The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently unearthed yet another undesirable side effect of Obamacare—one that will hit the taxman as well as business owners. The Taxpayer Advocate Service, “an independent organization within the IRS whose employees assist taxpayers,” reports that both the IRS and taxpayers will have trouble complying with the health care law’s extensive new tax reporting regulations. The regs will affect 40 million businesses, from international mega-corporations to Mom-and-Pop shops on Main Street. The Taxpayer Advocate Service says it “may propose administrative or legislative recommendations to modify the …
Andy Roth, Vice President of Club for Growth, highlighted a Boston Herald article about renovations to an IRS facility in a tweet he sent out this week: An IRS facility in Mass. will include a reflecting pool, an art gallery, and indoor gardens. – http://bit.ly/cxTHEPless than a minute ago via TweetDeckAndy Rothandyroth The Herald reports that the Andover, Massachusetts facility will boast a host of new amenities after its makeover, including “a reflecting pool, an art gallery, indoor gardens, a 7,000-square-foot cafeteria, and an amphitheater” but concedes that “it remains unclear …
Obamacare requires all individuals to carry health insurance for themselves and their families. Those who don’t will have to pay a penalty. And the IRS is the agency charged with making sure the uninsured pony up. Just how will the IRS do that? It’s not something lawmakers got around to actually, you know, writing down in any detail in that big bill. That’s even harder to do than reading that monster. But now that they’ve made Obamacare the law of the land, they’re starting to take an interest in the …
Roberton Williams and Rosanne Altshuler’s Five Myths About Your Taxes in the Washington Post on Sunday was such a useful piece one hesitates to criticize, but one confusion is so unfortunate that a correction is necessary. In all, the authors got about 3 and a half right out of five, which at the start of baseball season is really pretty good. They were right when pointing out that most people (75 percent by their estimates) pay some federal tax, even the many of the poor and virtually all the rich. …
Some supporters of the health care “reform” bill being shoved through the Senate are dismissing concerns over the individual insurance mandate and the tax penalty imposed on those who don’t meet that requirement. They claim that because § 5000A of the bill waives criminal prosecution of taxpayers and says that no liens or levies can be filed on the taxpayer’s property, this is supposedly a “voluntary mandate” and the IRS can’t do anything against you if you refuse to pay the penalty. That claim is wrong for a number of …
Byron York gets this scoop in the Washington Examiner today: …if the plan envisioned by President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats is enacted, the primary federal bureaucracy responsible for implementing and enforcing national health care will be an old and familiar one: the Internal Revenue Service. Under the Democrats’ health care proposals, the already powerful — and already feared — IRS would wield even more power and extend its reach even farther into the lives of ordinary Americans, and the presidentially-appointed head of the new health care bureaucracy would have …
The IRS released data today on the distribution of income taxes. It shows that the highest-earning taxpayers shoulder a considerable burden of the federal income tax. According to the IRS, the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid over 40 percent of all federal income taxes in 2007. That is a higher share than the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined! They paid just over 39 percent. The top 1 percent, those earning over $410,000, consists of 1.4 million taxpayers, while the bottom 95 percent contains 134 million. In 2000, before …
The Obama Administration’s desperation for new revenue to feed its massive spending appetite is becoming more apparent every day. The latest tax hike proposal, this time from the IRS, is to tax 25 percent of the value of employer-provided cell phones or Blackberries. The rationale is that workers use employer-provided phones to make or receive personal calls, and Blackberries to send and receive personal emails. As such, they should pay taxes on the value of these personal usages, because they are a form of income. It is unclear how the IRS …
