exercise of stock options set to expire this year.

He also traded barbs with politicians Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who called on wealthy people to pay more taxes.

Sawyer Merritt 📈🚀 @SawyerMerritt
·
Feb 20, 2022
For 2021, Elon will be paying the single largest tax bill of any individual in history (over $11 billion). @elonmusk

Breaking911 @Breaking911
SEN. WARREN: "You know how much [Elon Musk] paid in taxes, one of the richest people in the world? Zero! And he's not the only one. Jeff Bezos, another one of the richest people in the world, he pays less in taxes than a public school teacher or a firefighter."
Embedded video

Elon Musk @elonmusk
Will visit IRS next time I’m in DC just to say hi, since I paid the most taxes ever in history for an individual last year. Maybe I can have a cookie or something …
5:24 PM · Feb 20, 2022

Venmo, PayPal and Cash App will now have to report transactions totaling more than $600 to the IRS as Biden plans to ramp up financial enforcement //

The new reporting requirement will ensure that small businesses that receive payments through those apps are paying their fair share in taxes on them
Beginning Jan. 1, 2022, third-party payment processors were required to report such transactions
The changes will be included during the 2022 tax season
The payment apps were previously required to send users 1099-K forms if their gross income exceeded $20,000 or had more than 200 transactions per year //

The new rule is only for goods and services transactions, not personal, such as paying a roommate for rent or reimbursing a friend. It also excludes anyone selling a personal item at a loss, such as a couch bought for $700 and sold for $650. //

The new tax rule is separate from a proposed IRS reporting requirement that originally would have handed over transaction data on accounts with more than $600 aggregate inflow and outflow. That proposal, originally part of President Biden's Build Back Better plan, was raised to a $10,000 threshold after much pushback, and has not yet been acted on by Congress.

Illegal activities.

Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8z, or on Schedule C (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.

Stolen property.

If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless you return it to its rightful owner in the same year.

While you obviously wouldn’t be expected to know everything — or even most — of what the tax code says, there is something the IRS expects people to declare as income that is so absurd, you won’t believe it.

According to the IRS, “If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless you return it to its rightful owner in the same year.”

Elon Musk said his wealth "isn't some deep mystery" and that his taxes are "super simple."
He told The Babylon Bee he doesn't use tax-avoidance schemes, offshore accounts, or tax shelters.
The tech billionaire recently clashed with Warren, who accused him of "freeloading" over taxes. //

if Musk chooses to exercise all his Tesla share options expiring in 2022, the taxes on these could exceed $10 billion for this year, according to calculations by Bloomberg.

Musk, who now tops the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a net worth of $261 billion, told The Babylon Bee that he could do his taxes himself "in a few hours." //

He said his worth was calculated by multiplying his ownership percentage of the two companies by their valuations.

"My so-called wealth, it's not some deep mystery," Musk said.

He added that he doesn't take salaries or bonuses from the companies because he thought it would be "morally good to not do that."

"My cash balances are very, very low, at least until I sold stock," Musk said. "I simply had loans against my stock, so if Tesla and SpaceX went bankrupt, I would go bankrupt too, immediately."

Musk has sold $15.4 billion in Tesla shares since asking Twitter on November 6 to vote on whether he should divest 10% of his stake, and said Wednesday that he was "almost done" selling stock. He told The Babylon Bee that this quarter was the first time he sold stock "in any meaningful way."

Elon Musk @elonmusk says the woke mind virus is "arguably one of the biggest threats to modern civilization." pic.twitter.com/JqLmb1Sqm8

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) December 22, 2021 //

Wokeness basically wants to make comedy illegal, which is not cool. Trying to shut down Chappelle, come on man, that’s crazy. Do we want a humorless society that is simply rife with condemnation, and hate?”

He continued, “At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful. It basically gives mean people a shield to be cruel, armored in false virtue.” //

@elonmusk On Twitter Battle With Senator Warren

"She called me a grifter & a free-loader who doesn't pay taxes basically & I'm literally paying the most tax that any individual in history has ever paid this year, ever. And she doesn't pay taxes basically at all." @TheBabylonBee pic.twitter.com/jQZzvhBVRr

— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) December 22, 2021

“She struck first. Yes, she did actually call me a freeloader and a grifter who doesn’t pay taxes. I’m literally paying the most tax that any individual in history has ever paid this year, ever, and she doesn’t pay taxes, basically. And her taxes and salary is paid for by the taxpayer like me. If you could die by irony, she would be dead,” Musk said.

The CBO released another estimate that showed the true cost of the BBB bill after all the “temporary” programs in it are extended. That’s been the Democrat game. Just like with Obamacare, the Democrats wanted the BBB bill to be scored with more years of funding than programs. But that’s not how things work in the real world. So what’s the real number? You may want to grab a towel because it’s going to make your eyes water

Ryan Struyk
@ryanstruyk
·
Dec 10, 2021
CBO finds that, if the child tax credit, child care provisions, SALT deduction, health insurance subsidies and more in Build Back Better were made permanent instead of for limited timeline, the bill would add $3.0 trillion to the debt over next decade, instead of $0.2 trillion.
U.S. CBO
@USCBO
CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation project the budgetary effects, including the effects on interest costs, of a modified version of H.R. 5376, the Build Back Better Act, that would make various policies permanent rather than temporary. https://cbo.gov/publication/57673
Ryan Struyk
@ryanstruyk
President Biden two weeks ago on possible BBB extensions: "Here is what those critics are not telling you. They’re not telling you that I’ve committed to paying for every single program that extended, if any are, in future legislation, whether that’s for a day or a decade."
11:18 AM · Dec 10, 2021

The Proof Is in the Pudding: IRS Data Show Trump’s Tax Cuts Benefited Middle- and Lower-Income Earners More Than the Wealthy

Four years after President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) into law, IRS data prove the historic legislation benefited those in the working- and middle-classes more than the wealthy.

Of course, this fact belies the left’s relentless lies about TCJA being a massive tax cut for the ultra-wealthy while ripping off hard-working Americans. //

“IRS data further show that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act appeared to have a strong upward effect on economic mobility. The number of filers with an adjusted gross income of $1 to $25,000 decreased by more than 2 million in just one year, while the number of households reporting incomes higher than $25,000 increased in every income bracket.” //

“The IRS data also revealed that higher-income earners paid an even larger share of the total tax burden in 2018 than they did in 2017, indicating that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act may have made the tax code slightly more progressive,” Haskins writes.

The proof is in the proverbial pudding: “In 2017, filers earning $500,000 or more paid 38.9 percent of all personal income tax revenues. In 2018, the same income bracket paid 41.5 percent of total income tax revenues.”

Levied on wealthy Americans with phones in 1898 to help fund Spanish-American War, tax was discontinued Tuesday.

Aug. 2, 2006 6:01 a.m. PT

The Spanish-American War has been over for more than 100 years, and now so is the tax imposed in 1898 to help fund it.

As of Tuesday, all phone companies selling long-distance phone service are legally required to eliminate the 3 percent federal excise tax on long-distance service, which had been established in 1898 as a luxury tax on wealthy Americans who owned telephones.

the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published a paper demonstrating what would happen if a sustained increase in federal spending were coupled with big tax increases to pay for the spending.

While the analysis points to different long-term effects from different types of taxes, any tax-and-spend approach would lead to reductions in economic growth and personal income that are larger than the size of the tax hikes.

For example, the analysis found that having 10% more federal government would mean a 12% to 19% reduction in personal consumption.

And that’s a conservative estimate. Most estimates show tax hikes shrink the economy by two to three times more than the revenues they raise. //

While the Biden administration has repeatedly claimed that it will only seek to raise taxes on the wealthy, a government of the size that they’re seeking would require amounts of money that can only be generated through steep across-the-board tax increases on middle-class Americans.

Regardless of whether those taxes are levied tomorrow or in a few years, they would be an inevitable part of expanding the size and scope of the federal government.

Rather than continuing down the path of centralized power and socialism, lawmakers should recognize the costs associated with endless federal spending and chart a course towards financial responsibility and prosperity.

The weeks upon weeks of negotiations leading up to the passage of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill were just the prelude to the absolute whopper that is the Bernie Sanders budget resolution, which hit the wires Monday morning and will hit the Senate floor Tuesday.

The $3.5 trillion document is a full-on attempt to remake the American economy, the labor markets, blow off our immigration laws, rewrite the tax code, impose a climate agenda, and profoundly alter the relationship between the government, and those it governs.

Among the bill’s highlights:

• Amnesty for illegal immigrants
• Rewrites Medicaid statutes to bypass the Hyde prohibitions on federal funding for abortion
• Universal pre-kindergarten for 3 and 4-year-olds
• Paid family and medical leave
• Tuition-free community college
• Medicare expansion for dental, hearing, and vision
• Expansive climate change programs
• Language similar to the PRO Act, which is a card-check program for labor organizing, making it easier to unionize
• Expansion of the SALT deduction
• Empowers the IRS with more enforcement capabilities
• Does not include an extension of pandemic unemployment benefits