California’s ‘circus’ hurts recall efforts n Nevada – I thought everybody loves circuses. Heck, Las Vegas is just a big circus for adults.

GOP Puts Stock In ‘Investor Class’

Tax-Cut Plan to Aid Ailing Industries

DNC fat cats: Taxpayers pick up tab for Dem honchos’ $alaries – Isn’t America great? There are so many opportunities to feed from the taxpayers’ trough.

Gov.-elect Arnold committed to avoiding tax hikes – As I mentioned during the campaign, Arnold’s hesitation to sign the “No Tax” pledge because of the possibility of a huge disaster, was bogus. Even the lame duck governor didn’t call for new taxes today during discussions of the fire storm in SoCal. He acknowledged that costs for dealing with something that large are going to be picked up by the Federal taxpayers via FEMA.

Schwarzenegger’s adviser hits the books – I don’t envy her that task. The only thing worse would be trying to decipher the Federal government’s accounting.

Ohioans may revolt against higher taxes and spending. – More on the efforts in Ohio to slap down the governor’s recent tax hike.

Tax Troubles: How Did We Get In This Fix? – There are a number of tax reform options on the table for the voters in Maine. There is a lot of coverage of the various issues at the Portland Press Herald’s website.

Senate to ponder permanent Net access tax ban – This debate seems to be going on forever. Obviously the states hate the idea of the Feds telling them what they can and can’t tax.

QuickBooks 2004

I find it amusing every year when people, including professional accountants, wonder if there will be a new version of QuickBooks each year. The answer is “duh.” Does General Motors ever skip a year when remodeling their cars? Neither does Intuit for Quicken or QuickBooks A new version is released every year.

The changes from year to year aren’t usually that dramatic; so not everyone needs to buy the new version each year. However, it is a wise move to upgrade every two or three years. That’s when you will notice the big improvements over the version you had been using. Intuit has its own way of encouraging users to upgrade their software. They orphan any version more than three years old, not providing any more support for them.

The variety of different versions of QuickBooks available with the 2004 upgrade gets even more confusing than ever. However, for at least 95% of the people we have been working with, the least expensive Basic version is just fine. Very few people need the functions available in the more expensive versions. I haven’t ever used many of them, and I spend a lot of time doing a lot of things with QuickBooks. Anyone considering upgrading from an older version of QuickBooks or buying it for the first time should hold off for a few more weeks. It doesn’t make much sense to buy the 2003 version now, when the 2004 version will be available on November 10.

The Senate voted itself a pay raise for the fifth straight year – For the excellent job they’ve been doing running our country – not!

Motorcyclists blows $7,000 to winds – We all have our own ways of blowing our money. This guy just let his blow out of his pocket as he was driving down the freeway.

Vehicle sales plunge 35%. Tripling of state’s registration fee blamed – In spite of what our rulers claim, taxes do directly influence behavior. The ruling elite think they can just arbitrarily jack up the taxes and fees and everyone will just gladly pay them. As always happens, the actual results of tax hikes are completely different from the stated goals. Davis’ tripling of car registration fees has now deprived the state, counties, and cities of the huge sales tax dollars they would have received from new car sales, as well as the state income tax on the car dealers’ profits. Someone should kick such an incompetent and ridiculously stupid governor out of office for compounding the state’s fiscal problems. Oh yeah, they did. Of course, he still has over a month to do everything is his power to screw things up even more. I know it’s too much to ask for; but it would be awesome to see Arnold play the part of a club bouncer and physically pick old Gray up and toss him out on his butt before he can do any more damage.

AmeriDebt To Layoff Most Of Their Workers – The scam’s up for one of the credit counseling fronts for the credit card companies.

Another Look at Retirement Savings

Implementing car tax cut would take 3 months. Time needed to make change, DMV warns – As always, our rulers have set things up so that it’s much easier to increase taxes than to reduce them.

46 tax ideas include hikes, cuts for Arizonans. Proposed reforms will affect nearly everyone– The Tax Game is the extreme example of trying to do things while the targets are constantly moving, at all levels of government.

Stars not feeling charitable toward fund-raiser – Ah, the benefits of great wealth. Big celebrities are just too busy to check out the people they give their money to; so they end up being ripped off.

Can the Dems Win on Taxes? – Unfortunately, hating the rich (defined as anyone with more than anyone else) is a very popular theme in this country. They’re as unpopular in our society as smokers, and thus easy targets. There is also no shortage of politicians willing to exploit this hatred.

What Alabama’s Low-Tax Mania Can Teach the Rest of the Country

Social Security: Where Do the Candidates Stand? – Anyone who is holding his breath waiting for any of our rulers to repair a system as structurally flawed as SS is a fool. There are plenty of very easy legal methods available, especially for the self employed, to avoid having to pour the thousands of dollars down the SS toilet that most people do. The sooner a person starts holding onto that money for himself, the larger the amount of wealth can be saved for future years.

Boomers Unprepared For Retirement – Defining exactly what constitutes being prepared for retirement is as subjective as the defnintions of poverty in this country. Most such studies base their conclusions on the amount of cash in an official retirement account (pension or IRA). I’ve even had clients tell me they are all worried because they don’t have any such cash accounts. I have to explain to them that their multiple business and real estate investments will be more than adequate to provide for their retirement years. I’ve seen it hundreds of times with real life people. They buy around one rental or investment property each year until they are about 60 or 65. They then sell off a property each year and carry back most of the sales price. The monthly payments they receive from those carryback notes are far and away much larger than anything they receive from the SSA. The notes are also tangible assets that can be sold for lump sums if needed. They can also be left to their heirs, something that is not possible with the Social Security Ponzi scheme.

Plan seeks to double Illinois state income tax on wealthy – And they expect those people to just sit back and let their bank accounts be drained by the tax vampires in Springfield. There are already some town here in Northern Arkansas that are referred to as “Little Chicago” due to all of the immigrants from Illinois. This kind of attack on the rich will just motivate more refugees.

Estate Debate. Taking the wealth of rich men is neither moral nor efficient. – Amen to that.

Senators to Probe Stories of Tax Shelter – There are plenty of very legal ways to minimize taxes. Many of the schemes cooked up and marketed by some of the big CPA firms were outright scams that wouldn’t even pass my smell test.

Phantom Tax Bills Finally Stop – The stupidity isn’t only with the county that was charging taxes on nonexistent property. It was also with the people who paid that bill for years. Think about it. What is the penalty for not paying property taxes? The property is sold at auction by the county. Let them try that with the imaginary property. They would have to find someone with even less intelligence to bid on non-existent real estate.