Even in traditional tax haven States, such as Nevada, there is a strong movement to increase taxes.

This is the reason why, even though I think Governor Gray-Out Doofus is a terrible ruler of the PRC, I haven’t been a supporter of the recall idea. There was an election last November, where the voters had a chance to make a change in administration. Nothing is really very different now. It would also set a very risky precedent if new elections can be called willy-nilly every time people are upset about a certain issue. That is how other countries operate; but our system, with regularly scheduled elections, is a more stable way to make changes. The GOP wasn’t able to unseat Doofus last November. They had their chance and they should just have to wait until 2006 for the next election to do it properly.

IRS Adjusts Tax Tables to New Schedule – A little more take home pay for most employees.

Dot-Com Losses Not Broker’s Fault – It was the fault of the idiots who fell for the line that stock prices would go up forever and ever.

IRS Targets Tax Shelter For Stock-Options Income (link to article expired) – Some of the big CPA firms were selling bogus tax avoidance schemes that are now blowing up on their clients.

Refusal to Hike Taxes, Not Soaring Spending, Behind State Crises – How the left-wing mainstream media interpret the problem.

GOP Files Challenge to Tripling of PRC Car Tax – Maybe it can be stopped before it takes effect on October 1. I still fail to see how Governor Doofus thinks this is a good idea in the face of a recall election.

Dan Walters: Car tax arbitrary, irrational; reinstating it makes perfect sense – to some sick people. If the higher car tax does become real in October, there will be a lot more vehicles with Oregon plates driving around in the PRC.

Market Flop, Overspending Led to State Budget Calamities, Say Analysts

States borrow record amounts & raise taxes

Budgets prompt refrain: ‘We ran out of money’

Smokers Face July 1 Cigarette Tax Increases – I should amend my earlier comments on acceptable targets for persecution by our society to include nicotine addicts.

Private tax collectors get nod from Washington – A chance for people like Tony Soprano to apply their skills in support of our rulers in DC.

Is Taxation Theft? – If Robin Hood was considered to be a thief for taking from the rich and giving to the poor, how does that differ from what the IRS does?

Harrison Abstract shut; assets frozen – With the largest part of my practice involving real estate tax issues, I have always warned people that a deal isn’t real until it closes and the money is actually received. This shocking case, where an escrow company is seized, shows that a deal isn’t even real when it closes, if the funds haven’t been disbursed to the sellers. This case hits more close to home for me than similar cases that happen all the time around the country. Many of our clients used Harrison Abstract for their sales and purchases. In fact, Sherry had just delivered some exchange trust funds to Harrison Abstract last Thursday, the day before the seizure took place. We’re still waiting to see if that deal was completed in time. From another perspective, Harrison Abstract had been handling the collection of our loan payments for the purchase of our ranch. I have already been in direct contact via email with the one of the sellers to see if they lost any money from this embezzlement. From our early communications, it seems that may be the case, with some of our payments not being forwarded to the sellers. This will be a messy situation for quite a while.

Judge Tosses Out Big Stock Case(link to article expired) – A little common sense in the courtroom. As I’ve always said, stock market investing, especially during the dot-com bubble, is no different than playing the games in a casino. If you lose, be mature enough to take your lumps and stop trying to force someone else to pay you for your bad luck.

Most Workers Are in Dark On Health of Their Pension (link to article expired) – Unfortunately, things are often much worse than just being in the dark for many employees and former employees. That is why, whenever possible, it has always been my preference that clients have retirement accounts that they can control and monitor closely. When leaving an employer, it’s best to opt to roll any pension funds over into a self controlled IRA rather than leave them with the former organization.

There are actually lots of people who believe this is a good thing from the employee’s perspective; that it’s better to refuse additional income so as to not be pushed into a higher tax bracket. That is crazy. More often, people turn down opportunities for employer reimbursements of expenses, thinking they will be better off by just deducting it on their personal tax returns. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First, any tax deduction is only going to result in a small percentage of that amount in actual tax savings, depending on your tax brackets. A 100% reimbursement is always a much better thing than a tax deduction.

Second, IRS does not allow any deduction for an expense that could have been reimbursed, but you chose not to claim. There was an interesting case about ten or so years ago, where an IRS auditor was denied travel deductions because he could have submitted them for reimbursement, but didn’t because he was afraid of upsetting his superiors and harming his chances for promotion.

Firms’ Prop. 13 Savings Are Coveted – Newer property owners resent the lower taxes paid by long time property owners. It’s amazing how much energy is expended in our country in support of envy over what others have. Didn’t envy used to be one of the seven deadly sins? We’ve evolved to the point in our society where it is very acceptable and literally drives official government policies, as I described below.

As I’ve pointed out on far too many occasions, it is considered acceptable to discriminate, penalize and do all sorts of nasty things to the evil rich among us. Once it is agreed that it is proper to do bad things to a certain segment of our society, it comes down to defining where the line is between those to have bulls-eyes painted on them and the others who don’t deserve the harsh treatment. As I’ve described, in most areas, this line is defined by AGI (adjusted gross income) on 1040s. Those having income over the arbitrarily set amounts are to be penalized and persecuted.

If it isn’t obvious enough where I stand on this issue, it’s that we should all be treated equally. I dislike the entire concept of someone on their throne in Washington DC deciding who has enough and who doesn’t. That is just fine for communist societies; but has no place in a capitalist free market economy as established by our founding fathers.

For estate (aka death and inheritance) taxes, the defining point of who should have their family’s wealth stripped away and who may pass it on is defined by the size of their net estate at the time they pass away. That is currently one million dollars per person and scheduled to increase over the next few years.

Those of us who believe that nobody should be deprived of the right to retain his/her hard earned wealth in the family are having to fight people like this who openly resent rich people and feel it is the responsibility of government to equalize everyone by force. There is a name for these kinds of people. Just the idea of one group of elitists dictating who is average and who is evil rich is disgusting and is no different than having the government mandating what size home is allowable for each person in this country or in other ways telling us how to live our lives.

We have an increasingly unmistakable case of deja vu here. In spite of a huge approval rating after the 1991 Gulf War, Bush 41 alienated plenty of his conservative base by breaking his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge, leading to his record as a single term president. Bush 43 is following the same path with his support of bigger government spending. Many conservatives are expressing their displeasure with this blatant and very unprincipled attempt to buy votes from the DemonRats’ traditional constituency.

Let’s hope that, in acting on this disapproval, disenchanted Bush supporters will vote for a real small government choice (Libertarian Party) in November 2004 rather than sit out the election or waste their votes on a crackpot like Ross Perot.

Our rulers have done such an excellent job in forecasting the costs of other huge entitlement programs, why not let them just keep on going?

Calif. Near Financial Disaster – They’ve been on the brink of collapse before, and always survive. They’re trying to scare people into accepting higher taxes rather than cuts in the cost of government programs.