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
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.
Via CNSNEWS.COM –
Many people are living longer, but not to age 112 or beyond — except in the records of the Social Security Administration.
The SSA’s inspector general has identified 6.5 million number-holders age 112 — or older — for whom no death date has been entered in the main electronic file, called Numident.
The audit, dated March 4, 2015, concluded that SSA lacks the controls necessary to annote death information on the records of number-holders who exceed “maximum reasonable life expectancies.”
“We obtained Numident data that identified approximately 6.5 million numberholders born before June 16, 1901 who did not have a date of death on their record,” the report states.
Some of the numbers assigned to long-dead people were used fraudulently to open bank accounts.
Read the rest here
In the mail I recently got an advertisement pack that contained various business coupons. Huntington Bank had this offer if you opened a checking account:
I then took a look at the back for the details. Get ready to get an IRS 1099-INT tax form if you accept the $150.
I filed my taxes this past weekend online through H&R Block and stumbled upon the Obamacare tax. The sly government gurus have gave it a warm fuzzy college theory name of “Shared Responsibility Payment”.
Remember, under collectivism, shared responsibility also involves shared misery.
Tax filing season is underway so here is some basic information for deductions and tax credits. Read more at Forbes as they have a big list for all types of taxpayers.
Standard Deductions. The standard deduction rises to $6,200 for single taxpayers and married taxpayers filing separately. The standard deduction is $12,400 for married couples filing jointly and $9,100 for heads of household.
Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). For 2014, the maximum EITC amount available is $3,304 for taxpayers filing jointly with one child; $5,460 for two children; $6,143 for three or more children and $496 for no children.
Child Tax Credit. For taxable years beginning in 2014, the value used to determine the amount of credit that may be refundable is $3,000 (the credit amount has not changed).
Kiddie Tax. For 2014, the threshold for the kiddie tax – meaning the amount a child can take home without paying any federal income tax – remains at $1,000.
Halfway through reading Amity Shlaes book “Coolidge”. Very detailed and good reference for what the country was politically/economically facing at the time. Here are some economic factors from Calvin Coolidge time period:
Debt after WWI was $27 Billion. Nine times higher than 2 years before.
College professor salaries in 1890 were $2,500. This was 20 times more then tuition. Average American wage earner made $425/year.
1905, home in Massachusetts cost between $2,000-$5,000. Banks did not do mortgages. Building associations did.
1915 IRS employed 4700 people
1920 federal budget was $6.3 Billion and Calvin Coolidge Vice Presidential salary was $12,000.
From 1920 – 1921 Ford Motor Company sold 1.25 million cars.
Tuesday, five states voted to hike minimum wage for workers. The common theme is that government really cares for the people. Not exactly. Government likes minimum wage increases because it means more taxes collected. Here is example:
“The minimum wage increase is not just the dollar an hour, but it’s also a raise in our taxes,” said Jason Lerner of Little Learner Academy. His family owns five child care centers in New Jersey, where the minimum wage rose from $7.25 to $8.25 on Jan. 1.
In total, these taxes add an extra 10.5% to Little Learner Academy’s payroll expenses.
Take Social Security. Employees have 6.2% of their wages withheld from each paycheck for Social Security. But what they don’t see is that their employer also chips in, matching the 6.2%. For Medicare, both the employer and the employee pay 1.45% of the wage.
Payroll taxes are a big concern when running a business. This tax is also regressive when managing a business. On top of this tax, business owners must also pay to the state disability/unemployment taxes based upon amount of employees they have.
Many years ago I had a boss tell me that payroll is the #1 controllable expense. When payroll goes up and sales don’t, payroll gets slashed.
In the United States, the federal government not having enough money for spending is the new normal. One thing that never gets discussed is how the government sells its debt in the form of “bonds”.
What may surprise many is that banks and other financial institutions do it for the government and they are called “Primary Dealers”. Once the government has a certain amount to sell, these dealers take it to market and sell it. Here is the list of dealers:
Bank of Nova Scotia, New York Agency
BMO Capital Markets Corp.
BNP Paribas Securities Corp.
Barclays Capital Inc.
Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.
Citigroup Global Markets Inc.
Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC
Daiwa Capital Markets America Inc.
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.
Goldman, Sachs & Co.
HSBC Securities (USA) Inc.
Jefferies LLC
J.P. Morgan Securities LLC
Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated
Mizuho Securities USA Inc.
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC
Nomura Securities International, Inc.
RBC Capital Markets, LLC
RBS Securities Inc.
SG Americas Securities, LLC
TD Securities (USA) LLC
UBS Securities LLC
So next time you hear a politician claim banks or financial institutions are evil, they are the ones selling the debt to help that same politician in their spending addiction.
More investors are taking out loans against their 401(k)s, and that could hurt their retirement income by hundreds of dollars a month, according to an analysis by Fidelity Investments released Wednesday.
The number of investors borrowing from their 401(k)s has been steadily increasing for more than a decade. Today, more than one in five people, or 22.5% of Fidelity’s 401(k) investors, borrow against their retirement savings, up from 18.7% in 2000, according to Fidelity’s analysis of 13 million investors.
More than 2 million investors have outstanding loans, and nearly 1 million took out loans in the past year.
Hoosier Econ 