No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for April 29th, 2010

Hot Air moving on up

by @ 20:24. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Tonight is the big night that Hot Air moves onto Salem’s servers. Since they don’t feel like leaving any comment behind, they’ll be locking things down momentarily.

After that’s done, and the rather-massive database is saved, they’ll copy everything over to the new database and begin the process of having all the Domain Name Servers update. That means that you might see everything on the new server tonight, or you might not. That depends on your ISP.

If you still are not seeing anything new there tomorrow afternoon…

  1. Clear your browser’s cache
  2. Flush your computer’s DNS records (I can’t speak for MacOS/Linux/earlier versions of Windows, but later versions of Windows, open up a command-prompt window type ipconfig /flushdns, hit enter, and then close the command-prompt).
  3. Tell your ISP to update their DNS servers.

Senate horserace update

Well, I can’t exactly call it a horserace yet, unless it’s one to the glue factory, but there are several updates:

  • First, former Doyle Commerce Secretary Dick Leinenkugel launched his spoil…er, campaign, and the initial signs are not exactly encouraging. Even before he got in, Rasmussen had his head-to-head matchup against Russ Feingold as the worst of the three announced challengers at 48% Feingold/37% Leinenkugel/7% somebody else.

    He followed that up with a train-wreck of an opening interview on WTMJ-AM’s Charlie Sykes’ show, in which he defended the dirty Talgo deal, a massive rail network, and a deadly-to-business cap-and-tax scheme. One GOP insider said, “I frankly don’t get it. He has no base; no story to get a base, and no money to put in the race.”

    The latest stake comes from the Sauk County GOP (H/T – Little Miss Sunshine, who completely misread the effect). They have passed a resolution rejecting the Leinenkugel campaign, and plan on putting a similar resolution on the floor of the state convention next month.

  • Speaking of that Rasmussen poll, Terrence Wall is actually starting to close on Feingold now that Tommy Thompson is out of the race. He trailed Feingold 49%/43%/3%. Dave Westlake, on the other hand, continues to lag significantly (49%/38%/4%).
  • Another potential big name has bowed out of running – retiring State Senator Ted Kanavas (R-Brookfield) bowed out. As Patrick McIlheran recorded, Kanavas told Sykes that it would take $5 million to think about taking on Feingold, which he would have had to begin raising long before now.
  • Speaking of money, Feingold added another $1.3 million in donations the past quarter to bring his warchest to $4.3 million. Meanwhile, Wall raised $103,000 and loaned the campaign $1.2 million the past quarter to put his warchest at just over $1 million (and a total of $1.5 million in debt, and Westlake is essentially out of cash (just under $14,000 raised the past quarter, with $2,288 in cash on hand). As Wall told me on the 15th, the Thompson Wait, and a focus on meeting voters, had a significant effect on that.
  • In a bit of (hopefully) good news with a tip of the hat to Owen, WisPolitics is reporting Oshkosh businessman/Tea Party founder Ron Johnson is getting in the race. As I noted on the 15th, WISN-AM’s Jay Weber mentioned that Johnson was allegedly prepared to put a significant amount of his own money (up to $10 million) into the race.
  • The last challenger for Feingold, Tim Michels, is still undecided about entering the race. Michels got smoked by Feingold in 2004 after getting a major upset in a crowded primary, which included semi-official NRSC candidate/car dealer Russ Darrow and state Senator Bob Welch. After the primary, the NRSC pulled out of Wisconsin.

I have a bad feeling if this remains a 4-5 person primary. There is only one Democrat statewide primary on the horizon (lieutenant governor), and the Dems are busy “deconflicting” that so they can meddle in the Republican primaries. Housekeeping note for those of you from out-of-state – while Wisconsin does not have party registration, a voter cannot vote in more than one party’s primary per election.

The death of small business – courtesy PlaceboCare

by @ 13:18. Filed under Business, Politics - National, Taxes.

(H/T – Ed Morrissey)

Chris Edwards over at the Cato Institute found a significant penalty for anybody doing business in the recently-passed PlaceboCare bill – essentially every business transaction aggregating to $600 in a given year must be reported to the IRS and the payee starting in 2012.

First, let’s review the current state of the applicable law (Section 6041 of the Internal Revenue Code) – An entity that, in the course of engaging in a trade or business, pays more than $600 (or less, as noted) in a taxable year of the following categories of payments to an individual (generally-speaking; there are some limited instances where that entity must report payments to a corporation) must report the aggregate amount to the IRS and the payee:

  • Wages
  • Salaries
  • Rent
  • Premiums
  • Annuities
  • Compensations
  • Renumerations
  • Enoulments
  • Dividends (including patronage dividends – threshhold of $10)
  • Interest (threshhold of $10)
  • Royalties (threshhold of $10)
  • Stock ownership plan distributions (threshhold of $0.01)
  • Other fixed or determinable gains
  • Other fixed or determinable profits
  • Other fixed or determinable income

There were a trio of changes buried on page 737 of the 936-page engrossed version of PlaceboCare, specifically in Section 9006, titled “Expansion of Information Reporting Requirements”. In order:

  • A new section (h) is created to require reporting payments made to corporations that do not qualify as tax-exempt organizations. That’s right – rent paid by a business entity to a corporation would have to be reported to the IRS.
  • “(A)mounts in consideration for property” would also have to be recorded and reported. I’m not a tax lawyer, but my read of applicable definitions does not limit this to real estate. Rather, it includes any good purchased for the business, from computers to raw materials to fuel burned in business vehicles. That’s right – if you are a contractor who uses your vehicle for business, and you spend $600.01 at a chain of gas stations owned by a single entity, you must add up the amount and report it to both the IRS and the gas station owner.
  • “(Other) gross proceeds” would also have to be recorded and reported. That captures every business transaction.

When this was part of the original version of PlaceboCare that came out of the House, the Air Conditioning Contractors of America noted the following (emphasis added):

Consider all the payments you make in the course of your business for property, such as computers, software, office supplies, and fuel to services, including janitorial services, coffee services, and package delivery services. If you paid more than $600 over the course of the tax year, you’ll need to file a Form 1099.

Did the roundtrip ticket for your air travel to the ACCA Annual Conference cost more than $600? If you answered yes, then you would have to issue a 1099 to American Airlines. This enormous impact will hit all businesses, but especially small businesses that don’t have a large administrative staff.

Don’t forget that in order to file all these 1099s, you’ll need to collect the necessary information from all your service providers. In order to comply with the law, you would have to get a Taxpayer Information Number or TIN from the business. If the vendor does not supply you with a TIN, you are obligated to withhold on your payments.

Open Thread Thursday – Keeping it simple

by @ 9:17. Filed under Open Thread Thursday.

After all, I am a simple man…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqp1U6RoQaw[/youtube]

I might actually have some material today, but don’t let that stop you from contributing.

[No Runny Eggs is proudly powered by WordPress.]