IRS provides tax inflation adjustments for tax year 2023

IR-2022-182, October 18, 2022

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today announced the tax year 2023 annual inflation adjustments for more than 60 tax provisions, including the tax rate schedules and other tax changes. Revenue Procedure 2022-38 PDF provides details about these annual adjustments.

New for 2023

The Inflation Reduction Act extended certain energy related tax breaks and indexed for inflation the energy efficient commercial buildings deduction beginning with tax year 2023. For tax year 2023, the applicable dollar value used to determine the maximum allowance of the deduction is $0.54 increased (but not above $1.07) by $0.02 for each percentage point by which the total annual energy and power costs for the building are certified to be reduced by a percentage greater than 25 percent. The applicable dollar value used to determine the increased deduction amount for certain property is $2.68 increased (but not above $5.36) by $0.11 for each percentage point by which the total annual energy and power costs for the building are certified to be reduced by a percentage greater than 25 percent.

Highlights of changes in Revenue Procedure 2022-38:

The tax year 2023 adjustments described below generally apply to tax returns filed in 2024.

The tax items for tax year 2023 of greatest interest to most taxpayers include the following dollar amounts:

• The standard deduction for married couples filing jointly for tax year 2023 rises to $27,700 up $1,800 from the prior year. For single taxpayers and married individuals filing separately, the standard deduction rises to $13,850 for 2023, up $900, and for heads of households, the standard deduction will be $20,800 for tax year 2023, up $1,400 from the amount for tax year 2022.
   
• Marginal Rates: For tax year 2023, the top tax rate remains 37% for individual single taxpayers with incomes greater than $578,125 ($693,750 for married couples filing jointly).

• The other rates are:

• 35% for incomes over $231,250 ($462,500 for married couples filing jointly);
  32% for incomes over $182,100 ($364,200 for married couples filing jointly);
  24% for incomes over $95,375 ($190,750 for married couples filing jointly);
  22% for incomes over $44,725 ($89,450 for married couples filing jointly);
  12% for incomes over $11,000 ($22,000 for married couples filing jointly).

• The lowest rate is 10% for incomes of single individuals with incomes of $11,000 or less ($22,000 for married couples filing jointly).
   

• The Alternative Minimum Tax exemption amount for tax year 2023 is $81,300 and begins to phase out at $578,150 ($126,500 for married couples filing jointly for whom the exemption begins to phase out at $1,156,300). The 2022 exemption amount was $75,900 and began to phase out at $539,900 ($118,100 for married couples filing jointly for whom the exemption began to phase out at $1,079,800).
   
• The tax year 2023 maximum Earned Income Tax Credit amount is $7,430 for qualifying taxpayers who have three or more qualifying children, up from $6,935 for tax year 2022. The revenue procedure contains a table providing maximum EITC amount for other categories, income thresholds and phase-outs.
   
• For tax year 2023, the monthly limitation for the qualified transportation fringe benefit and the monthly limitation for qualified parking increases to $300, up $20 from the limit for 2022.
   
• For the taxable years beginning in 2023, the dollar limitation for employee salary reductions for contributions to health flexible spending arrangements increases to $3,050. For cafeteria plans that permit the carryover of unused amounts, the maximum carryover amount is $610, an increase of $40 from taxable years beginning in 2022.
   
• For tax year 2023, participants who have self-only coverage in a Medical Savings Account, the plan must have an annual deductible that is not less than $2,650, up $200 from tax year 2022; but not more than $3,950, an increase of $250 from tax year 2022. For self-only coverage, the maximum out-of-pocket expense amount is $5,300, up $350 from 2022. For tax year 2023, for family coverage, the annual deductible is not less than $5,300, up from $4,950 for 2022; however, the deductible cannot be more than $7,900, up $500 from the limit for tax year 2022. For family coverage, the out-of-pocket expense limit is $9,650 for tax year 2023, an increase of $600 from tax year 2022.
   
• For tax year 2023, the foreign earned income exclusion is $120,000 up from $112,000 for tax year 2022.
   
• Estates of decedents who die during 2023 have a basic exclusion amount of $12,920,000, up from a total of $12,060,000 for estates of decedents who died in 2022.
   
• The annual exclusion for gifts increases to $17,000 for calendar year 2023, up from $16,000 for calendar year 2022.
   
• The maximum credit allowed for adoptions for tax year 2023 is the amount of qualified adoption expenses up to $15,950, up from $14,890 for 2022

Items unaffected by indexing:

By statute, certain items that were indexed for inflation in the past are currently not adjusted.

• The personal exemption for tax year 2023 remains at 0, as it was for 2022, this elimination of the personal exemption was a provision in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. 
   
• For 2023, as in 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2018, there is no limitation on itemized deductions, as that limitation was eliminated by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
   
• The modified adjusted gross income amount used by joint filers to determine the reduction in the Lifetime Learning Credit provided in § 25A(d)(2) is not adjusted for inflation for taxable years beginning after December 31, 2020. The Lifetime Learning Credit is phased out for taxpayers with modified adjusted gross income in excess of $80,000 ($160,000 for joint returns).

Source: IRS

LINK: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-provides-tax-inflation-adjustments-for-tax-year-2023

The Brief: Biden Is To Blame For Inflation And Driving America Off An Economic Cliff

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Gregg is joined by Michael O’Neill, assistant general counsel at Landmark Legal Foundation

A true leader has the courage and humility to admit their own mistakes. A coward blames others.

Since the first day of his presidency, Joe Biden has waged all-out war on our domestic energy industry, crippling our nation’s ability to provide the needed resources to sustain our own economy. It was a grievous mistake that has caused prices to soar and left consumers struggling financially.

Americans are smart. They know that Biden is responsible. 70 percent disapprove of his handling of inflation and gas prices, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll. It is a damning indictment of Biden’s policies, if not his incompetence.

Instead of having the fortitude to admit that his misguided green agenda badly damaged the U.S. economy, Biden blames Putin. And our nation’s oil companies. And OPEC. And bankers on Wall Street. And transportation companies. And COVID. And the kid who kicked the cat.

Never once has Biden looked in the mirror for a moment of self-reflection. He is incapable of recognizing that he was wrong in his decision to reverse our nation’s energy independence.

Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

With stubborn arrogance, Biden ignored all the warnings by economists and energy experts who rang the alarm over his debilitating energy policies.

They correctly predicted that America would be left vulnerable to an unstable global marketplace…resulting in an inflationary spiral that would push us to the precipice of recession.

But Joe refused to listen. Now, he blames everyone but himself. In refusing to accept responsibility as a true leader would, Biden is a profile in cowardice.

When Biden took office a little more than a year ago, the U.S. was energy independent and a net exporter of oil. With the stroke of a pen just hours after his inauguration, our new president put an end to it.

Biden signed the following Executive Order: “The Secretary of the Interior shall pause new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters.” Drilling and production on hundreds of thousands of rich oil and gas fields came to a screeching halt.

Biden also shut down the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring over 800,000 barrels of oil to market every single day. He ordered other pipelines capped.

He then targeted oil and gas companies with punitive regulations that made it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain a consistent flow of energy to support our bustling economy. Making matters worse, Biden directed the EPA to raise the costs on power plants which began to reduce their output as a direct result.

Biden has tried to regulate oil and gas companies out of business. All on his own, he engineered an energy deficit in America. The U.S. was forced to turn elsewhere for its needs —Saudi Arabia, Russia, Canada, and Mexico. Of course, importing petroleum added its own exorbitant expense that was passed on to the consumer.

Fast forward one year and America is in the death grip of an energy and inflation crisis. Gasoline prices at the pumps are at record highs. That has driven up the price for other goods such as food, clothing and other manufactured products that are influenced by increased fuel costs. Overall inflation has skyrocketed…depressing economic growth.

Suffice it to say that Biden’s approach to energy has been an economic disaster for Americans. He has suffocated economic productivity in America and steered us into a financial abyss that will be exceedingly difficult to survive.

But Biden insists he’s not to blame. “Look…It’s simply not true that my administration or my policies are holding back energy production,” he vented.

Biden isn’t the only one who’s blatantly lying about what he did.

Joe is in a chronic state of denial.  He keeps claiming that Putin is the boogeyman to blame.

His White House flacks say that the current inflationary crisis proves that Joe’s green agenda is working. That’s right. Press Secretary Jen Psaki actually said that. Not to be outdone, the president’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, dismissed it as “a high-class problem.”

Forget that low-income and middle-class Americans are the hardest hit. They can now scarcely afford the gasoline that gets them to work so they can put food on the family table and keep a roof over their heads. The Biden administration is about as tone-deaf as they come.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Vice President Kamala Harris professed they had the answer for what ails America. They held a splashy news conference to announce an expensive plan to develop electric public buses. But in the meantime, they urged everyone to give up their cars and trucks in favor of expensive EVs. Harris asked her audience to “imagine a future” with only electric vehicles. “That’s why we are here today —because we have the ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been, and then to make the possible actually happen,” she waxed in her dreamy state.

Well, Kamala…imagine this: more than 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They can barely cobble together the cash to fill up their gas tanks. They can’t possibly afford to buy a pricey electric vehicle.

The average transaction price for an EV is roughly $60,000, according to the most recent Kelly Blue Book data. Yes, there are a few cheaper ones…but they’re small, hard to come by, and cannot accommodate a large family. But even those cars are well out of the price range for most Americans who just don’t have the money to fork over.

Harris and Buttigieg don’t know any of that because they live a life of privilege courtesy of taxpayers.  Their transportation is free.  They travel in style and luxury.  So does Joe Biden.  They have no clue what it’s like to hold down a real job and make ends meet when the monthly bills come due.

This invites another important question: when you plug in your EV (assuming you can afford one), where do you think that electricity comes from? It comes from the nation’s power grid, much of which is derived from the very fossil fuels that the Biden administration is waging war against.

Biden, Harris and so many other climate activists seem to think that they can wave a magic wand or flip a switch and poof! —we can suddenly transition to an environmentally sustainable economy with nothing but renewable green energy.

Here’s a reality check. It doesn’t exist. We don’t have the capacity, infrastructure, and technology to accomplish it. We don’t have the ability to produce, capture, and transport enough green energy to supply even a quarter of the country. I wish we did, but we don’t. And we won’t have it for at least another generation, if not longer.

We have made steady progress in scientific achievements that have advanced wind, solar and other renewable energy sources. But they still amount to only 20 percent of our nation’s electricity. And that’s the maximum output that our systems can process. In the meantime, demands for energy continue to grow as our society continues to develop.

None of this is a remedy for the economic catastrophe that the U.S. is facing right now. Biden created it with his ill-conceived assault on domestic energy.

His policies hiked the cost of oil and gas to intentionally make fossil fuels unaffordable without a viable replacement for them. His regulations drove up the expense of production while reducing the supply just as consumption went up. Inevitably, prices skyrocketed. Hardworking Americans are now suffering because of it.

But Joe is in a chronic state of denial.  He keeps claiming that Putin is the boogeyman to blame.

Forget that gasoline prices and inflation across America reached near record levels long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They’ve been on the rise during the past six months. Inflation is close to 8 percent —a new 40 year high for the third month in a row. This obviously predates Putin’s war.

Just days ago, at a conference of Democrats, both Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried to convince members of their own party that they’re not to blame.

Biden: “I’m sick of this stuff…because the American people think the reason there’s inflation is because the government is spending more money. Simply not true.”

Pelosi: “It’s Putin’s gas hike, that’s his gas hike, there’s so much of this increase in this gas tax…uh… gas price… started…uh, weeks leading up to what happened there.”

Biden: “Make no mistake, inflation is largely the fault of Putin. I love, you know, Republicans saying it’s Biden’s gas pipeline…Biden said he’s going to stop the Keystone Pipeline…and I did!”

It’s not just Biden’s deranged energy policy that is wreaking havoc. His profligate spending compounded the crisis. Like drunken sailors on payday, he and Pelosi pumped trillions of dollars into the U.S. economy. It’s impossible to saturate the marketplace with that much currency without causing prices to go up. It is basic Economics 101.

Yet, Pelosi stood before microphones and turned the fundamentals of economics on its head by stating, “Government spending is doing the exact reverse —reducing the government debt. It is not inflationary.”

Pelosi’s tortured logic was an embarrassing face-plant. Our national debt, which stands at $30 trillion is going up, not down. And even Biden conceded in a previous speech in November that his $2 trillion American Rescue Plan caused prices to go up. It was an uncommon moment of clarity. But now he’s changed his tune…because politicians are nothing if not duplicitous.

Voters understand economics far better than Biden and Pelosi. The polling data shows that Americans are deeply unhappy that the president and his party have driven energy prices and inflation off the proverbial cliff. They know that this is Biden’s inflation. Yet he refuses to own it.

Nor are they buying his vacuous excuses. You remember them. First, he claimed that inflation was “transitory.” Then it was merely a supply chain snafu. Then the White House said it was “actually a good sign.” When that didn’t sell, it was all Putin’s fault.

All the while, Biden keeps pretending that economy is in great shape, and we should double-down on his green energy agenda to eliminate all fossil fuels now. If that sounds like a sane strategy, you should get your head examined.

What happens when cars run out of gas and the lights go out? What happens when people can no longer heat their homes? Will Joe keep scapegoating and gaslighting? You can bet on it.

When he was sworn into office, Joe vowed that he would exhibit the courage and humility that true leadership demands. He declared, “I promise you, I’m going to take responsibility. When I make a mistake, I’ll admit it.” He hasn’t done it, and he won’t do it.

Instead, Biden has embraced the tactics of a coward…who blames others for his own mistakes.

Inflation Soars 7.9% In Past 12 Months, New 40-Year High

The rate of inflation grew in February by nearly 8% in the last year, with prices for everything from gasoline to bread, milk, and eggs soaring.

The consumer price index increased 7.9% over the past 12 months, hitting a 40-year high, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. “The February acceleration was the fastest pace since January 1982, back when the U.S. economy confronted the twin threat of higher inflation and reduced economic growth,” CNBC reported.

Meanwhile, earnings fell again, according to BLS data. “Real inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings for the month fell 0.8% in February, contributing to a 2.6% decline over the past year, according to the BLS. That came even though headline earnings rose 5.1% from a year ago, but were outweighed by the price surge,” the network reported.

The news comes as some begin to push for the suspension of federal and state taxes on gasoline.

Dubbed a “gas tax holiday,” ABC News reported “an increasing number of governors and state lawmakers are calling for the suspension of gas taxes to provide relief to motorists who are facing the prospect of even higher pump prices as the country cuts off Russian oil imports.” The outlet added

Republican legislative leaders in Michigan and Pennsylvania announced proposals Wednesday to suspend or reduce state gas taxes. That came after the Republican governor of Georgia and Democratic governor of California both called for relief from state gas taxes Tuesday, when President Joe Biden ordered a ban on Russian oil imports.

Meanwhile, the Democratic governors of Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin sent a joint letter to congressional leaders urging them to support legislation suspending the federal government’s 18.4-cent-a-gallon gas tax through 2022.

Calls to suspend gas taxes are also growing on Capitol Hill. Bills are pending in both the House and Senate to create a gas-tax holiday, with each planning to offset lost revenue by using general fund money to fund state highway and public transit programs.

Yet there’s no guarantee that doing away with gas taxes will actually help Americans.

“On average, only about one-third of the value of previous gas tax cuts or tax increases were passed on to consumers, according to a 2020 report from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association that analyzed 113 state gas tax changes enacted over several years. That’s because retail gas prices are influenced by complex factors, including the price of crude oil and supply-and-demand pressures,” ABC reported.

“The real problem with this approach at both the federal and the state level is that there’s no way to ensure that the people will see this savings when they go to the gas pump to fill up their cars, their SUVs and trucks,” said Jim Tymon, the executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent, and ran the Drudge Report from 2010 to 2015. Send tips to josephcurl@dailywire.com and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.

Source : https://www.dailywire.com/news/inflation-soars-7-9-in-past-12-months-new-40-year-high

Kakistocracy: noun, government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power

Kakistocracy: noun, government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power.

The old saying goes that even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally.  So you might think that during a 50-year political career, the odds would dictate that Joe Biden would, once in a blue moon, make a correct decision — just based on the odds.  But you’d be mistaken.  Biden has stumbled and bumbled from one disastrous decision to the next.  Disastrous, that is, for America.  Biden himself has prospered handsomely in spite of his glaring incompetence and corruption. 

Biden’s long Senate career was based on being the credit card companies’ man in Washington.  While crowing endlessly about the working class being “his people,” Biden sponsored bills allowing bank issuers to charge egregious interest rates and to make it harder for working men to escape the credit trap through bankruptcy.

When Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, he turned the confirmation of Clarence Thomas into a political smear campaign that descended into a degenerate three-ring circus. In his first campaign for president, he failed to garner a single percentage point before having to withdraw when confronted with his past lies and blatant plagiarism. He literally stole a speech detailing a British politician’s life story. He ran again in 2008 but again failed to reach even one percent of the vote.

When Barack Obama took him off the primary trash heap to make him vice president, Biden first made a hash out of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, wasting hundreds of billions on boondoggles and giveaways to Democrat cronies. Little of the recovery billions was spent on anything useful to America. Biden went on to manage our relations with China and Ukraine, pocketing untold millions for himself and his family by selling out America’s security interests.

By the time he ran for president again in 2020 he was a spent husk of his former corrupt and incompetent self, delivering asinine performances in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. When the Democrat establishment propped him up to once again stop Bernie Sanders, Biden was set up for the strangest presidential campaign in modern history. While Donald Trump barnstormed the nation with packed, enthusiastic rallies, Biden cowered in his basement, occasionally venturing out to speak with a few dozen voters sitting in circles drawn on the floor.

For his vice presidential pick, he chose — if you can believe it — an even more buffoonish candidate than himself.

Had it not been for Mark Zuckerberg buying and staffing government election offices in swing states, and the media and Big Tech’s censorship of the Biden family’s corruption, Biden would now be enjoying his dotage in Delaware, creeping on unsuspecting children with yarns of Corn Pop and South African arrests.

Instead, the man with one of the most astonishing records of abject failure in Washington was installed in the White House, and he has remained true to form.  As one of a hundred senators and then as vice president, there was a limit to how much damage he could do.  But as president, the shackles have been removed.

His first agenda item was to throttle our oil and gas sector, offshoring tens of thousands of good paying jobs to Russia and the Middle East — along with our energy independence. He threw open our southern border and encouraged virtually unlimited illegal immigration — during a global pandemic.

He sponsored trillions of dollars in wasteful spending, pushing our national debt to over $31 trillion.  Were it not for two Democrat senators who had not yet taken leave of their senses, it would have been even worse.  As it is, Biden has sparked the largest one-year increase in inflation in 40 years.

Biden’s “defund the police” rhetoric delivered us soaring violent crime in Democrat-run cities, while he sicced federal law enforcement on parents who object too strenuously to their children being indoctrinated with anti-White racism and LGBTQIA+ ideology. 

It can truly be said that as president, Biden’s record of failure remains unblemished.  

But now comes what may be the capstone on Biden’s long history of buffoonery and corruption.  In Ukraine, we have an armed conflict that threatens to plunge the world into an economic depression and raises the specter of nuclear war.  Not only did Biden set the stage for this calamity when, as vice president, he was in charge of Ukraine policy and led Kiev to believe that NATO membership was in Ukraine’s future, but on the eve of the Russian invasion, he refused to admit that it was not.  Then Biden all but admitted to Vladimir Putin — on live TV, no less — that NATO would not defend Ukraine if Russia chose to invade. 

In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion, Biden and his administration have crafted sanctions that seem almost designed to boomerang on America’s and Europe’s fragile post-pandemic economies, while forcing Russia into a deeper alliance with China. 

With the U.S. over $31 trillion in debt, Biden seems totally oblivious to the perilous position of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency and the consequences should that privileged position end. 

Economists predict that food and gasoline will cost the average U.S. household an additional $3,000 this year, and inflation threatens to push millions of lower-middle income-earners into abject poverty.

And bumbling, corrupt Joe Biden isn’t yet halfway through his first — and please God, last — term.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Jim Daws is a recovering talk radio host at jimdaws.com.

CPI inflation February 2022:

The consumer price index for February was expected to rise 7.8% over the past year, according to Dow Jones estimates.
— Read on www.cnbc.com/2022/03/10/cpi-inflation-february-2022-.html

• The consumer price index for February rose 7.9% from a year ago, the highest level since January 1982.
• Excluding food and energy, both of which moved sharply higher during the month, core inflation still rose 6.4%, in line with expectations but the highest since August 1982.
• Gas, groceries and shelter were the biggest contributors to the CPI gain. Auto prices eased.
• Worker paychecks fell further behind, as inflation-adjusted earnings dropped 0.8% in February, contributing to a 2.6% decline over the past year.

Inflation grew worse in February amid the escalating crisis in Ukraine and price pressures that became more entrenched.

The consumer price index, which measures a wide-ranging basket of goods and services, increased 7.9% over the past 12 months, a fresh 40-year high for the closely followed gauge, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The February acceleration was the fastest pace since January1982, back when the U.S. economy confronted the twin threat of higher inflation and reduced economic growth.

On a month-over-month basis, the CPI gain was 0.8%. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had expected headline inflation to increase 7.8% for the year and 0.7% for the month.

Food prices rose 1% and food at home jumped 1.4%, both the fastest monthly gains since April 2020, in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Energy also was at the forefront of ballooning prices, up 3.5% for February and accounting for about one-third of the headline gain. Shelter costs, which account for about one-third of the CPI weighting, accelerated another 0.5%, for a 12-month rise of 4.7%, the fastest annual increase since May 1991.

A customer refuels at a Chevron gas station with prices above $4 a gallon in Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Monday, March 7, 2022.

David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation rose 6.4%, in line with estimates and the highest since August 1982. On a monthly basis, core CPI was up 0.5, also consistent with Wall Street expectations.

The rise in inflation meant worker paychecks fell further behind despite what otherwise would be considered strong increases.

Real inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings for the month fell 0.8% in February, contributing to a 2.6% decline over the past year, according to the BLS. That came even though headline earnings rose 5.1% from a year ago, but were outweighed by the price surge.

Markets indicated a negative open on Wall Street, with stocks pressured by faltering Russia-Ukraine cease-fire talks. Government bond yields turned higher after the CPI report.

“Inflation is coming in hot but the reality is there are no real surprises in this report,” said Mike Loewengart, managing director of investment strategy for E-Trade. “The market likely already priced the inflation increase in accordingly, and is instead intently focused on Ukraine and the downstream impact from commodities, which are already sending shockwaves through the market.”

The inflation surge is in keeping with price gains over the past year. Inflation has roared higher amid an unprecedented government spending blitz coupled with persistent supply chain disruptions that have been unable to keep up with stimulus-fueled demand, particularly for goods over services.

Policymakers have been expecting inflation to abate as supply chain issues ease. The New York Fed’s supply chain index shows pressure has eased in 2022, though it is still near historically high levels.

Vehicle costs have been a powerful inflationary force but showed signs of easing in February. Used car and truck prices actually declined 0.2%, their first negative showing since September 2021, but are still up 41.2% over the past year. New car prices rose 0.3% for the month and 12.4% over the 12-month period.

A raging crisis in Europe has only fed into the price pressures, as sanctions against Russia have coincided with surging gasoline costs. Prices at the pump are up about 24% over just the past month and 53% in the past year, according to AAA.

Moreover, business are raising costs to keep up with the price of raw goods and increasing pay in a historically tight labor market in which there are about 4.8 million more job openings than there are available workers.

Recent surveys, including one this week from the National Federation of Independent Business, show a record level of smaller companies are raising prices to cope with surging costs.

To try to stem the trend, the Federal Reserve is expected next week to announce the first of a series of interest rate hikes aimed at slowing inflation. It will be the first time the central bank has raised rates in more than three years, and mark a reversal of a zero interest rate policy and unprecedented levels of cash injections for an economy that in 2021 grew at its fastest pace in 37 years.

However, inflation is not a U.S.-centric story.

Global prices are subject to many of the same factors hitting the domestic economy, and central banks are responding in kind. On Thursday, the European Central Bank said it was not moving its benchmark interest rate but would end its own asset purchase program sooner than planned.

In other economic news, jobless claims for the week ended March 5 totaled 227,000, higher than the 216,000 estimate and up 11,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department said. Continuing claims rose slightly to just below 1.5 million, though the four-week moving average remained at its lowest level since 1970.