Tennessee revenues exceeded budgeted estimates for the first month of the state’s 2021-2022 fiscal year by $115.1 million, Department of Finance and Administration Commissioner Butch Eley reported Monday.
Total state revenues for August, the first month of the fiscal year on an accrual basis, were $1.16 billion, which is $22 million more than August 2019 and 11 percent more than the budgeted estimate for the month.
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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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Tennessee tax revenues for the month of July exceeded the budgeted estimate by $667.1 million, Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration Commissioner Butch Eley announced Thursday.
Overall revenues of $1.86 billion in July were $689.4 million more than state revenues in July 2019.
The higher-than-expected revenues for July has the state finishing the 2019-2020 fiscal year in a surplus position of $369.2 million against the budgeted estimate and 2.42 percent above last year, despite the impacts of the COVID-19 economic slowdown.
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America’s working families need allies, not obstacles.
As a mother and a Michigan small business owner, I vividly recall the anemic “recovery” we experienced under the Obama-Biden administration, which increased regulatory costs to a historic high of nearly $2 trillion a year — a tab paid in large part by hard working entrepreneurs like me.
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The May revenues announced by Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration Commissioner Butch Eley Monday showed a negative growth rate of 15.83 percent compared to a year ago.
The state’s revenues of $981.9 million were $197.3 million less than budgeted and $184.7 million less than May 2019, according to the department’s news release.
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The economic shutdown has turned Minnesota’s projected $1.5 billion budget surplus into a $2.4 billion deficit, state officials announced Tuesday.
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Mayor John Cooper’s proposed 32 percent property tax increase is a terrible idea and would be detrimental to the city of Nashville, potentially creating a chilling effect across Middle Tennessee. An increase of such magnitude would bring additional pain and suffering to untold thousands of Nashvillians already harmed by the government-mandated COVID-19 lockdown and the tornado that preceded it.
Decisions about tax increases should be delayed until next spring. After the Mayor has made significant cuts and structural changes in Metro government. It also must come after Mayor Cooper has hosted townhall meetings in every Nashville neighborhood. At such times he can educate voters about what he will have done to cut spending and exactly how he will operate the city in a fiscally conservative manner.
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Commissioner of Finance and Administration Butch Eley announced Monday that the Tennessee’s tax revenues exceeded budgeted estimates for the month of March by $62.1 million, despite the anticipated impact of the coronavirus.
Eley was named to the new post by Governor Bill Lee on April 15, while also serving as the Chief Operating Officer for the state. Prior to joining Governor Lee’s administration, he was a founder and CEO of Infrastructure Corporation of America, an infrastructure asset maintenance management company and a partner at the Ingram Group.
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Tennessee tax revenues in February grew 6.79 percent compared with February 2019, the Department of Finance and Administration announced.
Tax revenue for February was a little more than $1 billion, which was $64.8 million more than was collected in February 2019.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed legislation on Monday that would help struggling Michigan homeowners pay their property taxes.
The “Pay As You Stay” bill, sponsored by Rep. Wendell Byrd (D-3-Detroit), eliminates penalties, interest, and fees to allow foreclosing governmental units to significantly reduce delinquent taxes.
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The state’s revenue collections for the month of January remained strong, resulting in a $129.4 surplus over the budgeted estimate of $1.55 billion, Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration Commissioner Stuart McWhorter reported Friday.
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In the monthly announcement of state revenues, Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration Commissioner Stuart McWhorter reported that collections for December were $55.3 million more than the budgeted estimate.
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The overtaxation scandal in Detroit underscores the importance of giving President Trump four more years in the White House, lest the tax-and-spend Democrats drown working Americans in a flood of new taxes.
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State lawmakers nationwide are spending more money, but they are also replenishing rainy day funds in preparation for the next economic downturn, a new report determined.
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The IRS placed a tax lien on Hunter Biden seeking $112,805 in unpaid taxes from 2015, according to records the Daily Caller News Foundation obtained.
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In a news release Friday, the Commissioner of Finance and Administration Stuart McWhorter announced that the state’s revenues for October exceeded budgeted estimates, resulting in a $49.8 million surplus for the month.
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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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The report of Tennessee state revenues for September at $1.6 billion resulted in a budget surplus of $138.8 million. Revenue for the month of September 2019, as indicated in the report, is $138.7 million more than September 2018, reflecting a 9.75 percent year-over-year growth rate. On an accrual basis, September is the second month in the 2019-2020 fiscal year. Combined with August, the two months of revenues have resulted in a total $167.6 million budget surplus year-to-date. Revenues are 6.6 percent ahead of the plan for the 2019-2020 fiscal year and 9.00 percent ahead of this time in the 2018-2019 fiscal year. Finance and Administration Commissioner Stuart McWhorter said of the most recent month’s revenue results, “September sales tax receipts continue to reflect strong consumer activity within the state and corporate tax revenues greatly outperformed expectations.” The sales and use tax, the state’s largest revenue generator accounting for more than 60 percent of the 2019-2020 budgeted revenues, exceeded the estimates for September by $31 million or nearly 4 percent. Year-to-date, sales tax revenues have exceeded the budgeted estimates by $40 million, or 2.5 percent for the two month period. Franchise and excise taxes combined, the state’s second-largest revenue source…
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Commissioner of the Department of Finance Administration, Stuart McWhorter, reported last week that Tennessee revenues for August were $28.8 million more than the budgeted estimates.
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The Commissioner of the Tennessee’s Department of Finance Administration Stuart McWhorter announced August 15 that, while state tax revenues were below budget for the month of July, Tennessee will end fiscal year 2019 with a surplus of $636.1 million.
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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 another Great Depression. “Trump trade plans could cause global recession: Experts,” read one confident headline on CNBC in May 2016. “If you take (Trump’s) position as real, that we would do this, then it would take the world down the road that we saw in the 1930s that we saw with the Smoot–Hawley Tariff,” Caroline Freund of the Peterson Institute for International Economics said. “The world would definitely fall into a recession.” The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson wrote in June 2018, “The ghost of Smoot-Hawley seems to haunt Trump,” after Trump levied tariffs on steel and aluminum. Samuelson suggested, “What’s eerie is that Trump’s embrace of protectionism is now assuming the same role as Smoot-Hawley in the 1930s. By slowing economic growth, it darkens the outlook and reduces the ability of debtors to repay their lenders. So much for the lessons of history.” Other predictions have suggested, besides slowing economic growth or perhaps…
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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 of $60,060,” CEI’s Wayne Crews wrote in his annual Ten Thousand Commandments report released Tuesday. In total, federal regulations, once again, cost the U.S. economy $1.9 trillion despite the Trump administration’s effort to roll back onerous regulations. Crews said his report was a conservative estimate of the true cost of regulations. “The regulatory ‘tax’ exceeds every item in the household budget except housing,” Crews wrote. “More is ‘spent’ on embedded regulation than on health care, food, transportation, entertainment, apparel, services, and savings.” One of President Donald Trump’s first actions upon taking office was to rein in federal agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), that had issued billions of dollars worth of regulations during the Obama administration. And Trump’s had some success, according to Crews. Crews reported that Trump will cut regulatory costs about $50 billion by the end of 2019, and his administration issued 3,368 rules in 2018. The…
Read the full storyby 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 (HHS), and Omnibus jobs and economic development, energy and climate, and telecommunications policy and finance bills are all expected to be revised through the weekend. Omnibus bills include numerous items that might not be passed on their own and only require a single legislative vote. The House Omnibus HHS bill alone is 1,043 pages long. Both Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s budget proposal and the Democratic House spending plan raise taxes at a time when the state’s tax revenue is at a record high with an expected billion-dollar surplus. The House plan includes new payroll taxes, new licensing fees and government mandates, in addition to other measures, which the Department of Revenue states would hurt low-income Minnesotans the most. The department’s report estimates that individuals earning less than $14,528 annually would pay an extra $2.37 for every $100 of income, more than double what the highest income earners would pay. On…
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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 (HHS), and Omnibus jobs and economic development, energy and climate, and telecommunications policy and finance bills are all expected to be revised through the weekend. Omnibus bills include numerous items that might not be passed on their own and only require a single legislative vote. The House Omnibus HHS bill alone is 1,043 pages long. Both Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s budget proposal and the Democratic House spending plan raise taxes at a time when the state’s tax revenue is at a record high with an expected billion-dollar surplus. The House plan includes new payroll taxes, new licensing fees and government mandates, in addition to other measures, which the Department of Revenue states would hurt low-income Minnesotans the most. The department’s report estimates that individuals earning less than $14,528 annually would pay an extra $2.37 for every $100 of income, more than double what the highest income earners would pay. On…
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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 under Walz’s tax, transportation, and health and human services bills. Overall, the report found that the combined increase in tax collections under Walz’s budget proposal is estimated to be $2.372 billion in 2021, of which $2.104 billion is “borne by Minnesota residents.” The average increase in total taxes paid would be 6.52 percent, though the increases would be higher for the bottom five income brackets than the top five. Specifically, the analysis shows that the lowest income bracket would see an 8.5 percent increase in tax burdens while the highest income bracket would see a 4.3 percent increase. Looked at a different way, Minnesotans’ state and local tax burden would increase by an average of 0.76 percent of income. The report, however, states that “the increased tax burden is largest for the lowest deciles and declines at higher income ranges.” The tax burden for the top one percent of earners…
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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, Congress passed massive spending increases with little to no effort to find pay-fors. With just two years remaining for the Budget Control Act’s modest restraints, there is tacit agreement that Congress will likely make yet another deal to add to the nation’s $22 trillion debt. If that was not bad enough, there is a long, bipartisan tradition of finding shortcuts around already-inflated spending limits. Appropriators have repeatedly used fake savings to squeeze more spending inside the caps. Disaster and war funding exceptions have been abused to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Congress has accepted flagrant violations of budget rules with minimal resistance. Another tactic for avoiding budget discipline is to re-categorize existing programs. While discretionary spending is subject to limits and annual deliberation, so-called mandatory spending is typically left to grow unchecked. The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >> Mandatory spending—which…
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A joint committee of the Ohio House of Representatives and Senate was convened Wednesday in the hopes of reconciling the major divides in their respective transportation budgets. As they work towards a solution, one state think tank is reminding them not to forget the consequences Ohio citizens will face as a result of their decisions. House Bill 62 (HB 62), the 2020-21 Ohio Transportation Budget, the first major bill proposed of newly-elected Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine’s tenure, called for an 18 cent gas tax increase. It would go into effect immediately and carry no tax offsets. The Ohio House of Representatives revised the proposal to 10.7 cents and ordered it to be phased in over three years. Most recently, the Ohio Senate dropped the tax rate even lower to six cents. None of the proposals carry a complete tax offset. In this joint session, the legislators hope to reconcile differences, yet DeWine has maintained from day one that his 18 cent proposal is “a minimalist, conservative approach, with this being the absolute bare minimum we need to protect our families and our economy.” The Buckeye Institute, an independent think tank whose focus is “to advance free-market public policy” has acknowledged that a gas tax increase is…
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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 the rest of the country. “We do have massive [spending],” he said. “We are going to spend $7.6 trillion as a society in this upcoming year which is roughly four times what Reagan’s era spent when he said government was the problem.” “We have massive tax systems,” Del Beccaro continued. “And hallmarks of socialist societies are poor incentives where there is weak economic growth. And that comes from tax systems. Trump did a good job beginning with the business tax code. He’s got to do better with personal so we have better growth.” He then moved to reduced economic growth through government interference and cited the EU as a prime example. “[The EU] had zero economic growth over the last 20 years and government is about 60, 70 percent of their economies,” Del Beccaro said. “In the United States we’re about 36 [percent]. With regulations closer to 50. Our growth has slipped…
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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 organized and connected into the D.C. power centers to continue and if possible expand the favored spending. Do you know who doesn’t have a well-funded lobbying arm? Why, it is the actual taxpayers and limited government conservatives who fight against the tide of the ever expanding government. Groups like Americans for Limited Government, which I head, depend upon the raw power of truth to stand up to the D.C. government growth machine, and the election of Donald Trump to the presidency shows that winning is possible. In spite of growing deficits, the Trump presidency gives us reason for hope that fiscal sanity may be restored, as for the third year in a row, they have released a budget which provides a pathway to balance. While the fifteen-year time frame may seem like a long time, by comparison, so-called budget cutter Paul Ryan’s proposals often had a four-decade timeline to reach balance.…
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Grover Norquist, President and Founder of the nationally recognized Conservative taxpayer advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), implored Ohioans Friday to reject the “straight up” gas tax currently being considered by the Ohio Legislature. In an open letter, Norquist warned; A gas tax hike does the greatest harm to households who can least afford it. Coupled with gas tax prices that have been creeping up in Ohio, a gas tax hike would have especially adverse effects on the state’s lower income earners. Additionally, the 2003 gas tax increase failed to meet revenue projections. Also consider that a state gas tax increase would counteract the benefits of federal tax reform and eat into Ohio taxpayers’ federal tax cut savings. This is one of the reasons why Congress has declined to raise the federal gas tax, despite pressure for them to do so. The bill has been a source of significant controversy, forcing a schism between many Ohio Republican legislators and the Ohio Republican Governor, Mike DeWine. While there is an overwhelming consensus that something must be done to address the rapidly decaying roads and bridges in Ohio, how best to fund these repairs is still up for debate. When DeWine first introduced House Bill 62 (HB…
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COLUMBUS, Ohio — The battle over a gas tax increase has officially kicked off in the Ohio Statehouse. Since taking office, Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has insisted that a gas tax was critically necessary to preserving and repairing the state’s decaying roads and bridges. Though many in the state on both sides of the political aisle agreed that some form of revenue increase would be necessary, the real question was exactly how much would the increase would be. In his State of the State Address on Tuesday, as previously reported, DeWine explicitly stated that his proposed gas tax increase of 18 cents was lowest it could go: “Members of the General Assembly, by requesting $1.2 billion dollars to fill the budget hole and meet existing needs, let me assure you that I am taking a minimalist, conservative approach, with this being the absolute bare minimum we need to protect our families and our economy. He intended for it to go into effect immediately with no tax break offsets, and would peg it to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), thereby ensuring it would increase over time as the economy grew. However, prior to that speech, Ohio Republican State Speaker of the House Larry Householder…
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COLUMBUS, Ohio– In a statement made via a Facebook Video, Columbus, Ohio’s Democratic Mayor Andrew J. Ginther announced that he is backing DeWine’s 18 cent gas tax hike. The mayor said he is backing the bill because: It will help us increase our funding for infrastructure in Columbus neighborhoods by 19 million a year. We think that’s worthwhile because we know infrastructure is really about people; opening up jobs and opportunities for others in the community to share in our prosperity. House Bill 62 (HB 62), which would create the transportation budget for the 2020-2021 biennium, includes the 18 cent gas tax increase and is currently being reviewed by the House Finance Committee. Governor DeWine made the case Tuesday in his State of the State Address for the necessity of the bill, stating: Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the General Assembly—our families should not be driving on roads that are crumbling and bridges that are failing. I appeal to you—as legislators, as fathers and mothers, as sons and daughters—help us fix this! The state has avoided its responsibility for too long—and now is the time to act. As previously reported, 30 percent of all roads are in “poor or mediocre condition.” DeWine dedicated almost half of his hour-long address to…
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by Edward Ring It is fashionable to refer to the job market of the future as “the gig economy.” In this enlightened, technology enabled wonderland, everyone will be free to balance work and leisure as they see fit. When they want to earn more money, they get online, find a “gig,” and when the job’s performed the money flows into their checking account. Not quite the utopia of Galt’s Gulch, but tantalizingly closer. The problem with the “gig economy” is the troublesome intervention of reality. Tell an Uber driver who has two hungry children, a wife home with the flu (unable to “gig”), who makes $20 per hour and has no health insurance that he’s living in utopia. You may have to duck. In 2017, the opinion section of the New York Times ran a guest editorial that included a graphic entitled “Our Broken Economy, In One Simple Chart.” That chart was drawn from data gathered by a team of economists that included Thomas Piketty, author of the 2014 bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Each dot on the chart below represents an income percentile. They form two lines, the grey line showing income growth by income percentile between 1946 and 1980, and the red…
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It’s safe to say that when Ohio Governor Mike DeWine appointed his “Governor’s Advisory Committee on Transportation” to develop solutions for paying for road and bridge repairs, citizens were hoping they’d come up was some creative answers. Instead, the committee reached a consensus last week that the primary means by which road repairs would need to be funded would be through raising gas taxes. During a meeting with the Canton Repository Editorial Board, Governor DeWine made it clear that he would be taking their advice. He noted that not only was raising the gas taxes essential to fixing the problem but that he couldn’t put a number on how high the hike would be. When asked how much the raise could be per gallon, he stated: Well I’m not going to talk about it yet. I’m not going to put a number on it…Just to maintain status quo, we’ve got to come up with $1.5 billion a year. So how we do that? I’ve been in discussions with the members of the leadership of the legislature of how to do that. Just doing the numbers, significant amount of that has to come from the gas tax. Many advocates note that there will never…
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North Carolina State House Representatives Pricey Harrison (D-D61) and Susan Fisher (D-D114) filed a bill on Monday that contains a progressive agenda wish list of tax reform rollbacks and social justice inspired mandates. House Bill 46, is titled the “Economic Security Act of 2019,” and includes items such as barring public employers from looking into the criminal history of an applicant and increasing the minimum wage. Here is what the bill seeks to do: Increase the minimum wage to $15 over 5 years statewide; no distinction is made for public or private and the raises would happen on Labor Day each year. “Mandate” equal pay for equal work regardless of experience or education. Require mandatory paid sick leave and family medical leave Increase the ‘tipped’ minimum wage. End “wage theft.” “Ban The Box” or which is removing the checkbox indicating a criminal record on employment applications. Bar public employers from looking into the criminal history of an applicant until a ‘conditional’ offer is made. Remove the ban on unions for public employees in the state Reinstate the earned tax credit. Reinstate the old child care tax credit and old employment expense tax credits. The majority of the bill appears to…
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After two meetings and two hours of public testimony, the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Transportation has, so far, agreed on only one thing to save Ohio’s roads and bridges: raise taxes. As previously reported, the committee was officially launched on January 31st. Hand-picked by Governor Mike DeWine, the bipartisan committee of industry leaders, advisers, and infrastructure experts was assigned the review the current infrastructure needs and explore creative and unique solutions. While they have yet to make their final report, these initial findings are sure to disappoint many of DeWine’s voters, should they be adopted. The current gas tax was set at 28-cents-a-gallon on July 1st, 2005. These revenues are intended to directly fund the maintenance, repair, and expansion of roads and bridges throughout the state. Over time, two primary factors have greatly diminished their ability to do so. The first is that, as cars have become more efficient and achieve higher miles-per-gallon, revenues have decreased. In addition, the higher demand and proliferation of electric vehicles has had an effect that will significantly increase over time. Until this problem is addressed, the more ubiquitous electric cars become, the harder it is to maintain the roads all drivers use. The second factor is…
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by Murray N. Rothbard Our country is beset by a large number of economic myths that distort public thinking on important problems and lead us to accept unsound and dangerous government policies. Here are ten of the most dangerous of these myths and an analysis of what is wrong with them. Myth #1 Deficits are the cause of inflation; deficits have nothing to do with inflation. In recent decades we always have had federal deficits. The invariable response of the party out of power, whichever it may be, is to denounce those deficits as being the cause of our chronic inflation. And the invariable response of whatever party is in power has been to claim that deficits have nothing to do with inflation. Both opposing statements are myths. Deficits mean that the federal government is spending more than it is taking in taxes. Those deficits can be financed in two ways. If they are financed by selling Treasury bonds to the public, then the deficits are not inflationary. No new money is created; people and institutions simply draw down their bank deposits to pay for the bonds, and the Treasury spends that money. Money has simply been transferred from…
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by Chris Edwards The Census Bureau has released new data on state population growth between July 2017 and July 2018. Domestic migration between the states is one portion of annual population change. The Census data show that Americans are continuing to move from high-tax to low-tax states. This Cato study examined interstate migration using IRS data for 2016. The new Census data confirms that people are moving from tax-punishing places such as California, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey to tax-friendly places such as Florida, Idaho, Nevada, Tennessee, and South Carolina. In the chart, each blue dot is a state. The vertical axis shows the one-year Census net interstate migration figure as a percentage of 2017 state population. The horizontal axis shows state and local household taxes as a percentage of personal income in 2015. Household taxes include individual income, sales, and property taxes. On the right, most of the high-tax states have net out-migration. The blue dot on the far right is New York with a tax burden of 13 percent and a net migration loss of nearly 1 percent (0.92) over the past year. On the left, nearly all the net in-migration states have tax loads…
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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 Argentina to chaos in the streets as so-called “yellow jacket” demonstrators continued protesting against taxes and Macron’s perceived indifference toward everyday citizens. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe canceled plans to attend a climate change summit in Poland. One person died outside Paris during the weekend’s protests, bringing the number of casualties to three. More than 260 people were arrested, including 133 in Paris, according to police reports. More than 412 people were arrested nationwide. Christophe Castaner, France’s interior minister, told reporters Sunday he would not rule out the president’s declaring a state of emergency. Macron has emergency powers that were expanded after terrorist attacks roiled the country in 2015 — it is not yet clear if he will exercised those powers. Saturday and Sunday’s protests drew roughly 136,000 people, slightly down from the 166,000 who gathered in late November, the Interior Ministry said in a press statement. Politicians and police officials believe the situation was…
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Taylor Swift is making the headlines again but this time, on the political stage. After her statement on Sunday that she is endorsing Democrat Phil Bredesen over Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN-07) in this November’s contest to replace retiring Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), The Tennessee Star tried to find some information about her financial contributions to federal political candidates. A brief review of Federal Election Commission records indicates that Swift appears to have made just one contribution to a political candidate for federal office in her career. That contribution came in 2014, when she generously gave fifteen dollars to a far left candidate campaigning in a congressional district of New Jersey. Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, broadcast Monday through Friday from 5 am to 8 am on Talkradio 98.3 FM and 1510 WLAC, Tennessee Star Report: Early Edition (5 am to 6 am hour) co-hosts Michael Patrick Leahy and Doug Kellett talked about the discovery and it’s implications. Kellett: We were talking about the Presidents comments yesterday about Taylor Swift and he was making these comments while he was swearing in the new justice on the US Supreme Court, Judge Kavanaugh. And he said he likes Taylor Swifts music…
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Republicans are checking the facts about Phil Bredesen’s “phony” claims to have balanced the state budget when he was governor, pointing out Tennessee’s constitution requires a balanced budget. “Phil Bredesen is touting his budgetary accomplishments in a recent ad, but he’s not giving Tennesseans the full story,” the Tennessee Republican Party said in a statement. Bredesen, a former Democratic governor, is running for the seat being vacated by U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), who is retiring. His opponent is U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN-07). The Tennessee Republican Party says their latest video shows “Bredesen doesn’t have a leg to stand on.” The video is available to watch here. Tennessee has balanced its budget every year since voters approved a balanced budget amendment to the state Constitution in 1978. The GOP points out how Bredesen fails to say that as governor he raised taxes and fees by nearly $1 billion, citing a 2010 story by the Times Free Press, and “raided hundreds of millions of dollars from the state’s highway fund so that he could pay for his own budgetary priorities.” “Our state constitution has strictly prohibited anything other than a balanced budget since 1978, so it’s pretty rich for Phil…
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Senate Leadership Fund on Tuesday launched a new advertising blitz targeting Phil Bredesen’s fixation with raising taxes on Tennessee families. The $1.1 million buy will run statewide on a combination of broadcast and cable television, radio and digital. The ad is available to watch here. Bredesen, a former Democratic governor, is running for the seat being vacated by U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), who is retiring. His opponent is U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN-07). The ad, titled “Out of Touch,” highlights Bredesen’s 30-year record of supporting higher taxes and fees, and his opposition to the recently passed tax reform legislation. “Phil Bredesen is an out-of-touch multimillionaire who raised taxes and fees on Tennessee taxpayers by over $1 billion,” said Senate Leadership Fund Spokesman Chris Pack. “Bredesen never saw a tax hike that he didn’t like, which explains why he was so resolutely opposed to the Trump tax cuts that are helping Tennessee’s families and jobs.” Senate Leadership Fund’s website says this about the organization: “As an independent Super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund has one goal: to protect and expand the Republican Senate Majority when Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, together with their army of left-wing activists, try to take it back in 2018.” The $1…
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by Jenna Suchyta I am tired of hearing Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission hailed as a “victory” for religious liberty; it was no such thing—unless we’re also going to start counting forfeits and rain delays as wins. Masterpiece was a bunt, and not a very promising one at that. Although the outcome of the decision was in favor of Jack Phillips, the Christian baker in Colorado who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, the reasoning of the decision was mostly based on the hostility that Phillips faced from the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. If proponents of religious liberty unwittingly allow this false sense of security to pervade their thinking, they run the risk of being caught by surprise in later cases, like this one in Michigan to be discussed later. In the Masterpiece case, the Supreme Court very clearly refused to make a ruling on religious exemptions to discrimination law and public accommodations law. “The delicate question,” Justice Kennedy writes in the majority opinion, “of when the free exercise of his religion must yield to an otherwise valid exercise of state power needed to be determined in an adjudication in which religious hostility on the part of the State itself would not be a…
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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 easier since we’re one step closer to ending the medical device tax for good,” Minnesota Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen, the bill’s sponsor, said in a Tuesday press release. “Today’s vote shows strong bipartisan support for lifting this burden on innovators in an industry so important to Minnesota. I’m more optimistic than ever we’ll be successful in giving these job creators the certainty and predictability they need to thrive.” The repeal will reduce federal tax revenue by about $22 million over the next 10 years, according to a Wall Street Journal article. The tax was temporarily rolled back in 2016, and Congress extended the rollback to 2020. Paulsen’s bill makes the repeal permanent. “This bipartisan legislation will make healthcare more affordable and ensure Americans have access to the most innovative life-saving and life-improving medical technology,” Speaker Paul Ryan tweeted Tuesday. Good news→ The House just voted to repeal Obamacare’s Medical Device Tax. This bipartisan legislation will make…
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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 put more money in the pockets of hardworking families … we’re gonna continue building on that growth,” House Majority Whip Steve Scalise said during a Tuesday press conference. GOP Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the House Committee on Ways and Means chairman, went to the White House Monday to discuss a second round of tax cuts, Scalise said during the press conference. WATCH: The #TaxCutsandJobsAct has jump-started our economy, created more jobs, and put more money in the pockets of hard-working families. Americans are #BetterOffNow. And there's still more to come—#TaxCuts 2.0 ✂️ pic.twitter.com/9bigUUCtxi — Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) July 24, 2018 Brady released a listening session framework for the proposed round of tax cuts, which includes making the original individual and small business tax cuts permanent and new tax write-offs for startups, on Tuesday as well. “With this framework, we are taking the first step to change the culture in Washington D.C. where tax reform only happens…
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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 Vice President Joe Biden, who says: “The notion that deregulation unleashes growth is virtually impossible to find in the data.” In reality, there is a wealth of data indicating that regulations harm economic growth, and economists have identified numerous mechanisms by which this can occur. This includes but is not limited to: preventing workers from using the most efficient means of production. In the words of an economics book published by Johns Hopkins University Press, “The sectors that provide services related to human capital investments [like education and healthcare] may produce inefficiently because regulations preclude efficient production,” which “may result in much greater costs of achieving specific investments than would be possible with fewer regulations.” diverting people from productive work. For example, federal tax laws and regulationsrequire taxpayers to spend 6.1 billion hours per year filling out forms and performing other tax compliance tasks. This is more than the combined work time of…
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The gloves are definitely off in the Tennessee Republican Primary for Governor. Diane Black has unleashed a vicious television hit on Randy Boyd based upon a Tennessean story claiming that Boyd has used the location of his company’s foreign operations in order to avoid U.S. taxes. “From 2014 to 2016, the company sheltered millions of dollars in European profits from any taxes because of this corporate structure, according to two experts who analyzed Radio System’s Irish tax records obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee,” The Tennessean reported on Monday. One of two “experts” quoted by the Tennessean was a California-Irvine School of Law Professor. “Analyzing the company’s tax records, University of California-Irvine School of Law professor Omri Marian estimated the company paid an effective tax rate of a little more than 1 percent,” The Tennessean said. However, as The Tennessee Star has reported, whatever documents were provided by the Tennessean for review by the professor could not have been obtained from public records, raising questions about the legality of the means by which The Tennessean procured them. The Tennessean has refused to make the “tax records” they obtained available for review by the public or other news media outlets, nor…
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by Kalena Bruce As we enter the summer, Republicans and Democrats continue to debate the merits of the tax cuts. Lost in this partisan bickering is the genuine and long-overdue relief the tax cuts offer small businesses. Sadly, the media reporting on small business tax cuts has been heavily politicized, complicating rather than clarifying the issue. Even The New York Times couldn’t get it straight in an article earlier this year, leading to an embarrassing correction. As a certified professional accountant, I’ve already started dealing with the new tax code for small business clients who file returns on a quarterly basis. Here’s what they need to know. The new tax structure lowers tax rates and expands the income thresholds for anyone who pays individual income tax, including small businesses that are structured as pass-throughs. These include sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, and S-Corps. The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >> Under the new tax structure, rates fall to 10, 12, 22, 24, 32, 35, and 37 percent from 10, 15, 25, 28, 33, 35, and 40 percent. Income thresholds under these new rates are also expanded. For instance,…
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By Dan Mitchell One of the key principles of a free society is that governmental power should be limited by national borders. Here’s an easy-to-understand example. Gambling is basically illegal (other than government-run lottery scams, of course) in my home state of Virginia. So they can arrest me (or maybe even shoot me) if I gamble in the Old Dominion. I think that’s bad policy, but it would be far worse if Virginia politicians also asserted extraterritorial powers and said they could arrest me because I put a dollar in a slot machine during my last trip to Las Vegas. And if Virginia politicians tried to impose such an absurd policy, I certainly would hope and expect that Nevada authorities wouldn’t provide any assistance. This same principle applies (or should apply) to taxation policy, both globally and nationally. On a global level, I’m a big supporter of so-called tax havens. I’m glad when places with pro-growth tax policy attract jobs and capital from high-tax nations. This process of tax competition rewards good policy and punishes bad policy. Moreover, I don’t think those low-tax jurisdictions should be under any obligation to enforce the bad tax laws of uncompetitive countries. There’s a very similar debate inside America. Some…
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The dream of tax reformers for decades has been to transform the maddeningly complex federal tax code into a system simple enough for Americans to file their tax returns on a postcard. Republican leaders who the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on Thursday said that dream would become reality for 90 percent of taxpayers. Meeting with…
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