The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
Guard your wallets, New Jersey taxpayers! The deficit in state pension and health-benefit plans for public employees is fast approaching $200 billion. Mark Lagerkvist, NJSpotlight Read more
Aug 17, 3:50 PM EDT
BY STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — A computer breach at the IRS in which thieves stole tax information from thousands of taxpayers is much bigger than the agency originally disclosed.
An additional 220,000 potential victims had information stolen from an IRS website as part of a sophisticated scheme to use stolen identities to claim fraudulent tax refunds, the IRS said Monday. The revelation more than doubles the total number of potential victims, to 334,000.
The breach also started earlier than investigators initially thought. The tax agency first disclosed the breach in May.
The thieves accessed a system called “Get Transcript,” where taxpayers can get tax returns and other filings from previous years. In order to access the information, the thieves cleared a security screen that required knowledge about the taxpayer, including Social Security number, date of birth, tax filing status and street address, the IRS said.
The personal information was presumably stolen from other sources. The IRS believes the thieves were accessing the IRS website to get even more information about the taxpayers, which could help them claim fraudulent tax refunds in the future.
“As it did in May, the IRS is moving aggressively to protect taxpayers whose account information may have been accessed,” the IRS said in a statement. “The IRS will begin mailing letters in the next few days to about 220,000 taxpayers where there were instances of possible or potential access to `Get Transcript’ taxpayer account information.”
AUGUST 12, 2015, 11:51 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12, 2015, 11:56 PM
BY CHRISTOPHER MAAG AND HERB JACKSON
STAFF WRITERS |
THE RECORD
It’s the tunnel that everyone agrees is necessary and no one wants to pay for.
This week, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York became the latest person to step into the fray, saying a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River should be built by a non-profit development corporation established specifically to tap every available pot of federal, state and regional money.
“We’ll only get Gateway done by adding up several pieces of financing, with an eye toward getting the maximum amount possible from the federal government,” Schumer said Tuesday at a news conference, referring to the name Amtrak has given a nascent plan for a new two-track tunnel.
But pursuing that financing requires promises from Governor Christie, a Republican presidential candidate who canceled a previous tunnel project, and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, who does not even want to meet to discuss it.
And until they are on the same page, any chance of persuading a Republican-led Congress focused on spending cuts to get behind a project as big as Gateway is a heavy lift indeed.
Still, Christie, Cuomo, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and nearly every transportation expert from Boston to Washington, D.C., agree with Schumer that work should begin immediately to build a new train tunnel, which would supplement the existing, century-old one that is beginning to fail.
August 5,2015
Ridgewood NJ, Faced with an ever increasing number of meeting attendees who publicly disagree with his administration’s policies, Mayor Paul Aronsohn has invoked a protocol of accepting “comments only” from certain meeting attendees. If the Mayor doesn’t like your comment/question, no response is offered, and you are asked to leave the podium and return to your seat.
Long gone are the days when a taxpayer could go to the microphone during a public meeting of the Village Council and engage in meaningful dialog with a Council member or members, regardless of your support for the “Council majority” or the issue at hand. When asked why the new protocol was being instituted, Aronsohn said only that he’d “received complaints” about the interactive nature of the meetings’ public comment segment. He did not say who had “complained.”
Here’s a comment for you Mr. Mayor – If you can’t stand the heat, don’t change the rules, just get out of the fire.
July 15,2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Village of Ridgewood Council Meeting
Wednesday July 15, 2015- 7:30pm, Court Room
The Village of Ridgewood Council will be voting for the future of a parking garage in Ridgewood
Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce looks to rally the troops tonight to push through the parking garage readers say not so fast .
“Where will the shopper/diners/employees park during construction? A net loss of 80 spots at any given time for three years. Let me remind you $.50/hour per meter. 80 spaces x $.50/space = $40/hour. $40 x 12 hour day = $480/day. $480/day x 465 days x 3 years = $525,600 revenue loss during construction. About the same amount that could pay for the parking study commissioned by the 3 Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
Skimmed the linked (Walker)report and my heart sank at the photos. This is not suitable. Walk down Hudson St. with a building sticking out over our heads? How is this appropriate? The noise, the traffic, the smells, people rushing around at rush hour–forget sitting on the sidewalk at Sook or Natalie’s, or probably even inside. Who wants to listen to/look at/smell that thing? The mayor and deputy mayor are so proud to be pushing for this? Burn in hell, guys.”
“How can we even consider something that costs this much money? We will never get it back in any way. Let NJ Transit and CBD building owners pay for it. The turf was bad enough.”
“Of course the wording is misleading. They have every intention of misleading the public on this. They are trying to shove this parking garage down our throats and they want to be able to say that we all approved it.”
“As sure as you’re born, a parking garage erected by Ridgewood’s village government will be co-opted for use by out-of-town commuters in accordance with the preferences of those seeking to dismantle New Jersey’s deeply ingrained “home rule” tradition and replace it with a new oligarchical style of regional government. Imagine a regional, multicounty board of overseers populated by Gwen Hauck-type cloned hand-puppets easily manipulated by namelesss, faceless third-party wealthy power brokers. That’s what many forward-thinking progressive statists see in their dreams. They don’t give a whit about mere business owners and their parking concerns…”
“My questions:
1. What happens if parking revenues fall short of expectations?
2. What is the proposed parking fee structure for the new garage?
These are very important questions and I will explain why. For the first one, the answer is pretty obvious. The Village taxpayers will be on the hook for it as the construction bond cannot be reneged on just because you hoped there would be enough revenue. The second one will absolutely dictate the success or failure of the entire project. Any fee structure that is more than street parking will completely disincentivize most people from using the garage. They will circle the blocks until a street space frees up, or they will go somewhere else to eat/shop. As I’ve stated before, this garage will represent the parking location of absolute last resort, and I predict it will be viewed in years to come as one of those “what were they thinking” buildings.”
From the Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce :
PARKING GARAGE
We invite everyone to attend next weeks Village of Ridgewood Council Meeting
Wednesday July 15, 2015- 7:30pm, Court Room
The Village of Ridgewood Council will be voting for the future of a parking garage in Ridgewood…
we encourage everyone who knows that the future of Ridgewood’s business district depends on this very important vote-
**needed are 4 yes’s from the Council members**
Please attend the meeting,voice your concerns at the public form and show your support for a parking garage.
It’s been 88 years since Ridgewood’s needed a parking garage…NOW IS THE TIME!
pu
Save our “downtown”!
see you there.
Readers say at the end of the Taxpayers will be on the hook for the garage while business,developers and NJT will all benefit from it
My questions:
1. What happens if parking revenues fall short of expectations?
2. What is the proposed parking fee structure for the new garage?
These are very important questions and I will explain why. For the first one, the answer is pretty obvious. The Village taxpayers will be on the hook for it as the construction bond cannot be reneged on just because you hoped there would be enough revenue. The second one will absolutely dictate the success or failure of the entire project. Any fee structure that is more than street parking will completely disincentivize most people from using the garage. They will circle the blocks until a street space frees up, or they will go somewhere else to eat/shop. As I’ve stated before, this garage will represent the parking location of absolute last resort, and I predict it will be viewed in years to come as one of those “what were they thinking” buildings.
Its called a shell game. money from the parking revenue is now used to support the town budget. money from the new garage if a surplus will be used to pay the loan off on the new garage. If revenue from the new garage isn’t adequate the town (I mean taxpayers) will have to make up the shortfall.
Or should the Village tax the CBD landlords for the garage or local businesses, their the ones that are going to profit from it.
STEVEN MALANGA • | JUNE 15, 2015 | 12:01 AM
The New Jersey legislature, looking to solve a budget crisis back in 1992, passed a bill that changed some of the accounting principles of the state’s government employee pension system. The technical changes, little understood at the time, made the system seem in better financial shape than it actually was, allowing the legislature to reduce contributions for pensions by $1.5 billion over the next two years. Legislators seized those extra dollars and redirected them into other spending.
Jersey officials could manipulate their pension system because local governments have latitude in how they run their own retirement plans. So what they did was not unique. Around the country, state and local officials have increasingly discovered over the years that they can exploit the complex and sometimes ill-defined accounting of government pension systems, as well as loopholes in their own laws governing those pensions.
Over time, elected officials came to promise workers politically popular new benefits without setting aside the money to pay for them, declared “holidays” from contributions into pension systems and changed their own accounting systems midstream to make the systems seem better funded — all just ways of passing obligations on to future taxpayers. In the process, government pension systems became one of the chief vehicles that state and local politicians used to massage their budgets.
Now we face the consequences. Our elected representatives played a deceptive game of chicken with pension funds. And now the chickens have come home to roost.
AP
New Jersey Supreme Court Associate Justices Lee A. Solomon, left, and Jaynee LaVecchia, right, listen as Associate Justice Anne M. Patterson asks a question during a hearing Wednesday, May 6, 2015, in Trenton
Taxpayers Face Tax Increase as N.J justices appear divided along partisan lines in pension battle
MAY 6, 2015, 12:45 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2015, 11:30 PM
BY SALVADOR RIZZO
STATE HOUSE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
The state Supreme Court appeared split along ideological lines Wednesday on one of the biggest legal questions in New Jersey: Can Governor Christie ignore a pension-reform law he signed in 2011 and cut funding for the distressed retirement system?
Associate Justice Barry Albin, a veteran of the court’s liberal wing and a Democratic appointee, hammered Christie’s attorney and sounded incredulous that the Republican governor wanted to strike down a key part of his own pension overhaul. At one point, Albin suggested the courts could order a tax increase to meet pension-funding requirements.
Associate Justice Anne Patterson, a Christie appointee on the court’s conservative side, grilled the attorneys for public-worker unions suing over the funding reductions. Patterson said the courts were no place to be deciding state budget priorities and noted that Christie would have to make deep cuts to hospitals or schools in order to round up the funds missing from the pension system.
The outcome may hinge on the court’s lone independent, Associate Justice Jaynee LaVecchia. She asked tough questions of both sides and did not indicate which way she was leaning.
Today, let’s talk about what I have decided to call time-bomb bonds: securities that blow up in the issuer’s face years or decades after being sold to investors.
The case in point: $1.14 billion of pension bonds that my home state of New Jersey sold in 1997, securities that I came across while working with Cezary Podkul of ProPublica for anarticle about New Jersey’s finances that was published Saturday by The Washington Post. (Sloan/Washington Post)
Prosecutor: Montvale businessman made “tens of millions” in fraud
APRIL 16, 2015 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2015, 1:21 AM
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
* Faces up to life in prison and $134.5M in fines for a scheme that bilked the federal government
“April 15, tax day, is a fitting date for Mr. Furando to accept responsibility for his crimes, which defrauded U.S. taxpayers of tens of millions of dollars.”
JOSH J. MINKER, U.S. ATTORNEY FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF INDIANA
A Montvale businessman earned tens of millions of dollars as part of one of the largest frauds in Indiana history, prosecutors said on Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy, fraud and other charges.
Joseph Furando, 49, and two companies he owned, Cima Green LLC and the Caravan Trading Co., both in Park Ridge at the time of the crimes, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Indiana to participation in a scheme that prosecutors said fraudulently sold more than 35 million gallons of fuel that cost $145.5 million.
No date was set for Furando’s sentencing.
The pleas, following a guilty plea in August by a Ridgewood businesswoman who worked for Furando, Evelyn Katirina Pattison, also known as Katirina Tracy, leave three Indiana-based defendants to face trial in the case beginning on May 11 in Indianapolis.
“April 15, tax day, is a fitting date for Mr. Furando to accept responsibility for his crimes, which defrauded U.S. taxpayers of tens of millions of dollars that Congress appropriated for energy independence and a cleaner environment for all of us,” said Josh J. Minker, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Indiana.
Furando, who described the scheme to colleagues as “alchemy,” abused a federal program that offered companies a tax break for using environmentally friendly biodiesel, which contains recycled oil, prosecutors said.
Although the program awarded only one tax credit for each gallon used, Furando and his companies bought biodiesel that had already earned the tax credit and sold it to an Indiana company, E-biofuels, as newly produced fuel, prosecutors said.
E-biofuels then sold the fuel and claimed a new tax credit, selling the fuel at an inflated market price because it had the credit attached, prosecutors said.
The scheme realized “huge per gallon profits” for all the conspirators, sometimes more than $12,000 a truckload, prosecutors said.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/business/montvale-exec-pleads-guilty-in-biofuel-tax-fraud-1.1310536
Federal workers more financially secure than the taxpayers who pay them
By Karen Beseth / March 9, 2015
A new study by Gallup reports that federal workers are much more likely to say that they are thriving financially than the rest of us.
The findings are based on more than 80,000 interviews from February 2014 to February 2015, and Gallup concluded that “US federal workers have [an] edge in financial well-being over other workers.”
Only 34 percent of workers outside of the federal government say they are thriving financially, while 44 percent of federal workers report a strong sense of financial well–being, a full ten point difference. On the flip side, non-federal workers are much more likely to say they are struggling (42 percent) or suffering (24 percent) than federal workers, while only 17 percent of federal workers say they are suffering.
The findings cut across all income and education levels, and according to Gallup “for those who experience higher levels of financial well-being, they feel as if they can spend time and energy addressing other facets of well-being in their day-to-day lives, including their purpose, social, community and physical well-being.” In other words, working for the federal government brings benefits that extend beyond the financial realm and improve all aspects of life.
While most Americans want to see all of their fellow citizens thriving and doing well, to some it does seem unfair that the people paying the federal workers are worse off financially than their public servants. Investor’s Business Daily compares the situation to The Hunger Games, a popular book and movie series in which the people in the “Districts” struggle while residents of the “Capital” live the good life.
“Gallup says this “could mean good news.” Well, for federal workers it sure is. But it’s hardly good news for the rest of the country. What the survey shows is how our massive federal government has increasingly become a wealth transfer machine that takes money from working families and gives it to elites in and around Washington….
The U.S. is, in short, becoming a real-world version of the Hunger Games, where people living in far-flung impoverished districts toil for the benefit of an increasingly rich, corrupt and indifferent capital city.”
That hardly sounds like the vision our Founding Fathers had when they created the federal government.
This article was written by a contributor of Watchdog Arena, Franklin Center’s network of writers, bloggers, and citizen journalists.
Tax Foundation : In 2012, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers (68 million filers) paid 96.7 percent of all income taxes
The Tax Foundation’s annual summary of the latest federal income tax data broken down by income percentile.
This summary is a nicely formatted version of the 2012 data that the IRS released just before the holidays and is available as a PDF and Excel spreadsheet. Each year, this is one of our most popular resources for reporters, lawmakers, tax lawyers, etc.
Here are some of the highlights:
In 2012, 136.1 million taxpayers reported earning $9.04 trillion in adjusted gross income and paid $1.1 trillion in income taxes.
All income groups increased their income and taxes paid over the previous year.
The top 1 percent of taxpayers earned their largest share of income since 2007 at 21.9 percent of total AGI and paid their largest share of the income tax burden since the same year at 38.1 percent of total income taxes.
In 2012, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers (68 million filers) paid 96.7 percent of all income taxes while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 3.3 percent.
The top 1 percent (1.3 million filers) paid a greater share of income taxes (38.1 percent) than the bottom 90 percent (122.4 million filers) combined (29.8 percent).
The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a higher effective income tax rate than any other group at 22.8 percent, which is nearly 7 times higher than taxpayers in the bottom 50 percent (3.28 percent).
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