Commentary: Tax All Foundations and Endowments Now

Yale University

If there were trillions of dollars socked away in convenient vehicles to avoid taxes and benefit the ultra-elite should we not tax them? Are they not fair game in a just system of taxation, where the little guy and the middle class have to pay up—or else? 

The largest endowments, mainly universities indoctrinating students in social justice, wokeism, and class warfare, pay absolutely no taxes. 

The big foundations, promoting radical left-wing activism, likewise pay no taxes. 

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Commentary: New York and New Jersey Are Among the Top 10 States Where Residents Pay the Highest Lifetime Taxes

Tax withholding forms

In the mood for a depressing statistic? A new report from the financial services firm Self concludes that the average American will pay an astounding $525,037 in taxes over their lifetime—roughly 34 percent of their lifetime earnings. 

But the numbers aren’t uniform across the country; they vary wildly from state to state. Based on taxes on earnings, spending, property, and cars, here are the 10 states where residents pay the highest taxes over a lifetime.

1. New Jersey

Topping the list is New Jersey, where residents will, on average, owe an astounding $932,000 in taxes over their lifetime. That’s nearly 50 percent of their typical lifetime earnings!

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Biden Administration Proposes ‘More Realistic’ 15 Percent Global Corporate Tax Rate

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, joined by White House staff, participate in a virtual bilateral meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

The Biden administration proposed a minimum global corporate tax rate of 15%, but said it hoped world leaders would negotiate a more “ambitious” minimum rate.

Treasury Department officials proposed the 15% minimum corporate tax rate during an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) meeting on taxation Thursday. The meeting marked the initial discussions over a global minimum rate between nations after the Treasury Department had previously pushed for such a tax to stop the global “race to the bottom.”

“Treasury proposed to the Steering Group that the global minimum tax rate should be at least 15%,” the department said in a statement Thursday. “Treasury underscored that 15% is a floor and that discussions should continue to be ambitious and push that rate higher.”

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Commentary: Biden’s Capital Gains Tax Plans Are a Lose-Lose Proposition

There will always be munis. Income from municipal bonds typically enjoys tax-free status at the federal level and in the issuing state. Conversely, when investors put wealth to work in a startup, private corporation, or public company, they face a capital gains tax penalty if their investment bears fruit. If a home run, that penalty becomes enormous.

Imagine that. Investors who subsidize the growth of government largely avoid taxation. But if they back an innovative corporation, or rush a distant future into the present through an intrepid investment with a visionary entrepreneur, a major IRS bill awaits.

Worse, the cost of prescient investing may soon increase. Seemingly in a bid to placate his ravenous left flank, President Biden has announced a proposal to nearly double the federal penalties on savings and investment to 43.8%.

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Commentary: Taxing Workers for Staying Home Is a Policy Rooted in Envy

Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, working from home is the new normal.

In 2018, just 5.4 percent of the US’s working population worked remotely. By mid-2020, it had turned into reality for 56 percent of the workforce. While not all workers forced to stay home were quick to welcome the change, many learned to enjoy it over time. With state governments beginning another round of lockdowns, it isn’t shocking to see many companies choosing to carry on with remote work.

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Hunter Biden Says He’s Being Investigated for Possible Tax Crimes

Federal prosecutors in Delaware are investigating Hunter Biden for potential tax crimes, he said in a statement issued Wednesday through his father’s presidential transition team.

“I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs,” Biden said in the statement.

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Biden Pledges to Hike Taxes to Bush Administration Levels

President-elect Joe Biden in a Wednesday interview said “there’s no reason why” his administration shouldn’t raise both corporate and individual income taxes to levels maintained during former president George Bush’s administration.

Biden insisted “everybody pairs their fair share” in taxes during his presidency, and suggested a nearly 40% rate for those in the top bracket, which he said was commonplace during the Bush era, in an interview with the New York Times.

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Biden’s Gun Registration Tax Could Cost Firearms Owners Billions

President-elect Joe Biden’s proposed firearm tax could cost gun owners upwards of $30 billion to keep the weapons they already possess, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

Biden plans to mandate both taxation and registration of so-called “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines under the National Firearms Act (NFA), which requires a $200 fee per item, according to the former vice president’s campaign website. Around 20 million rifles and 150 million magazines would be taxable, leading to a total cost to U.S. gun owners of over $34 billion, according to the Free Beacon.

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Reports: Biden’s Tax Plan Would Increase Taxes Across the Board, Estimates Vary by How Much

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s proposed tax increases of nearly $4 trillion over the next 10 years, if passed, “would be the highest in American history – indeed, in world history,” an analysis of his plan determined.

Lew Uhler, founder and chairman of the National Tax Limitation Committee and National Tax Limitation Foundation (NTLF), and Peter Ferrara a senior policy adviser to NTLF, made that conclusion in a new report published by The Hill.

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Minneapolis Mayor Frey Proposes 5.7 Percent Property Tax Increase, Recommends Police Hiring Freeze

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey gave his preliminary 2021 budget address Friday, in which he suggested how the city could improve its finances after restrictions put in place to slow the COVID-19 pandemic battered tax revenue. 

Fifty-five percent of the city’s ongoing general fund revenue is gathered from sources other than property taxes, Frey said, sources he added that are projected to drop next year by $32.5 million.

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Commentary: Bernie Will Confiscate Your Money, But Fortunately Not Your Guns

Vermont’s Socialist Senator and top-tier Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is one of the true disruptors in American politics. His unconventional ideas defy easy categorization as he campaigns around the country on his own idiosyncratic brand of Democratic Socialism.

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Commentary: Tariff Hawks Got It All Wrong When They Predicted ‘Another Great Depression’ from Trump’s America-First Trade Policies

Donald Trump

by Robert Romano   In 2016, when President Donald Trump ran on his America first trade agenda, much of the conventional wisdom was that, if implemented, his tariffs would wreck the U.S. economy. It would have the same impact as the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act, and so the prediction goes, lead to…

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Federal Regulations Amount to a $15,000 ‘Hidden Tax’ on Families, Report Finds

by Michael Bastasch   The federal regulatory apparatus imposed a roughly $14,600 “hidden tax” on American households last year, according to a new report by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). “That amounts to 20 percent of the average pretax income of $73,573, and 24 percent of the average expenditure budget…

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Conference Committees Meet to Hash Out Tax, Spending Increases in Minnesota Budgets

by Bethany Blankley   With 17 days to go before the end of session, legislative conference committees began meeting Friday to hash out differing proposals for three of the most contentious omnibus bills yet to be voted on by the full Legislature. The Omnibus tax bill, Omnibus Health and Human Services…

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Conference Committees Meet to Hash Out Tax, Spending Increases in Minnesota Budgets

by Bethany Blankley   With 17 days to go before the end of session, legislative conference committees began meeting Friday to hash out differing proposals for three of the most contentious omnibus bills yet to be voted on by the full Legislature. The Omnibus tax bill, Omnibus Health and Human Services…

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Minnesota Dept. of Revenue: Walz Tax Proposals Would Hurt the Poor Most

  A new analysis from Gov. Tim Walz’s own Department of Revenue shows that his tax proposals would hurt the poorest Minnesotans the most. The Tax Research Division of the Minnesota Department of Revenue released its tax incidence analysis Tuesday, and looked at the combined changes that would be made…

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Lawmakers Eye a Huge Backdoor Spending Increase

US Capitol

by David Ditch   Members of Congress are promoting the concept of changing three programs from the discretionary category (requiring annual appropriations) into mandatory (auto-pilot) spending. Such changes would become a huge backdoor spending increase. Spending limits have come under relentless attack from both parties. In 2013, 2015, and 2018,…

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Former California GOP Chairman Lists Nine Ways America Is Moving Towards Socialism

by Nick Givas   Former California GOP Chairman Tom Del Beccaro listed nine ways in which America is moving towards socialism during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Monday. Del Beccaro said increased government spending and inflated tax codes are just the beginning and claimed they’ll have a domino effect on…

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Rick Manning Commentary: President Trump Versus Washington’s Spending and the Constituencies Who Fight for Them

by Rick Manning   In Washington, D.C., every spending program and tax break has a constituency that fights for it.  This is why they exist, because somewhere, someone believes that Warren Buffett needs a wind production tax credit, and that opera programming should be taxpayer funded. These constituencies are tightly…

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Macron Bails on Climate Summit as France Melts Down Over High Gas Taxes

by Chris White   French President Emmanuel Macron made his way back to France Sunday as protesters turn the streets of Paris upside down over sky-high gas taxes designed to fight global warming. Officials are considering declaring a state of emergency to deal with the unrest. Macron returned from his trip in…

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Minnesota Ranked As the Least Tax-Friendly State In the Country

Minnesota was recently ranked as the least tax-friendly state in the country, beating out both California and New York for the top spot on the list. According to Kiplinger, a D.C.-based financial outlet, Minnesota’s “income tax rate of 5.35 percent” earned it the title of “least tax-friendly” state on the…

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House Votes Overwhelmingly To Kill Obamacare’s Tax On Medical Devices

Obamacare

by Julia Cohen   A bipartisan majority in the House voted to repeal President Barack Obama’s 2.3 percent medical device tax Tuesday. The repeal passed 283-132, with 57 Democrats and all but one Republican voting in favor. North Carolina Republican Rep. Walter Jones was the sole Republican against the bill. “Minnesota’s innovators can breathe…

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Republicans Unveil Tax Cuts Round Two On The Same Day Progressives Release Plan For Tax Increases

Steve Scalise

by Julia Cohen   House Republicans announced they are working on a second iteration of tax cuts on Tuesday, the same day the Congressional Progressive Caucus announced a proposal for raising taxes. “The tax cuts have been working incredibly well to get this economy moving, to create more jobs, to…

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Just Facts Think Tank President: The True Effects of Regulations on the Economy

by James D. Agresti   In a New York Times article about President Trump scaling back regulations, reporters Binyamin Appelbaum and Jim Tankersley report “there is little historical evidence tying regulation levels to” economic growth. They support this sweeping claim only with a quote from Jared Bernstein, a former chief economic adviser to…

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