Super rich pay no taxes

reply to post by seentoomuch


IMO businesses like yours get screwed the most.

Your taxes are so high so the super rich don't have to pay taxes, People worth hundreds of millions and billions in personal worth.

Originally posted by seentoomuch
My tax rate is 30%. I am supposedly "rich". But, due to most of my income going towards working capital for our family company which employs about 30 people my actual income is middle class but with a huge tax bill each year to keep the jobs, keep the company working. So, while on paper I'm at a top level of income in reality it is not so. Why don't I have a break on the tax rate? We're keeping jobs going, families going? A tax hike means we will downsize, mechanize and pass the hike on in the price of our product. The Dems are killing this country.

STM

Thank you, Obama. Now we will have to say, "You're fired" to many of our employees........... What a jerk!

Obama's tax rates are on average the same as Ronald Reagan's tax rates -

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by seentoomuch

 

IMO businesses like yours get screwed the most.

Your taxes are so high so the super rich don't have to pay taxes, People worth hundreds of millions and billions in personal worth.

I agree, I would rather this persons business be exempt and make Mitt Romney pay his share,
instead of 14%

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by fulllotusqigong

 

I agree, now would be a very good time to hit corporations with real estate taxes. And ICs should pay a higher tax rate on their estate holdings in the US.

When you have condos selling for a hundred mil, then clearly there are serious problems.

As far as I am concerned, I don't think ICs should be allowed to own property in the US.

The real truth is that we can produce more than we can consume. Most consumption is a result of planned obsolescence. We should be working 20 hour weeks, and spending more time with our families. The only problem is that such a system would eliminate the wealthy class.

The rich are on fact a burden on civilization, and they have always been.

Since the "rich" own the businesses for products and services, I hope you realize who ends up paying those tax increases. It's not them. They increase the cost of those same products and services to make up the tax increase. So the taxing the rich means the commoners like me pay more for products and services.

If you increase their by taxes 100%, they'll increase the products and services 100%.

The ONLY solutions are armed confiscation of what the rich have (Argentina, etc.) or stop spending so much money so you don't need to collect more and more taxes, causing everything to cost more and more.

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by seentoomuch

 

IMO businesses like yours get screwed the most.

Your taxes are so high so the super rich don't have to pay taxes, People worth hundreds of millions and billions in personal worth.

Assets and "worth" is not taxable. Income is taxable. If you want to "get at" someones worth, get the military to raid them, kill them, and take all their "stuff". Is that what you want?

Then those that have a home worth $200K are too rich, then only an apt. and $1000 of furnature are too rich.

Who is the god-squad that has the authority to determine who has too much, because it causes other people to lust after their property. (covet neighbors goods). Envy is such an ugly, deadly sin.

reply to post by tkwasny


The costs of goods and services provided by corporations should include the cost of the services provided by the US government to keep those corporations in business.

Instead of small businesses having to pay high tax rates that subsidize corporate bankers exportation of business and technology developed in the US, overseas to slave labor markets.

These corporations didn't create these markets, products, or technology, they bought it all with Borrowed money that came from fraudulent schemes

reply to post by seentoomuch


In Germany everyone works 30 hours a week so that there's increased employment.

In the U.S. Robert Reich says this would work only if the hours are covered by unemployed insurance.

So it's a matter of how the tax money is used -- right now the increase in taxes is to pay the banking elite who just print money at interest and then use the free money for speculative investment.

So the federal government needs to stop paying the banking elite and instead invest the money in job creation -- whether through government contracts or actual government businesses.

The reason prices are so high is because the government has not pursued the antitrust laws and so there are too many monopolies in oil, etc. with banking as the main monopoly.

The increase in taxes are incremental so any tax increase only affects the income earned over a certain income level -- so it just means less profits for the business as economic growth.

Are you saying that you have to expand your market share without increasing the number of employees? Are you saying your employees aren't productive enough so that they would need to work harder in order to compete?

The problem is that consumer demand is so low because the banks are not loaning money as they're using the free welfare money for speculative investment.

I'm sure there are tax deductions that can be found to offset tax increases for business.

Corporations used to provide at least 50% of federal tax monies and now that money is provided by payroll taxes on the workers.

So you're talking about your personal income tax rate versus your corporate tax rate?

If Buffett really thinks he and his “mega-rich friends” should pay higher taxes, why doesn’t his firm fork over what it already owes under current rates?

So a big problem here is transferring corporate wealth to individual income and then as with Buffett he hides his individual income so he pays "less taxes than his secretary."

When Warren Buffett penned that op-ed demanding he be taxed more, we assumed that meant he had actually paid his taxes. Not quite the case. Buffett’s famed company, Berkshire Hathaway, owes taxes that are nearly a decade old.

So apparently his plea to increase taxes on individual income is backfiring as the real issue is his corporate tax.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, owns an airplane company that has been sued by the Federal Government for no less than $366 million in back taxes. Here’s the details: NetJets Inc., the private-plane company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), was countersued by the U.S. over $366 million in taxes and penalties.[...]

So wait -- you're saying your personal wealth is $10 million but if you have an increase in taxes for your company then you have to fire workers?

For ten years I lived off less than $10,000 a year with a 30% tax rate and now my income is zero. I'm not complaining but the only way me and my coworkers could be so poor was because our executives were paying themselves $100,000 a year in income and that was for a small environmental nonprofit!!!

So the income ratio between workers and executives should be four to one as is the case with Madragon Cooperative system in Spain.

Here's Forbes on a wealth tax instead of an income tax

The stock value of private businesses may require an inventory of assets and valuation based upon a liquidation of assets computation. The key difference with a small business is that the principals of the company may account for much of the value of the business and their services should not be valued for wealth tax purposes.

You say $10 million but does that include liquidation value for taxes?

2% Flat Net Wealth Tax 4% Sales or VAT Tax 8% Flat Income Tax

Richard Wolff supports a 10% tax increase on the richest Wall St. portfolios

In other words, those with only $ 1 million in their portfolios might pay 1-2% whereas those with over $30 million (called "Ultra-HNWI's" by the way) might have to pay 12-13 %.

reply to post by tkwasny


Assets and worth have been the basis for taxes for a very long time, and continue to be.

You can keep buying into the con if you want. So you can pretend you are rich, while the people who are actually rich laugh all the way to their off shore bank accounts

Why is it you don't support politicians who will give you the tax break you deserve, and pay for it by shifting the tax burden back to where it belongs, on the rich and the corporations.

Flat tax, everyone pays the same rate.

Originally posted by MidnightTide
Flat tax, everyone pays the same rate.

National sales tax on 100% of products and services and finincial transactions, no exceptions, no exemptions, with a repeal of the 16th amendment. Even the "47%" that pay no effective money into the Govt. now will. So will all the drug dealers, etc. and the entire underground economy. Even they have to eat, gas the car, buy clothes, etc.

That way there is no basis for envy over the rich. The more they spend or transfer funds the more they feed into the govt. Doesn't matter how much you have, it's got to be spent or moved at some point.

reply to post by seentoomuch


If your workers were family members would you just fire them? Or would you transfer your private wealth into investing in your business so you wouldn't have to fire the workers making them homeless, starving, etc.? Or to put it in other terms why do investors think that the U.S. is a bad investment compared to China? Because they can get a bigger profit against labor costs in China and so U.S. wealthy individuals invest in China instead of the U.S.

You seem to think I'm naive about taxes on businesses in the U.S. but I've read this book Perfectly Legal:

It is possible to write about money matters with more deftness, to capture in the text the kind of real-life complexities that account for 55,000 pages of tax rules; William Greider did so in “Secrets of the Temple,” his magisterial account of the Federal Reserve Board under Paul Volcker, and Johnston clearly has the journalistic prowess to do something as ambitious on taxes. Instead, what Johnston intends with “Perfectly Legal” is a call to arms. “It is my hope,” he writes in the introduction, “that the truths revealed in this book will serve as a wake-up call to everyone who believes as much as I do in the principles our country was founded on.”

This book from 2004 is dated as the situation is worse but it's still accurate:

the richest 13,000 households in the country own about 5.1 percent of the nation’s wealth)

Here's a good zinger:

Johnston is best when he focuses on some of the least known and most egregious perks for the wealthy hidden in the tax code. There is an engaging section on the loopholes business executives use to get great deals on corporate jets. “Under the rules set by Congress,” Johnston writes, “flying in the luxury of the company’s Boeing 737 Business Jet is often cheaper than the middle seat in coach on a commercial airliner.” Under the tax rules, executives pay nothing to use a company’s corporate jet, even if they use it for pleasure (which Johnston says is not an uncommon practice). Instead, the executive pays only income taxes on the cost of the trip — something like $500 for a flight from New York to Paris, for example. But such a trip would cost a company’s shareholders at least $30,000, and since those shareholders get to deduct these expenses from their tax returns, “all taxpayers pick up 35 percent of the true costs,” Johnston writes. Taxpayers, then, pay at least 10 times as much for the executive’s personal trip as he does himself.

And this nice "bait and switch" manuever may be fooling you:

George W. Bush, of course, has elevated this deception to a high art. His last tax cut, which provided hundreds of billions for the wealthy, also almost fully erased the income tax bill for a family of four. You can try to tell the electorate that it’s being screwed, but you’ll do so at your peril.

reply to post by tkwasny


Payroll tax acounts for over 50% of federal taxes.

It's also a regressive tax so the poor that don't pay income tax pay a higher percentage of payroll taxes.

This was caused by Reagan cutting the corporate and top income tax brackets.

That's called class warfare against those who work for a living.

But you can't take blood from a stone which is today's scenario in the U.S. yet you call it "envy." haha.

reply to post by fulllotusqigong
All my wealth is the company, my pay is middle class, so yes we will have lay offs if the taxes are raised so that the remaining employees will have all their benefits. Are you saying as a business owner I shouldn't even receive middle class wages?

reply to post by tkwasny


Corporations are granted charters by the government in order to operate business.

The citizens can revoke the charter of any corporation that is not operating legally and that includes taxes.

Prices are a "private" tax while the government can provide services and products through government owned businesses at a lower price -- this is why healthcare is nationalized in all industrialized countries and healthcare is the largest tax cost after the military.

reply to post by seentoomuch

Allowing the top two marginal tax rates to return to pre-2001 levels as scheduled next year would affect very few small businesses, a recent Treasury Department study found.[1] The study shows that only 2.5 percent of small business owners face the top two rates. The claims that allowing the Bush tax cuts for high-income people to expire would seriously harm small businesses rest on an exceedingly broad, and misleading, definition of “small business.”[2] The definition is so broad, in fact, that under it, both President Obama and Governor Romney would count as small business owners — as would 237 of the nation’s 400 wealthiest people.[3] Charges that any tax increases on people making over $1 million a year, such as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s proposal to implement the “Buffett Rule,” would inflict injury on many small businesses rest on the same misleading definition of small businesses.[4]

Sounds like you've been drinking the wrong kool-aid

The frequently cited claim that letting the high-income tax cuts expire would seriously harm small businesses because “roughly half of the income of small businesses” is taxed at the top two tax rates relies on a highly exaggerated definition of small business owner[6] . This definition includes any taxpayer who receives any income from any “pass-through” entity (that is, an entity that does not pay corporate income tax on its profits but instead passes them through to its owners, who pay tax at the individual rates).

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by beezzer

 

The GOP gets blamed because they are the ones who wrote the laws that allow the super rich to avoid paying taxes.

We need to do what was done after WW II, and start taxing the super rich up to their eye brows until the huge debts created by the free market scam is wiped out.

Any working person smart enought to look after their own welfare should support high taxes on the rich.

Let's start with the millionaires in congress. Begin with those who became millionaires AFTER they were elected. Then, let's freeze ALL congressional pay, benefits (NOT to be retro-active) and monies for their pet-projects; until budgets are passed.


Oh yeah, while we're at it; everyone in congress should be required to participate in Obamacare and all other socialized programs pass into law.

Then, and only after ALL of the above is met, I'd be interested in discussing taxes and the rich.

We are, and were always meant to be a Capitalist country. Deal with it! (or leave, who cares since there are so many other socialized countries to pick from...leave my capitalist country alone.)

reply to post by SourGrapes


So you're saying Eisenhower was a socialist?

Dwight D. Eisenhower Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income over $400,000: 92% - 91% Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 25% During the administration of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a 92 percent marginal income tax rate for top earners in the United States remained from the previous administration of Harry S. Truman. At the time, the highest tax bracket was for income over $400,000. This was nearly the highest tax rate for top earners in the century, just under the 94 percent rate for income over $200,000 instated during World War II under Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency. In 1954, the 92 percent marginal rate decreased to 91 percent under Eisenhower. The maximum tax on long-term capital gains was 25 percent -- a rate that remained in place for a decade.

The seven biggest economic lies

Originally posted by spinalremain
Reply to post by beezzer

 

Not being able to repair a mess at a fast enough rate is radically different than actually creating the mess.

 

Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

 

BS. Obama helped create this mess, and Obama is working to create a much larger mess: The Complete collapse of our nations medical system(that is a different topic though).

But since your from New York and obviously content living in that heck hole, logic and reason will never reach you. The reality of this depression is: Stagnant wages caused by outsourcing and immigration, increasing energy costs and inflation is the reason why the economy is so messed up.

But then again, expecting more then petty insults from a New Yorker is like expecting Sasquatch to show up at regular intervals(at-least us Pennsylvanian's like to insert the occasional opinion, criticism or factiod). Then again, given how unpopular Romney is, and how outrageous the Obama administration has been acting(almost like they are trying to tank their own re-election bid), I wouldn't be surprised if Romney supporters are trying to build up support for Romney by attacking Romney.

Make people chose sides in an antagonistic manner based upon emotions, not rational thought. Both are scum, and any who support either are less then mentally handicapped.

reply to post by korathin


The mess is the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned of after WWII.

All the politicians are dependent on monies and government contract jobs in their districts -- the military industrial complex purposively has made sure to spread out all the government tax contracts to all government districts thereby ensuring that no politicians will vote to lower the military budget.

The military is the most inefficient means of job creation and with the most tax fraud and the military is 51 percent of federal taxes when including debt costs on past wars.

Basically the U.S. empire is collapsing because we've had to rely on more expensive wars to try to control the last resources on the planet -- mainly oil.

Real sustainable cultures compost their own humanure to grow food. The U.S. wastes too much energy using water-based sanitation for sewers and then is dependent on oil to grow food.

So the U.S. is way out of touch with reality -- not just New Yorkers -- 2 billion people live on 2 dollars or less a day.

In Brazil it is illegal for the rich to have land that remains idle after 7 years so then the poor can farm that land of the rich to grow food.

So the U.S. wastes huge amount of land in idle speculation or else covers up good farm land with speculative real estate that is just a tax deduction for the developers.

With global population to hit 9 billion -- reality will become more apparent for people in the U.S.

The world will no longer provide welfare to the U.S. but instead will tax the U.S. for all the resources and wealth the U.S. steals from the poor.

reply to post by seentoomuch

Two ads say Obama would tax "small businesses" at a rate of "62 percent." He wouldn’t. That number is an inflated estimate of the very top tax rate, and it doesn’t represent what Obama has proposed.

Fact check from 2008 -- looks like this is a repeated lie about small business tax

Republicans have for years greatly exaggerated the extent to which higher taxes on upper-income individuals would fall on owners of small businesses. And we have repeatedly pointed out the inflated figures they’ve used in the past.

Boehner’s Big Stretch on Small Business

You haven't responded yet to the Treasury department clarification against the lies about taxes on small business owners.

From what I can tell -- you are not included in this tax increase that you're scared about.

O.K. let's clarify here to be real clear!

Obama's Tax Hike Plan Punishes Small Businesses By David Park July 13, 2012

O.K. that's your fear right?

I mean your fear is smeared all over the internet by corporate-funded liars.

But guess what -- it's a lie and it's wrong! I already posted the reason why but you didn't respond.

Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen falsely claimed that 90 percent of small businesses would face a tax hike under President Obama's tax plan. Official estimates and independent analysts agree that Thiessen is wrong, and that only about 3 percent of businesses make enough profit to face the proposed higher rates.

Still True: Obama Plan Won't Raise Taxes On 97% Of Small Businesses Research July 19, 2012

A memorandum from the Joint Committee on Taxation, a congressional panel that analyzes tax proposals, explains that "3.5 percent of all taxpayers with net positive business income" will face higher rates. All other small businesses that pay taxes as an individual will pay the lower rates. From the Joint Committee On Taxation:

And this:

Less than 2 percent of tax returns reporting small-business income are filed by taxpayers in the top two income brackets -- individuals earning more than about $170,000 a year and families earning more than about $210,000 a year.

So you said you have a middle class lifestyle for your family right?

You're not going to have to fire any of your workers!

Another expert, William G. Gale, a director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, disputed the notion that raising marginal tax rates on small-business owners depressed hiring. These businesses can deduct wages from their revenues, he said, with the potential to lower their effective tax rate. “They can deduct everything in full,” Mr. Gale said. “It’s a canonical result in economics that if you can immediately deduct the investment, then the effective tax rate should be zero.”

A Fuller Picture in the Small-Business Tug of War By TRIP GABRIEL Published: July 13, 2012

Here's how to deduct your workers' wages from your taxes

Are you saying that you can't deduct your workers' wages from your revenue?

If so -- why?