Killing Several Birds with One Stone In planning for your retirement, you may face several financial issues. Maybe you’d like to generate retirement income, but don’t want to pay capital gains tax on investments you’ve held for several years. Perhaps you’d like to minimize your income taxes during retirement. You also might like to reduce [...]

Half of Americans aren’t paying federal income taxes. Is that right? A provocative statistic. Last July, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution) estimated that 47% of Americans would not owe a penny to the IRS for tax year 2009.1 The White House has projected the [...]

How do you pay down an $8 trillion debt? The Obama administration needs an answer, as the non-profit Congressional Budget Office says America’s debt could rise to $20 trillion by 2020. One possible answer has a very European ring to it: a VAT, or value-added tax. What are the chances of Americans paying a national sales tax? And what about an Internet tax? Or an energy tax? Are they also possible?