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Will Smith told viewers that it’s an act of “love” to respond to an insult with your hands. It most certainly is not.

It seems that each week another ridiculously unconstitutional “content moderation” bill pops up in another state. Beyond the fact that nearly all of these bills are preempted by federal law (and are unconstitutional under the 1st Amendment) it seems that state legislatures feel the need to score political points. And it’s not just one party. […]

ST. LOUIS - Cafe Natasha's is closing at the end of April but the legacy of the south St. Louis mainstay will live on in the same building through The Gin Room. Hamishe Bahrami, owner of Cafe Natasha's, is retiring on April 30 and subsequently, the Persian restaurant will also close. But the adjoining Gin [...]

ST. LOUIS - Spire's free online energy assessment tool is projected to have helped Missouri customers save more than $2 million in total. It debuted last spring and works by showing them the energy efficiency of their homes. The energy assessment tool is available at no cost to Spire Missouri residential customers. Once customers establish [...]

Find your dream job, or move up to one you've always wanted.

Born without arms, Letisha Wexstten achieved YouTube fame by showing people all the things she can do — drive a car, bake a cake and more. Now, she wants to help other disabled people demonstrate what they can do via her online career development platform V15Able, which links people with disabilities to employers.

A new AC Hotel by Marriott opened to guests Monday in the new $80 million Wildhorse mixed-use development in Chesterfield.

American Jews say they were blindsided by the U.S. Senate’s lightning-fast passage of a bill to make daylight saving time year-round and intend to fight it. The Sunshine Protection Act, …

"It's time," Brennan told listeners Monday, according to the station.

Authorities said the male victim appeared to be in his late teens.

The Fan Expo, formerly produced as Wizard's World, comes May 13-15 to America's Center.

This is Interstate 15 where it crosses California Highway 76. The view is looking south. San Diego is shrouded in clouds at the southern end of I15; Oceanside is off the frame at the western end of Highway 76; and Camp Pendleton is off the frame to the lower right.

Members of the House Budget Committee reviewed the latest version of the state budget put forth by Rep. Cody Smith, a Carthage Republican who chairs the panel.

Three St. Louis Catholic high schools are closed Monday amid ongoing contract negotiations between the union that represents more than 100 teachers and the Archdiocese of St. Louis, according to the union president. Kathryn Williams-Heese, the president of the St. Louis Archdiocesan Teachers Association, said staffing shortages and unresolved contract issues affecting teachers at Bishop DuBourg High School, Rosati-Kain High School and St. Mary's High School led to classes being canceled. Classes…

ST. LOUIS - Today, the Downtown Engagement and Public Safety Initiative, in partnership with Labyrinth Smart Mobility, today launched STL Downtown Link. The program, a micro-transit pilot designed to enhance connectivity in the downtown corridor is a perfect solution for visitors and residents who travel within the downtown area for the world-class sports, and cultural attractions Downtown St. Louis offers. “The STL Downtown Link will increase connectivity downtown and help everyone take advantage of the great amenities Downtown has to offer,” said Alderman James Page (5). “The community is excited for this program, and I encourage residents and visitors alike to try it out for themselves.” Labyrinth Smart Mobility will manage the service, which includes two six-passenger electric vehicle shuttles, lead system operations, and shuttle drivers. Funded through the American Rescue Plan Act, the STL Downtown Link will provide free localized public transportation

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by Paul Kiel, Jesse Eisinger and Jeff Ernsthausen

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Join us April 12 for a live discussion about how the ultrawealthy skirt the tax system and how Biden’s new billionaire tax proposal could change that.

Last year ProPublica, drawing on a trove of IRS data, gave the public its most extensive view ever of the taxes of the wealthiest Americans. The first article in the Secret IRS Files series put real numbers to a core truth about the U.S. tax system: Billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett can easily shield their fortunes from taxation by avoiding the sorts of income captured on a tax return.

A proposal released today by the Biden administration takes direct aim at this issue. The policy, if enacted, would, for a sliver of the very wealthiest, close that escape hatch. Vast increases in wealth would result in owing taxes.

Generally, the IRS does not tax gains unless they are “realized,” typically when a person sells a stock that has gained in value. Billionaires who hold on to assets that have appreciated get the benefit of those unrealized gains — they often borrow against them — without owing any tax.

This is by no means a new bug in the U.S. system. But as ProPublica explained last year, the explosion of wealth inequality in recent decades, coupled with the particular nature of how these new fortunes have been built, has made unrealized gains particularly important at this point in our history.

Past U.S. presidents have, on occasion, pushed for higher taxes on the rich, but usually by hiking traditional income tax rates. Biden’s proposal calls for a paradigm shift: It would change what gets counted as income. “Although the taxation of unrealized gain is still far from enactment, and even if enacted would await an uncertain fate in the Supreme Court, presidential endorsement of the concept is a milestone in the history of the income tax,” said Lawrence Zelenak, a Duke University School of Law professor whose expertise includes income and corporate tax and tax policy.

As outlined by the White House, the new tax would apply only to households worth over $100 million. They would owe a tax of at least 20% on their “full income,” as a White House document terms it, a definition that includes unrealized gains. News of the proposal, which was included as part of Biden’s 2023 budget plan, was first reported by The Washington Post.

Under the current system, the wealthiest Americans pay nowhere close to that tax rate on gains in their wealth. The 25 richest Americans, as measured by Forbes, got $401 billion richer from 2014 to 2018. ProPublica’s analysis of the IRS data found that the group paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes during that time, a rate of only 3.4%.

In an analysis posted on Twitter, University of California Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman estimated that the 10 richest Americans alone would owe at least $215 billion under the plan.

In all, the Biden Administration estimates, the new tax would generate $360 billion in extra revenue over 10 years.

The plan would allow those hit by the tax a period of nine years to pay their “initial” obligations: In other words, someone whose fortune has increased by $10 billion as of when the bill became law would have that time to pay the $2 billion they owe. Going forward, further increases of wealth would result in taxes owed over a five-year period.

Although Biden’s Billionaire Minimum Income Tax, as it’s called, is a major departure from past presidential proposals, it would deploy features that are already part of current tax law.

For instance, there is the Alternative Minimum Tax, a measure first enacted decades ago in response to revelations that the richest were easily avoiding paying income taxes. The AMT is supposed to work as a kind of fail-safe, imposing taxes on rich people who have used huge deductions to wipe out income for tax purposes and thus avoid taxes. But it often fails. For instance, we found multiple examples of billionaires paying not a penny in income taxes, sometimes for years at a time.

Like the AMT, Biden’s minimum tax would work alongside the current tax code. If a billionaire happened to already be paying 20% of their full income, the Biden plan would result in no extra tax.

The existing tax code also has provisions that tax unrealized gains in certain situations. For instance, professionals who trade in securities, such as hedge fund managers, often elect to have their portfolios “marked to market” and owe tax based on their gains or losses relative to the previous year. Similarly, another provision hits wealthy Americans who choose to renounce their citizenship: All their property is valued and taxed as if it had been sold.

Versions of a tax on mark-to-market gains have been proposed before, going back several years, most notably last year by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chair of the Senate Finance Committee. The idea, however, has its share of critics, both Republicans and tax experts who worry it would be too complicated to administer and would risk being struck down by the Supreme Court.

John Brooks of Georgetown University Law Center is among the supporters. He argued the idea is squarely constitutional, given “the many examples of taxing unrealized gain already in the tax code.” And as for complaints about its complexity, the wealthy already value their assets for their own financial purposes, he told ProPublica: “In the end, it would be a simple, formulaic approach that would require minimal work in addition to what wealthy taxpayers are already doing.”