The U.S. government estimated unemployment fraud during the pandemic cost taxpayers up to $135 billion or about 11% to 15% of the total amount of unemployment insurance benefits paid during the pandemic.
That’s according to the latest report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which the U.S. Department of Labor disputes.
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A few weeks ago, I argued the Biden Administration would use the new SAVE plan to enact student loan forgiveness with or without the approval of the Supreme Court. Since then, the administration has announced details which highlight the SAVE plan offers even more generous forgiveness terms.
This talk about student loans has brought about a question for Ask an Economist this week. Garrett from Ohio says,“One of the most prominent arguments against student loan forgiveness is that the borrowers are forcing the greater population to pay off their debts for them.
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In signing Wisconsin’s new two-year spending plan Wednesday, Democrat Governor Tony Evers liberally applied his veto pen to the Republican-crafted biennial budget, gutting a $3.5 billion tax cut proposal that had reduced the state’s tax brackets and delivered relief for all taxpayers.
Republicans blasted the governor for his 51 partial vetoes, including a particularly sneaky one that changed the meaning of funding for schools to a four-century commitment.
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When government grows, taxpayers should ask why and what they’re getting from it.
A Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency report shows in fiscal year 2017-18, adjusted total appropriations equaled $55.8 billion. From fiscal year 2017-24, spending ballooned to $82 billion – a spending increase of $26 billion, or 47%.
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An expansion of federal student aid for the 2023-2024 academic year will cost taxpayers $130 million per year in grants to prisoners for higher education, according to The Associated Press.
The Biden administration’s expansion of the taxpayer-funded federal Pell Grant program, a program for low-income college students, will give 30,000 prisoners a total of $130 million in student financial aid for the upcoming academic year, according to the AP. The expansion is part of the Second Chance Pell Experiment from the Biden administration that is testing the benefits of providing Pell Grants to prisoners in order to reduce recidivism, according to a Department of Education (DOE) press release.
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As congress weighs another “deal” to raise the national debt limit, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is blasting the two leading contestants for the GOP nomination for their support of a “reckless” debt ceiling agreement in 2018.
The former South Carolina governor points out that Governor Ron DeSantis was a member of congress who voted for a 2018 bill to increase the nation’s debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion.
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A former employee says Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley has driven an unmarked city-owned police car since 2019.
The perk has cost taxpayers up to $41,000 in lease costs, auto insurance, maintenance, and gas.
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While project promoters in cities such as Nashville, Tennessee, and Tempe, Arizona, continue to push the narrative that professional sports stadiums with surrounding developments are economic stimulators, a new report shows professional sports stadiums and the surrounding developments do not bring the promised returns.
The academic paper, from the College of Holy Cross’ Robert Baumann and Kennesaw State University Economist J.C. Bradbury, looked at the promised returns of both The Battery outside the Atlanta Braves’ Truist Park and Polar Park in Worcester, Massachusetts.
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Georgia had more taxpayers move to the state than out between 2020 and 2021, new IRS data shows.
Federal tax forms filed in 2021 show Georgia welcomed 282,626 taxpayers and dependents, including 278,474 from other states. Conversely, 227,888 Georgians went elsewhere, including 224,629 to other states.
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A new report finds Badger State homeowners pay nearly a half-billion dollars annually in property taxes to fund Wisconsin’s technical colleges, a figure expected to grow in the next biennial budget.
But in Wisconsin there are no directly elected members to authorize these taxes, creating a system of “taxation without representation,” according to the study from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL).
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Tennessee saw the fifth-largest influx of taxpayers in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to new data released by the United States Internal Revenue Service.
Tennessee saw 214,731 new taxpayers filing either a 1040 or W-2 that came from other states while it lost 152,716 for a net gain of more than 62,000 in new tax forms filed in 2021.
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Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Nashville mayoral candidate Jim Gingrich in studio to discuss his disfavor with the current Titans Stadium deal, Nashville’s growth, and the effect on taxpayers.
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Connecticut trucks hundreds of thousands of tons of solid waste to landfills in other states, which costs the state and taxpayers millions of dollars a year.
Gov. Ned Lamont has pitched a plan to reduce the amount of waste going to other states by increasing recycling and requiring manufacturers to reduce packaging materials, but the effort has faced pushback from the solid waste industry and some lawmakers.
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Secretary of State Doug La Follette’s sudden retirement from the post he’s held for nearly half a century raised questions, particularly when Governor Tony Evers swiftly appointed former state treasurer and Democratic Party political climber Sarah Godlewski to take La Follette’s place.
But it’s the millions of dollars La Follette — and his survivors — could take home in retirement benefits that may really raise eyebrows.
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Ahead of Tax Day on April 18, 73% of taxpayers said the government doesn’t use their taxes wisely, a new survey found. A separate report found that red states have the better taxpayer return on investment.
Wallethub’s “Taxpayer Survey” found that 28% of respondents said charities would better spend their money; 26% said local governments would best spend their money, followed by state government (22%), the federal government (16%) and religious groups (13%).
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On Wednesday March 8th, city leaders received an earful from local residents and the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) when they took public comments about the city’s plan to build a $72 million municipal network through its electric utility Cleveland Utilities. TPA testified that the project is duplicative and unnecessary, and that there are numerous factors that raise concerns about its viability.
The city anticipates a take rate of 30 percent. In its research, including in the 2020 report “GON with the Wind: The Failed Promise of Government-Owned Networks,” TPA has found that expected take rate percentages rarely materialize when private providers respond to competition by adjusting pricing or services. This is particularly a concern in Cleveland, given that there are already several internet options in the city and Bradley County.
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The Michigan Legislature is supposed to make laws and spend taxpayer money wisely and transparently.
But a report from the Detroit News says the GOP-led Legislature gave $4 million to a for-profit company, with an unclear return on investment for taxpayers. The details of the corporate handout weren’t discovered until months after the appropriation.
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Connecticut saved taxpayers millions of dollars through a pandemic-related program that provided legal representation to low-income tenants facing eviction, according to a new report.
The report on the state’s right-to-counsel program, prepared by the independent consulting firm Stout, found that by preventing evictions or helping tenants find new housing before they’re evicted likely saved Connecticut taxpayers between $5.8 and $6.3 million from the end of January to the end of November 2022.
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It pays — twice — to be a recently retired employee of Metro Nashville.
The local government is paying about 200 people both for part-time work and monthly pensions, with double-dippers collecting up to $13 million from taxpayers.
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Taxpayers have until Dec. 12 to tell the Minnesota Department of Agriculture how they want it to distribute $3.16 million in grants through a community food procurement and distribution program.
In September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced its Agricultural Marketing Service signed an agreement with Minnesota under the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program. The American Rescue Plan authorizes the program to maintain and improve supply chain resiliency, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s Sept. 7 news release said. The program’s goal is to buy local food from socially disadvantaged farmers and distribute it to the state’s underserved communities. Nationally, the USDA is awarding up to $400 million to states and Tribal governments to buy food from producers in the state or within 400 miles of delivery destination.
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A new report was released by the Beacon Center of Tennessee on Wednesday examining the return on investment for students and taxpayers at Tennessee’s public universities and colleges.
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Transit agencies could turn to taxpayers for more money when federal COVID-19 money runs out.
With federal money dwindling, some mass transit agencies are preparing to seek more tax dollars at a time when fewer people are riding, according to a report from a credit rating agency.
Some workers never plan to return to the office, creating uncertainties for mass transit agencies and the taxpayers who fund them, especially those more dependent on riders for fare revenue. A new report from S&P Global Ratings said transit systems could seek additional tax dollars when federal COVID-19 money runs dry in 2025.
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Taxpayers are being asked to fund the reopening of the Palisades nuclear plant in Southwest Michigan through a federal grant.
When it was still in operation, Palisades provided more than 800 megawatts of of carbon-free power and employed 600 people. The plant’s former owner closed the plant on May 20 after the plant’s fuel supply ran out and the power purchase agreement with Consumers Energy expired.
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The taxpayer cost of the 2014 Flint water crisis litigation might grow to as much as $90 million after the Michigan Supreme Court rejected Attorney General Dana Nessel’s appeal of a decision that she must use a “taint team” to separate legal documents.
The court said justices were “not persuaded that the question presented should be reviewed by this Court.”
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The IRS briefly made public the personal financial information of roughly 120,000 taxpayers, the agency announced on Friday.
Taxpayers’ Form 990-Ts were temporarily available to public viewing on the IRS website, but the agency has since removed them, according to the Wall Street Journal. Individuals file the form to disclose certain types of income within their retirement accounts.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
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President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive some federal student loan debt received a lukewarm reaction from some Georgia groups who say the policy is unfair and won’t help ease inflation.
“We’re disappointed to see yet another policy out of Washington that creates more problems than it solves,” Eric Cochling, the chief program officer and general counsel for the Georgia Center for Opportunity, said. “In addition to contributing to already runaway inflation, this plan from the White House doesn’t actually forgive debt, it simply transfers the burden to taxpayers.”
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President Joe Biden announced Wednesday his administration would “forgive” $10,000 in federal student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 per year. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said the plan could cost taxpayers more than $200 billion.
The total income cap is expected to be higher for married couples, likely around double the $125,000 mark, though that has not been confirmed.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed to the newsmaker line Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots and columnist for The Washington Times, to voice deep concerns with the IRS’s intent on auditing middle-class Americans and violating the rights and privacy of citizens.
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Most Americans have been conditioned to accept some level of incompetence and inefficiency from government – but not to the extent that federal employees paid by our tax dollars simply admit that they are fundamentally incapable of doing their jobs. Yet shockingly, this is what we are now witnessing with the Department of Education’s failed and convoluted attempt to process claims for student loan cancellation.
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Rather than impose higher taxes and more restrictions on domestic production of oil and natural gas, as Senate Democrats voted to do by passing the Inflation Reduction Act, those in the industry proposed 10 actions policy makers can take right now to reduce costs. The industry says its solutions won’t cost taxpayers $740 billion, as the Inflation Reduction Act does, or increase the national debt or inflation, as 230 economists have warned the act will do.
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President Joe Biden’s continuous sales of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) could have severe consequences for taxpayers, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Biden administration announced plans last Tuesday for another wave of oil sales from the SPR, as well as a proposal to help restock the reserve, according to a White House press release. The Biden administration aims to strategically sell oil from the reserve to boost supplies and fight soaring gas prices, but the rapid draining of U.S. stockpiles could cause taxpayers to foot the bill when the department inevitably refills its reserves.
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The Internal Revenue Service has been under fire for delays and millions of backlogged returns, but now lawmakers are raising the alarm after the federal agency “destroyed” millions of Americans’ tax documents.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig this week asking for answers about why these records were destroyed.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Fox contributor and Finance Guru Liz Peek to the newsmaker line to explain the state of the economy, inflation, and what is in store for the year’s end.
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On Nashville’s Morning News, host Mandis spoke with Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton regarding the proposed $500 million bond for a retractable roof on Titans Stadium and its benefits for Nashville and the state.
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More than $1.1 billion of legal marijuana has been sold in Michigan in fiscal year 2021, and now, more than $140 million of tax revenue will kick back to taxpayers.
Of that amount, $42.2 million will fund 163 municipalities and counties, $49.3 million will flow to School Aid Fund, and $49.3 million will go to the Michigan Transportation Fund.
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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a measure Wednesday to give a one-time tax refund to eligible Georgia taxpayers.
Taxpayers who are single or married and filing separately will receive a $250 refund under House Bill 1302. Heads of households will receive a $375 refund, while married taxpayers who file jointly will receive a $500 refund.
The Georgia Department of Revenue will credit taxpayers with the refund once they file their 2021 taxes, which are due April 18. Taxpayers who already have filed their 2021 taxes will receive a refund based on what they indicated on their tax returns.
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A great plague of our contemporary political landscape is that one bad policy begets even more bad policies. Such is the case with many of America’s existing immigration laws.
Federal law, for example, calls for specific enforcement protocols. But our elected representatives have decided that some of those protocols simply should be ignored. This mindset led to ideas like catching and then releasing illegal aliens into our communities, preventing local law enforcement from working with federal law enforcement, and “sanctuary” cities where those who have broken our laws can hide from accountability.
From this witches’ brew of bad ideas has come the latest product rollout, one suited for our time: stimulus checks for illegal aliens. Using the economic damage caused by COVID-19 as a pretext, anti-borders activists and their allied politicians have found a way to sustain those here illegally while creating further incentives for even more foreign nationals to move here.
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General Motors (GM) garnered national headlines when it promised to invest $6.5 billion in Michigan, but the people negotiating the deal’s claw back provisions might only require GM meet half of that investment and 80% of the original job creation promise, despite taxpayers still footing an $824 million subsidy.
When in front of the press, GM and Michigan promised the factory would support 4,000 jobs and retain another 1,000 – a cost of about $206,000 per job created, and if it failed, Michigan could claw back a sizeable portion of that money.
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A Pennsylvania state senator is raising the alarm over millions of dollars the commonwealth owes to local municipalities for unpaid stormwater management fees.
The state Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held a hearing to discuss the commonwealth’s refusal to pay required fees to more than 2,500 municipalities to manage stormwater run-off.
Local officials told lawmakers last week state and federal laws require municipalities to manage the runoff, but only the U.S. government covers its portion of the cost.
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The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) announced recipients of the $3 million Minnesota Cultural Mall Operator Grants program.
The Legislature passed the $64 million bipartisan Main Street COVID-19 Relief package in 2021 and Gov. Tim Walz signed it into law, which will award grants ranging from $20,000 to $300,000 to 12 cultural mall operators across Minnesota whose facilities lease space to a total of over 1,178 Black, Indigenous, and People of Color business owners.
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Public education has been under the microscope lately, especially since many states shut down in-person learning last year during the COVID-19 pandemic. With children learning from home via technology, many parents had the chance to hear what their children’s teachers were saying—and they didn’t always like it. In fact, many were downright disturbed by what public schools were teaching their children.
Parents should not be forced to sit by and watch as their children get indoctrinated with progressive ideas they don’t agree with. Assuming it is legitimate for the government—that is, the taxpayers—to fund education, the government should distribute those funds directly to parents in the form of vouchers and allow them to choose where to educate their children. Not only would this allow for more choice in schools, but it would also reduce much of the conflict we are seeing today between parents and school boards across the country.
A common response to voucher proposals is that they would allow parents to use taxpayer dollars to send their children to private religious schools, thus violating separation of church and state. In other words, atheists and progressives argue that they should not have to financially support schools that teach students religious worldviews.
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U.S. states may have to provide funding for Apple’s plan to store government-issued identification credentials in its devices.
The company first announced partnerships with several states in September to develop a digital driver’s license and state identification card that could be stored on a person’s iPhone. However, the technical maintenance of the program, the customer support and marketing, may be paid for by taxpayer dollars and reviewed by Apple, according to documents seen by CNBC.
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Bowing to pressure from banks and taxpayers concerned about a proposal to require financial institutions to report to the IRS gross inflows and outflows for just about every account in the country, Democrats have attempted to quell concerns by raising the threshold. Unfortunately, even the raised threshold is still laughably low to accomplish Democrats’ stated purpose of cracking down on wealthy tax cheats.
The original proposal would have required financial institutions to report on any account (be it a checking account, savings account, stock portfolio, etc.) which handled more than $600 in inflows and outflows in a given year. Obviously, that’s just about every account.
But the new proposal isn’t much better. This time, the threshold would be set at $10,000, and exempt payroll deposits. In other words, if a given taxpayer received $20,000 in payroll deposits, they would only exceed the threshold were other deposits and spending, taken together, to exceed $30,000.
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Tennessee continued its trend of growing a financial surplus as the state ranked sixth nationally for its fiscal health, according to Truth in Accounting’s annual Financial State of the States report.
Using numbers that included data from the fiscal year that ended in June 2020, Tennessee had $8.7 billion more than it owed in obligations, amounting to a $4,400 surplus per taxpayer and earning a grade of B in the report, which was released Tuesday.
The state had a $3,400 surplus per taxpayer the year before.
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Over the course of the pandemic, federal overspending has exploded even by Congress’s lofty standards. While trillion-dollar deficits were a cause for concern before 2020, spending over just the last two years is set to increase the national debt by over $6 trillion. It’s bizarre, then, that the only thing that members of opposing parties in Congress can seem to work together on is fooling the budgetary scorekeepers with phantom offsets for even more spending.
In total, the bipartisan infrastructure deal includes around $550 billion in new federal spending on infrastructure to take place over five years. Advocates of the legislation claim that it is paid for, but they are relying on gimmicks and quirks of the budget scoring process to make that claim.
Take the single biggest offset claimed — repurposing unused COVID relief funds, which the bill’s authors say would “raise” $210 billion (particularly considering that at least $160 billion have already been accounted for in the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline). Only in the minds of Washington legislators does this represent funds ready to be used when the national debt stands at over $28 trillion.
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“Columbia and other wealthy universities steer master’s students to federal loans that can exceed $250,000. After graduation, many learn the debt is well beyond their means,” notes the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal reports on Columbia University’s Master of Fine Arts Film program, one of the worst examples, in an article titled “Financially Hobbled for Life: The Elite Master’s Degrees That Don’t Pay Off”:
Recent film program graduates of Columbia University who took out federal student loans had a median debt of $181,000.
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Arizona Governor Doug Ducey is expected to sign a budget bill the Arizona Legislature sent to him on Friday that includes a historic tax reform package. HB 2900 implements the lowest flat tax in the country, 2.5%. The average Arizona family will see a 13% income tax reduction, about $350 per year. According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, Arizona previously had one of the highest marginal income tax rates in the country.
The budget bill also eliminates taxes on veterans’ retirement pay and prevents a 77% increase on small business taxes. It reduces property taxes by 10% on small businesses and job creators by 10%, capping the maximum tax rate on businesses at 4.5% and reducing commercial property taxes. According to a report by Ducey, 43% of Arizonans in the private sector work for small businesses. HB 2900 increases the homeowner’s rebate so the state covers half of homeowners’ primary property taxes.
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Taxpayers are coming to Arizona from other states by the tens of thousands and bringing billions of dollars in annual earnings with them.
The Internal Revenue Service released its annual migration statistics, a record of address changes by filers and their dependents between tax years. The data released in late May reflects changes from the 2018-2019 tax years, which symbolize moves that occurred between 2017 and 2018. Nationwide, 8 million people relocated to either another state or county.
Arizona gained 218,736 new taxpayers in that time. Having lost 152,769, that’s a net gain of 65,967 exemptions from one tax year to the next. That’s nearly 1,000 more than the previous tax year.
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California residents of all ages and incomes are leaving for more tax friendly climates, and they’re taking billions of dollars in annual income with them.
The Internal Revenue Service recently released its latest taxpayer migration figures from tax years 2018 and 2019. They reflect migratory taxpayers who had filed in a different state or county between 2017 and 2018, of which 8 million did in that timespan.
California, the nation’s most-populous state, lost more tax filers and dependents on net than any other state.
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