Taxation
This is the agency that will be central to ensuring that healthcare is universal: The number of prisoners who file false tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service has more than doubled in the last five years, according to a new Treasury Department report, and the amount of money the IRS has mistakenly refunded to…
Here’s a worrying tidbit about a frontrunner for the open House Finance Committee chairmanship in the General Assembly: [Rep. Helio Melo (D, East Providence)] is the current deputy Finance Committee chairman, and House leaders signaled their confidence in him by letting him take the lead on last year’s big end-of-session, income-tax overhaul. I suppose that…
This doesn’t appear to be a sustainable system: Consider an average-wage, two-earner couple together earning $89,000 a year. Upon retiring in 2011, they would have paid $114,000 in Medicare payroll taxes during their careers. But they can expect to receive medical services – from prescriptions to hospital care – worth $355,000, or about three times…
Yesterday, Marc highlighted the peculiarity of a tax reform that purports to lower most Rhode Islanders’ taxes while increasing withholdings: The point is to give workers “a little cushion so that when they get to the end of the year, they [won’t] be in a situation where they’d owe money on their personal income tax,”…
Lower taxes? Sounds good: Rhode Island begins to put in place provisions of state tax legislation that…make the state tax system easier to understand and calculate, said Michael F. Canole, the Rhode Island Division of Taxation’s chief of examinations. “We’ve simplified our personal income tax,” he said. The changes will also ultimately reduce overall state…
I think John Kostrzewa overstates the ability of the recent tax-cut preservation legislation to boost the economy: … I give [President Obama] credit for crafting the compromise with the Republicans because the major pieces of the bill will create an economic stimulus that will stir job creation. It is not the same type of $800-billion…
A local controversy with statewide implications is the subject of my Patch.com column, this week. In short, the Tiverton school department spent $367,165 in local funds to make up for estimated state funds that didn’t materialize, and now the municipal government is taking it back. Of course, given the season, I couldn’t treat the topic…
For those interested, HERE is a working list of all of the earmarks contained in the lame duck FY2011 budget. I assume it will be continually updated as required (hence, the “working”). I’ve also broken out the RI earmarks from messr’s Reed, Whitehouse, Langevin and Kennedy and you can download it HERE. All told, according…
Did you happen to see this profile of the $250,000 family, in the Washington Post, no less? Just how flush is a family of four with a $250,000 income? … The bottom line: Living in high-tax areas on either coast can leave our $250,000-a-year-family with little margin. Even with an additional $3,000 in investment income,…
This Neil Downing article points to an egregious error in the waning year of Governor Carcieri’s time in office (emphasis added): … the amount of Rhode Island income tax withheld from your pay will change because of massive changes to the state income tax law enacted in June. Employers will have to withhold more in…
