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We Have Ghost Estates: China Has Ghost Cities

A $19 billion development in Zhengzhou, packed with blocks of empty apartments

Don't Get Audited! The IRS's Dirty Dozen Red Flags

By Joy Taylor, assistant editor, The Kiplinger Tax Letter

Ever wonder why some tax returns get intense scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service while most are ignored? The agency doesn't have enough personnel and resources to examine each and every tax return filed during a year -- it audits only slightly more than 1% of all individual returns annually.

I have filed exempt , when I am allowed , for many years. You must file the W-4 between Jan 1 and Feb 15 and you must file a new W-4 annually. If you file beyond the time limit you are automatically set to Single with no dependents. In the last 10 years we have had a total of $5 in FITW withheld and we received a full refund. The only income based tax we pay is Social Security but that is unavoidable.
In the last 20 years we have paid about $1,000 in Income Taxes and that has been offset by the Stimulus money that we have received.

Another example of how mindless government bureaucrats are. They were actually counting on a $10,000,000 tax return from a Long Island tax payer. $10,000,000 owed on a personal tax return, you think that would have caught somebodies attention!

The city of Aurora, Illinois stole nearly $200,000 from two brothers and is now refusing to return it despite an order from a judge.

Congressman Ron Paul has continued to run his Congressional office in a frugal manner, and was able to return more than $100,000 from his allotted office budget to the Treasury this year, an increase over the $90,000 returned last year.

About 180 county employees in suburban Atlanta are being asked to return thousands of dollars the county says they were overpaid 16 years ago.

On Sunday, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as members of Afghans for Peace, led a peace march of thousands of people. Iraq Veterans Against the War held a ceremony where nearly 50 veterans discarded their war medals by hurling them down the street in the direction of the NATO summit. We hear the soldiers’ voices as they return their medals one by one from the stage. "I’m here to return my Global War on Terror Service Medal in solidarity with the people of Iraq and the people of Afghanistan," said Jason Hurd, a former combat medic who spent 10 years in the U.S. Army.

Nearly one in three Americans failed to return their census questionnaires by Friday’s official deadline, the Census Bureau said.