Rick Perry for President hits a hurdle with his optional flat tax

Locked in a competition with Herman Cain to see who can propose the most crazily unrealistic tax reform that panders to the delusions of the Republican base, Rick Perry delivered a speech in South Carolina Tuesday in which he outlined his plan for (kind of) scrapping the current tax code and offering taxpayers the choice of an optional 20% flat income tax.

At the CNN debate in Las Vegas, during which Perry seemed to awake from his stupor while Herman Cain took fire over apples and oranges, Perry promised a tax reform plan that could compete with the pizza mogul’s 9-9-9 plan. “I’ll bump plans with you brother,” … Read more...

The rich and famous who’ve avoided the taxman, at their own peril

Who pays taxes and who doesn’t? It’s a question that seems to occupy our country, what with people debating President Obama’s proposed Buffet Tax and Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan. But if who should pay more taxes is a question up for debate, here are some people who definitely didn’t pay their fair share.

The IRS consistently goes after celebs for unpaid taxes, in the hope that they might serve as a cautionary tale to us regular folks. Celebrity travails, the theory goes, will scare us into paying our taxes. At the very least it injects a little variety into the usual tabloid fodder. The following celebrities are some … Read more...

Tea Party politics buoy Herman Cain’s bid for President, but questions remain

No dearth of material has been published in recent weeks about the bad math in Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan. It would effectively scrap the current tax system and replace it with a 9% business flat tax, a 9% individual flat tax, and a 9% national sales tax. Did he steal it from Sim City? Is it the price of a pizza? The work of the devil? We can only guess.

What is pretty clear, however, is that Herman Cain’s plan would mean a significant tax increase for the roughly 30 million low-income Americans who pay neither income nor payroll taxes as well as a … Read more...

After Denmark’s fat tax, many Americans are wondering, “Should we have a fat tax?”

The taxosphere is all abuzz with the news that the government of Denmark recently imposed a so-called ‘fat tax’ on its citizens in an attempt to discourage Danes from consuming fatty foods.

The fat tax increases the price of any food containing more than 2.3% saturated fats by 16 kroner ($2.90) per kilo (2.2lbs). To give you an idea of what kind of real effect the fat tax will have, it will increase the price of a burger by about $0.15 and a small package of butter by about $0.40.

Contrary to what many people assume, the fat tax was not put in place to combat … Read more...

Free checking ends as banks up fees in response to new federal regulation

Hey there Rascals, here’s a piece of financial news that’s not strictly tax related but definitely relevant for anyone with a checking account. According to this article in USA Today, about ⅔ of major banks are ending free checking. This is a move that’s been looming on the horizon for about a year now, but the banks are finally making good on their threats.

Here are some numbers for you on the rapid demise of the free checking account: Only 45% of non-interest checking accounts are still free, as opposed to 65% last year and 76% in 2009. And now the average monthly non-interest checking account … Read more...

Obama’s new deficit plan is as high on populist rhetoric as it is on taxes

The American conservative has reached a certain crisis of conscience. With the American economy caught between a rock and a hard place, he must sail cautiously the dangerous waters of economic stalemate and double-dip recession fears, charting a delicate course between two equal and opposite dangers.

On the one side stands taxes, to which he is ideologically opposed, not so much because he objects to funding the government, but because he believes the government’s role should be a small one and because he fears the money, which he could put to work, will just be wasted. On the other side of the … Read more...