- U.S.Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Two children killed in Roanoke backhoe accident studied at private Fort Worth school
The driver of the backhoe, Vijender Chauhan, 40, of Crowley, was arrested on suspicion of two counts of manslaughter, according to the Texas Highway Patrol.
- LifestyleNextShark
Woman Discovers Her Son's Bride is Her Long Lost Daughter
A woman in eastern China had the shock of her life when she found out that her son was marrying her long-lost daughter. The reunion occurred right at the would-be spouses' wedding in Suzhou, Jiangsu province on March 31, according to Sohu News. The shocking discovery was made after the woman noticed a birthmark on the bride's hand, which looked strikingly similar to that of her long-lost child.
- EntertainmentIn The Know
Former stripper reveals she was the inspiration behind a popular 2000s song: 'I refuse to believe this'
Prepare for your daily dose of nostalgia.
- BusinessNational Review
Biden Plan Will Raise Taxes on the Middle Class
President Biden’s promise to raise taxes only on the richest Americans cannot possibly be upheld if he is successful with the centerpiece of his tax plan. That, of course, is to repeal the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) passed during the Trump administration. The primary effect of the TCJA was to reduce taxes for Americans in the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution. Put another way, the top 20 percent of earners were the only ones who did not get a tax cut under the TCJA. Americans earning between about $40,000 and $80,000 per year benefited most from the TCJA, and millions of others at the lowest income levels were taken off the tax rolls altogether. President Biden, along with House and Senate Democrats, have pledged to reverse all that. For example, the president vows to eliminate the so-called “stepped-up basis” rule for inherited property. The president refers to this as a “loophole” that allows the rich to game the system. It is no loophole. In fact, it is a specific rule of law under Internal Revenue Code §1014. This law was not a part of the TCJA. It has been on the books since 1954 but is only now under attack by Democrats looking for ways to take more of your money. Here’s how it works. Suppose your parents own a home worth $200,000. They purchased the home decades ago for, say, $50,000. If they gift the home to you prior to their passing, your basis in the home is the same as theirs: $50,000. That means if you sell the home for its current value of $200,000, you must pay capital gains tax on the profit of $150,000 — the difference between basis and sale price. By contrast, if you inherit the home after their death, your basis is equal to the fair market value of the property as of the date of death — in this example, $200,000. See: Code §1014(a)(1). Now if you sell the property for $200,000, there is no capital-gains tax because there’s no gain (sale price minus basis equals gain). This is what we refer to as “stepped-up basis.” And the rule absolutely does not apply only to “rich people.” The operation of Code §1014 is not controlled by one’s annual income, the value of the inherited asset, or the total value of one’s estate. It applies across the board. Every American taxpayer enjoys the benefit of stepped-up basis on inherited property. If Code §1014 were repealed in its entirety, all inherited property would be taxed on sale at the capital-gains rate. In general, the gain would be calculated on the difference between the sale price and the price at which the deceased person paid for it (plus any capital improvements that add to the cost basis). To go back to your parents’ home, if they paid $50,000 for it, and you sold it for $200,000 after their death, that $150,000 would be subject to tax. And that example might not be as extreme as it seems. It’s not unlikely that your parents would have held on to their last home for many years. One consolation, however, is that the White House appears to be contemplating exempting the first $1 million in unrealized gains from these new rules, a limit which, if left unchanged, will likely be eroded by inflation over the years, if not outright reduced or eliminated. Moreover, you can expect the tax bill to be calculated at a much higher rate than those currently in effect. According to Gallup, as of 2017, 82 percent of Americans over age 65 own their own homes. That is the highest rate of homeownership for any age group. When these people die, their property passes to their heirs. If President Biden and the Democrats have their way, the coming years will see an increased transfer of wealth — not from parents to children (as it should be) — but from parents to the federal government. For now, there may be a way for those affected by these proposed changes to reduce the impact of the law, by (to oversimplify) selling a primary residence eligible for capital-gains-tax relief on its sale, but then how many elderly people are going to want to go through the disruption of selling their homes at a late stage in their lives? And of course, to the extent that there are ways to reduce the impact of the step-up rules, we cannot be sure that they will endure, considering how desperate the federal government will be for money in light of the multi-trillion-dollar spending spree it’s been on for the past year. Meanwhile, keep an eye on the estate tax, too. In 2021, estates valued under $11.7 million are not subject to the estate tax. But if President Biden has his way, that threshold will be cut to $3.5 million, and the rate of tax increased to 45 percent (from 40 percent). Considering that as recently as 2001 the threshold was just $675,000, it’s not difficult to foresee this tax hitting middle-income Americans. So much for tax hikes on “only the rich.” Author’s Note: Any tax strategy depends upon the totality of your own circumstances. Before engaging in any tax strategy, you should first consult competent advisors to whom you make full disclosure of all the relevant facts and circumstances of your case.
- U.S.Axios
America is losing its religion — and the effects will be long-lasting
New surveys show Americans' membership in communities of worship has declined sharply in recent years, with less than 50% of the country belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque.Why it matters: The accelerating trend towards a more secular America represents a fundamental change in the national character, one that will have major ramifications for politics and even social cohesion.Get market news worthy of your time with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free.By the numbers: A Gallup poll released last week found just 47% of Americans reported belonging to a house of worship, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% as recently as 1999.The shift away from organized religion is a 21st century phenomenon. U.S. religious membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937, and stayed above 70% for the next six decades.Context: The decline in membership is primarily driven by a sharp rise in the "nones" — Americans who express no religious preference.The percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion rose from 8% between 1998 and 2000 to 21% over the past three years, while the percentage of nones who do not belong to a house of worship has risen as well.The big picture: The story of a more secular America is chiefly — though not entirely — one of generational change.Membership in houses of worship is correlates with age, with the oldest Americans much more likely to be church members than younger adults.But while church membership is lower among younger generations, the dropoff is particularly stark among millennials and Gen Z, who are about 30 percentage points lower than Americans born before 1946, compared to 8 points and 16 points respectively for baby boomers and Gen X. Children who grow up without organized religion are less likely to join houses of worship when they become adults, so it stands to reason that the secularization trend will only continue in the future, barring major demographic or cultural changes. Yes, but: Generational replacement — the idea that society-wide changes in values between the young and the old can be attributed to their different circumstances growing up — doesn't tell the entire story.Even the oldest Americans have seen a slight rise in the percentage of nones, while 20% of Gen Xers report no religious affiliation, up from 11% in 1999.Details: Whatever their religious practices, Americans are increasingly rejecting many of the moral precepts found in most major religions. A 2017 Gallup poll found a significant majority of Americans believe practices like birth control, divorce, extramarital sex, gay and lesbian relations are all morally acceptable. In a piece last year for Foreign Affairs, the political scientist Ronald F. Inglehart argued that as birthrates have dropped thanks in part to contraception and falling infant mortality, modern societies have become less observant "because they no longer need to uphold the kinds of gender and sexual norms that the major world religions have instilled for centuries." The catch: Just because conventional religious practice is on the decline doesn't mean Americans will have no need to fill what the journalist Murtaza Hussain calls the country's "God-shaped hole."While the earlier phases of the civil rights movement were built on the strength of the Black church, today many young people are flocking to campaigns like Black Lives Matter that aren't religious in nature, but often adopt the language of religion, spirituality and justice. "Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations," Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a recent Atlantic essay. "This is what religion without religion looks like."What's next: As religion decreasingly becomes something Americans practice, it may instead become another identity, subsumed into the ongoing culture wars.The trend may also shake up the electorate. The journalist Matt Yglesias noted that when a white person switches from being Christian to non-affiliated, they are more likely to become a Democrat, "but when a Black person makes the same switch, the correlation goes in the other direction."That could help explain the fairly secular Donald Trump having partial success in increasing the GOP's share of the non-white vote in 2020. The bottom line: The U.S. remains an unusually religious country, with more than seven in 10 Americans still affiliating with some organized religion, according to the Gallup poll.But conventional religion's power is on the wane, and it might take a miracle for that to change.More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free
- WorldThe Week
Newly disclosed CIA memo reveals U.S. concealed high-ranking Nazi's role in Holocaust so he could serve as a Cold War asset
In the years following World War II, the United States and West Germany jointly worked to conceal a high-ranking Nazi official's role in deporting tens of thousands of Jews, newly disclosed intelligence records obtained by German public broadcaster ARD reveal, per The New York Times. Franz Josef Huber led a large section of the Gestapo — Adolf Hitler's secret police — that stretched across Austria, and his forces worked closely with Adolf Eichmann on the coordination of the deportation of Jews to concentration and extermination camps. Eichmann, famously, was tried and executed in Israel in 1962 for his role in the Holocaust, but Huber dodged that fate, even though he was arrested by American forces in 1945. He was released in 1948 and continued to live out his days in Munich, seemingly avoiding responsibility altogether because he was seen as a potential Cold War asset. The CIA, for example, believed he could help recruit agents in the Soviet bloc. As one memo from 1953 reads, the agency was "by no means unmindful of the dangers involved in playing around with a Gestapo general," but "we also believe, on the basis of the information now in our possession, that Huber might be profitably used by this organization." The West German intelligence service, the BND, gave him a cover story, and it took 20 years before the agency decided "they could no longer tolerate the connection," the Times writes. While Huber's story may stand out because of his significant standing within the Third Reich, Prof. Shlomo Shpiro of Israel's Bar-Ilan University explained that "Western intelligence services struggled to recruit reliable anti-communist contacts," which meant they frequently ignored the backgrounds of potential assets. "Many former Nazis took advantage of the new communist threat to secure for themselves both immunity from war crimes prosecution and hefty salaries from U.S. and West German intelligence agencies," he said. Read more at The New York Times. More stories from theweek.comGallup: Democrats now outnumber Republicans by 9 percentage points, thanks to independents5 scathingly funny cartoons about MLB vs. the GOPPiers Morgan claims 'several' royals have thanked him after he repeatedly said he doesn't believe Meghan Markle
- NewsInternet Video Archive
VideoLaw & Order: Special Victims Unit: Stabler's Heartbreaking Apology To Benson For Abandoning Her
The squad rallies around Detective Stabler to find the suspect behind a threat to his family. Also guest starring Isabel Gillies, Allison Siko and Jeffrey Scaperrotta.

Yahoo Home




