Shopping blues: Top tax 12%. Chicago’s 10.25% highest big-city rate. More Internet tax fights loom. While President Obama’s push to raise federal income taxes for the wealthy gets lots of attention, the continuing upward creep in the sales tax rates imposed by state and local governments has gotten less notice. But Vertex Inc., which calculates […]
Category Archives: Finance
Supermarkets Trick You To Spend More
Beware of the sneaky ways grocery stores spur spending, and follow our tips to outsmart the system. 1. ENTRANCE AREA The trap: Stores internally refer to this as the “chill zone.†And with good reason: This spot primes shoppers with impulse buys like DVDs, bulk goods and holiday products that appeal to them emotionally, says […]
Euro’s Next Battleground
Greece set off the crisis rattling the euro zone. Spain could determine whether the 16-nation currency stands or falls. The euro zone’s No. 4 economy, Spain has an unemployment rate of 19%, a deflating housing bubble, big debts and a gaping budget deficit. Its gross domestic product contracted 3.6% in 2009 and is expected to […]
Family Car A Cash Cow
SAN DIEGO, California (AFP) – US researchers unveiled a vehicle Thursday that earns money for its driver instead of guzzling it up in gasoline and maintenance costs. The converted Toyota Scion xB, shown at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science here, is the first electric car to be linked […]
11 Tax Deductions
Although the tax code permits a wide range of deductions for taxpayers in various situations, thousands of filers routinely claim deductions for various types of expenses that are in fact non-deductible. Here is a list of some of the more common non-deductible expenses that show up on tax returns each year. Spousal and Child Support […]
The Least-Trusted Banks in America
Customers of the biggest banks in the United States are the least likely to believe their financial institution does what’s best for them as opposed to what’s best for the bottom line, according to a new report from Forrester Research. The report, Forrester’s annual Customer Advocacy rankings, ranks nearly 50 financial services firms in the […]
Recessionomics 101
How to Make Extra Money Jennifer Winslow wanted to earn some extra cash without giving up the flexibility of working part time. An avid cook, she and a friend initially planned to cater meals for busy families. When that turned out to be too time consuming, she tried baking. More than five years later, she […]
Keep IRS Auditors Away
Keep IRS auditors away: Earn less than $200,000 Earn less than $200,000 and IRS auditors will stay away 99 percent of the time Want to keep IRS auditors away? Keep your earnings under $200,000 and they won’t bother you 99 percent of the time.IRS enforcement numbers, released Tuesday, show that returns under that amount have […]