Tag: Taxes

But since Piotrowski describes property taxes as “unethical, unchristian-like” and a form of “financial slavery,” he decided to make a statement.

“Since I’m being forced to pay for something against my own will, I’m paying in pennies,” he told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

SOURCE: This man collected 50,000 pennies to make a statement about paying his property taxes – Yahoo Finance.

I don’t know about you but these sort of stories get on my nerves but kind of like a train wreck I just can’t seem to look away. This guy claims paying taxes is “unethical, unchristian-like and a form of financial slavery”. Oh come on…. Paying taxes is a very necessary part of living in a democracy. Who does this guy think builds our bridges, maintains our police and fireman forces, and a myriad of other services we come to expect? Those things don’t come free and I’m sure this guy’s eyes glaze over when someone tries to explain that to him.

Its bad enough that he is ignorant enough to think paying his share of taxes is unethical and financial slavery but he had to add his religious leanings too. Yeah I know there are a lot of conservative, especially evangelical, Christians out there that don’t want to be forced to pay for things like helping the needy, infirm, or mentally challenged. Jesus Christ made it very clear that we are to be our brother’s keeper and since  religious organization don’t remotely begin to meet that need we should happily support our government do so in our place. But again, I’m sure this guy’s eyes also glaze over when that is explained to him.

I kind of put this guy in the same league of all those millionaires who have off-shore accounts to hide their money so they don’t have to pay their share of taxes. Both are shameful.  Before you say I am painting with too broad a brush here I will say that fortunately this guy does not represent the majority, or even a slight minority of Christians  with this behavior the same as that rich guy doesn’t represent everyone who has more money than they know what to do with… I kind of hope this yahoo got a hernia from lifting his 50,000 pennies 🙂

Despite a wide coalition of business, labor, religious groups, farmers and others pushing for an immigration overhaul, many individual Republican House members who represent largely white districts have been unmoved. SOURCE: Republican leaders to block US immigration measure – Yahoo News.

After so many years of a stalemated government there are so many things that need changes. We are stuck in the 20th century practices due to a small number of our congressional representative being frozen with the fear of change? There are just too many of us old white folks who are trying to hold back the tide of change when in comes to the demographics of our country. There are too many arthritic fingers stuck in the holes of the dam trying to turn back the inevitable.

I for one believe that our increased diversity as a nation is a good thing. Our country has always been defined as a nation of immigrants. That is what makes us unique in the world.

Another topic that needs some severe change is our tax system. It needs a complete overhaul in order to address the ever-increasing inequity of opportunity in this country. Until that is done the 1% will continue to gobble up what once went to others as their rightful portion of economic gains they help generate. Since the Reagan years too much of the tax code has been targeted at allowing the most wealthy among us to pay less and less taxes. The faulty idea was that if we gave the ultra-rich more money they would invest it and create new jobs.  In reality what has happened is that they park that extra wealth in off-shore accounts and then get into a bragging contest with others as to how much they have accumulated. One aspect of change that needs to be addressed immediately is how we fund our government.

Surprisingly I just might sound like some of my conservative friends with the remainder of this post.  It is just a matter of degree I suppose. Many of them see things in black/white where I see shades of grey.

Change is also needed at the other end of the economic spectrum. There are too many among us who don’t contribute at all to paying for our country’s expenses. Everyone should have some degree of ownership of our country.  I believe that everyone who earns a wage, or for that matter any income, should contribute to the tax base that keeps our country running.  And yes, there are too many who are gaming the system at both ends of the spectrum and they should be brought to task.

It does my heart good to see our government go after the Swiss banks who are helping the rich avoid paying their fair share. As the bible says to whom much is given much is expected. To shirk that responsibility is loathsome. Our government needs to go after these tax dodgers with an increased sense of seriousness.

There are too many people who are living off government doles who could easily join the rest of us as tax paying citizens. They fake back injuries to get on social security disability. They don’t really look for a job but instead collect unemployment. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not labeling everyone in these programs as gamers anymore than I am saying that all affluent people hide money from taxes.  We need to take a serious look at how these programs are administered in order to make sure that those who are truly in need get what they need but not those who are freeloading.

Those who are holding up these necessary changes due to their stiffing fear need to step aside and let us get that work done… The sooner the better…

On top of that, higher-income taxpayers could see their itemized deductions and personal exemptions phased out and pay higher capital gains taxes — 20 percent for some taxpayers. And there are new taxes for them to help pay for health care reform.

There are different income thresholds for each of these new taxes. An additional 0.9 percent Medicare tax, for example, kicks in on earnings over $250,000 for married couples filing jointly and $200,000 for singles and heads of household.

Same for a 3.8 percent tax on investment income. But the phase-out of personal exemptions and deductions doesn’t begin until $300,000 for married couples filing jointly and $250,000 for singles. Taxpayers will still be able to deduct their medical expenses, but it will be more difficult for many to qualify.

The threshold for deducting medical expenses now stands at 10 percent of adjusted gross income, up from 7.5 percent. There’s an exception, though, for those older than 65. For them, the old rate is grandfathered in until 2017.

SOURCE: Tax code changes will hit high-income Americans hardest | PBS NewsHour.

It is good to hear that at least some things are changing when it comes to asking the wealthy to pony up a little more of their mammoth discretionary income for the good of the country and for the basic welfare of its citizens. While these gains (you probably say loses if you are on the receiving end) are notable they is still a long way to go in this area…

“The Republican Party is not really a party. It doesn’t stand for anything except re-electing itself,” Stockman, who directed the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, tells Newsmax. “The neocons are only oriented to an aggressive, imperialistic foreign policy of big defense establishment and suppression of our civil liberties. That’s bad.

“The tax cons want to just cut taxes — any time, any day — regardless of the fiscal situation,” Stockman adds. “That has gone to an absurd length. The social cons, social policy people — the right-to-life issue and gay marriage and all of that — that’s irrelevant to governing a democracy in a free society.

SOURCE:  Former Reagan Budget Head Stockman Critical of GOP.

I have long agreed with Will Rogers when he said “I’m not a member of an organized party I am a Democrat”. The Democrats have always be a coalition of many factions.

• There are those who think government is the solution to all problems.

• There are those who want to give help to everyone whether they want it or not. 

• There are those called “blue dogs” who want less government but not be destroying the social safety net. 

• And finally there are those who want abortion to be easily obtained for those who “want to control their own bodies”. 

This hodgepodge of associations has long been the face of the Democratic party. Except for the last item they all seem to share a basic empathy that we should be there for one another. We should have each other’s back. The safety net that protects those caught in some bad times should be strong so that no one is totally destroyed either by their own actions or the actions of others.

And then there are the Republicans of the last couple of decades. You would think that the words in the quote above were spouted by one of the talking heads over at MSNBC but you would be wrong.  They came from one of the chief aids to then president Ronald Reagan. David Stockman invented “trickle down economics” or at least the current version of it. Trickle down is widely believed to be one of the primary reasons Reagan was elected. Give money to the rich and it will eventually trickle done to the poor. The other economic thought was that in order to raise tax revenue you must lower taxes.  Don’t ask me to explain that one but Mr. Reagan and Mr. Stockman thoroughly believed it. Of course it didn’t happen and Reagan turned out to be the first big deficit spenders of our time.

It is enough to say that Stockman was one of the founders of conservatism as it is practiced  up until recently.  The words in the quote are  pretty blunt that the GOP stands for nothing except getting re-elected. But of course that could also be said for the Democrats in congress as well. As Stockman points out

• The neocons are only for a big military establishment and suppression of civil liberties.

• The tax cons are only for cutting taxes even if it means stripping our safety net in the process. That fact does not concern them at all. 

• The social cons are so fixated on “below the belt” issues that nothing else really matters to them.

The source article goes on to include several other dark sides of the current GOP but I will leave it up to you to see that if you want.  As for me I will stick to the first group with my tenuous political allegiance. At least until the GOP comes back to something resembling any level of compassion.

A Senate panel late Monday accused Apple (AAPL) of using what it called a “complex web of offshore entities” to dodge billions of dollars in U.S. income taxes.

Source: Lawmakers say Apple dodged billions in taxes – CBS News.

If we could just manage to get a Centrist party in control of those folks in Washington one of the first things I would want them to attack is our bloated tax code. The 10,000 plus pages of rules are at the core of the above article. Of course businesses want to minimize their tax load in order to increase their profits.  That is, after all, what the free enterprise system is all about. Profits are the sole driver.

One of my major themes in my life lately has been around the word “Simplify”. Our world is just getting too complicated when it doesn’t have to be. Let’s throw out those 10,000 pages and replace them with just a handful. Let’s take away the means for corporations to move massive amounts of their income into tax exempt entities.

Let’s just make income well, income. If it comes in it is income and you pay a certain percentage of it as taxes to support our government and its business. For the individual that means you pay the same rate for income for profits from your investments as you do from the sweat of your brow. That means if you inherit income you pay your taxes on that amount in order to pass part of your windfall on for the common good.  You didn’t earn it so it is taxable income to you. For corporations money coming in is income; doesn’t matter if it was from a foreign sale or one in the U.S.

Lets Get a Centrist party in power and direct them to simplify our tax code. After they accomplish that then I would want them to give us “real” universal healthcare; not that pretend extremely watered down version called Obamacare. But first things first I guess and that is getting centrists into power in our government. Click on the logo below to see more about that.

Source: Most Americans Face Lower Tax Burden Than in the 80s – NYTimes.com.

But in fact, most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.

Households earning more than $200,000 benefited from the largest percentage declines in total taxation as a share of income. Middle-income households benefited, too. 

Everything is relative. I learned that in college in a physics class way back in the 1960’s.  Another lesson I learned is that everything is a shade of grey; nothing is totally black or white. So when I hear people complain about how all their hard
work goes out in taxes we need to remember that everything is relative.  It’s like all those millionaires who are complaining about the possible rise in their taxes. They seem to forget that during the Clinton years when many of them got the wealth they hoard today, their taxes were much higher than they are now. But I very much doubt they missed a meal during those “high tax”years.

Everyone loves to complain about taxes especially those folks in California. They don’t know of a single tax that they can’t eliminate by a ballot initiative . They seem to think they can get something for nothing out there on the west coast.  They just can’t seem to realize that all those roads, and they have lots and lots of them, that they drive on cost money to make and maintain.  They don’t seem to realize that the police who keep them safe or the fire fighter who save their lives and property cost money. All they see are taxes and that taxes are bad!! I did see recently that they are not totally oblivious to taxes as they did just vote themselves a tax increase. 

As the title here says it’s all relative. If you care to look it up the average tax rate for the U.S. is not remotely near the top of the most taxed in the world. There are socialist countries like Sweden and Denmark that pay a much higher percentage to taxes. But of course the old saying that “you get what you pay for” often applies even sometimes with taxes.  In those countries high quality single payer healthcare is the norm. They also have some of the best social insurance on the planet.  You get what you pay for……

In case you need some more reinforcement here is another article about this stuff:

Source: Facing the fiscal cliff: American taxpayers have had it easy for decades – Economy Watch on NBCNews.com

The case isn’t hard to make.  The U.S. federal tax burden, relative to gross domestic product, is lower than it’s been in half a century. Americans pay lower taxes in relation to the size of their economy than all but a handful of developed countries, including Chile and Mexico