[quote]orion wrote:
You bill 1500 hours and yet you do not know how to avoid taxes?
Such things as incorporating businesses above a certain size, preferably in Nevada, never occurred to you?
Hardly anything to brag about, eh?[/quote]
You know what, go get em champ…
lol… You will understand after you live in the real world for awhile.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
orion wrote:
You bill 1500 hours and yet you do not know how to avoid taxes?
Such things as incorporating businesses above a certain size, preferably in Nevada, never occurred to you?
Hardly anything to brag about, eh?
You know what, go get em champ…
lol… You will understand after you live in the real world for awhile.[/quote]
Ge Sir, I guess I get me a job then!
[quote]jsbrook wrote:
orion wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
orion wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
orion wrote:
Loose Tool wrote:
orion wrote:
Loose Tool wrote:
orion wrote:
The obvious bias of this clearly escapes you, huh?
The top tax payers pay the most taxes, huh?
Corporate taxes, like the VAT are payed by the customers, not the owner of the company. If they pay their dividends into a trust fund or do not pay them out at all the rich do not pay anything at all, except for the relatively small amount they need to live off, because they cannot escape consumption taxes and capital gains taxes.
Who pays the taxes is mostly the middle class, i.e. those who actually have, an need, an income.
And yes, the really “rich” pay very little taxes, relatively speaking. Their tax rate is actually regressive.
The top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers (adjusted gross income over $66,532) earned 68.7 percent of the nation’s income, but they paid more than four out of every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (86.6 percent).
The top 1 percent of taxpayers (adjusted gross income over $410,096) earned approximately 22.8 percent of the nation’s income, yet paid 40.4 percent of all federal income taxes. That means the top 1 percent of tax returns paid more in federal individual income taxes than the bottom 95 percent of tax returns.
Follow the link for the data tables.
Yes, it is about income taxes. And income is defined by the tax code.
If you however plough your money back into your company and only take out a relatively small part of that as “income” you only pay taxes on that “income”.
Your company however may be worth more a few million dollars, tax free. You would only pay taxes when you sell your company and at least in Europe even that can be avoided easily.
The percentages I quoted are only with regard to individual income taxes, not corporate. So what bearing does the corporate bias have on the percentages?
None, but people present it as if the “rich” pay an extraordinarily high percentage of taxes, which they don’t and never will.
That is not the point. The point is that people that make a nice living and have a good income are falsely categorized as ‘rich’ and pay a high percentage of income tax. Maybe the percentage is justified. Maybe not.
But the top 1% cannot truly be categorized as rich. A nice lifestyle sure. But after paying for college and various other things, there is really not a huge amount of surplus money floating around. The truly rich do not pay a high percentage of income tax.
I agree.
So why are you arguing with Bill? Everything he says is right for 99.9% of people. To the extent it does not apply to the megarich .1% (all 1000 of them) who are able to avoid paying a high percentage of taxes through tax shelters and other loopholes, that is irrelevant.
They represent such a small percentage, and it does nothing to change the fact that the vast majority of the top 1% income bracket pays a high percentage of taxes.
First of all, that effect comes in sooner than at 100m.
Let us say 10m.
If you have 10m in liquid assets you are pretty loaded.
Those people own almost all of America and yet can avoid taxes EASILY.
I am not saying that this is wrong.
I am saying that that whole income tax debate is a diversion.
I agree with the conclusion of that diversion though, that the upper middle class gets anally raped.
Just saying, you had a revolution to get rid of the untaxed aristocracy?
How is that working for you?
It is the whole premise of the welfare state, to soak the rich.
And yet, they never achieve that.
It is always the middle class.
Ok. But this thread wasn’t about corporate taxation. It was about taxation of individual income. And to the extent what you say about big corporations exploiting the tax system is true, it still doesn’t apply to small business owners.
As far as individual income goes, maybe something should be done to close loopholes that are exploited by the megarich (who still actually pay billions in taxes because of the sheer amount of their wealth even if they are able to manipulate the system to pay a lower percentage of income in taxes than those less well-off).
But that’s another issue. You can quibble about what percentage of taxes this small segment of megarich pays and how much of America’s wealth they actually own. but that is still a sideshow.
The fact remains that the vast majority of the top income bracket is NOT superich, does not have the ability avoid taxation through tax loopholes, and does pay a high percentage of income tax. You don’t disagree with that. Because you can’t. Because it’s true. [/quote]
These kind of threads make it look though as if the income tax was where its at.
I am saying that “income” is a highly arbitrary concept that is quite malleable when that should be necessary.
[quote]orion wrote:
These kind of threads make it look though as if the income tax was where its at.
I am saying that “income” is a highly arbitrary concept that is quite malleable when that should be necessary.[/quote]
Income tax IS where it’s at. Because that is what affects the most people’s lives most directly. It’s not like we’re talking 19th century European philosophy. I don’t really understand what this last sentence is supposed to mean.
Orion can correct me if I’m wrong as to what I meant, but it seems to me that he means that if you don’t ever want to yourself see or be able to use for personal expenses or possessions the income that you earn, and you own your own business and are incorporated, you can drive your personal income tax to zero or a low level.
He seems to be confused on thinking that in America the corporation can earn the profit and yet still have it available for you to have, as the owner, when you want it. Being utterly unfamiliar with American tax law, yet presuming to educate an American accountant on it, I suppose he does not know that the sum of the corporate income tax rate and tax on dividends is just as high as the personal income tax rate.
(Pre-emptive strike: Saying that the customers pay the corporate income tax does not change the above consideration in any case where the owner wants to himself be able to enjoy the money earned on things like all his personal and family expenses, things he would like to buy for himself, college education for the kids, etc, etc.)
But having only the shallowest knowledge of America gleaned from thousands of miles away never has stopped and I guess never will stop Orion from assuming that he knows more about how things are done in America than those that have been immersed in this society for decades. So the above will probably just get another post saying how we just don’t understand American taxation.
[quote]jsbrook wrote:
orion wrote:
These kind of threads make it look though as if the income tax was where its at.
I am saying that “income” is a highly arbitrary concept that is quite malleable when that should be necessary.
Income tax IS where it’s at. Because that is what affects the most people’s lives most directly. It’s not like we’re talking 19th century European philosophy. I don’t really understand what this last sentence is supposed to mean. [/quote]
Most “Rich” people (the owner class) can define their own incomes therefore the notion of rich people paying income taxes is preposterous. A rich person could theoretically live off an expense account provided by his company and draw $0 income – or even incur a loss through capital devaluation.
So: soak the rich really means soak the middle class – including those mom and pop businesses everyone seem to be waxing poetically about. Mom and pop businesses can usually declare a loss to avoid paying income taxes as long as they are creative enough in declaring those losses – they still get fucked over by consumption taxes which lowers their productivity and thus lowers their actual income in the long run.
You (and everyone else who deigns to argue with Orion) really need to pick up an economics book or three.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
But having only the shallowest knowledge of America…[/quote]
You really need to stop this childishness…
Nothing Orion has written is devoid of fact. You claim he is ignorant of American tax law yet he has gotten it correct on how business owners actually behave with respect their incomes.
You are grasping at straws and it really makes you look simple.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
orion wrote:
These kind of threads make it look though as if the income tax was where its at.
I am saying that “income” is a highly arbitrary concept that is quite malleable when that should be necessary.
Income tax IS where it’s at. Because that is what affects the most people’s lives most directly. It’s not like we’re talking 19th century European philosophy. I don’t really understand what this last sentence is supposed to mean.
Most “Rich” people (the owner class) can define their own incomes therefore the notion of rich people paying income taxes is preposterous. A rich person could theoretically live off an expense account provided by his company and draw $0 income – or even incur a loss through capital devaluation.
So: soak the rich really means soak the middle class – including those mom and pop businesses everyone seem to be waxing poetically about. Mom and pop businesses can usually declare a loss to avoid paying income taxes as long as they are creative enough in declaring those losses – they still get fucked over by consumption taxes which lowers their productivity and thus lowers their actual income in the long run.
You (and everyone else who deigns to argue with Orion) really need to pick up an economics book or three.[/quote]
You may want to pull your head out of your ass.
Outside of committing FRAUD what you said is utter bullshit.
This fucking forum is full of retards.
except for Bill, he isn’t a retard.
I’m out. This place just pisses me off. God I hope no one actually listens to some of the shit spewed forth here.
Lifticus, as usual your attempt at trying to apply what you have read in a book has failed yet again.
Nothing I have written is incorrect with regard to 99% of small business owners or the great majority of those in the upper 1%, let alone the upper 10%, who pay the great majority of the taxes. Which was the topic of the thread.
Ideas such as Orion’s that all that has to be done is incorporate in Nevada and then suddenly the tax burden is gone or nearly so are a product of simply not knowing how it is in America with regard to taxes. If you think the same as he does, then you don’t know what you’re talking about either, again.
I’m not going to argue with you because of past experience. You simply repeat dogma that you have picked up and extrapolate from that, and nothing ever moves you past that, hence attempted discussion with you can get nowhere, except on rare occasions. This isn’t one of them, clearly.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
orion wrote:
These kind of threads make it look though as if the income tax was where its at.
I am saying that “income” is a highly arbitrary concept that is quite malleable when that should be necessary.
Income tax IS where it’s at. Because that is what affects the most people’s lives most directly. It’s not like we’re talking 19th century European philosophy. I don’t really understand what this last sentence is supposed to mean.
Most “Rich” people (the owner class) can define their own incomes therefore the notion of rich people paying income taxes is preposterous. A rich person could theoretically live off an expense account provided by his company and draw $0 income – or even incur a loss through capital devaluation.
So: soak the rich really means soak the middle class – including those mom and pop businesses everyone seem to be waxing poetically about. Mom and pop businesses can usually declare a loss to avoid paying income taxes as long as they are creative enough in declaring those losses – they still get fucked over by consumption taxes which lowers their productivity and thus lowers their actual income in the long run.
You (and everyone else who deigns to argue with Orion) really need to pick up an economics book or three.[/quote]
Orion has agreed with much of what I’ve set to the extent that means anything. Means little. He suffers from some fundamental misconceptions. But at least what he says is clear. What YOU are trying to say with this post is decidely less clear. It’s indicipherable garbage.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Lifticus, as usual your attempt at trying to apply what you have read in a book has failed yet again.
Nothing I have written is incorrect with regard to 99% of small business owners or the great majority of those in the upper 1%, let alone the upper 10%, who pay the great majority of the taxes. Which was the topic of the thread.
Ideas such as Orion’s that all that has to be done is incorporate in Nevada and then suddenly the tax burden is gone or nearly so are a product of simply not knowing how it is in America with regard to taxes. If you think the same as he does, then you don’t know what you’re talking about either, again.
I’m not going to argue with you because of past experience. You simply repeat dogma that you have picked up and extrapolate from that, and nothing ever moves you past that, hence attempted discussion with you can get nowhere, except on rare occasions. This isn’t one of them, clearly.[/quote]
His arguments, to the extent I can even dicher what they are, are entirely irrelevant to anything discussed in this thread. Not to mention the issues facing the American tax system. So were Orion’s. Some of what he said is true. But is not relevant to anything whatsoever.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
orion wrote:
These kind of threads make it look though as if the income tax was where its at.
I am saying that “income” is a highly arbitrary concept that is quite malleable when that should be necessary.
Income tax IS where it’s at. Because that is what affects the most people’s lives most directly. It’s not like we’re talking 19th century European philosophy. I don’t really understand what this last sentence is supposed to mean.
Most “Rich” people (the owner class) can define their own incomes therefore the notion of rich people paying income taxes is preposterous. A rich person could theoretically live off an expense account provided by his company and draw $0 income – or even incur a loss through capital devaluation.
So: soak the rich really means soak the middle class – including those mom and pop businesses everyone seem to be waxing poetically about. Mom and pop businesses can usually declare a loss to avoid paying income taxes as long as they are creative enough in declaring those losses – they still get fucked over by consumption taxes which lowers their productivity and thus lowers their actual income in the long run.
You (and everyone else who deigns to argue with Orion) really need to pick up an economics book or three.
You may want to pull your head out of your ass.
Outside of committing FRAUD what you said is utter bullshit.
This fucking forum is full of retards. [/quote]
I don’t care. I will prevent my property from being stolen from me any way I can.
Your IRS is the REAL FRAUD.
Stupid people say Taxes are evil and have done no good,
They would rather go back to the days that people rode horses because with no taxes high ways would not have been built.
We would not have world class medical facilities. People would be living until their 40s Because no one would have went to school and so no one would have gone to college. We would be a society like Afghanistan.
We would not have law enforcement. We would have war lords,
No one would have read any of the books by Ayn Rand. She would not have been the same person with out the industrial revolution
All this because some people have fabricated a hypothesis that things could work out the way they say. Then they get mad if you do not buy into their idiocy even though they can not name one society that has functioned that way. And the closest examples that would relate are scary like Somalia.
I think the only people more retarded than the Republicans are the Free Market, Anarchist, nut jobs. I personally think the free market has a place in our society, but you can not allow the market to run the world.
The only tax that should be payed is a sales tax. Income tax is theft any way you look at it.
Edit.
With a 10% sales tax that comes up to $595,565,000,000. That’s what could be made if taxes where still in place. If you take away income theft you will see that number rise greatly. Not only that but apply the 10% sales taxes to businesses and you can easily fund the government we where supposed to have.
What do you mean by the owner? Corporations have countless owners; owning a single share is all that is needed to be an owner. Now, yes, it is possible for individuals to create corporations that are wholly managed, operated, and owned by themselves, but you are clearly not referring to such corporations.
[quote]
Who pays the taxes is mostly the middle class, i.e. those who actually have, an need, an income.[/quote]
So, the top 1% of all income-earners are actually middle-class? They are not rich because they are still income-earners?
[quote]
If you however plough your money back into your company and only take out a relatively small part of that as “income” you only pay taxes on that “income”.[/quote]
Do you know how much of a corporation you’d have to own in order to live off dividends? I think this represents an extremely small portion of the U.S. population, but since you appear to be making an affirmative claim that these segment is not insignificant, please provide a source.
From what I understand, you reason as follows: a corporation derives its revenues from consumers; the check to the Treasury for income taxes is taken from these revenues; therefore, consumers paid for the corporation’s income tax. Sorry, but I don’t agree with this line of thinking. That the corporation sends a check to the Treasury is pretty strong evidence in my opinion that they do, in fact, pay taxes.
[quote]jsbrook wrote:
Gambit_Lost wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
What’s rich? The top 1% pays a very high percentage of income in taxes. Don’t know that I would consider that rich. The top .1% pay a surprisingly low percentage of income in taxes compared to the top 1% as a result of tax shelters, writeoffs and various other financial arrangements.
Wait, you wouldn’t consider the top 1% of income earners in the richest country in the world to be rich? I realize we’re just arguing semantics here, but come on, give me a break. “I make more than 99.9% of the world, and 99% of my countrymen…but it’s that .1% man, they’re rich.”
No, I wouldn’t. Sorry. I make $160K without bonus (which may not exist in this economy). That’s close to the top income bracket. I’m comfortable. I have a nice lifestyle. But I don’t consider myself rich.
In the later years of my adolescence, my parents probably made a joint income of $300K. It doesn’t go as far as you think. We lived a nice lifestyle and never wanted for anything. But there wasn’t buckets of extra money to throw around. You know how expensive college and grad school is? My sister and were fortunate enough to go through without loans, and that is a blessing. But most parents in the lower end of the top bracket of taxable income who are able to do that for their children and give them that start aren’t going to be rolling around in extra dough.
I can also say with great confidence that most of these pay pleny of taxes and dont have the means to have a staff of accountants to help them figure out how to exploit tax loopholes. [/quote]
Yeah, I know EXACTLY how expensive college and grad school is.
You can always have your own definition for things, and there is nothing wrong with that. But if a person is making more than 99.9% of other people, I’m going to consider that rich. If a person “never wanted for anything” I’m going to consider that rich. That’s just me.
It’s the same logic as would be, employed person’s don’t pay any income tax, their employer pays it.
But even less so since, due to forced deduction, most or all of the amount due actually does get sent out by the employer. But it’s money that, had the person not owed income tax, the person would not have had to pay. To say that he isn’t paying any personal income tax, the employer is, would be just foolishness.
Funnily enough, many of the same people that say “corporations don’t pay corporate income tax, their customers pay it” also say “Your employer doesn’t pay the so-called employer’s share of Social Security: that is your money, you are paying it.” Quite the double standard.
Getting back to the corporate income tax, an idea that consumer prices would be, but for the corporate income tax, that much lower is very naive.
Any well-run corporation prices its product where the product of the number of sales and the difference between price and marginal cost is the greatest value possible, or at least where they think that is the case. I am speaking of the simplest case where the plant is already in existence and changing the overhead to be in accordance with anticipated sales volume is not in consideration. Including that consideration does not fundamentally change the question at hand, though.
Let’s say an executive comes back from a trip and announces that he’s just, thanks to wining, dining, schmoozing, and just the right contribution, obtained a tax break that will save the company – either just this company, or everyone in the business, either way – their entire corporate tax obligations, thus no corporate taxes will have to be paid this year. This doesn’t suddenly make it more profitable to lower the price of the goods sold, does it now, let alone equally.
Or if taxes are suddenly increased, that doesn’t mean price will necessarily be increased. Price should have already been set at the level producing the greatest revenues for the existing fixed costs. (If the tax increase forces selling a plant, though, or otherwise downsizing, then price might increase, but not necessarily by an amount equal to the tax.)
Now, long term, having profits taken away by taxation results in less capital investment, which may well mean marginal costs will not be lowered over time as they might otherwise be, and so yes, the taxation does in the long run cost consumers. But not necessarily exactly the same amount.
If for example a company is considering building a new billion dollar plant, and decides that they want to go ahead only if that plant will generate so many millions in additional net revenue, let’s say that projections show that somewhat more than that would be generated, and fortunately there are no taxes. The plant will be built, and due to greater supply price goes down for consumers.
But wait – the taxes are such that the added revenue, minus the taxation, now makes it not worth building that plant. So supply doesn’t go up, and consumers do not receive the savings that would have happened from that. So yes, consumers do suffer a cost, quite a lot of cost, from corporate taxation.
But they don’t pay the tax. The persons actually paying the corporate income tax are – what a shock – the shareholders of the company. They are the ones definitely and positively out that exact amount of money.
But I guess this doesn’t make as good rhetoric for those either calling for abolishment of the corporate income tax or – on the other side of the fence – wanting to say “the rich” pay little to nothing in taxes, as does the simplistic statement that “corporations don’t pay corporate income tax, consumers do.”
However that entire subject is a sidetrack having really nothing to do with the thread topic that the top 1% pay an enormous share of the total tax burden, and the remaining 9% of the top 10% also pay utterly through the nose.
Perhaps better than the above is a simple example. Ford Motor Company has both had years of making billions in profits and owing a billion dollars or more in corporate income tax; and years of having no profit and owing no corporate tax.
When they found in a given year they were making a nice profit, did they then say, “Oh wait! We are going to have to pay corporate income tax, so: add so many hundred dollars to each car’s price.” No.
If they had thought profits would be better at the higher price anyway, the cars would have already been at that price. They weren’t, because raising price from its optimized point (or attempted optimized point) would reduce profit.
Rather, the taxes owed now do not go to the shareholders as dividends, and/or do not go into investing in capital improvements, which the shareholders would own if it occurred. The people out the money, or the improvement that could have been made in the company with that money, are the shareholders. The consumers didn’t necessarily see and probably did not see a raised price at all as response to it being discovered that a profit was being made this year and therefore corporate income tax would have to be paid.
But, “corporations don’t pay corporate income tax, consumers do” is one of those pieces of rhetoric that will not go away, as – unusually – it serves both these that would consider it productive to the economy to lower these tax rates, and those who like engaging in class warfare. Can’t beat that I guess.
"Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again . . . Take this great power away from them, and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in. . . . But, if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.[38]
In other words, taxes don’t matter. They are kept as a means of control. We’re all economic serfs now. Don’t you guys realize why the 30 year mortgage was invented?
[quote]John S. wrote:
The only tax that should be payed is a sales tax. Income tax is theft any way you look at it.
Edit.
With a 10% sales tax that comes up to $595,565,000,000. That’s what could be made if taxes where still in place. If you take away income theft you will see that number rise greatly. Not only that but apply the 10% sales taxes to businesses and you can easily fund the government we where supposed to have.[/quote]
I think you are arguing for a flat tax here, right? Theoretically, I’ve no problem with one, but realistically it’s near impossible. Also, it’s a hell of a lot more complicated than it seems at first. Here’s a decent article I’ve posted before that gets into it:
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/articles/1998/summer_useconomics_gale/gale.pdf