Super rich pay no taxes, page 15

Originally posted by beezzer

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by beezzer

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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.

A flat tax would be fair for all.

But the left refuses to be fair. They want to punish the rich and justify the theft by taking it all.

And this nonsense about the right allowing the tax laws is bullspit! What have the democrats done the past 6 years?

Spend and whine and spend and whine and complain that taxes aren't high enough.

edit on 14-8-2012 by beezzer because: (no reason given)

Fair for all? Define fair? What rate would be "fair for all?" And who decides what's fair?

If everyone paid a flat 10%, the guy making 25k a year would (IMO rightfully) protest, why do i have to pay 10% when the guy who makes 100--1000--times what i make only pay 10% too. If everyone paid 20-25%, the guy making 25k would (imo rightfully) protest, why do i have to pay so much?

I personally think it should be proportionate to income.

If we eliminate the income tax, and institute a "fair tax," it will add that burden on most purchases to lower income people. While many of them pay little income tax anyway, that extras "fair" tax would be income they lose to taxes. While some might argue, "well, if the rich buy a 2 million dollar house or yacht, that's an additional tax on that;" that's a luxury for them, not necessities that those struggling to survive need, with additional taxes, while CoL increases and income doesn't.

ETA:

I certainly don't want an additional x% tax added to most or every purchase i make, or have an additional tax added to services i require.

reply to post by Liquesence

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The sad thing is that our sales taxes have crept up over the last decade, so that in addition to the income taxes we pay, our sales taxes have doubled, falling disproportionately on the working classes. Most government functions now charge fees as a part of meeting the rules, commonly referred to as licences in order to boost revenues. All of these fees and fines for compliance failures and safety violations have allowed government to increase our tax rates secretly while claiming to reduce our taxes.

In short, tax cuts for the rich have been offset by sneaky tax increases on everyone else.

All the while, government expenditures have increasingly gone to serve the needs of the super rich, and take away from the middle class.

reply to post by poet1b

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poet, you really understand what has happened to the middle class over the last few decades.

Originally, the South and West were in favor of a progressive income tax, because they knew they were the poorer states to the wealthy North East and wanted to see those who had the resources to pay a federal income tax do so. Now, after decades of effective political campaigning to wed religious and free market fundamentalism, many citizens buy into low tax rates and flat taxes for all.

You noted fees and licenses. As the poor/middle class voter bought into the propaganda of "no new taxes" and "personal responsibility", no politician told them that, instead of taxes, they would end up paying "user fees" (or higher college tuition, etc.). That is fraud!

Where a wealthy person might never step foot on a public beach to dig up a clam, the poor/middle class person now pays a fee/license to supplement the family food budget, or pays just to relax on a beach (or other public recreation area). Where before taxes paid for such things, the poor/middle class pay out-of-pocket, lowering their already vanishing disposable income.

There are some who would not see anything wrong with the wealthy paying no/ little taxes, yet rant about a new fee, failing to see the connection.

So when I protested at the Democratic National Convention in 1996 in Chicago. Anyway I stayed at Karl Meyer's apartment.

He is a War Tax Resister but the IRS then confiscated all his monies, etc. so he relied on underground work. Anyway he moved to Tennessee and now does permaculture.

Here's Karl's current permaculture farm in Nashville

Anyway so what is wealth? I visited the most traditonal Berber village in Morocco and they made all their own clothes from wild sheep they herded and they composted their own manure to transform the desert mountains into fertile vegetable and wheat fields. They built their houses out of mud adobe. It was a sustainable happy village for thousands of years. The gov't had just put in a gravel road and one truck drove by and all the women raised their fists shouting at it - no tolerance for industrial noise-pollution.

So money? It's just a matter of exchange but taxes and interest rates are a matter of transferring wealth to the elite. I would dare to say even technology is this way also.

So the poor don't pay income taxes -- why should they since the poor don't receive any benefits. Oh are the poor really just useless eaters? More like fodder waiting to be killed when they're drafted for wars. Even slaves were fed and clothed. Wage slavery means there is no responsibility for housing, etc. So that's why even the homeless have jobs a lot of the time.

And if there's food stamps that doesn't mean it's enough to feed the people.

I dumpster dived for food for 10 years - because the U.S. wastes so much food.

Freud said money is an anal retention -- and the old phrase "smells like money" refers to this also.

Composting is how waste is turned into money as nutrition to grow food.

Taxes on the rich is how money is recirculated into the economy of production and consumption instead of gambling on capital gains as dividends.

Local currencies are a means to take back money but more importantly is to just see how little we can go without money -- grow your own food.

Walk or bike instead of using a car.

Share everything.

Compost your manure and save drinking water.

The genocide against the Native Americans is still going on. Yet if they get money it is considered unfair.

Gambling is "voluntary taxes" yet people gamble because it's a dopamine addiction just like Wall St.

So yes the poor need to overcome dopamine addiction just like the rich.

The middle class though prop up the whole system for both the poor and the rich. Instead we need a radical movement back to the land as the real creator of wealth.

The article, "A Fund for Mankind Through Effective Tax Resistance," was reprinted widely, and it won many converts. Even today, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee publishes pamphlets based on Meyer's thinking. But what seems practicable to Meyer does not always seem that way to others, and although thousands of people joined him the Fund for Mankind never became the movement he envisioned. Soon enough, too, Meyer came under scrutiny from the IRS. In 1971 he was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for tax evasion. He served nine months in Sandstone, Minnesota. It was not lost time. Prison was a kind of graduate school in radicalism: "Nine months in prison was a more valuable educational experience than nine months at the University of Chicago, because of what it told me about the human condition and about our society," he says. "It was an education in trying to see the world the way it is-like Socrates-not to see the shadows, but the reality."

More on Karl Meyer

Wow I thought I had a lot of tomatoes in my garden:

About once a month he makes a foray to a wealthier part of Nashville to rescue discarded loaves from the dumpster behind a fancy bakery. None of this embarrasses him. It saves him money and time. Plus, he regards waste as immoral. Each fall Meyer drives to Chicago for two or three months of freelance carpentry, his one concession to the need to make a living. He learned carpentry years ago because it seemed a good way to work part time and earn enough to live on without paying taxes. It leaves plenty of time for his real work: protesting, writing letters and articles for the Catholic Worker and other pacifist publications, following community affairs, and growing food. The garden is thriving. Last summer, he harvested, among other vegetables, 2,000 tomatoes. It is like Meyer to keep count. A friend describes him as "the most organized anarchist I have ever seen." Meyer also has planted apple trees, pear trees, paw-paws, Illinois mulberry, cherry, persimmon, blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and eight varieties of grapes-more than growing food, it's a way "to bring biodiversity back into the cities."

reply to post by poet1b

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Some will steadfastly believe the narratives they have heard and wanted to believe in. They believe that those who tell those stories have their best interest in mind and that their personal wealth will be protected. They have been, in reality, the Maginot Line of the class warfare, run over by the Have-Mores.

Egyptians understood that the wealth from globalization did not trickle down to them, because they could see that it wasn't happening. They demanded change. The American middle class could not see their wealth being vacuumed up, until the machine broke down.

With the narrative now being "punishing success" and "envy", some Americans will line up on bended knee to receive their own punishment from the narrative tellers and proclaim mea culpa for the false accusation of sinning with envy.

Americans have been insulated from the true cost of many things. Corporations have seen to that.

reply to post by fulllotusqigong

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Individuals have to decide. Does s/he want the world of the Buchanans, Santorums, and Ryans, or the world of Dorothy Day.

A line from "Servant of God, Dorothy Day" came to me as I read of the miserable despair of the warden. She wrote that these problems "stem from our acceptance of this filthy rotten system."

Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, wrote, "Our task is to build a society in which it is easier for people to be good." In that, he was anticipating Blessed Pope John XXIII's encyclical, "Peace on Earth."

Day concluded, "the only solution is love and love comes with community." Blessed Pope John Paul II resonates with her sentiment: He insisted that justice must be open to "the new horizon of solidarity and love."

Catholic social teachings and my Buddhist brother's book

Since we play in each other's karma, it can be easy at times to despair. Personally, I would rather live in a country that refuses to accept a filthy rotten system, where it is easy to be good, and where there is a community of love. But, that is just me, and that is all the more reason to choose this direction to travel.

oops, forgot to say, I enjoyed reading your post! And about Karl Meyer

reply to post by poet1b

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Yeah good point -- this is why Noam Chomsky states that National Public Radio is the worst form of mind control because it creates a false framework of seemingly intellectual discussion that smoothly ignores the pink elephant in the room.

Or as Greg Palast calls it "National Petroleum Radio."

So consider it long term -- Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru

This book title documents how the pre-Incan cultures were matrifocal lunar cultures -- based on horticultural and easy living but when the Inca conquered them the males were forced into a new deal -- if the males want to marry they have to

1) join the military for the Inca empire

2) pay taxes to the Inca in the form of potato harvest.

Now most men want to get married so they buy into the above "deal" and it's really no different then what was the "middle class" of the U.S. based on WWII. So essentially everyone was patriotic, etc. For the females conquered by the Inca they had to submit to the Incan elite females who sort of controlled the whole elite system.

Like Dick Cheney being secretly controlled by his wife.

I mean essentially -- and no one wants to admit this -- but civilization going back to the Greeks pretends to be "democratic" but it's really a military empire. So there is that external and internal dichotomy. The people who are "against taxes" are also "pro military" which happens to be the biggest use and most inefficient use of tax monies.

So what is civilization anyway? Basically not just to take control of others territory and resources so one tribe or "nation" can dominate over others as the U.S. has military bases all over the world for this purpose -- but also to control the internal population through brainwashing and propaganda.

The tax paying military serving "middle class" have to be the most mind controlled. As Noam Chomsky says when brutal force can not be used to control people because it's ostensibly a "democracy" then there has to be mind control. If you can control a person's mind then you have also controlled their bodies.

So of course the whole Cold War was a scam as a huge tax subsidy for the military

But more over all these "spin off" technologies from the military do not make the economy more efficient -- like the internet, etc. but rather create automation as the number one cause of job losses.

If we want employment as mass labor we need manual labor but this is just not possible in this high tech era.

People worship technology as our new religion. This goes back to Plato -- it's built into logarithmic math.

There seems to have been some connection with the Delphi temple (the name Pythagoras means “voice of Pythia,” the snake-goddess of Delphi and its oracle). They have been likened to the Free Masons, in that they served as a kind of Council of Foreign Relations or New World Order…. Archytas developed the musical scale into a political metaphor for the scales of justice. What gave music this imagery of social balance and just proportion was the ability of its mathematics of harmonic (“geometric”) proportions to serve as an analogy for how inequities of wealth and status rendered truly superior men equal in proportion to their virtue — which tended to reflect their wealth. By this circular logic the wealthy were enabled to rationalize their hereditary dominance over the rest of the population.

Professor Michael Hudson’s essay, “Music as an Analogy for Economic Order in Classical
Antiquity” in Jürgen Backhaus (ed.), Karl Bücher. Theory, History, Anthropology, Non-Market Economies
(Marburg:Metropolis Verlag, 2000): pp. 113-35.

The secret truth is that logarithmic mathematics inherently justifies logarithmic technology as unequal economic orders. So then the distribution of wealth matches the logarithmic mathematics. It goes that deep.

O.K. consider farming -- Cargill: Our Taxes, Global Destruction! MAR. 2, 2000 – EDITORIAL/OPINIONS

O.K. Professor Richard Wolff has some amazing new Economic Updates -- Economic Update: "No Better Economic Policy?" Audio The Economic Crisis by Richard Wolff. Published on September 10, 2012

So corporations used to pay 40% of federal tax revenue but now pay only 8% of tax revenue.

How did the government make up for this loss of corporate tax revenue from the 1940s and 1950s? Payroll tax on the working class.

Payroll taxes bring in 37 to 38% of the federal government revenue and they are a regressive tax -- disproportionately on the poor.

Income tax is progressive -- but not nearly as progressive as it used to be.

The payroll tax - after 106,000 dollars -- no tax so the more money you make the smaller percentage of a payroll tax you pay.

So that is the SIMPLE redistribution of wealth to the rich and stealing wealth from the poor.

Only 2 out of 1000 estates are subject to estate tax. Only 3 tenths of 1 percent of the federal government revenue is from estate tax on the rich.

So this whole fear tactic of making the rich pay is a scam - it used to be 91% tax on the rich as individual income tax in the 50s and 1960s and now it's only 35%.

New Interview with Economist Professor Michael Hudson -- on the Bankers taking control of public assets through monetary speculation with the tax bailouts

MH: Because if you didn’t tax consumers through the sales taxes, then you’d have to do what governments used to do and tax real estate! And if you taxed real estate, then it wouldn’t have as much money, rental income, free to pay the banks. And the idea is to free all of the income from real estate rent and natural resource rent so that instead of this being the tax base, it can be paid to the banks and the financial sector, so the financial sector, now that it has become the de facto government of the economy, wants all of the rent that used to be the tax base to go to it. And its aim is to shift the taxes off real estate, off finance, off insurance and off monopolies, on to labour to shrink the living standards as rapidly as it can.

KF: It beggars belief that the Tax Justice Network has quantified some $21 trillion hidden in tax havens around the world. If there was a better usage of the property tax, or I prefer, actually, a land value tax, would this wealth discretion be possible?

MH: Only if you change the tax system. If you don’t tax real estate, and you don’t tax wealth, then it doesn’t matter where it goes abroad. There are all sorts of reasons that money goes abroad – false invoicing, there’s an immense amount of fictitious economic statistics that are turned in so that companies can take their revenue abroad rather than at home. They can pretend to lend money to themselves and abroad and then pay interest to themselves in a tax haven where there is no tax on it. On my website, michael-hudson.com, I have all sorts of narratives of how this is done through offshore banking enclaves.

KF: From what you’ve said, it’s not going to be long until there is a full-scale campaign declaring cities, regions, municipalities and nations as dead democracies. Essentially, to hear that word democracy, more and more people are s'n-word'ing at it.

reply to post by fulllotusqigong

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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.

reply to post by poet1b

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Yeah I realized today -- O.K. my friend got a great corporate advertising job but all advertising is 100% tax deductible.

Now when Reagan cut the tax on the rich and corporations then Reagan had to increase the payroll tax on the working poor in order to make up for the losses. The same truth holds for advertising -- it is welfare for the rich!!

So I work part time for room and board -- I do manual labor with hand tools -- a pick axe, a shovel, a hand saw, hauling buckets of water, etc. I grow food. I burn wood for heat. I clear out invasive European buckthorn on 10 acres. I plant restoration ecology and I watch plants grow back in diversity after I clear out the buckthorn. I have planted fruit and nut trees and bushes, etc. I compost my own manure to use for fertilizer to grow food so I use less water and electricity for flushing a toilet.

Anyway so who is on welfare? I get money but only for food and supplies. If I grow my own food then I have some surplus money to buy books which I then donate to the local library. If I buy clothes I get them at the thrift store.

So my friend has a fancy car, take airplanes for vacation. Owns a house, etc. But my friend is literally on welfare!!

reply to post by fulllotusqigong

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And my opinion is why in the world should you have to pay fed income taxes.

Originally, only the rich and corporations were required to pay income taxes, and that is how it should be.

reply to post by seentoomuch

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When you say your income is middle class I think actually this is more a problem of hidden inflation from supply side monetary policies transfering wealth to the elite banking class -- this new documentary End of the Road is streaming on netflix

So there really needs to be a tax on speculative finance. In 1970 speculative finance was only around 10% of Wall St investment and now speculative finance is 90% of Wall St. investment.

Everyone still thinks of Wall St as investing in real business but actually it's more about currency trading and puts and options and other gambling derivatives.

The link I give is my review of that documentary.

The Democrats are just as dependent on CIA drug money propping up the banks through bank laundering which is then funnelled into the national political parties -- I personally confronted Al Gore about this when he was vice president and he and his dozen secret service all of a sudden got real edgy. haha.

I said to Gore: Everyone knows the CIA is complicit in the drug trade.

An understandment but a safe one. Now -- I think Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich should run together because even the Republicans are pissed off about what happened to Ron Paul at the national convention because the Mitt Romney process was completely fascist -- and Romney supported the fascist coup in Honduras also.

I have a relative who is an engineer for the largest styrofoam company in the world based in the U.S. but guess what -- the owners revoked their U.S. citizenship so their company does not have to pay U.S. taxes!!

As a business owner if you hire an accountant then that is a tax deduction -- 100 percent.

Any expense incurred in connection with the determination of tax is deductible as an itemized deduction (Schedule A) on Form 1040, subject to the two-percent floor. That means you take all "2% floor deductions", add them up, and to the extent they exceed 2% of your adjusted gross income, you get the deduction. To answer your question, your tax preparers fee is not 100% deductible UNLESS all your other miscellaneous itemized deductions exceed 2% of your income. If you take the standard deduction, you do not get any additional deduction for your tax preparation fee.

1. Employees' Pay. You can deduct the pay you give your employees as long as the pay is in cash, property or services.

That sounds like a tax break to me!!

2. Inventory (Cost of Goods Sold). Businesses that manufacture products or purchase them for resale can deduct the cost of goods sold.

No wonder the local "used" bookstores loved my business of selling them my new books that I had just read. haha. It was welfare for them if they sold the books.

. Depreciation. If you buy property to use in your business, you generally can't deduct the entire cost in the year of purchase — but you can spread the cost over more than one tax year and deduct part of it each year.

Wow I wish I could deduct the cost of my supplies I need for my job but I'm not a business owner!

This is a huge deduction for the wealthy - -just think: Real Estate as your business is a deduction.

27. Taxes. As strange as it sounds, taxes incurred in running your business are deductible.

Well if there weren't enough deductions already!

28. Rent. You can deduct rent as an expense if the rent is for property that you use for your business. However, you can't deduct the rent if you have even partial equity (or will receive equity) in the property.

Dang -- I didn't know this! So a business renting a storefront can deduct all that rent expense!!

14. Travel Expenses. Nearly all business travel expenses are 100 percent deductible. These include airfare, hotels, and other on-the-road expenses (like dry cleaning, Wi-Fi or cab fares). Eating out on the road is also deductible, but only up to 50 percent.

So everytime my relative flies across the country for family vacation -- that is company-paid vacation -- as a tax deduction!!

Welfare for the rich.

reply to post by seentoomuch

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Are you personally worth $10 mil plus? If not, you are not rich. You are upper middle class, and your taxes primarily go to subsidize the people who are actually rich.

reply to post by poet1b

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10 is about right, including equipment, building, land, etc. What difference does your comment make? We'll still have to lay off employees due to the higher taxes. Do you really believe for one minute that a tax hike will help businesses? Really? If you do I'll let you lay off the employees, right at Christmas time, 'kay?

reply to post by fulllotusqigong

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Ha, you don't even begin to know the extent of the tax code. All the pretty quotes you are citing do not apply in many cases and we have our company situated as strong as we can within the U.S. for the maximum tax benefits but due to not being a giant company we will be hit hard if these taxes are raised. Layoffs will abound at all the mid to smaller companies.......

reply to post by seentoomuch

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You pay high taxes because republicans have raised your taxes year after year, by refusing to tie the tax brackets to the rate of inflation. When you wake up to that reality, then you will be on your way to understanding.

By the way $10 mil personal wealth, not including your business, at a minimum. A net worth of a hundred mil is probably more accurate. They want you to think you are rich, but you are not. If you are laying off workers because of tax rates, you ought to recognize how screwed up things are.

Poor people aren't going to pay off our national debt. It is either the super rich and corporations, or they will stick people like you and me with the debt from the massive transfer of wealth from the fed gov and the middle class into the bank accounts of the super rich that occurred under GWs admin.

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