House Republicans on the chief tax-writing Ways and Means Committee are seeking to make the tax cuts and adjustments enacted in the 2017 overhaul of the tax system permanent, a move economists say would stimulate the economy at the same time the Federal Reserve is trying to rein in demand against 40-year-high inflation. Ways and…
Author: Tobias Burns
Trump loses latest bid to shield tax returns from House committee
A federal court cleared the way Thursday for a Democratic-led House committee to review former President Trump’s tax returns, although the Supreme Court could still block the action. Judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling that courts won’t stand in the way of the House’s chief tax committee seeing Trump’s financial…
‘The greatest harm I could ever imagine’: Organized labor blasts Fed rate hikes
Organized labor is expressing anger about continued interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, joining a chorus of voices on the left arguing that lower inflation is not worth the pain of recession. Unions maintain that the central bank’s rate hikes are divorced from the root cause of inflation, which is affecting many different countries…
Liz Truss’s downfall sparks talk of democracy’s decline in UK
Questions of democratic legitimacy are swirling in the United Kingdom after the resignation on Thursday of Prime Minister Liz Truss, whose government collapsed just 44 days after she took office. Truss’s downfall will trigger a second leadership election within the Conservative Party’s 170,000 members to pick a third prime minister for the country of…
Five things to know about the IRS’s changes to next year’s taxes
The IRS announced on Tuesday inflation adjustments for more than 60 tax provisions for tax year 2023, including the standard tax deduction and the designation of tax brackets, both of which affect the vast majority of taxpayers. These tax adjustments happen every year, but since inflation is at a nearly 40-year high of 8.2 percent,…
How to prepare for a potential recession in 2023
Many market watchers are predicting a recession in 2023 as the Fed continues to raise interest rates in its battle against 40-year-high inflation. Due to a persistently hot job market, a recession is not a certain fate, but the economy has already contracted for two quarters in a row, and a period of cooling off…
US to announce release of 15M barrels of oil from strategic reserve
The U.S. will release 15 million barrels of oil from its strategic reserve, Biden administration officials plan to announce Wednesday. The 15 million barrels are the final tranche of a disbursement of 180 million announced in March and comes as energy prices threaten to rise again less than a month before Election Day. Rising prices…
Major companies race to buy back stocks ahead of new corporate tax
Major corporations are scrambling to repurchase their own shares before a new tax on stock buybacks passed as part of Democrats’ major spending bill over the summer goes into effect, an effort that may sap one of the bill’s main sources of revenue. Stock buybacks occur when a company buys its own shares, taking them…
Five things to know about today’s Social Security COLA
Social Security payments will increase by an average of $140 per check as the national pension plan is set to receive its biggest cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in 40 years. The hike came in at 8.7 percent, an attempt to close the gap caused by inflation that reached as high as 9.1 percent in June before…
Latest minutes show Federal Reserve surprised at persistently high inflation
Minutes from the latest meeting of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) show the U.S. central bank is still surprised by persistently high inflation, after members initially characterized the price increases as a short-term phenomenon. Expectations of Fed bankers came in low in September as consumer inflation hit 8.3 percent annually in August, down…