by Charles Katebi Ever since Congress passed Obamacare in 2010, each April 15, the dreaded tax return filing day, brings ever more complexity to our federal tax code. This year's complexity is the employer mandate, the most harmful of the law's tax provisions because it spells trouble for businesses and workers alike. If the Supreme Court sides wit...

by Wyoming Liberty Staff April 15 looms large on the calendar for taxpayers. Don't be fooled if you get a refund on your federal income tax return. Taxes represent a significant annual expense for many families, especially those that usually pay the United States Treasury, because the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") withheld your money throughout ...

Have you ever wondered whether government should buy coal or natural gas, convert it to a higher valued product and then sell that product in the open market? If this sounds like a bad idea to you, you'd be right. Private companies have already invested their own money in this type of scheme and lost big. It is unlikely government would do better w...

by Tom Rose This week I attended two days of the Judiciary Interim Committee. There were several juvenile justice related topics on the agenda. During my attendance at these long and sometimes heated meetings a junior legislator asked out loud (in frustration) if anyone knew whether juvenile crime in Wyoming was actually decreasing. This legislator...

The 2015 legislative session created a number of measures that put taxpayers into the risky business of supporting some private companies. It also, in contrast, set up the Minerals Tax Task Force that could turn this corporate welfare trend around. The job of the task force is to study and make recommendations for a fair, viable and simplified syst...

by Wyoming Liberty Staff In writing a piece about why school choice is the right choice for parents in Wyoming I could start by reciting a whole slew of numbers regarding graduation rates, college enrollment, academic achievement and taxpayer savings. These figures are readily available everywhere and have been discussed for years by those in the e...

WyLiberty attorney Benjamin Barr comments on the 1040 campaign checkbox in this NPR story. April 14, 2015 

by Stephen Klein In the 2015 Wyoming Legislative Session, Senate File 14, or Senate Enrolled Act 1 (SEA 1), would have overhauled Wyoming's drug forfeiture laws to require a felony conviction before alleged drug property (cash, cars, firearms and the like) could be permanently taken by the state. The bill passed the Wyoming Legislature with an init...

by Tom Rose If you have been following juvenile justice issues at all you may have come across the fact that Wyoming is the only state in the nation which has not decriminalized status offenses. You may even believe that you have an understanding of what that means. The concept is fairly simple: a status crime is an action that would not be a crime...

by Tom Rose For the last few weeks I have been writing about child wellness in Wyoming. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation Wyoming ranked 19th in the 2014 annual report which is a lower ranking than our performance of 15th according to the 2013 report. These rankings are determined according to sixteen measured wellness categories divided a...