Tax Bill Gives People More Money

90% Of Workers Likely To See More Money In Paycheck Next Month

By Jeanne Sahadi and Katie Lobosco, CNN MoneyJanuary 12, 2018 at 9:03 am

Filed Under:Local TV, Money, Taxes

(CNN Money) — The U.S. Treasury and the IRS on Thursday put out new guidance and withholding tables for employers that incorporate changes from the new tax law.

Under those new tables, the Treasury estimates that 90% of people who get a paycheck are likely to see more in take-home pay, as soon as February. Employers will have until Feb. 15 to incorporate the changes in their payroll systems.

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But for many taxpayers, they will need to assess whether the new tables really are withholding enough money so that they’re not saddled with a big bill when they file their taxes next year.

The major changes affecting individuals include new tax brackets, (mostly) lower income tax rates, a near-doubling of the standard deduction and the elimination of both personal exemptions as well as many itemized deductions.

The new tables are designed not only to best approximate the change in workers’ tax liability under the new law, but to do so in a way that “delivers benefits as soon as possible to as many people as possible with as little disruption as possible,” a senior Treasury official told reporters.

The IRS is not issuing new Form W-4s … yet. “We’ve constructed the tables so that most people should be accurately withheld if they leave their W-4 in place,” a senior IRS official noted.

Related: Will enough tax be withheld from your paycheck? Good question

The plan is to have new W-4s by 2019. Personal exemptions are a core feature of the current withholding system, but now that they are eliminated, “it’s necessary to build a new approach to withholding, which will take some time,” the senior IRS official said.

In the meantime, he urged filers who have complicated tax situations — i.e., anyone who is not single, childless and holding down just one job — to review the number of allowances they currently take on their W4s once the IRS puts out its new withholding calculator by the end of February.

Such a calculator will ask for anonymous inputs — for example, your income, number of dependents and other pieces of information that help determine whether you might be eligible for various tax breaks.

“We would encourage every taxpayer to run their information through the calculator. Then they can decide what they want to do,” the senior IRS official said.

That’s not bad advice for any year when there are big tax changes but it’s especially critical this year.

Most people fill out their W-4 form when they’re hired at a new job and don’t change it unless they get married, have kids, get divorced or experience other life-changing situations.

And roughly three-quarters of tax filers are overwithheld because they take too few allowances. And that results in a refund when they file their tax returns. The IRS doesn’t expect that to change much under the new tax law given the preference filers have shown for getting big refunds, rather than just breaking even or having to cut a new check to Uncle Sam when they file their returns.

Too good to be true?

Democrats are concerned the rushed withholding tables could leave many tax filers in a situation of potentially being underwithheld for tax year 2018 and therefore left owing money when they file their tax returns in early 2019.

“Republicans are using brute force and speed to implement a law that will deliver a financial blow to hardworking Americans all across the country,” Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement.

Earlier this week, Wyden and Rep. Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the House tax-writing committee, asked the Government Accountability Office to analyze the new IRS tables to see if they might lead to systematic underwithholding of federal taxes from paychecks.

“I look forward to GAO’s independent review of these tables, which will expose whether the Trump administration is tampering with Americans’ paychecks, resulting in a whopping tax bill next year,” Wyden said.

The GAO has said Wyden’s request must go through its usual review process before a decision to proceed is made.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at the White House press briefing on Thursday dismissed suspicions that administration is “juicing” the tables as a “ridiculous charge.”

— CNNMoney’s Donna Borak contributed to this report

Obama Rewards Iran With Another Gift. Leaves Terror Victims Out.

Shurat HaDin: Obama Secretly Transferred $1.7 Billion to Iran to Keep It Out of Terror Victims’ Reach

By JNI Media September 14, 2016 , 7:30 am

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“And he said: ‘Go thy way, Daniel; for the words are shut up and sealed till the time of the end.'” Daniel 12:9 (The Israel Bible™)

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(Shutterstock)

Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, representing American the families of terror victims who have won US court judgments against the government of Iran for its support of Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel, on Tuesday released a letter it sent US Congress members alleging that the Obama Administration kept secret the details of the $1.7 billion in cash payments to Tehran in January 2016 in order to evade efforts by their clients to recover those funds to satisfy outstanding court awards.

In the past, American terror victims have been successful in seizing Iranian bank accounts when those had been located.

The letter, sent by attorneys Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Tel Aviv and Robert Tolchin of New York, recalls that on January 17, 2016, President Obama announced the settlement of a legal dispute between the United States and Iran over $400 million held by the US in a Foreign Military Sales (“FMS”) program account since 1979. The Obama Administration agreed to pay the $400 million it finally conceded it owed Iran, plus payment of an additional $1.3 million in interest on that amount.

image: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/shurat-hadin.jpg

Administration witnesses before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (Committee on Financial Services) hearing on “Fueling Terror: The Dangers of Ransom Payments to Iran,” Sept. 8, 2016. (Screenshot)

Then, “in recent weeks, the $1.7 billion which was secretly paid out in cash has come under severe scrutiny because the timing and circumstances of the payments appear to confirm the Iranian claim that the White House agreed to pay the money as ransom to Tehran for the release of American hostages.”

However, in light of the recent revelations in a Congressional subcommittee hearing held on Thursday, September 8, 2016, Shurat HaDin is asserting that “it is now clear that the Administration has deliberately kept numerous payments to Iran secret in order to shield Iran from having to forfeit those funds to pay terror victims amounts Iran owes under outstanding US judgments.”

The Shurat HaDin letter cites a “suspicious revelation at the Congressional subcommittee hearing that the United States and Iran did not draft a written settlement agreement or any other formal documentation of the cash transfers, and that Iran specifically directed the Iran-US Tribunal at the Hague, where the claim was to be resolved through arbitration, that it should not record the settlement of the claim for the parties.”

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Shurat HaDin asserts that under a legislation passed in 2000, the US was legally entitled to apply the $400 million in the FSM account to satisfy terror victims’ judgments, and this way eliminating the $400 million balance and nearly 16 years of interest claimed by Iran.

Shurat HaDin President Nitsana Darshan-Leitner said in a statement: “We believe that the secrecy in which these cash payments were made was part of an effort by the White House to conceal these payments from the terror victims and to hide the fact that it was effectively canceling Iran’s debt for its terror-related activity. This is a horrible fraud against the terror victims. It appears the secret cash transfers were specifically done as an end run around the ability of the families to attach the money and enforce their federal court judgments.”

“Why didn’t the Treasury ever tell the families they were holding these funds?” Darshan-Leitner demanded to know.

Had either the settlement or an award against the United States at the Iran-US Tribunal been entered on the books, and Iran had sought to have the settlement or award confirmed in US court, then terror victims with judgments against Iran could have legally “attached” any judgment affirming the settlement or award, so that the amount could be applied to satisfy their terror compensation judgments, Shurat HaDin contends, explaining that “instead, the Administration went to great lengths to ensure that the $1.7 billion purported settlement was shrouded in secrecy, was never reduced to writing or even recorded with the Tribunal in Hague, and was paid to Iran in cash as quickly and directly as possible in order to head off any chance that Iran would be forced to forfeit any amount to pay legal judgments it owes to American terror victims.”

Shurat HaDin urged Congress to continue to investigate these issues, and to take action to guarantee that further payments to Iran do not take place as long as Iran remains a state sponsor of terrorism and a threat to its neighbors, “and until it has paid every judgment it owes to American victims of terror.”

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner addressed her letter to Senator Marco Rubio and Representatives Mike Pompeo and Ed Royce, who have each introduced legislation in response to the $1.7 billion payment to Iran, and to House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Sean P. Duffy, whose subcommittee held a special hearing on the $1.7 billion payments last Thursday, September 8, 2016.

Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/75603/shurat-hadin-obama-secretly-transferred-1-7-billion-iran-keep-terror-victims-reach/#1XbkqfH6viP2S5hc.99

What A Country! Federal Works Paid NOT To Work.

Feds paid thousands of workers to stay home

Posted on October 20, 2014 by Personal Liberty News Desk

Over the course of three years, the federal government paid workers about $775 million to stay home, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.

The GAO report reveals that 57,000 federal workers were paid not to work for a month or longer between October 2010 and September 2013. Aside from receiving pay, the sidelined workers continued to accrue pensions, time off and opportunities for pay scale increases.

Via The Washington Post, which originally obtained the forthcoming GAO report:

The GAO report almost certainly understates the extent and cost of administrative leave because the figures examined by the auditors were incomplete. Not all government agencies keep track of the practice, and those reviewed account for only about three-fifths of the federal workforce.

The Office of Personnel Management rule book lists dozens of reasons for allowing paid leave, such as donating an organ, house-hunting before a job transfer, and attending the funeral of a relative in the military. Snow days also are permitted.

But these require only a few hours or days — not the months and years that GAO discovered are common at more than 100 federal agencies including the Defense and Treasury departments.

Republican Changes To IRS Oversight Of Political Speech Make A Lot Of Sense.

GOP IRS Report: Political Speech Provides Social Welfare

July 30, 2014 by Sam Rolley 

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Representative Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee discussed its report on the Internal Revenue Service targeting scandal, “Making Sure Targeting Never Happens: Getting Politics Out of the IRS and Other Solutions” on Wednesday.

According to the report, the Oversight Committee “has reviewed approximately 800,000 pages of documents produced by the IRS, the Treasury Department, the Justice Department, the Federal Election Commission, the IRS Oversight Board, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, and other custodians.” Based on the findings from the research, Oversight members have come up with a 15-point plan to reform the IRS.

The most important reforms, as summarized by Issa in a press release accompanying the report’s Tuesday release, include:

*Replacing the IRS Commissioner with a multi-member, bipartisan commission

*Removing the IRS as a regulator of political speech for social-welfare groups

*Allowing taxpayers, and not the IRS, to control access to their confidential taxpayer information

*Creating a private right of action for victims of willful and injurious leaks by IRS officials of confidential taxpayer information

*Establishing transparent and objective criteria for scrutiny of applicants

*Establishing clear and transparent rules for information-collecting purposes

*Prohibiting political and policy communications between the IRS and Executive Office of the President

*Removing the IRS from implementation of the Affordable Care Act

Currently, nonprofit status is supposed to be reserved for entities which allocate less than half of resources to “political activities.” The left has already heavily criticized the Issa plan, charging that lawmakers should instead focus primarily on defining what the IRS should consider “political speech,” thereby strengthening agency guidelines for denying nonprofit status.

But in the months since the IRS scandal hit headlines more than a year ago the agency has already attempted and failed to narrow down the definition. Center for Competitive Politics President explained why during Oversight testimony Wednesday.

He said in a prepared statement: “The Internal Revenue Service is primarily a tax collection agency. It knows little about nonprofit advocacy and even less about First Amendment protections for free speech. This incompetence was on clear display when the IRS proposed regulations last November attempting to define political activity, which generated over 150,000 public comments. Organizations and citizens across the political spectrum were nearly unanimous in criticizing the proposal for seeking to regulate too much activity.

“In fairness to the career staff at the IRS, this is extremely difficult work. The tax laws are complicated, but the relationship of campaign finance laws and the First Amendment is even more complex and raises very difficult constitutional issues,” he continued. “This difficulty is one reason why the IRS should not be involved in this type of political regulation.”

Instead of making the political speech definition narrower, supporters of more comprehensive IRS reform support broader protections for nonprofits’ 1^st Amendment activities. The reason for this view, as Issa’s report puts it, is that “activities that promote free political speech and free political assembly benefit the general welfare” because they are American rights.

Lets Start Reforming Government By Making The Employees Pay Their Back Taxes! Anyone Owing Taxes Should Be Fired If They Work For Us!

IRS: 318,000 Fed Workers Owe $3.3 Billion in Back Taxes

Friday, 23 May 2014 07:29 AM

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More than 318,000 federal workers and retirees owe just over $3.3 billion in back taxes, the Internal Revenue Service said.
That works out to nearly 3.3 percent of all 9.8 million federal workers and retirees who are behind on their taxes — significantly lower than the proportion of delinquent taxpayers in the overall population. The IRS estimates that to be at least 8.7 percent.
Those behind in their tax payments include 714 people working for the House and Senate. IRS officials said the data used to compile the report does not indicate whether any of those delinquent taxpayers were members of Congress.
In addition, 821 employees of the nation's federal courts have overdue tax bills. IRS officials said the data did not indicate whether any of them were judges.
Agency officials said the IRS pursues delinquent taxes from federal workers the same way it goes after money that others owe. The agency will initially send at least two bills for the taxes it believes are due, a process that eventually can evolve into garnishing wages from paychecks or seizing property.
Almost 4.1 percent of active civilian government workers owe back taxes, the report said.
Among Cabinet-level departments, the highest rate of delinquency is at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where 5.3 percent of workers have overdue taxes. The lowest was at the Treasury Department — which includes the IRS — where 1.2 percent of workers were delinquent.
The IRS said 1.7 percent of active duty military personnel are overdue. So are almost 2.7 percent of those in the Reserves and National Guard.
Among retirees, 2.6 percent of retired civilian workers and 4.2 percent of retired military are delinquent.
The figures are as of Sept. 30, 2013.
© Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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