Modern Poverty Includes A.C. and an Xbox

reply to post by macman


You forgot to include the deductions for depreciation of equipment, which sometimes results in a tax credit, the fact that a week at resort can be written off as a "business" expense, and all the other tax-payer provided subsidies, like the company car, computers, etc.

Any good accountant can use the tax code to provide not just tax relief for businesses, but income from tax credits most years, just like GE.

If you are a regular person who wants to play the rich boy game, and you are married here is how you do it.

You and your wife form an LLC. You put all of your assets under the LLC. Now you can take advantage of the same deductions businesses use. You can pay for everything thru the LLC, and if you are forced to declare bankruptcy, only the business assets can be used, not your personal ones. Oh, and rarely do business assets have to be surrendered under bankruptcy The business usually owes more than what the assets can be sold for.

Originally posted by apacheman
reply to post by macman

 

You forgot to include the deductions for depreciation of equipment, which sometimes results in a tax credit, the fact that a week at resort can be written off as a "business" expense, and all the other tax-payer provided subsidies, like the company car, computers, etc.

Any good accountant can use the tax code to provide not just tax relief for businesses, but income from tax credits most years, just like GE.

Yep, but if there is no profit for the business to show, then there is no taxes, then there are no right offs. SO, a zero sum gain means just that.

You can only right off of taxes paid. I know how to play the game.

As for a business owner, then yes, take the $100k a year, expense everything and hope you don't get audited.

Originally posted by haarvik
If you are a regular person who wants to play the rich boy game, and you are married here is how you do it.

You and your wife form an LLC. You put all of your assets under the LLC. Now you can take advantage of the same deductions businesses use. You can pay for everything thru the LLC, and if you are forced to declare bankruptcy, only the business assets can be used, not your personal ones. Oh, and rarely do business assets have to be surrendered under bankruptcy

The business usually owes more than what the assets can be sold for.

Forgot to add that if you file bankruptcy in Florida, then the house is off limits.

If corporations and households taking in $1 million or more in income each year were now paying taxes at the same annual rates as they did back in 1961, the IPS researchers found, the federal treasury would be collecting an additional $716 billion a year.

In other words, if the federal government started taxing the wealthy and their corporations at the same rates in effect a half-century ago, the federal debt to investors would almost totally vanish over the next decade. Similarly stunning numbers have come, earlier this month, from MIT economist Peter Diamond and the University of California's Emmanuel Saez, the world's top authority on the incomes of the ultra-rich. These two scholars have shared some fascinating "what ifs" that dramatize how spectacularly the incomes of our wealthiest have soared over recent decades.

In 2007, Diamond and Saez point out, taxpayers in the nation's top 1 percent actually paid, on average, 22.4 percent of their incomes in federal taxes. If that actual tax burden were to about double to 43.5 percent, the top 1 percenter share of our national after-tax income would still be twice as high as the top 1 percent's after-tax income share in 1970.

So why aren't we taxing the rich? Why are we now suffering such fearsome "debt crisis" angst? Why are our politicos so intent on shoving the "fiscal discipline" of layoffs and cutbacks - austerity - down the throats of average Americans?

No mystery here. Our political system is failing to tax the rich because the rich have fortunes large enough to buy off the political system. Again, some numbers can help us better visualize that plutocratic big picture.

In 2008, the IRS revealed this past May, 400 Americans reported at least $110 million in income on their federal tax returns. These 400 averaged $270.5 million each, the second-highest U.S. top 400 average income on record.

In 1955, by contrast, America's top 400 averaged - in 2008 dollars - a mere $13.3 million. In other words, the top 400 in 2008 reported incomes that, after taking inflation into account, amounted to more than 20 times the incomes of America's top 400 a half-century ago.

But 1955's top 400 didn't just make far less than 2008's top 400. The rich in 1955 paid far more of their income in taxes than today's rich. In 2008, the new IRS data show, the top 400 paid only 18.1 percent of their total incomes in federal income tax. The top 400 in 1955 paid 51.2 percent of their total incomes in tax.

The bottom line: After taxes, and after adjusting for inflation, 2008's top 400 had a staggering $38.5 billion more left in their pockets than 1955's most awesomely affluent.

Multiply that near $40 billion by the annual tax savings the rest of America's richest 1 percent have enjoyed over recent years and you have an enormous war chest for waging class war, billions upon billions of dollars available for bankrolling think tanks and candidates and right-wing media.

In the face of these billions, should the rest of us, America's vast non-rich majority, just toss in the towel? Our counterparts a century ago certainly didn't. They challenged their rich, on every battlefront imaginable. They eventually prevailed. They sheared their rich down to democratic size.

We can do the same.

http:/ /www.sott.net/articles/show/232536-Psychopathic-Plutocracy-If-Corporations-and-the-Rich-Paid-1960s-Level-Taxes-the-Debt-Would-Vanish

I think I'll save my tears for the poor, the rich cry enough for themselves.

reply to post by apacheman


Aha, but your illustrious leader wants to bring that number down to $250k which is not rich. Wealthy maybe, but not rich. But to a guy who only makes $24k/yr to him that is rich and that is who he is playing to.

reply to post by haarvik


I agree that $250K "ain't what it usedta been".

Would raising the floor to $350K make you happier?

That seems a reasonable compromise.

eidt to add:

He's your illustrious leader, too, as much as mine;that's why we have elections. I didn't vote for him, but he won anyway, so there it is.

Sorry 'bout that.

reply to post by apacheman


No. Raising it to $1M would though. There are 10.5 million millionaires in the US. Tax their asses. Let them foot the bill. When the guy who makes $350k makes it to the millionaire club, his taxes go up too.

i didn't vote for the commie either. Hm...maybe rigged election?

Originally posted by apacheman
reply to post by haarvik

 

I agree that $250K "ain't what it usedta been".

Would raising the floor to $350K make you happier?

That seems a reasonable compromise.

eidt to add:

He's your illustrious leader, too, as much as mine;that's why we have elections. I didn't vote for him, but he won anyway, so there it is.

Sorry 'bout that.

edit on 27-7-2011 by apacheman because: (no reason given)

I was going to provide a retort to this, but you are a lost cause.

reply to post by haarvik


I'm ok with raising it that far, and they can certainly afford it.

Rigged?

Mighta been, wouldn't be the first time.

reply to post by apacheman


Good, we agree on something...progress.

Now, if only the people in Congress can compromise like this, then we could actually make some progress.

reply to post by dolphinfan


I couldn't agree more. I will admit I'm guilty of some of the statistics. I've been between a rock and a hard place for a few years waiting for something to finally break. I don't own a big stereo (I have a $15 MP3 player), don't have a cel phone, no credit cards, bank accounts, mortgages, assets, investments, and I could fit my worldly possessions in a pickp truck. I haven't filed taxes in 3 years as I have had no income to report. I do use the internet and TV to keep me busy but I only watch documentaries and educational stuff on TV.
As you did point out, the zombies have not a clue of the abyss we're falling in to, but they can play Halo, watch 'wives of _________' reality shows, and have giant thumbs from texting all day afer choking down a king size meal at the nearby burger king. As I observe so many houses on the market, I think to myself 'you could fit an entire guatemalan neighborhood in one of those homes'.

Originally posted by origamiandurbanism

Originally posted by macman
You clearly have never started and/or ran a business.

OK, here's what doesn't make sense to me. According to some people, rich people create jobs, according to those same people small businesses create jobs, and according to those same people they are NOT rich and taxes are killing their business.

So which is it? I guess we can have it both ways? Boehner, I'm waiting for a response!

As a small business operator, I will tell you that cash/flow does not always = profit. Depending on the business and your market, you could have large amounts of $ tied up in inventory. For a small business this is a big deal. The jest of this being, small businesses are crippled by taxes. Mostly unemployment taxes. My business pays $1000 per employee just for unemployment insurance. You take away some of these taxes I would never have to lay anyone off, therefore wouldn't need unemployment insurance. I could also pay employees a lot more in benefits and compensation.

Originally posted by no time

Originally posted by origamiandurbanism

Originally posted by macman
You clearly have never started and/or ran a business.

OK, here's what doesn't make sense to me. According to some people, rich people create jobs, according to those same people small businesses create jobs, and according to those same people they are NOT rich and taxes are killing their business.

So which is it? I guess we can have it both ways? Boehner, I'm waiting for a response!

As a small business operator, I will tell you that cash/flow does not always = profit. Depending on the business and your market, you could have large amounts of $ tied up in inventory. For a small business this is a big deal. The jest of this being, small businesses are crippled by taxes. Mostly unemployment taxes. My business pays $1000 per employee just for unemployment insurance. You take away some of these taxes I would never have to lay anyone off, therefore wouldn't need unemployment insurance. I could also pay employees a lot more in benefits and compensation.

Yep, I agree. Most, almost 90% of the working force does not realize that for every $1 an employee makes, a little more then a $1 needs to be spent by the company in Govt fees/taxes alone.

What should happen is that for 1 year, every employee is allowed to take home every damn cent they earn, and then at every pay period and quarter, the employee can pay their own taxes/fees to Govt.

That would bring a fast and swift revolt like nobody has ever seen.

reply to post by dolphinfan


dolphinfan, the policies of the '60s-'70s were not "socialism". That keynesianism.

Read & research what socialism is before re-puking the same garbage that the neocons are vomiting here.

reply to post by Echtelion


Socialism is both an economic system and a political philosophy. With respect to the political philosophy which is predicated on communial allocation of resources with that allocation based on need and controlled by the government, there is no way than an honest analysis of LBS's Great Society and War on Poverty programs were not socialist. They were socialist by definition.

Of course we have not (yet) reached the place where the government has moved to control the means of production, which would be the traditional explanation of the socialist economic system. We have used stimulative approaches to accomplish the implemention of the socialist philosophy coupled with a regulatory burden and other government oversight through countless oversight and enforcement mechanisms to achieve it as well.

Redistribution of wealth is by definition socialist

reply to post by dolphinfan


Try going to the poorest counties in the US, which are all Native American reservations... Try telling them what you found on the net.

If you truely believe poor people having fridges is the issue here, you are 100% WRONG.

reply to post by ShogunAssassins


I fail to see how ancedotal stories change reality. Thats a typical strategy of the left. When confronted with an uncomfortable truth they deflect and bring up some miserable story.

That being said, I personally believe that the treatment of Native Americans in this country is an outrage and disgraceful. I also believe there are free market solutions that would be relatively easy to implement and while requiring investments would have enormous and long term positive economic impact. Merely throwing more money about absent a strategy (typical liberalism as practiced today) is certainly not the answer.

reply to post by dolphinfan


Here is a bit of reality for you..

en.wikipedia.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

"Buffalo County is a county located in the U.S. state of South Dakota. As of 2010, the population is 1,912. Its county seat is Gann Valley[1], which is also the center of population of South Dakota,[2] though Gann Valley is an unincorporated community. The county's per-capita income makes it the poorest county in the United States.[3] The Crow Creek Indian Reservation inhabited by the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe makes up the majority of Buffalo County. Unemployment is 57%; many homes lack either kitchens or indoor plumbing.[4]"



Thats a typical strategy of the right.. To sit comfy on the hill looking down on the others and pretending they know or have it just as bad.