Because of Global Warming-obama to tax everytime we exhale

[Gigharborvair]

NEW TAX

[azdave]

NEW TAX

Sounds too familiar. Our new governor just got in office this month with the promise of balancing the budget without raising taxes. He said we have to learn to live within our means and raising taxes is not the solution.

Less than two weeks in command and he just announced plans to double the vehicle registration fee and tells everyone that it's okay because it's a fee, not a tax. Funny...it still feels like money leaving my wallet.

Edit 10-21-2014 -Removed emoticon from quoted section. -azdave

[bbodie52]

It sees like aspects of Obamacare were also debated because some said it was a fee, and others (like the Supreme Court) said it was a tax. What is the difference? A government agency is taking money from your pocket!

The leading global publisher of tax news, analysis and commentary
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

When Is A 'Fee' Actually A Tax? When Politicians Say It Isn't
Joseph Thorndike Joseph Thorndike , Contributor

Politicians are, by nature and necessity, truth-challenged. It’s tempting to call them liars, but that would be harsh, so let’s stick with the euphemism. After all, that’s what politicians do when it comes to taxes.

As everyone knows, the “breakthrough” budget deal now pending in the Senate includes no new taxes. We know this because Paul Ryan told us so. “The budget agreement does not raise taxes,” declares the House Budget Committee’s official FAQ on the budget deal. “There are no amendments to the Internal Revenue Code, and there are no increases in statutory or effective tax rates.”

Good to know. But the agreement does raise new revenue from “user fees,” including ones tied to pension benefit guarantees, conservation planning, customs enforcement, and aviation security.

This last fee, often called the airline passenger security fee, has drawn some special scrutiny, probably because lots of people fly and no one likes the Transportation Security Administration. The aviation fee is definitely not a tax, and we know this (again) because Paul Ryan told us so. The fee covers only part of the total cost of airline security screening, he points out. Even after it goes up, it will still pay only about 43 percent of the Transportation Security Administration’s overall tab.

OK, so maybe you’re still skeptical. But if you won’t believe Ryan, how about Grover Norquist? The unelected GOP arbiter of all things taxlike certainly doesn’t like the aviation fee, but he doesn’t think it’s a tax. “This fee straddles the line between a tax increase and a user fee without technically crossing into tax hike territory,” he assured the nation.

Also good to know.

Snarkiness aside, the aviation fee really isn’t a tax. As Ryan points out, it meets the definition of a user fee provided by the Congressional Budget Office:

Money that the federal government charges for services, or for the sale or use of federal goods or resources, that generally provide benefits to the recipients beyond those that may accrue to the general public. The amount of a user fee is typically related to the cost of the service provided or the value of the good or resource used.

Taxes, by comparison, are not tied to particular services and therefore can’t be avoided by simply declining to use these services. Taxes, according to the CBO, are “funds collected from the public that arise from the government’s exercise of its sovereign or governmental powers.” You pay taxes because you have to, and it doesn’t matter whether you want the services they’re paying for or not.

The CBO definitions are broadly accepted by economists and budget experts, and they clearly establish the airline security fee as a nontax. But it seems safe to say that this distinction is not particularly meaningful beyond the Beltway. As Roberton Williams of the Tax Policy Center recently pointed out, “I pay the TSA ticket fee because I choose to fly. How does that differ from my paying the gasoline tax because I choose to drive a gas-powered car?”

Obviously, it doesn’t. But these semantic distinctions can’t be entirely empty or politicians would stop using them. Yet efforts to sidestep the “tax” label are as old as the republic. They’ve been especially popular since the Reagan administration, when the Gipper himself popularized the term “revenue enhancement” to describe what most people would call a tax increase. As I explained in a 2011 article for Tax Notes, credit for actually inventing that particular euphemism belongs to Larry Kudlow, economist and media personality.

At the time, Kudlow was a U.S. Treasury official looking for some way to square Reagan’s antitax politics with his pro-tax policies. Some careful rewording seemed in order. “”There’s no better way to sell economic theory than by the euphemistic route,” he later confided to The New York Times. “I gave them another one, ‘receipts strengthening.’”

Kudlow’s rebranding didn’t save the Reagan Administration from a lot of snickering (and Democratic finger-pointing). But it did start Republicans down a long road of nontax revenue raising. A road they’re still on today.



This article is available online at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts ... y-it-isnt/ Forbes.com LLC™ All Rights Reserved

[Gigharborvair]

Someone must be editing some of these posts !! For the record, there was no welcome sign on my original post....just a waving smiling face as if to say "new tax, what else would you expect?"

Now it can be interpreted as a welcome to a new tax. The last thing I would welcome...

Who has the authority to edit posts on this forum?

[davemotohead]

Come clean Bob, you meant to post that smiley ,1949 converted you to the left with all his propaganda and Obama's SOTU self promoting victory speech finished you off,,you have now been assimilated, Get ready to vote for Hilliary in 2016 with the rest of the Demo drone voters!

[Gigharborvair]

Dave, you're not calling me a "pimple on some nut-job, left wing hyena's ass " now are you? That would hurt my feelings terribly.

Seriously, my first post was altered !

[davemotohead]

you can edit your post,go to it and click the Edit button and change it!

[64powerglide]

NEW TAX

This is how you original post is & was, someone changed the Quote not the post.

[azdave]

Someone must be editing some of these posts !! For the record, there was no welcome sign on my original post....just a waving smiling face as if to say "new tax, what else would you expect?"

Now it can be interpreted as a welcome to a new tax. The last thing I would welcome...

Who has the authority to edit posts on this forum?

I never even noticed that the emoticon changed from your post to my quote of your post but I can assure you I did not change it to the waving welcome sign. I just clicked on the "Quote" button and typed my reply (which was in agreement with your comments anyway). I'd have to reason to change it.

As far as I know, only the moderators here can edit other posts but anyone can edit their own posts at anytime.

I will now entirely remove the emoticon from your quote in my first post.

[64powerglide]

NEW TAX

All you have to do is hit Quote, backspace the quote out & enter a new one but I didn't do it.