woodguru

The country is in trouble, yet we are in a situation where the wealthiest people and corporations pay less in taxes than hard working people do. Many other countries have one thing right in terms of taxes, those making less pay less so they can be a part of the economy and live better, thus contributing to the economy directly in day to day in local economies...as income goes up so does the tax scale. Estimates are that there is an easy $800 Billion a year sitting there in easy to find cheated taxes. The reality is people won't be as inclined to cheat in the first place if the odds get better that they will be caught and penalized.

Wealthy people live well regardless of how much they pay in taxes, they live in a world of relative wealth and privilege. Yet here we are in a world where the right acts like taxes are a crime...they even act like the concept of going after tax cheaters would somehow be against the country, rhetoric comes into play about how taxes will destroy the country.

How does holding people accountable for stealing, cheating on what they owe, become something the right is so adamantly against?

Meanwhile, as someone who honestly pays their taxes owed, I find it disturbing that the IRS isn't properly funded so that they can recover conservatively $800 Billion that people are intentionally screwing our country out of. The idea of being against increasing funding by hundreds of millions of dollars to put tens of thousands of skilled people to work recovering hundreds of billions of dollars is far beyond being mentally retarded.

And then there is the thing that would be an instant game changer to kill a huge amount of this fraud if not also recover past owed amounts...hit the certified public accountants hard, fined substantial portions of the amounts they allowed to be stolen, loss of their certification, and possible jail time. This brings accountants into the role they are supposed to be serving as proxy officers of the IRS, they are supposed to be the ones that certifies that people and businesses are paying the taxes they are supposed to.

Bevvy

Make Nancy Pelosi pay her fair share

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

From the great Walter E. Williams, professor of economics at George Mason University.

Politicians exploit public ignorance. Few areas of public ignorance provide as many opportunities for political demagoguery as taxation.

Today some politicians argue that the rich must pay their fair share and label the proposed changes in tax law as tax cuts for the rich.

Let’s look at who pays what, with an eye toward attempting to answer this question: Are the rich paying their fair share?

According to the latest IRS data, the payment of income taxes is as follows.

The top 1 percent of income earners, those having an adjusted annual gross income of $480,930 or higher, pay about 39 percent of federal income taxes. That means about 892,000 Americans are stuck with paying 39 percent of all federal taxes.

The top 10 percent of income earners, those having an adjusted gross income over $138,031, pay about 70.6 percent of federal income taxes.

About 1.7 million Americans, less than 1 percent of our population, pay 70.6 percent of federal income taxes. Is that fair, or do you think they should pay more?

By the way, earning $500,000 a year doesn’t make one rich. It’s not even yacht money.

But the fairness question goes further. The bottom 50 percent of income earners, those having an adjusted gross income of $39,275 or less, pay 2.83 percent of federal income taxes.

Thirty-seven million tax filers have no tax obligation at all. The Tax Policy Center estimates that 45.5 percent of households will not pay federal income tax this year.

There’s a severe political problem of so many Americans not having any skin in the game. These Americans become natural constituencies for big-spending politicians. After all, if you don’t pay federal taxes, what do you care about big spending?

Also, if you don’t pay federal taxes, why should you be happy about a tax cut? What’s in it for you? In fact, you might see tax cuts as threatening your handout programs.

Our nation has a 38.91 percent tax on corporate earnings, the fourth-highest in the world. The House of Representatives has proposed that it be cut to 20 percent—some members of Congress call for a 15 percent rate.

The nation’s political hustlers object, saying corporations should pay their fair share of taxes. The fact of the matter—which even leftist economists understand, though they might not publicly admit it—is corporations do not pay taxes.

An important subject area in economics is called tax incidence. It holds that the entity upon whom a tax is levied does not necessarily bear its full burden. Some of it can be shifted to another party.

If a tax is levied on a corporation, it will have one of four responses or some combination thereof. It will raise the price of its product, lower dividends, cut salaries, or lay off workers. In each case, a flesh-and-blood person bears the tax burden.

The important point is that corporations are legal fictions and as such do not pay taxes. Corporations are merely tax collectors for the government.

Politicians love to trick people by suggesting that they will impose taxes not on them but on some other entity instead. We can personalize the trick by talking about property taxes.

Imagine that you are a homeowner and a politician tells you he is not going to tax you. Instead, he’s going to tax your property and land.

You would easily see the political chicanery. Land and property cannot and do not pay taxes. Again, only people pay taxes. The same principle applies to corporations.

There’s another side to taxes that goes completely unappreciated. According to a 2013 study by the Virginia-based Mercatus Center, Americans spend up to $378 billion annually in tax-related accounting costs, and in 2011, Americans spent more than 6 billion hours complying with the tax code.

Those hours are equivalent to the annual hours of a workforce of 3.4 million, or the number of people employed by four of the largest U.S. companies—Wal-Mart, IBM, McDonald’s, and Target—combined.

Along with tax cuts, tax simplification should be on the agenda.

LogicallyRight Loc: Chicago

Woody is populist bull shit and Blade is the facts

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Tribute goes to Walter Williams, I went to him to get the facts.

Woody is a coward, he will make no attempt to refute this.
He does this all the time. Posts some highly prejudiced and inflammatory comments,
then when someone throws the facts in his face and totally disarms him,
he bails from the thread and starts another with the same prejudiced and inflammatory bullshit.

woodguru

As Kelly Anne so aptly said it, when enough people believe lies they become the facts...their facts

It's not populist BS to say people cheat taxes to a degree that is hundreds of billions of dollars.

Nor that it is not right for a company that makes tens of billions in profits to pay little or no taxes.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Kelly Anne was alluding to Joseph Goebbels.

If you read the piece by Walter Williams, maybe you can stop believing the lies.

woodguru

There is so much bullcrap to unpack there it takes line by line to do it.
Taking that last line "Along with tax cuts, tax simplification should be on the agenda."
the wealthy have had too many tax cuts as it is, they need more?

How's this for simple, after any expenses involved in costs of doing business without all the special interest tax credits and breaks, you have the last line of adjusted gross income...you owe 35% of that up to a million, after that it goes up to

Shandel

LogicallyRight Loc: Chicago

[quote=woodguru]As Kelly Anne so aptly said it, when enough people believe lies they become the facts...their facts

***It's not populist BS to say people cheat taxes to a degree that is hundreds of billions of dollars.

Nor that it is not right for a company that makes tens of billions in profits to pay little or no taxes.

***It's not populist BS to say people cheat taxes to a degree that is hundreds of billions of dollars.
>>>Agreed

Nor that it is not right for a company that makes tens of billions in profits to pay little or no taxes.
>>>Disagree. Are they following the tax code? If so, they are right to pay as little as possible.