PACE loans are quick personel loans that cities provide to homeowners, otherwise known as the Property Assessed Clean Energy Bonds. Beyond the fact they are intended solely for energy retrofits, PACE loans are also paid off by property taxes. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is working to push these loans out of their market.

August 22 is when new credit card rules will be put into place. To make these new rules possible, banks and credit card companies are working to cut credit limits, rates and fees on all their cards. Since the economy is so bad right now, it makes sense that credit limits would be cut. Although a consumer can do nothing over it, having a credit limit lowered like this hurts a person's credit score. There are possibilities for individuals who want to either stop their credit limit from going down or even make it go up.

Interest groups for the traditional banking regime would have you believe that you will find numerous cheap payday loans alternatives. Their argument may apply to consumers with sufficient credit to grant the financial flexibility needed to obtain cheaper short term loans, but for consumers operating under great credit constraints, loan lenders is a a lot more practical option. Unfortunately, an excellent deal of misinformation concerning paydayloans alternatives exists in the mainstream media, and a recent piece by USA Today underscores this trend.

The nation's economy added 431,000 jobs in the month of May, and the unemployment rate dipped to 9.7 percent, the government reported Friday.

The job growth is lower than many expected and will not provide a boost to the Obama administration, which has been struggling to demonstrate that its economic policies are helping to ease the nation's epic unemployment problem.

The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama's promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000.

This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.

To be sure, Barack Obama's tax promises in last year's campaign were most often made in the context of income taxes. Not always.

March 26, 2010

Small Business Fact of the Week

Obama and Taxes

Given the passage of ObamaCare and looming tax increases at the end of this year, let's take a look at where some key taxes are headed under President Obama:

• Personal Income Taxes: The top personal income tax rate is scheduled to increase from 35% to 39.6% at the end of this year. But the additional Medicare income tax of 3.8% under ObamaCare must be added into the mix in 2013, increasing the top tax rate to 43.4%

By Ian Swanson - 04/23/10 01:04 PM ET

Vast tax increases will be inevitable under President Barack Obama’s budget blueprint, the nation’s largest business groups complained on Friday.

The groups blasted tax increases on businesses and wealthy individuals and families in the budget in a letter to members of the House and Senate, while warning that escalating public debt threatened the underlying economy.

Obama made many pledges on the campaign trail in 2008 and in the beginning stages of his presidency. These included prohibiting lobbyists from serving in his administration, enacting a net spending cut, closing Guantanamo Bay by January 2010, and open and transparent health care negotiations. All of those pledges have been violated. And now we can add another one to the list: Obama’s famous pledge to ensure the middle class will not see a tax increase during his administration.