U.S. manufacturing activity fell for the fourth month in a row while prices paid to manufacturers also decreased to the lowest level in more than two years. The Institute for Supply Management’s October purchasing managers’ index came in at 50.2 percent, 0.7 percentage points lower than September and the lowest level since May 2020. The…
Author: Tobias Burns
Wheat prices shoot up after Russia suspends UN grain deal
Wheat prices shot up on global commodity markets after Russia pulled out of a deal to keep grain exports moving out of Ukrainian ports, exacerbating concerns that the move by Moscow could worsen global food shortages. “Each fraction of a percentage point pushes someone somewhere over the line to extreme poverty,” United Nations aid chief…
Tax gap rises as IRS finds amount of unpaid taxes is increasing
The amount of taxes owed but not paid to the government is increasing, an IRS report released Friday has found. The shortfall, known as the “tax gap,” is measured every three years. The latest numbers show that it went up by $58 billion to $496 billion for the three-year period ending in 2016, from $438…
Rettig out as IRS commissioner
The Treasury Department on Friday announced the departure of IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, whose term is set to end in mid-November. Before Congress approves a new permanent IRS chief, the agency will be headed by deputy commissioner Douglas O’Donnell as acting chief, the Treasury said. “I want to thank Commissioner Rettig for his tireless service…
Wage growth ticks down, causing markets to soar
New data showing a slowdown in wage growth on Friday is leading to a big day on the stock market. Compensation rose 1.2 percent in the third quarter, a tick down from the 1.3 percent growth in the previous quarter, according to the data released Friday by the Labor Department. Wage growth at an annualized…
House GOP lawmakers push permanent tax cuts amid soaring inflation
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…
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,…