Posts

Canada's Lower Corporate Tax Rate Raises More Tax Revenue

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Tax Foundation

Photo Credit: Tax Foundation

Canada is apparently becoming an attractive place to do business. This week Burger King announced plans to move its headquarters to Canada, via a merger with Tim Hortons. Other U.S. companies that have recently moved or announced plans to move to Canada include Bausch and Lomb, Allergan, and Auxilium. A Bloomberg analysis indicates Tim Hortons was once a U.S. company, until it inverted to Canada in 2009.

Part of the attraction is the substantial tax reforms that occurred over the last 15 years in Canada. First among these is the dramatic reduction in the corporate tax rate, from 43 percent in 2000 to 26 percent today. The U.S. currently has a corporate tax rate of 39 percent, but lawmakers are reluctant to do what Canada did, i.e. lower the tax rate, for fear of losing tax revenue.

The natural question is: How much tax revenue did Canada lose?

Answer: None.

Read more from this story HERE.

Why It Makes Sense for Burger King to Become a Canadian Company

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Mike Mozart / Creative Commons

Photo Credit: Mike Mozart / Creative Commons

How many iconic American companies have to leave or threaten to leave these shores for foreign lands before Washington acts to fix our anti-growth tax system and keep firms, profits, and jobs here in the U.S.?

Burger King became the latest Fortune 100 company to announce it is looking to leave. The company is considering a deal to merge with Canadian restaurant chain Tim Hortons and move its headquarters north across the border. The multi-billion dollar deal would make the $11.4 billion hamburger company now based in Miami a Canadian firm valued at more than $21 billion. The technical term for this transaction is an “inversion.”

Why is it happening? The combined federal and state corporate income tax rate in Florida is 38.6 percent, near the highest in the world and more than a third higher than the combined national and provincial rate of 28.0 percent in Ontario, Canada. This is costing American workers jobs and the U.S. capital investment.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare Might Kill Your Tax Refund

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Shannon Stapleton

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Shannon Stapleton

Americans who underestimated their income for 2014 when they applied for health insurance might see their tax refund reduced or eliminated completely, the Washington Examiner reports.

The Obama administration is warning taxpayers that they need to provide updates about changes in income, but the message doesn’t seem to be getting through.

“As time goes on, the ability to make adjustments diminishes,” Mark Ciaramitaro, H&R Block’s vice president of health care services told the Examiner. “Clients count on that refund as their biggest financial transaction of the year. When that refund goes down, it really has reverberations.”

Taxpayers who make use of tax credits to help pay health insurance premiums are at serious risk, since if income increases unexpectedly during the year, the tax credit could not only dry up completely, but instead reverse, leaving taxpayers with an additional bill.

Read more from this story HERE.

We Might See HUGE Taxes Just For Using The Internet, Thanks To Harry Reid

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Mal Langsdon

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Mal Langsdon

State governments always seem to find creative ways to tax Americans, so why haven’t they taxed us for using the Internet yet? It’s because we’re protected by the Internet Tax Freedom Act — but if the Senate doesn’t pass a permanent extension of the act by Nov. 1, we might see $15-$20 additions to our phone bills for Internet usage.

“It’s really unfortunate because the House passed it on voice vote to make it permanent, and now the Senate is messing it up,” president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance David Williams told The Daily Caller in an interview. “I mean Harry Reid in particular is messing this up.”

On July 15, the House passed the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (PITFA) via voice vote — in true bipartisan fashion — which would allow permanent freedom from Internet taxes and eliminate the need for extensions. The Senate still has to pass the bill. On July 31, right before the August recess, Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz tried to bring the bill to the floor, but was shut down by Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Read more from this story HERE.

Democrat Congressman: Tax Drivers for Every Mile They Drive

/14 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: CNSNews.com / Penny StarrWhile the House and the Senate this week issued measures intended to temporarily replenish the Highway Trust Fund before it runs out of money next month, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) ended the week by proposing to hike – then abolish – the federal fuel tax and replace it with a per-mile “fee.”

“The policy development that I’m most excited about and that will reinforce the right practices for the future: After we raise the gas tax, we should abolish it,” Blumenauer said on Friday at the liberal Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. “The time is right to replace the gas tax, because it’s no longer an accurate reflection of road use and benefit because of these wildly changing fuel consumption patterns, and replace it with a vehicle mile travel fee regardless of the choice of vehicle fuel.

“That technology is available,” said Blumenauer, whose home state of Oregon has already had pilot vehicle mile travel fee programs in place for a decade.

Read more from this story HERE.

Secret Tax Could Collapse Dollar

/7 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Google Images
FATCA, a massive tax increase passed by the Democrat majority that controlled the House and Senate back in 2010 is set to go into effect July 1, 2014.

FATCA, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act could actually collapse the U.S. dollar after it goes into effect. Talk about unintended consequences. Read more about how FATCA will have devastating effects on Americans here.

Obama is declaring economic war on the rest of the world through this tax increase and yet most Americans have never heard of it.

FATCA was so ill conceived that if it goes into effect as planned, it could lead to the end of our way of life in America. Americans could wake up to find that the money in their bank account is suddenly worthless and devalued to the point where they could not buy anything with it.

There is a good chance that the House Majority will vote to repeal FATCA if Americans raise their voices against it. Many Democrats are starting to back away from this act as well, because they do not want a tax increase to go into effect right before the elections.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hypocrisy Much? Clintons Took Pains To Avoid Taxes They Publicly Support

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: IJ Review According to Bloomberg, in 2010 the Clintons changed the ownership status of their New York home, which they bought in 1999 for $1.7 million, to take advantage of current estate tax rules.

What they did is divide the ownership into two separate trusts that pass to on to Chelsea after 10 years. After that period they will have to pay rent to her, but any growth in the value of the home remains outside of their estate. And thereby limit estate taxes.

Doesn’t everyone do that if they have the financial wherewithal? Isn’t it the responsible thing to do?

Of course and of course.

Read more from this story HERE.

Credit Suisse Pleads Guilty To Helping U.S. Tax Evaders

/1 Comment/in /by

Photo Credit: Evan Vucci / APCredit Suisse AG has pleaded guilty to helping wealthy Americans evade taxes in offshore havens, and the Swiss bank has agreed to pay U.S. authorities $2.6 billion in penalties, the Justice Department has announced.

Attorney General Eric Holder told a news conference in Washington on Monday that the Swiss bank had “engaged in an extensive and wide-ranging conspiracy … to help tax cheats dodge U.S. taxes.”

Holder said the conspiracy spanned decades and involved bank employees destroying records in an effort to hide the truth and that the destruction of evidence continued after the Justice Department launched its investigation in 2010.

The Associated Press reports:

“The conspiracy charge was filed in a criminal information, which is a charging document that can only be filed with a defendant’s consent and which typically signals a guilty plea.

Read more from this story HERE.

One Tax To Rule Them All

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Just one of Obamacare’s many taxes could cost the U.S. hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next decade, according to an industry report published Tuesday.

The National Federation of Independent Businessprojects that between 152,000 and 286,000 jobs will be lost by 2023 due to Obamacare’s health insurance tax. NFIB, a nonprofit association of business owners, actively supports the repeal of the tax.

The health insurance tax has proved to be one of Obamacare’s more controversial fundraising measures. The tax targets insurance companies, charging each one proportional to their market share — the more health plans sold (Obamacare’s goal), the more insurers are required to pay.

The report found that the tax will cause a spike in the cost of employer-sponsored health coverage, which will lead primarily small businesses to cut jobs. NFIB estimates that 57 percent of the job losses will come from small businesses — firms with under 500 employees, according to the federal Small Business Administration.

The cut in employment would results in a reduction of U.S. real output, or sales, of between $20 billion and $33 billion through 2023.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sen. Introduces Bill To Test Out Taxing Motorists For Every Mile They Drive

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: David McNew / Getty

Photo Credit: David McNew / Getty

The California Legislature is looking at a voluntary program that would tax motorists for every mile they drive.

KCAL9’s Bobby Kaple reports that Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, introduced a bill to test out the vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax because the state’s gas tax was no longer bringing in the revenue it used to due to people driving more fuel efficient vehicles.

The program is modeled after ones in Oregon and Washington.

“We want to do as Washington and Oregon have done in a much bigger state with much longer commutes…to make sure that we find out whether it would work, whether the public would like it or not,” DeSaulnier said.

It’s unknown how much the tax would be, but Oregon currently charges its volunteers 1.5 cents per mile.

Read more from this story HERE.