So how come the IRS doesn't just send a bill?

reply to post by Apolon


Legal or Illegal, you'll go to jail if you get caught excercising your right not to pay.

Originally posted by Apolon
Taxing 40% on your earnings is ILLEGAL in USA and many other states but we assume that it has to be paid because

Who gets taxed 40% or even 20%? I was taxed well under 5% last year with a wife, two kids and a house, and I'm well above any poverty level.

Again, you are right, I just haven't choosen to pay YET, and when I do I'll let you and them know.... thanks for being concerned for my confusion,... I understand now. You can try to convince people and me of your inerpretation of their definition all you want,.... Some of us have BALLS to stand up to this, ignorance is not an excuse, rule #1 in law,... I choose to follow in the examples of my great grandfathers, who were....

Medorem Crawford, left the East Coast with Elijah White,...

www.arlingtoncemetery.net...

Nathaniel Austin Sr, Revolutionary War Patriot and Hero

www.rootsweb.com...

Both of these men were my 5th Great Grand Fathers and examples of Men it takes to bring change when change seems impossible,.....

[edit on 10-2-2008 by KanehBosm]

[edit on 10-2-2008 by KanehBosm]

Well, I just hope you People will do the right thing and bring Dr. Ron Paul in the white house. He wants to abolish those blood sucking vampires in IRS, income tax and Federal Bank to start with.
He will piss of all the ones actually running the Country so he will have to be heavily guarded in order to make groundbreaking changes.
I just hope he will not end up like Kennedy Brothers.

reply to post by BlueRaja

You do realize that the top 1% of income earners pay over 50% of the tax revenue, and the top 50% pay 96% of tax revenue. That means the bottom 50% is paying 4% of the tax burden.

Could you supply some sources on these figures?

If this is true, why not abolish income tax for the bottom 50%, and reduce govt expenditure in collecting and processing? If only 4%, govt would save far more and garner huge popular support.

Are you sure you mean tax "revenue"? Are you saying the "income tax" payments of individuals in the top 1% accounts for 50%+ of TOTAL tax revenue from income tax? Just want to be sure, thanks.

The mnychmp link was a list of income tax brackets, no mention of percentage of revenue paid by each bracket.



[edit on 10-2-2008 by undermind]

[edit on 10-2-2008 by undermind]

Originally posted by undermind

If this is true, why not abolish income tax for the bottom 50%, and reduce govt expenditure in collecting and processing? If only 4%, govt would save far more and garner huge popular support.

The 96% is very correct and a quick goggle search would prove it. Who pays tax

I think the point here is why bash the rich or those above middle class. Not only do they pay the majority of the taxes, but they also provide the majority of the jobs.

Take two people who are basically the same. One strives to get ahead in life and works hard in college and then spends 80 hours a week to build a small business. After many years he has 300 people working for him and he is worth millions. Between the taxes his business pay and his personal taxes, he pays 10 times the money of all 300 of his employees will pay combined, and on top of all that he has provided a livelihood for 300 families.

The other person does nothing with his life and finds a balance of lower living with low paying jobs now and then and government subsistence his whole life. Though he never really pays a penny into taxes (other than sales tax) he is a huge draw off of all the services.

In these two scenarios the rich guy always comes out as the bad guy, and I need to ask why is that?


[edit on 10-2-2008 by Xtrozero]

reply to post by Xtrozero



Why is that? Here's why: The business man you theoretically mention will NOT pay even a small portion of what he should. He will have lawyers and advisers find the loopholes , like the rich always do, and pay little or nothing at all. Business have so many deductions they can taake, from building depreciation on as far as you can imagine.

The rich normally never pay a percentage that comes even close to what the poor man pays: The poor guy will pay 40% out in taxes to Fed and state, and the rich guy will end up giving maybe 10%, which may equal more dollars than the poor mans contribution, but is a heel of a lot less than what it would be it the system were fair.

A world where 4% have it all and 96% have little is a shame and a call for revolution, to overthrow the filthy rich who enslave and mistreat the common man. It always comes down to this: At some point, the 96% will get sick of living like peasants and will rise up and make things more equal. People with BILLIONS of dollars drive by in their limo's while the vet with no care from the govt. crawls in a gutter begging for help. This is not a system that can last, and for good reason.

No, I am not a communist, or socialist. I am saying that at some point there will be an equalization, there always is.

Originally posted by eyewitness86

Why is that? Here's why: The business man you theoretically mention will NOT pay even a small portion of what he should. He will have lawyers and advisers find the loopholes , like the rich always do, and pay little or nothing at all. Business have so many deductions they can taake, from building depreciation on as far as you can imagine.

Well then how do they pay 96% of all taxes then? No matter what they do with loopholes etc. they still pay the majority of all taxes. You also discount my point that my rich guy provides the livelihood for 300 families and so is a great asset to this country where my poor guy is nothing but a liability.

The rich normally never pay a percentage that comes even close to what the poor man pays: The poor guy will pay 40% out in taxes to Fed and state, and the rich guy will end up giving maybe 10%, which may equal more dollars than the poor mans contribution, but is a heel of a lot less than what it would be it the system were fair.

Eye,

You seem to speak from the heart and not from logic. Let’s look at your poor person 40% thing. In turbo tax I did a quick check on a family with two kids that make 50k a year as to what Fed tax they would pay. With no deductions like a house, IRA etc other than the basic, this family of four would pay $1000 in Fed taxes. That comes out to 2% taxes paid. Any Family that makes less than 50k would pay even less percentage. This same family at 100k would pay 10% taxes without added deductions and a family that makes 200k would pay 19% taxes, and finally a family that makes 500k would pay 25% without a good number of deductions. Also even if they got their tax down to 2% like the 50k family they are still paying 10 times the tax of the 50k family.

A world where 4% have it all and 96% have little is a shame and a call for revolution, to overthrow the filthy rich who enslave and mistreat the common man.

Boy you sure know how to skew it all up. How does all this end up with 4% having everything and 96% have nothing? LOL!

The truth is the people who make between 100k and 200k are hit the worst in all this for they make just enough to pay the higher taxes. Do you consider a family in this range as part of your 96% that have nothing?

No, I am not a communist, or socialist. I am saying that at some point there will be an equalization, there always is.

Equalization is more along the lines of the middle class. To equalize the very rich IS communism, so the more people who can have a good life in the middleclass is what is best for America, and the middleclass would be your typical worker who has skill or trade that makes them a asset in life.

[edit on 10-2-2008 by Xtrozero]

reply to post by Xtrozero

I guess calling him on his sources does look like agenda-driven rich bashing.

By all means, to the creators of jobs and real, productive industry: more power to their arm.

But where the f*#& are these 1% of movers and shakers and where are they getting their income from? Not from investments in research and development of new products to be manufactured, that's for sure. Derivatives (betting on the stock market)? Real estate ? Paper shuffling?

Income tax obscurantism. That is one gigantic bloody buboe of an industry:

www.whatreallyhappened.com...

To cover the loss of manufacturing jobs, our government has invented the catch phrase "service economy". This is the idiotic notion that we don't need to actually sell manufactured products; that we can grow and prosper our nation by doing each other's laundry for a fee. To conceal the loss of manufacturing jobs, the government has legislated into existence thousands upon thousands of useless paper-shuffling jobs, and declared their necessity by fiat. The most obvious is the income tax which has been so obfuscated by the government that half of you had to rely on an outside expert to figure out just what all those incomprehensible words really meant. By this device, the government has replaced those jobs that made products to sell with an equal number of jobs that produce nothing whatsoever of any worth, except to keep the unemployment figures down. This over-burdening of the American people with gratuitous regulations and paperwork has accomplished nothing except to obfuscate the loss of manufacturing jobs , and to transform the American character from innovators and inventors creating new products to that of minor clerks, peeking under each other's seat cushions for lost change.

How about this from the Wall Street Journal

online.wsj.com...



So, does the first figure ($2,270,000,000,000) refer to individual income tax plus business tax or what? Why link it to “132 million income tax returns”?Then to another number, the second figure, ($1,110,000,000,000) which is just a complete confusing of the whole thing.

Further down



OK, 1% is a nice low round figure for the lowest 20% to be paying right?

www.whatreallyhappened.com...

The government is borrowing so much money that it drives the interest rates up! You pay MORE interest on your mortgage, car loan, and credit cards, because the government cannot balance its books. That extra interest you pay is therefore another hidden tax.

Who pays huge amounts of their income on mortgages, car loans, credit cards ?

Uhh, that would be ...

OK. I am new here and this is my first post, so any comments on this info is helpful.

First,I am an expat, living in germany, and I remember from about 6 years ago, that the 1040 was listed in the OMB's "book" as a form for the filing of income earned by employees of the federal government and citizens of tributaries such as Guam and Puerto Rico. It does not list it as a form for private citizens to use. There is/was no form list for use by private citizens. That is why it is called "FEDERAL INCOME" tax.

Second, (you will all love this), I tried to move back with my german wife to the states(we were married in CA before I moved over here)and she was turned down for a green card because we did not have a sponsor over there. But I am supposed to file income tax forms on my income here, as well as hers. Even tho they don't want to give her a green card, and she has never lived in the US, they expect me to pay taxes on her income.

reply to post by eyewitness86


The 96% figure wasn't the have nots. It was the percentage of the tax burden that the top 50% tax bracket pay. The top 1-5% pay 50+% of the tax burden. Exactly how punitive of a tax code would make you happy, to stick it to the rich? Exactly how will that make the existence of someone who is poor, any less unpleasant?

Sorry, as a disabled person that gets a whopping$ 843.oo a month from the government after working for a lifetime, I have NO sympathy for the filthy rich. The rich do NOT spend a vast part of their money, as pointed out above, on things like high interest rates: They can go buy things for cold cash and pay zero interest! Mortgages? Thats a laugh. They own their ten vacation homes outright so no bother there..lets see. what else? There are millions of examples but it boils down to this:

The middle class is being destroyed: The better jobs are gone or outsourced..mills closed... textile industry DEAD, the only growth industries are health care( big pharma ) Prisons...and of course a police state apparatus growing like a plaugue.

Some day, the people who live in hovels and eat one meal a day to survive are going to storm the Bastille and drag some of those culpable into the docks for beheading, and I say great! I welcome a revolution. I welcome a total upheaval that pits the 4% of rich against the 96% of poor; I know who will win. But it has to get desperate, really desperate, before that can happen..and that is what the big shots do; stall and manage and corrupt until they drain all money from the system.

Sure, if some guy works hard, he shopuld benefit. But some families pass money on to their kids and they have done ZERO to earn it, and drive around in fancy cars laughing at the rest of us who happened not to be lucky enough to be born into the ' elite '. Maybe the elite need to be taken down a few notches, and see what the rest of us are living on.

reply to post by Xtrozero


I must admit you made a great reply. I must concede certain points. BUT, the poor man is who? The guy that is working for the rich man!! The employee that gets a wage that barely allows survival while the rich owner lives like a king from the labors of the poor man is the one I mean. Sure, there are poorer people that have zero and no job, or cannot work, the disabled, etc..and they are the ones that suffer in this nation.

Tell you what> I would be all for anyone getting as filthy rich as they wanted, as long as the LEAST of us lived decently and at a level that reflects our wealth as a nation. There should be health care for all; yet what do we see? Poor people being dumped from hospitals onto the street. The rich man eats well and gets all he needs to insure a long and healthy life..a happy life. The poor man, regardless of his labors, is always ONE inch away from ruin.

ONE lost paycheck can mean disaster for many of us...most of us perhaps. In this day and age there is NO excuse for gas to be almost 4 bucks a gallon when there is plenty of oil....the bigshots are making fortunes off of the backs of the people. Gas should never cost more than a dollar a gallon, and that would still allow for massive profits for the big shot CEO's who take retirements with bonuses of HUNDREDS of millions of dollars. That sick and thats not right; while the poor are dying in the streets they have to see the limo's roll by with the thieves and big shots having a great life. No wonder this nation will go down totally soon.

reply to post by eyewitness86


I'm not rich either, but I don't begrudge those that are. Given my druthers, I'd rather be rich than not rich. You do understand that these rich with whom you have so much disdain, also are responsible for providing employment for us non-elites. When you punish them, that trickles down, as they'll just horde wealth rather than invest in job creation. Less taxation is the answer, not more. You can't tax your way into prosperity. I refuse to participate in class warfare. It's utterly pointless, and does nothing to improve anyone's life. All it serves is to foster a hateful and bitter spirit.

reply to post by eyewitness86


Prices are determined by market forces- supply/demand. It's a bad idea to have government interfering in these types of economic matters. I for one don't want to live in a Nanny State, with a Government controlled command economy. I guarantee the poor wouldn't be any better off. You'd just ensure that more people were poor with that sort of system. Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's the best economic system that mankind has come up with.

reply to post by undermind



I do agree we as a country waste a lot of money. I would say close to 50% is wasted, and this is why government should be removed as much as possible from the process. There just is no efficiency in it, and we should not walk but run from ideas like Clinton’s health care plan. Why not have compentition in the health care system.

Did you know our government spends 500 billion on services and welfare every year? When did the constitution state that the federal government should provide anything in the form of services and welfare? Also, if we had just a flat tax then everyone would just get a bill. We could even make everyone pay the same…lets say 5% of their gross, I think that would be fair. IRS would be a workforce of 10 people…

Originally posted by eyewitness86
I must admit you made a great reply. I must concede certain points. BUT, the poor man is who? The guy that is working for the rich man!! The employee that gets a wage that barely allows survival while the rich owner lives like a king from the labors of the poor man is the one I mean. Sure, there are poorer people that have zero and no job, or cannot work, the disabled, etc..and they are the ones that suffer in this nation.

First of all you can hate the rich, but we need them. Of course the rich that are just parasites or have no ethics are no better than the healthy person who is unwilling to work and opts for a life of welfare.

If you really look at America, the vast majority that works in a job that takes some skill or knowledge are the middleclass. You do not normally start in middleclass, but build up to it. A continued process of improving normally makes a person more valuable hence they make better pay. If a person is unwilling to improve in anyway then they will have a life of low paying jobs. I personally think this is a life choice and so I do not feel that sorry for people like this.

For people who cannot work this is a totally different situation. In your case, I feel there would be much more available to you if we didn’t also support those who choose not to work or choose not to become better in life and are perfectly healthy.

Let me ask you a question, why do people spend their life making low pay and are just one paycheck from ruin, but have the health and intelligence to do better, but don't? I don't blame the rich. At some point we are all responsible for our actions or non-actions. When I was 18 I worked for like $5 an hour and I complained to my dad that I worked hard and made so little. He asked me what I think the job I was doing was worth.
After I thought about it I realized my job was only worth $5 per hour, and so I worked to get a better job that was worth more. The problem is unless a person is willing to improve themselves they will not get the better job. This has nothing to do with the rich being bad people and everything to do with what is a job worth.

When I came in the military I was making like $450 a month, and now I make $7k a month. When I retire soon I will get another good job because of the skills I have developed over the years while reaping the benefits of my retirement too. This is not too bad for a person who started out with just a high school education and $450 a month.

Every healthy person has the exact capabilities to do as I have done if they wanted to, and so that is why I feel there is a huge difference between the people who cannot and those who will not when it comes to who the government should be helping.

Originally posted by Xtrozero
reply to post by undermind

 

Did you know our government spends 500 billion on services and welfare every year? When did the constitution state that the federal government should provide anything in the form of services and welfare? Also, if we had just a flat tax then everyone would just get a bill. We could even make everyone pay the same…lets say 5% of their gross, I think that would be fair. IRS would be a workforce of 10 people…

Did you know that, in the US, most of the expense for "services" and "welfare" go to children under the age of 12?


Now, are you suggesting that we put those children to work and make them earn their own keep (Maybe they could all be sold off to the booming 'child sex trade'?!!), or maybe we should just let them die of starvation and exposure in the streets, they aren't our kids after all!


Or are you suggesting that the financial burden be shifted to the individual states to deal with, relieving the Federal government of the onus? Do you really believe that such a transfer would, in any way lessen your tax burden?

The states would have to raise the tax rates they impose to cover the additional cost.

And no state would be immune from the fallout.

Those few states that currently have no personal income tax, would be forced to impose one; and while their legislators haggled and dithered over the "How's" and Who's, their citizens would be lying, dying and rioting in the streets.

Corporations, and those non-corporate businesses that could make the jump, would flee the US in an exodus not seem since Moses left Egypt!. No state, in such a nightmare-land, would be able to justify or afford to give businesses anywhere near the kind of tax incentives currently enjoyed in several states.


And you think a Flat Tax is the answer? HA!

You think 5% of gross (income, I assume) would be fair?

Riiiiiiight!

Define Gross.

Define Income.

Now try to argue your case against some one who claims that "Wages" aren't a form of Income.

Then try to convince the multi-millionaire who 'just happens" to have a house in the US, that he owes 5% of his Gross income to the US, even though, as he claims, all of his business is done overseas, therefore he has no gross (US) income to report to the US!


It is all sooo easy....When you don't have to think about it.

Originally posted by Bhadhidar
Did you know that, in the US, most of the expense for "services" and "welfare" go to children under the age of 12?

That I would need to see proof, unless you are saying that welfare is based on the number of childern the parents have, and we still have the situation of people unwilling to work because they get welfare that also becomes a generation to generation event.

Now, are you suggesting that we put those children to work and make them earn their own keep (Maybe they could all be sold off to the booming 'child sex trade'?!!), or maybe we should just let them die of starvation and exposure in the streets, they aren't our kids after all!

Lol do you argue to just argue. Here is a new idea...you have childern, you take care of them...wow isn't that extreme.

Yes we need to care for childern, but that is not the issue here.

Or are you suggesting that the financial burden be shifted to the individual states to deal with, relieving the Federal government of the onus? Do you really believe that such a transfer would, in any way lessen your tax burden?

First I would suggest we come up with different support systems that are not based on welfare as we have it now.

The states would have to raise the tax rates they impose to cover the additional cost.

Sure they would, but it would be much closer to home and there would be incentive by the state to get people off welfare and back into the working society. If a person is unwilling then why support them, and why should they keep their kids who they cannot support?



So you think our tax system is better?

Originally posted by Bhadhidar

Did you know that, in the US, most of the expense for "services" and "welfare" go to children under the age of 12?


Now, are you suggesting that we put those children to work and make them earn their own keep (Maybe they could all be sold off to the booming 'child sex trade'?!!), or maybe we should just let them die of starvation and exposure in the streets, they aren't our kids after all!

I'm gonna need to see some citations for that statistic. More likely what that stat shows is welfare mothers that get paid more based on the number of children that they have. I don't see anyone suggesting child labor or participating in the sex trade, so that was a pretty asinine remark with zero bearing on the discussion. Answer this question- do you believe that the money you earn is yours, and it's a privelege that the government can use some of it, or do you believe that it's the government's money and it's a privelege that they let you keep as much as they do? If you believe that your money is yours, then forced wealth redistribution should be anathema to you.