Category Archives: Taxes

California Recession Incoming, by John Seiler

Posted on July 31, 2022 | Leave a comment

California’s tax receipts have always been boom or bust, and right now they’re starting to bust. From John Seiler at The Epoch Times at zerohedge.com:

A recession is hitting California. The only question is how hard it will be.

The July Finance Bulletin by Keely Bosler, director of the California Department of Finance, calculated for the personal income tax (PIT), “Cash receipts for June were $3.345 billion below the forecast of $16.939 billion.” The actual receipts were $13.594 billion.

Receipts vary month to month because of when people file their tax reports. So it’s best to compare a particular month to the same month in the previous year. According to the July 2021 report, “Cash receipts for June were also $1.783 billion above the month’s forecast of $15.312 billion.” So the actual receipts were $17.095 billion a year ago June.

Put them together. June 2021 actual receipts were $17.095 billion and for June 2022, $13.594 billion. That was a drop of $3.501 billion, or 20 percent. If that continues, the yearly loss for fiscal year 2021-22, which began on July 1, would be $42 billion.

The expected $97 billion surplus would be only $55 billion. All that surplus money Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature promised to spend in June would have to be cut by $42 billion.

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The “Withholding” Tax You Pay by the Mile, by Eric Peters

Posted on July 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

Don’t think the thieves who rule us aren’t already working on taxes to replace the gasoline taxes electric car owners won’t be paying. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

One of the biggest economic incentives to drive a hybrid (or a full-boogie electric car) is to not have to buy gas and – by dint of that – not have to pay the extortionate taxes applied to the purchase of gas. These total around 50 cents in taxes applied to every gallon of gas. Proportionately, gas taxes are just about the most regressive taxes after those applied to cigarettes, with the difference being no one has to smoke while almost everyone has to drive.

And even if you don’t drive, you still pay – because the cost others (truckers) pay for their gas (and diesel) plus taxes is folded into the cost of the things you buy, such as the food that is trucked from A to B.

But government doesn’t like it when people evade paying, as by driving a car that uses very little or even no gas at all. Notwithstanding the government’s pushing of such cars.

The solution? Make those who bought them pay by the miles they drive rather than by the gallons they no longer buy.

Virginia is the latest state to initiate such a program – purely voluntary, of course . . . for the moment. The Mileage Choice Program, as it is styled, offers participants the option to “save money” – the carrot – by not having to pay the annual highway user fee (which is of course a tax)  that owners of hybrids and electric cars are otherwise required to pay to make up for the gas taxes they thought they would be able to avoid paying and thereby actually save money. Leaving aside the money they spent on the hybrid or EV to “save” it.

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If Canadians Wanted to Eat Crickets, We Wouldn’t Be Forced to Subsidize the Cricket Farm, by Karen Selick

Posted on July 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

Your tax dollars at work. From Karen Selick at lewrockwell.com:

I know a Canadian man who lives in Thailand. He teaches English as his primary occupation, but he and his wife also have a “hobby farm” raising crickets in large wooden bins in their home. When the insects are ready for harvesting, his wife—a Thai native—fries them up with popular Thai seasonings. The crickets are then sold as snacks on the local streets.

For Thais, eating insects isn’t novel. Take a look at some of the other mouth-watering delicacies they eat: bamboo worms, silkworms, grasshoppers and giant water bugs.

Thais aren’t the only people in the world who eat insects. “Consumers in Latin America are already familiar with eating insects as food or snacks,” according to this Mexican bureaucrat in charge of food safety.

Recently, however, it has been announced that Canada, of all places – where I’ve lived all my life and have never known anyone to eat crickets – will become home to the world’s largest cricket farm, newly built in London, Ontario by Aspire Food Group. The company’s CEO, Mohammed Ashour, predicts that North Americans will soon join two billion other people on the planet who, he claims, already eat insects.

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US Retaliates Against Hungary For Obstructing 15% Global Minimum Tax, by Tyler Durden

Posted on July 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

Cartelization and price fixing are only bad when private companies do it, not when government does. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

In response to Hungary’s obstruction of the European Union’s adoption of a 15% global minimum tax on corporate income, the Biden administration on Friday announced it will terminate a 43-year-old tax treaty with the country. 

Hungary blocked the EU’s finalization of the 15% minimum tax scheme in June. Over the past dozen years, Hungary has slashed its corporate tax rate from 19% to just 9%.

In October 2020, 136 countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)—together representing more than 90% of the world’s GDP—agreed to move forward with the tax plan. Making it an actual reality, however, requires countries and economic blocs to pass legislation.

At the time of Hungary’s veto, the country’s finance minister, Mihaly Varga, hinted that Budapest could still be persuaded: “The work is not ready. I think we have to continue the effort to find a solution.”

That could be a veiled reference to something else entirely that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seeking: billions of dollars in loans and grants from the EU’s Covid-19 recovery fund. 

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Slightly Up From Slavery, by Doug Casey

Posted on July 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

If you’re successful in the U.S., various levels of government may end up taking over half your income. Does working for over half of your time for no money make you a half-slave? From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

slavery

To eliminate misunderstanding as to what taxes are, it is helpful to define the word “theft.” One good definition is “the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods of another.” The definition does not go on to say, “unless you’re the government.”

There is no difference, in principle, between the State taking property and a street gang doing so, except that the State’s theft is “legal” and its agents are immune from prosecution. Many people do not accept that analogy, because the government is widely viewed as being of, for, and by the people, even though it’s also acknowledged as acting badly from time to time.

Suppose a mugger demanded your wallet, perhaps because he needed money to buy a new car and threatened you with violence if you weren’t forthcoming. Everyone would call that a criminal act. Suppose, however, the mugger said he wanted the money to buy himself food. Would it still be theft? Suppose now that he said he wanted your wallet to feed another hungry person, not himself. Would it still be theft?

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Taxation With Representation, by Eric Peters

Posted on July 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

Being able to vote for your unfreedom doesn’t make you any less unfree. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

Today, Americans celebrate their independence – from what, exactly?

From Great Britain? Why should that be cause for celebration? What have Americans gained thereby?

Was it “taxation” – with “representation”? Is this in fact the case? And if so, can it be accounted an improvement?

The fundamental thing is this business of taxation. Everyone knows what it means – the obligatory handing over (one isn’t “paying”) of money, unwillingly, to be used to finance things the person made to hand over the money almost certainly does not wish to finance. Hence the necessary element of threats – of physical violence – leveled and implicit in every tax, to coerce the handing over.

In other words, strong-arm robbery – as distinct from mere theft, which is a lesser thing because it is generally done without overt violence or threats thereof. The thief steals in the manner of an opportunistic fox, who sees that the henhouse is open. It would be robbery rather than mere theft if the fox – armed with a gun – sent you a letter declaring that you “owed” him a chicken and had better deliver it to him by such-and-such a date. 

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A Triple-Barreled Gun Is Destroying African Economies: Inflation, Government Debt, and Taxes, by Manuel Tacanho

Posted on June 19, 2022 | Leave a comment

You can lump the three under the general category of statism. That philosophy always has and always will destroy, not build. From Manuel Tacanho at mises.org:

Today it is conclusive that Africa’s socialist experiments failed, as did the state-led development approach. Not only was the heavily statist approach unable to develop African economies, but it made poverty worse. In this context of repressive state-driven economic systems, most African countries are trapped in a morass of high inflation, high debt, high taxation, high dependency, worsening poverty, food insecurity, chronic mass unemployment, and other pervasive problems.

Barrel One: High Inflation

Africa’s unstable and inflationary currencies have been a significant impediment to economic development because of their destabilizing and impoverishing effect. Organic and lasting economic growth must necessarily be driven by savings, not by debt, deficit spending, or money printing.

In the long run, inflation ends in the breakdown of the currency. This is what happened in Angola in the 1990s and in Zimbabwe in the first decade of the 2000s.

Evidence from the past and present, from developed and developing countries, unequivocally shows that inflation is a government and central bank policy that cannot go on forever and that does come to a catastrophic end, however long the run may be.

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Economic Security is National Security, and the Foundation of Economic and National Security is Energy Policy, Biden is a Threat to National Security, by Sundance

Posted on June 15, 2022 | Leave a comment

Biden’s destroying everything all at once. From Sundance at theconservativetreehouse.com:

Economic security is the foundation of national security.  When the government takes action that destabilizes our economy, every element of national security is put at risk.  We are experiencing that right now as we suffer through Joe Biden’s intentionally flawed energy policy that is destroying the U.S. economy and everyone within it.

“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”

~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Never has that Machiavelli quote been more apropos than when considering the MAGA movement and the rise of Donald Trump.

Thankfully, we are now in an era when the largest coalition of American voters have awakened to the reality that, to quote the former president: “Economic Security is National Security.”

As we live through the economic mess of a Biden administration hell bent on eroding the middle class of the United States, there are numerous pundits contemplating 2024 Republican presidential candidates other than Donald Trump; consider this group the lukewarm defenders Machiavelli noted.

At the same time the leftist coalition, writ large, are apoplectic about the base of the Republican Party now belonging to Donald Trump.  This group consists of those affluent Wall Street agents and politicians set on retaining the profits derived from decades of institutional objectives.

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Ticking retirement timebomb? Unfunded state pension liabilities grow to $8.28 trillion, by The Center Square

Posted on June 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

Is default the only way out. Probably. From The Center Square at justthenews.com:

Unfunded state pension liabilities have climbed to $8.28 trillion, or nearly $25,000 for every person in the United States, according to a new report from the American Legislative Exchange Council.

The American Legislative Exchange Council released the latest edition of its report on pensions in all 50 states Thursday. The report, “Unaccountable and Unaffordable 2021,” shows just a handful of states with outsize pension liabilities account for a large share of overall pension debt in the U.S.

The report looked at 290 state-administered government pension plans and their assets and liabilities from fiscal year 2012 to fiscal year 2020. An example of state-administered government pension plans in Illinois would cover state employees, teachers, university workers, judges and lawmakers.

The states with the most unfunded liabilities were California ($1.53 trillion), Illinois ($533.72 billion), Texas ($529.70 billion), New York ($508.70 billion) and Ohio ($429.53 billion). These five states alone account for more than $3.5 trillion in unfunded liabilities, or about 43% of all unfunded liabilities in the U.S.

The bottom 10 states make up $4.9 trillion, or 59.36% of all unfunded liabilities, according to the ALEC report. On a per capita basis, the bottom five state were Alaska ($42,829), Illinois ($41,656.79), Connecticut ($40,427.58), Hawaii ($39,939.43), New Jersey ($39,849.02) and California ($38,713.16).

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Demographers Warn Of Impending Population Collapse, by Kevin Stocklin

Posted on June 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

Having a baby is an expression of optimism. There are a number of factors behind declining birth rates, but one of them has to be that the present state of the world doesn’t lend itself to optimism. From Kevin Stocklin at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:

Amid the deluge of dire predictions that the human population will rise exponentially, deplete the earth’s resources, and overheat the planet, two recent demographic studies predict the opposite—that the number of people will peak within the next several decades and then begin a phase of steady, irreversible decline.

A father prepares to change the diaper of his newborn daughter as his wife looks on in a hospital in Apple Valley, California, on March 30, 2021. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

In some places, including Japan, Russia, South Korea, and most countries in Europe, that population collapse has already begun. China is not far behind.

The United Nations has predicted that humanity will continue its rapid expansion into the next century, growing from just under 8 billion today to more than 11 billion by 2100. An oft-repeated interpretation of this data is that people are having too many babies, and many of the models for climate change and environmental degradation are based on projections like these. In August, the U.N. declared a “code red for humanity” over climate change and overpopulation, and analysts at investment bank Morgan Stanley stated that the “movement to not have children owing to fears over climate change is growing.”

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