Schedule of Florida Sales or Use Tax Credits Claimed on Form

WHOA! You may have a BIG problem. When you started, are you certain you did not fill in a W-4 form? Are you certain that your employer doesn’t have your SS#? If that’s the case, I would be alarmed. Do you have paycheck stubs showing how they calculated your withholding? ( BTW you are entitled to those under the law, and if you are not receiving them, I would demand them….)If your employer is just giving you random checks with no calculation of your wages and withholdings, you have a rogue employer. They probably aren’t payin in what they purport to withhold from you.

OK, first off I’m going to say *IGNORE* the instructions on the updated W-4 form. It’s not worth anything. And yes, I’ve seen and followed the directions, which are wildly inaccurate and misleading.Here’s how exemptions and the W-4 work.As of last year, per the Tax Cuts and Job Act, you can NO LONGER, claim yourself as a dependent/exemption. You can, if you are married, no longer claim your spouse as a dependent/exemption.IF you have minor children (Age 19 and under) you *MAY* claim one exemption per child. IF you have a child, enrolled ‘full time in school’ who is age 24 or under, and that schooling is College, Trade School, Vo-Tech, etc and NOT primary education (IE High School education, GED classes, etc) you may claim an exemption for them.So simple example. Jack and Jane Darling are married. They have one child born June 1st.From January to June, Jack and Jane can *ONLY* claim ZERO EXEMPTIONS on their W-4. From June 1st, when the child is born, on wards, they can each claim ONE Exemption on their W-4.Hopefully that helps and simplifies it down. And yes, I’m a tax preparer as well. I spent all of last year warning various clients and I’m doing the same this year, along with explaining how many you can *legally* claim on your W-4.

Who cares?The entire point of cash assistance and child tax credits and other unrestricted subsidies is to increase aggregate demand. I don’t care where it’s spent, so long as it is spent, because that is it’s purpose.To illustrate this point, in your linked article there is a tattoo artist who is upset that someone used public funds to purchase a tattoo because “taxes keep going up”. However, since this artist pays taxes based on income, is he better off or worse off after someone bought the tattoo with public funds? Surely the taxes weren’t 100% or more, and surely he turned a profit from it. It’s almost certain that he’d be worse off if no one ever bought a tattoo with public funds.We see this type of argument with means tested welfare all the time. Even with something as tightly controlled as food stamps, you get states that want to restrict people from buying things like pre-made spaghetti sauce or potato chips, which are staple foods in most American households. Companies like Kraft and Frito-Lay understand the concept I outlined above, and know that public dollars are an increase to their bottom line and fight any and all legislation that tries to restrict food stamp use. I’ll guarantee they pay more in taxes than you ever will, and yet they fight in favor of these programs because it’s financially prudent.THOSE PUBLIC DOLLARS BEING SPENT ON TATTOOS, GAMBLING, VACATIONS, SPAGHETTI SAUCE, ETC., ARE LITERALLY PROFITS THAT CREATE JOBS. Stop caring about what they are spent on, and be happy that they are spent. They don’t create a paycheck when they are sitting in a bank account.Getting back to the “taxes keep going up” line… Los Angeles had a tax reduction over the last 6 years at some point. California State sales tax dropped -.25%, and at some point LA dropped another -.75%, because in 2011 it was 9.75% and today it stands at 8.75%. Various other taxes rise and fall depending on the economic situation as well, demonstrably throughout history. It’s disingenuous to claim otherwise while making a point.

Source: 2019 Federal Income Tax Brackets | 2019 Tax Brackets & RatesAssuming nothing more than this list applies (and using Head of Household rates):$1,385 +$4,680 +$6,897 +$18,360 +$13,888 +$107,170 +$3,511,189or $3,663,569

Mexico can't stop America from doing that. They also can't stop America from charging tariffs and taxing Americans to pay for Trump's hair treatments. Mexico has no control over America's tariff and taxation policy, that's run by the US government, and is ultimately only accountable to the American people.What Mexico can, and absolutely will do, is retaliate by imposing tariffs on American goods, effectively kicking off a trade war which will hurt both countries. American farmers, ranchers, manufacturers, etc., who sell things to Mexico will lose business, and some will go out of business. American consumers will pay more for everything from gas to grapes, and American manufacturers who buy materials and components from Mexico (and there are many), will find their expenses going up. Some will have lay offs or go out of business.As for the taxation, if Trump can convince a Republican congress to raise taxes, Mexico has no say in it. I mean, to 100% certainty it will increase the market for illegal smuggling of money and other financial interests across international borders. Some of the more tech-savvy organizations might use BitCoin, or some other digital currency. America will likely try to crack down on this, occasionally confiscate an envelope of money to wave around on the news as a sign they're doing their job, but the additional federal money gained from this program will probably be less than the additional money we have to spend on border enforcement just chasing the dark money. But that's ultimately a US thing. Sure, it would be hypocritical of a Republican congress to raise federal taxes, but hypocrisy has never stopped them before. And it would have massive political backlash from every American with friends or relatives in Mexico who wants to send them money for any reason. But this administration has basically written of the support of everyone with Mexican ties in the entire US, so that's probably not such a big thing.So, if destruction of trade and onerous taxes on the poorest of our workers is what Trump wants to build his wall on, all Pena can do is try to tie his country closer with other, more reasonable global powers.