Tax day has hit America. The United States tax code is well over 70,000 pages long with special give aways that benefit many organizations. One of those being nonprofits. Here is some tax day information about nonprofits via StastiticBrain.com
Number of nonprofit returns–
383,064
Assets controlled by nonprofit’s –
$3.796 Trillion
ZeroHedge posted this on their Twitter account but this shows how lawyers make billions off a highly regulated financial system via the government.
AustinHeraldDaily.com had an interesting article about $70,000 worth of bull semen being stolen in Minnesota. The fascinating aspect of it was the price of bull semen being sold on the market. Here is a snapshot of the pricing.
The canister was worth about $500, and the vials of semen were worth from $300 to $1,500 apiece.
H/T Washington Post
Washington Times and Stephen Moore put together a piece showing migration out of high tax states and migration into low tax states.
The least “regressive” tax states had average population growth from 2003 to 2013 that lagged below the national trend. The 10 most highly “regressive” tax states, including nine with no state income tax, had population growth on average 4 percent above the U.S. average. Why was that? Because states without income taxes have twice the job growth of states with high tax rates. Unlike the experts at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, most Americans think that fairness means having a job.
Read the rest here.
With a so called “booming” stock market states pension systems are still getting worse. Decades of shady accounting practices and too many promises have made pensions almost broke.
In Pennsylvania there is talk of pension reform after one startling find recently. Here is more from IndianaGazette.com:
Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale warned Friday that the growing collective municipal pension debt in the commonwealth, if allowed to worsen, will become a problem for every Pennsylvanian.
“We found 46 percent of the municipal pension plans in Pennsylvania … are in some level of distress,” DePasquale said. “Certainly the bigger dollar amounts are in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. … Scranton is very bad.”
Researchers at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation did a study on lost productivity in America due to our tax code. Washington Times published an article on it entitled “U.S. economy out $233.8 billion due to ‘lost productivity’ as Americans wrestle with taxes: Study”
An interesting number was in the study concerning the amount of pages Obamacare takes up on the IRS website:
the researchers also found a “staggering” 3,322 pages of legal guidance for the Affordable Care Act at the IRS website. The content includes regulations, Treasury decisions, assorted notices, revenue procedures, and revenue rulings.
As far as the study of our tax code, here are some sad numbers:
The study also notes that the estimated length of the Tax Code itself is about 4 million words. The study grimly recalls that the Form 1040 instructions were once just two pages long. “Today, taxpayers must wade through 209 pages of instructions, quadruple the number in 1985, the year before taxes were simplified,” it states.
There are 76 wineries in the Hoosier state. Indiana produces 1.4 million gallons of wine a year, but it grows only 650 acres of grapes.
H/T TheStarPress.com
Via Steve Hanke, Cato Institute –
Venezuela has the dubious honor of registering the world’s highest inflation rate. According to my estimate, the annual implied inflation rate in Venezuela is 252%.
The only other country in which this rate is in triple digits is Ukraine, where the inflation rate is 111%. The only encouraging thing to say about Ukraine’s shocking figure is that it’s an improvement over my February 24th estimate of 272%
I took a look at some Walmart store expansion numbers to see where the company is expanding. This is current data from February 2015.
First lets go overseas where they are ramping up in South Africa
The current U.S. data is where I found the college campus expansion numbers.
Here is more about the recent growth on college campuses via INSIDE Higher Ed –
In January 2011, Walmart opened its first location on a university campus at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, a half-hour drive from its corporate headquarters. Now, Walmart has announced that it will be opening a second campus location, at Arizona State University, with luck by May, according to Delia Garcia, a Walmart spokeswoman. A third location, at Georgia Tech, is slated to open at a to-be-determined time next year. “Walmart on campus is an opportunity to bring low prices to students, reach new customers and serve our on-campus customers in a convenient way,” Garcia said in an interview.
Hoosier Econ 