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55 percent of small business owners would not start company today, blame Obama

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55 percent of small business owners would not start company today, blame Obama
September 26, 2012 | 10:39 am

Fifty-five percent of small business owners and manufacturers would not have started their businesses in today’s economy, according to a new poll that also reports 69 percent say President Obama’s regulatory policies have hurt their businesses.

“There is far too much uncertainty, too many burdensome regulations and too few policymakers willing to put aside their egos and fulfill their responsibilities to the American people,” said Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, which commissioned the poll along with the National Federation of Independent Businesses. “To fix this problem, we need immediate action on pro-growth tax and regulatory policies that put manufacturers in the United States in a position to compete and succeed in an ever-more competitive global economy.”

The poll reports another ominous statistic for job creation: “67 percent say there is too much uncertainty in the market today to expand, grow or hire new workers.” Why? Because “President Obama’s Executive Branch and regulatory policies have hurt American small businesses and manufacturers,” according to 69 percent of the business owners surveyed.

Here are the key findings in the poll, as highlighted by NAM:

67 percent say there is too much uncertainty in the market today to expand, grow or hire new workers.
69 percent of small business owners and manufacturers say President Obama’s Executive Branch and regulatory policies have hurt American small businesses and manufacturers.
55 percent say they would not start a business today given what they know now and in the current environment.
54 percent say other countries like China and India are more supportive of their small businesses and manufacturers than the United States.

https://washingtonexaminer.com/55-percent-of-small-business-owners-would-not-start-company-today-blame-obama/article/2509069#.UGNuRpjLQph

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Hospitals Warned by U.S. on Medicare Electronic Billing

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file photo of emergency response

Hospitals Warned by U.S. on Medicare Electronic Billing
By Alex Wayne – Sep 25, 2012 7:38 AM ET

Hospital bills are being audited as the U.S. tries to identify whether new electronic records were used to “game the system” and overcharge the Medicare health program.

Some hospitals may be “cloning” patient records and “upcoding” their bills — charging for higher intensity services than are given — to raise payments from the government, Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter yesterday to five trade associations. Hospitals caught misusing the electronic systems may be prosecuted for fraud or lose Medicare payments, the officials said.

Encouraged by as much as $27 billion in incentives in President Barack Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus law, hospitals and doctors’ offices have been converting paper record-keeping systems to computers, an effort the administration said would reduce medical errors and save money. Instead, hospitals may be using the systems to increase their billings for Medicare, the federal program for the elderly and disabled, the U.S. said.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-25/hospitals-warned-by-u-s-on-medicare-electronic-billing.html

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MAP® Formative Assessment

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MAP® Formative Assessment

Formative Assessment Presentation is October 17 Since the fall of 2008, the Ridgewood Public Schools has administered online formative assessment to all students in Grades 3 through 8. Formative assessments help teachers gain an understanding of students’ strengths and weaknesses. For the 2012-2013 school year, the Board of Education has approved the use of MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) as its online formative assessment program.

As part of the district’s continuing curriculum outreach efforts, a presentation will be held on MAP on Wednesday, October 17 at 7:30 p.m. Parents, guardians and the general public are invited to come to the Education Center, 49 Cottage Place, floor 3, to hear Jim Tilghman, Professional Representative of Northwest Evaluation Association and producer of MAP

Since the Fall of 2008, the Ridgewood Public Schools has been administering an online formative assessment to all students in Grades 3 through 8. Formative assessments help teachers to know and understand their students’ strengths and opportunities for improvement, providing valuable information about what students already know and what may require additional reinforcement.

The Ridgewood Public Schools had formerly used an online formative assessment that was funded through the New Jersey Department of Education. In 2010-2011, the assessment company’s contract with the New Jersey Department of Education ended. In 2011-2012 the
district examined various options, and, in May of 2012, the Ridgewood Board of Education approved the use of NWEA (Northwest Evaluation Association) MAP® (Measures of Academic Progress®) as its online formative assessment.

Students in Grades 3 through 8 will take two online assessments each year in Reading and Mathematics. We expect that the computer-delivered nature of these assessments will promote a more student-friendly experience than that of high-stakes tests; this is appropriate
since there are no “stakes” attached to these tests – only information to guide instruction. Although the assessment is not timed, most students take one class period to complete each subject area. The assessment adapts to each student, giving harder or easier questions based
on correct and incorrect responses. It identifies an instructional level by moving toward questions that each student is likely to get right 50% of the time and to get wrong 50% of the time. That instructional level becomes information that teachers use to modify and adjust
their instruction in the classroom.

Since MAP® is not a standardized test, scheduling is flexible, and results do not become part of a student’s record. MAP® is used by teachers as a planning tool for the sole purpose of informing instruction; therefore, test preparation is neither required nor desirable, and neither
test notification nor test reports are sent home.

There will be two administrations of MAP® during the 2012 – 2013 school year. We anticipate testing windows of September 18 through October 5, 2012, and January 22 through February 8, 2013.

As always, and in accordance with District policy, parents/guardians are welcome at any time to contact their principal to review their child’s progress

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NJ to pilot early testing for kindergarten

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NJ to pilot early testing for kindergarten

As part of the Christie administration’s latest push for early literacy, the state is launching a pilot program for testing children as they enter kindergarten.

New Jersey has enlisted six school districts and a charter school to test out the new “kindergarten entry assessment” (KEA), which will measure children for basic academic and social development.

Nearly 50 teachers and administrators in the districts began training in August to learn to use a commercial assessment tool called Teaching Strategies GOLD.

New Jersey joins Delaware, Colorado and Washington in using the new assessment tool, the companyannounced this month. State officials said they chose the Maryland-based company’s program because it is easy to use and aligns with the national Common Core State Standards.   (Mooney, NJ Spotlight)
https://www.njspotlight.com/stories/12/09/25/early-testing-for-kindergarten/

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Skewed and Unskewed Polls

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Skewed and Unskewed Polls
September 23, 2012 – 7:44 pm
CHARLIE MARTIN

In most all things, I try to follow Hanlon’s (or Heinlein’s) Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

This is particularly important to remember when looking at polls.Sometimes, however, one must wonder.

As I pointed out yesterday, the result of Romney’s “really bad week” was that Romney had gone from 5 or 6 points behind in Gallup, to essentially tied. Even so, a number of people have noted that there are some odd assumptions in that poll, and others. Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen talked about it recently. Asked if the polls were, in his opinion, a fair representation of the electorate, Schoen said:

“The simple answer is no John. The bottom line is there were seven percent more Democrats in the electorate in 2008 than there were Republicans. That’s from the exit polls and that’s about as accurate as you can get….President Obama won by about seven points. Given 90 percent of Democrats vote for the Democrat and 90 percent of Republicans vote for the Republican, every time you reduce the margin between the parties by one point, roughly it’s about one point off the margin.”

Schoen pointed out that the Pew poll was based on Democrats sampled for having an 11 percent voters registration edge over Republicans. He further added, “saying that America has gotten more Democratic than 2008, which is a questionable assumption.”

In fact, Rasmussen keeps a running monthly poll of party identification. In the latest poll, released September 1, they found:

During August, 37.6% of Americans considered themselves Republicans. That’s up from 34.9% in July and 35.4% in June. It’s also the largest number of Republicans ever recorded by Rasmussen Report since monthly tracking began in November 2002.

https://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/09/23/skewed-and-unskewed-polls/

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“60 Minutes” Contrast Between Romney, Obama on Entitlements

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“60 Minutes” Contrast Between Romney, Obama on Entitlements

https://tinyurl.com/crqs4x4

The official, head-to-head debates begin next week, but Sunday’s “60 Minutes” appearances by President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) provided a contrast in the ideas offered on the nation’s entitlements and spending crisis.

For his part, the President punted on a serious question about the nation’s concern over spending—blaming everything on President George W. Bush. Instead of addressing the spending question, he waited for the next question about the national debt, which has increased more than 50 percent since he took office. Then came the familiar refrain of why he’s not responsible for Washington’s overspending or the country’s abysmal fiscal situation:
When I came into office, I inherited the biggest deficit in our history. And over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but 90 percent of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren’t paid for, as a consequence of tax cuts that weren’t paid for, a prescription drug plan that was not paid for, and then the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

These continued excuses ignore the massive increases since the President took office. According to Heritage expert Emily Goff: By fiscal year 2008, the deficit had reached $458.6 billion. The deficit was increasing as Obama came into office, mainly driven by the recession and the first wave of TARP bailouts. But his Administration’s massive stimulus bill sent spending into overdrive and led to a record $1.4 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2009. Deficits have stayed at more than $1 trillion each year since then.

America’s entitlement programs are the major driver of out-of-control spending. Without reform, they would push federal spending to nearly 36 percent of the economy within a generation. Debt held by the public would explode to nearly 200 percent. Serious structural reforms are inevitable—it is merely a question of how we change what we are doing.

In his “60 Minutes” interview, Obama glossed over Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare and the resulting costs for seniors.

Romney, when asked how he would change Social Security, first made clear there should be no changes to benefits for those in or near retirement.

But he went on:
What I’d do with Social Security is say this: that again, people with higher incomes won’t get the same high growth rate in their benefits as people with lower incomes. People who rely on Social Security should see the same kind of growth rate they’ve had in the past. But higher income folks would receive a little less.

As Heritage expert Alison Fraser explains, Social Security is already income-adjusted today. This is called means testing. Benefits are capped for high-income earners, and the calculation of initial benefits a new retiree receives is based on his or her past income. Upper-income retirees pay a much higher tax than those with lower incomes. Romney proposes to extend this income adjusting so that upper-income retirees receive a bit less than they do now.

While many politicians claim that the only way to address entitlements is to raise taxes or cut benefits, expanding means testing is a serious and sound way to pursue reform.

These kinds of solutions can be found in Saving the American Dream, Heritage’s blueprint for solving our spending and debt crises. Saving the American Dream lays out solutions like slowly moving to a flat Social Security benefit that keeps seniors out of poverty, means testing Social Security so that very affluent seniors have a reduced benefit, and moving to a more robust means-tested premium support mechanism for Medicare that offers seniors choice and control over their health dollars and better health outcomes.

Without reforms, entitlement programs will push spending to untenable levels and put undue pressure on vital areas of government such as national defense. The Obama Administration’s comments about reform, like “now is not the time” for fixing Social Security and the need for a “balanced approach,” have been proven hollow by its push for tax hikes on job creators. We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem, and the longer Washington wastes time, the harsher the changes will have to be.

This debate is vital. To save the American economy and sustain the safety net for those who need it, spending must be reined in and entitlement programs must be reformed.

https://tinyurl.com/crqs4x4

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Washington’s Disdain for Wealth Creators Is a Big Part of the Problem

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Washington’s Disdain for Wealth Creators Is a Big Part of the Problem
Posted by Daniel Ikenson

https://www.cato-at-liberty.org/washingtons-disdain-for-wealth-creators-is-a-big-part-of-the-problem/

Like too many other long-reigning fixtures on Capitol Hill, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) doesn’t appreciate the magnitude of the challenge to the authority he presumes to hold over America’s job and wealth creators. Or maybe he does, and frustration over that fact explains why he besmirches companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard.

Levin presided over a Senate hearing last week devoted to examining the “loopholes and gimmicks” used by these multinational companies to avoid paying taxes – and to branding them dirty tax scofflaws. Well here’s a news flash for the senator: incentives matter.

The byzantine U.S. tax code, which Senator Levin – over his 33-year tenure in the U.S. Senate (one-third of a century!) – no doubt had a hand or two in shaping, includes the highest corporate income tax rate among all of the world’s industrialized countries and the unusual requirement that profits earned abroad by U.S. multinationals are subject to U.S. taxation upon repatriation. No other major economy does that. Who in their right minds would not expect those incentives to encourage moving production off shore and keeping profits there?

Minimizing exposure to taxes – like avoiding an oncoming truck – is a natural reaction to tax policy. Entire software and accounting industries exist to serve that specific objective. Unless they are illegal (and that is not what Levin asserts directly), the tax minimization programs employed at Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard are legitimate responses to the tax policies implemented and foreshadowed by this and previous congresses. If Levin is concerned about diminishing federal tax collections from corporations (which, of course, reduces his power), the solution is to change the incentives – to change the convoluted artifice of backroom politics that is our present tax code.

Combine the current tax incentive structure with stifling, redundant environmental, financial, and health and safety regulations, an out-of-control tort system that often starts with a presumption of corporate malfeasance, exploding health care costs, and costly worker’s compensation rules, and it becomes apparent why more and more businesses would consider moving operations abroad – permanently. Thanks to the progressive trends of globalization, liberalization, transportation, and communication, societies’ producers are no longer quite as captive to confiscatory or otherwise suffocating domestic policies. They have choices.

Of course many choose to stay, and for good reason. We are fortunate to have the institutions, the rule of law, deep and diversified capital markets, excellent research universities, a highly-skilled workforce, cultural diversity, and a society that not only tolerates but encourages dissent, and the world’s largest consumer market – still. Success is more likely to be achieved in an environment with those advantages. They are the ingredients of our ingenuity, our innovativeness, our willingness to take risks as entrepreneurs, and our economic success. This is why companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Hewlett-Packard are born in the United States.

But those advantages are eroding.

While U.S. policymakers browbeat U.S. companies and threaten them with sanctions for “shipping jobs overseas” or “hiding profits abroad” or some other manifestation of what politicians like to call corporate greed, characterizing them as a scourge to be contained and controlled, other governments are hungry for the benefits those companies can provide their people. Some of those governments seem to recognize that the world’s wealth and jobs creators have choices about where they produce, sell, and conduct research and development. And some are acting to attract U.S. businesses with incentives that become less necessary every time a politician vents his spleen about evil corporations. Not only should our wealth creators be treated with greater respect from Washington, but we are kidding ourselves if we think our policies don’t need to keep up. As I wrote in a December 2009 Cato paper:

Governments are competing for investment and talent, which both tend to flow to jurisdictions where the rule of law is clear and abided; where there is greater certainty to the business and political climate; where the specter of asset expropriation is negligible; where physical and administrative infrastructure is in good shape; where the local work force is productive; where there are limited physical, political, and administrative friction.

This global competition in policy is a positive development. But U.S. policymakers cannot take for granted that traditional U.S. strengths will be enough. We have to compete and earn our share with good policies. The decisions made now with respect to policies on immigration, education, energy, trade, entitlements, taxes, and the role of government in managing the economy will determine the health, competitiveness, and relative significance of the U.S. economy in the decades ahead.

Since another hearing devoted to thanking these companies for their contriubtions to the U.S. economy is unlikely, perhaps Senator Levin should at least consider the perils of chasing away these golden geese.

https://www.cato-at-liberty.org/washingtons-disdain-for-wealth-creators-is-a-big-part-of-the-problem/

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Why is the NJ unemployment rate rising while the state gains jobs?

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Why is the NJ unemployment rate rising while the state gains jobs?

Another increase in New Jersey’s unemployment rate — this time to 9.9 percent — prompted the Christie administration Thursday to wonder aloud if there was something wrong with the survey itself.

Charles Steindel, chief economist for the state Department of Treasury, said the jobless rate told a story that was 180-degrees different from another survey that showed the state added 5,300 jobs in August.

If the unemployment rate is accurate, “this would mean we were losing 600 jobs a day in August, including weekends,” Steindel said in a conference call with reporters. “It didn’t happen.”  (Diamond, Asbury Park Press)

https://www.app.com/article/20120920/NJBIZ/309210003/Why-NJ-unemployment-rate-rising-while-state-gains-jobs-?nclick_check=1

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Senate GOP furious newspaper got better briefing on Libya

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Senate GOP furious newspaper got better briefing on Libya
By Alexander Bolton – 09/22/12 06:00 AM ET

Senate Republicans are furious the Obama administration rebuffed their attempts to learn details of the Benghazi attack, only to give the coveted information to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Senators say they were rebuffed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when they pressed for more information about the attack that killed U.S. envoy Christopher Stephens in Libya.
“That is the most useless, worthless briefing I have attended in a long time,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told reporters after the closed-door session.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/251109-senate-republicans-upset-obama-administration-passed-them-over-for-the-new-york-times

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Cost of Regulations Under Obama: $488 Billion

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Cost of Regulations Under Obama: $488 Billion
10:03 AM, SEP 19, 2012 • BY DANIEL HALPER

The American Action Forum has released new analysis of the burden of new regulations under President Obama. It’s most striking finding? The cost of added regulations under President Obama is now estimated to be $488 billion.

“Based on data from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and regulations published in the Federal Register, the Administration has published more than $488 billion in regulatory costs since January 20, 2009 – $70 billion in 2012 alone,” reads the analysis from AAF.

“Ignoring all non-“major” rules with costs in 2009, the regulatory tally still surpassed $61 billion. In 2010, counting only “major” rules, the regulatory bill rose to $160 billion in lifetime costs. AAF began tracking every proposed and final rule in 2011. That year alone the Administration published more than $231 billion in regulatory costs. AAF reviewed 6,705 regulations in 2011 and has tracked more than 4,700 regulations to date in 2012.”

The most costly government agencies in 2012 alone are Health and Human Services (which has an estimated regulation burden of $16.7 billion), the Environmental Protection Agency ($12.1 billion), the Department of Energy ($10.6 billion), the Department of Justice ($6.9 billion), and the Securities and Exchange Commission ($6.2 billion).

The other cost associated with these regulations is the man-hours that it would take to implement and enforce these new regulations. Under President Obama, this cost is at least 1.58 billion hours.

https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cost-regulations-under-obama-488-billion_652691.html

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100 Days Until Taxmageddon

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100 Days Until Taxmageddon

https://atr.org/days-taxmageddon-a7203#ixzz278PWNKzo

Sunday will mark the start of the 100-day countdown to “Taxmageddon” – the date the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2013:

First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief
In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for small business owners, families, and investors (later re-upped by President Obama and Democrat Congress in 2010). The following tax hikes will occur on January 1, 2013:
Personal income tax rates will rise on January 1, 2013. The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which the majority of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent. All the rates in between will also rise. Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates. The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:

-The 10% bracket rises to a new and expanded 15%
-The 25% bracket rises to 28%
-The 28% bracket rises to 31%
-The 33% bracket rises to 36%
-The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%

Higher taxes on marriage and family coming on January 1, 2013. The “marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of taxable income. The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level.

Middle Class Death Tax returns on January 1, 2013. The death tax is currently 35% with an exemption of $5 million ($10 million for married couples). For those dying on or after January 1 2013, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes and a retirement account could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones.

Higher tax rates on savers and investors on January 1, 2013. The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 23.8 percent in 2013. The top dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 43.4 percent in 2013. This is because of scheduled rate hikes plus Obamacare’s
investment surtax.

Second Wave: Obamacare Tax Hikes
There are twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Some have already gone into effect (the tanning tax, the medicine cabinet tax, the HSA withdrawal tax, W-2 health insurance reporting, and the “economic substance doctrine”). Several more will go into effect on January 1, 2013.

They include:

The Obamacare Medical Device Tax begins to be assessed on January 1, 2013. Medical device manufacturers employ 409,000 people in 12,000 plants across the country. This law imposes a new 2.3% excise tax on gross sales – even if the company does not earn a profit in a given year. Exempts items retailing for <$100.

The Obamacare Medicare Payroll Tax Hike takes effect on January 1, 2013. The Medicare payroll tax is currently 2.9 percent on all wages and self-employment profits. Starting in 2013, wages and profits exceeding $200,000 ($250,000 in the case of married couples) will face a 3.8 percent rate.

The Obamacare “Special Needs Kids Tax” comes online on January 1, 2013. Imposes a cap on FSAs of $2500 (now unlimited). Indexed to inflation after 2013. There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education. This Obamacare cap harms these families.

The Obamacare “Haircut” for Medical Itemized Deductions goes into force on January 1, 2013. Currently, those facing high medical expenses are allowed a deduction for medical expenses to the extent that those expenses exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI). The new provision imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI. Waived for 65+ taxpayers in 2013-2016 only.

Third Wave: The Alternative Minimum Tax and Employer Tax Hikes

When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2013, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise—the AMT won’t be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired. These tax increases will be in force for BOTH 2012 and 2013. The major items include:

The AMT will ensnare over 31 million families, up from 4 million last year. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families—rising from 4 million last year to 31 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.
Full business expensing will disappear. In 2011, businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. Starting on 2013 tax returns, all of it will have to be “depreciated” (slowly deducted over many years).

Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses. There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the “research and experimentation tax credit,” but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.

Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced. The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available. Tax credits for education will be limited. Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses. Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut. Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed. The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.

Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed. Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA. This contribution also counts toward an annual “required minimum distribution.” This ability will no longer be there.

Read more: https://atr.org/days-taxmageddon-a7203#ixzz278PWNKzo

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Obama pressed on failures at Univision forum

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Obama pressed on failures at Univision forum
By REID J. EPSTEIN | 9/20/12 5:07 PM EDT

CORAL GABLES, Fla. – President Barack Obama on Thursday faced some of the toughest questioning of his reelection campaign to date, pressed repeatedly on his failure to achieve comprehensive immigration reform and other unmet promises from his 2008 run.

The Univision presidential forum at the University of Miami here kicked off with grilling on another topic which brought mounting criticism from Republicans Thursday: The government’s decision to label as a terrorist attack the violence at the consulate in Benghazi which killed American Christopher Stevens.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81470.html#ixzz277DdRf2k

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Avo 25th Anniversary in stock now at Tobacco Shop of Ridgewood

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Avo 25th Anniversary in stock now at Tobacco Shop of Ridgewood

This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the AVO cigar brand
created by cigar icon Avo Uvezian, who began composing
cigars in 1987. To celebrate 25 years of ‘Cigars in Perfect
Harmony,’ Avo has decided to share with you his two greatest
passions, the piano and the cigar. It is this passion for music and
cigars that has presented Avo with such happiness throughout
the last quarter century. And today, in celebration of 25 years,
Avo presents his passions to you..

Only 2,000 individually numbered ‘Grand Piano’ boxes have
been made for the United States making this a rare collector’s
item. Available now at The Tobacco Shop of Ridgewood.

Now available at
The Tobacco Shop of Ridgewood

~Gary, Barbara and Collin

The Tobacco Shop of Ridgewood  10 Chestnut Street  Ridgewood, New Jersey 07450
Phone: 201-447-2204 | Email: [email protected]
Hours: Monday – Saturday 10:00AM – 5:30PM and Thursday Night 6:30PM – 8:30PM

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$1.8 trillion shock: Obama regs cost 20-times estimate

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$1.8 trillion shock: Obama regs cost 20-times estimate
September 20, 2012 | 8:51 am

Current federal regulations plus those coming under Obamacare will cost American taxpayers and businesses $1.8 trillion annually, more than twenty times the $88 billion the administration estimates, according to a new roundup provided to Secrets from the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute.

And it could grow, warned the author of the report, Clyde Wayne Crews, a CEI vice president.

Complying with Health and Human Services Department requirements alone, he revealed, costs $184 billion a year, yet regulators are still drafting the rules for the 2,400-page Obamacare law that kicks into gear in 2014.

Crews has made a working project of his “Tip of the Costberg” report which he regularly updates. In it, he compares the cost of regulations estimated by federal agencies to a much broader list of estimates from multiple federal and independent sources. And even then, he said, it doesn’t include hard-to-calculate costs associated with antitrust intervention, regulation of electricity networks, or the cost of constrained access to natural resources.

“While OMB officially reports amounts of only up to $88.6 billion in 2010 dollars,” said Crews, “the non-tax cost of government intervention in the economy, without performing a sweeping survey, appears to total up to $1.806 trillion annually.”

https://washingtonexaminer.com/1.8-trillion-shock-obama-regs-cost-20-times-estimate/article/2508466#.UFtH07KPX-u

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Ridgewood Garage , Estate,Yard and Moving Sales

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Multi-Family Garage Sale – $1 (Ridgewood, NJ)

Huge Garage Sale Saturday October 22nd 9 -4PM. Desk, Chairs, portable dishwasher, oven, jewelry, designer mens and womens clothes, kitchen appliances, antiques and much more. Coach, Juicy, Worth, Polo, RL

235 Walthery Ave, Ridgewood, NJ 07450

Huge Multi Family Yard Sale Saturday, 9/22 (Ridgewood)

Huge Multi-Family Yard Sale

Saturday, 9/22 from 9 to 1

493 Eastbrook Road, Ridgewood, NJ

Tons of baby gear ,Strollers, Swings, , toys
Books,Household goods,Electronics
And more!

No early birds please.

MULTI FAMILY YARD SALE!!! SAT. 9/29 (RIDGEWOOD,NJ)

135 S.VAN DIEN AVE. RIDGEWOOD NJ
Multi family yard sale selling baby joggers, pack n play, high chair, toddler bike seat, various pieces of furniture, lamps, electronics, assorted toys for all ages,
books, luggage, entertaining accessories and decorations, misc. items for the kitchen, bikes, curtain rods, and many other treasures!
See you Saturday 9/22 9am-3pm (Rain date: Sunday 9/23 12-4)