The math was done and for political reasons chances are good the sales tax rate to match current revenues would probably be over 20% since food and shelter would in some ways be considered tax free. Over time we could absorb it and it would bring some benefits, but it would be a horrible shock to our system for awhile. The country lives and dies with its consumerism; this would cause us to die for a very difficult and long period.
Jay C's flat tax is probably the best concept mentioned here, but I just can't see the government staying out of that and screwing it up. The best way to handle it, without any doubt whatsoever, is make taxes the duty of an independent body like the Federal Reserve. Taking the politics out of taxes is a nearly impossible task, but about the only thing that will work. Just imagine though the benefits the country would see, the tax committee would have a goal of generating sufficient revenues without choking off growth. They might be allowed to run very temporary deficits, but nothing more. Best of all, it would hugely blunt the powers of special interests and all their tax giveaways.
Jay C's flat tax is probably the best concept mentioned here, but I just can't see the government staying out of that and screwing it up. The best way to handle it, without any doubt whatsoever, is make taxes the duty of an independent body like the Federal Reserve. Taking the politics out of taxes is a nearly impossible task, but about the only thing that will work. Just imagine though the benefits the country would see, the tax committee would have a goal of generating sufficient revenues without choking off growth. They might be allowed to run very temporary deficits, but nothing more. Best of all, it would hugely blunt the powers of special interests and all their tax giveaways.
Yes Mr. Face I do GET IT. I wasn't refering to the middle class. I think anyone (or couple) making more than 250,000 would not starve if they have to pay 50% in taxes. Because, really, at that level you can afford a good accountant and get that whittled down substantially. I would agree with a national sales tax if say a couple earning 3X the poverty rate or less were totally exempt.GAMEFACE said:
But that, I would think, is the problem with a NST. Before long you will have a large tax code with that also. And don't believe it won't happen, there will always be someone or group pleading their case as to why they should be exempt.
And BTW my wife and I don't make anywhere near 100K and I've figured it out, with all the various taxes (I include such things as auto license plates and dog tags) I am being taxed at a 39% clip.
Before Reagan the top tax rate was 70%, I believe. You didn't have the obscene(IMO) wealth on the scale you have now. CEO's, many corrupt, making Millions, sometimes Billions. Athletes and actors, Limbaugh, Stern etc making Millions. And far too many people homeless. I rarely saw homeless in NYC prior to Reagan. You also didn't have the severe deficits you have now. This country is increasingly becoming one of lords and surfs. Back to the question, the rich should pay higher taxes to the country, because this country affords them the opportunity to have this wealth. There is no reason for this nation, with all it's vast resources, to have the number of poor and homeless people it has.
The Guesser said:
I applaud your post. I couldn't agree more. Hec 35% is half what it used to be. Throw in the loopholes and all the fudging and they can end up paying what joe schmo shoe store manager pays on his salary.
Its time for Corporations to pay their fair share too. If they want a tax break, hire the homeless.
The tax cuts to the rich absolutely have to be rolled-back. And we need to get the fvck out of Iraq, ASAP.
That's nicely put.The Guesser said:
:aktion033
The homeless suddenly re-appeared under Thatcher about the same time too. (For the first time since WW2.)
The wealthy have good lives in a decent society, they should pay extra to help maintain it.
Plenty of ordinary working people bust their ass off, but most don't become obscenely wealthy, its not as simple as that.
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DEMOCRAT:
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
You vote people into office that put a tax on your cows, forcing you to
sell one to raise money to pay the tax.
The people you voted for then take the tax money, buy a cow and give it to
your neighbor.
You feel righteous.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.
SOCIALIST:
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.
REPUBLICAN:
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?
COMMUNIST:
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a
man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your
government.
BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for
the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.
AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when one cow drops dead.
You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and
are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.
FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch.
Life is good..
JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and
produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.
GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give
excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.
ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.
RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 12 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.
You produce your 10th, 5-year plan in the last 3 months.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.
TALIBAN CORPORATION:
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts.
At night when no one is looking, you have sex with both of them.
Then you kill them and claim a US bomb blew them up while they were in the
hospital.
POLISH CORPORATION:
You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.
FLORIDA CORPORATION:
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who like the brown one best, vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which is the
best-looking one.
NEW YORK CORPORATION:
You have fifteen million cows.
You have to choose which one will be the leader of the herd, so you pick
some fat cow from Arkansas.
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
You vote people into office that put a tax on your cows, forcing you to
sell one to raise money to pay the tax.
The people you voted for then take the tax money, buy a cow and give it to
your neighbor.
You feel righteous.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.
SOCIALIST:
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.
REPUBLICAN:
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?
COMMUNIST:
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a
man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your
government.
BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for
the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.
AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when one cow drops dead.
You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and
are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.
FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch.
Life is good..
JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and
produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.
GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give
excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.
ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.
RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 12 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.
You produce your 10th, 5-year plan in the last 3 months.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.
TALIBAN CORPORATION:
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts.
At night when no one is looking, you have sex with both of them.
Then you kill them and claim a US bomb blew them up while they were in the
hospital.
POLISH CORPORATION:
You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.
FLORIDA CORPORATION:
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who like the brown one best, vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which is the
best-looking one.
NEW YORK CORPORATION:
You have fifteen million cows.
You have to choose which one will be the leader of the herd, so you pick
some fat cow from Arkansas.
Taxation on profits also means that a company has to perform multiple profit cycles to transfer (steal) wealth out of an area. (country)
With 0% tax, you can nick $1000 in year 1.
At 50% tax it takes 2 years to hoover the equivalent wealth out of an area, plus there is $1000 available for local government to use.
With 0% tax, you can nick $1000 in year 1.
At 50% tax it takes 2 years to hoover the equivalent wealth out of an area, plus there is $1000 available for local government to use.
First of all, the top 20% make at least 80% of the money. (Example:Take everyone in a typical town of 10,000 and add Bill Gates to the town. The top 0.01 would be paying most of the taxes.)
The extremely wealthy make most of their money from investments (which are taxed at lower rate than salaries). CEOs of big companies get a lot of perks (use of corporate jet, chaffeured limo, etc.), stock options and bonuses. There is also a lot of their wealth that never even gets taxed like art work, jewelry and real estate that increase in value each year.
Now, without taxes, how do you pay for the roads that take everyone to work, or the schools, or military defense, etc.?
Okay, now here is why a National Sales tax is bad: There are tens of millions of families making less then $20,000 a year. (Minimum wage is 5.15/hour = $10,500/year). Taxing food, gas, clothes, newspapers, bus tokens, movies, etc. puts a disproportionate burden on the poor who need every dime to feed their kids and pay the rent. The Poor spend almost their entire incomes. The Rich sock it away and don't spend every dime they make.
So, with a 20% national sales tax, family making $24,000 spends $4,000 in sales tax on $20,000 in purchases.
A comfortable family making 240,000 (10 times as much) can live well spending 150,000 plus 30,000 in taxes and put 60,000 in the bank.
A rich family, making 2,400,000 spends an even smalller percentage of their income to live on, and pockets a greater percentage.
Don't forget, it's all those little guys making low or minimum wage that are creating the wealth for the corporations run by the big guys.
For the religious: isn't there some quote in the Bible about "each according to his means"?
The bottom line is that it costs a certain amount of money to run civilization and the poor may do most of the work, but they don't have enough money to pay for it.
The extremely wealthy make most of their money from investments (which are taxed at lower rate than salaries). CEOs of big companies get a lot of perks (use of corporate jet, chaffeured limo, etc.), stock options and bonuses. There is also a lot of their wealth that never even gets taxed like art work, jewelry and real estate that increase in value each year.
Now, without taxes, how do you pay for the roads that take everyone to work, or the schools, or military defense, etc.?
Okay, now here is why a National Sales tax is bad: There are tens of millions of families making less then $20,000 a year. (Minimum wage is 5.15/hour = $10,500/year). Taxing food, gas, clothes, newspapers, bus tokens, movies, etc. puts a disproportionate burden on the poor who need every dime to feed their kids and pay the rent. The Poor spend almost their entire incomes. The Rich sock it away and don't spend every dime they make.
So, with a 20% national sales tax, family making $24,000 spends $4,000 in sales tax on $20,000 in purchases.
A comfortable family making 240,000 (10 times as much) can live well spending 150,000 plus 30,000 in taxes and put 60,000 in the bank.
A rich family, making 2,400,000 spends an even smalller percentage of their income to live on, and pockets a greater percentage.
Don't forget, it's all those little guys making low or minimum wage that are creating the wealth for the corporations run by the big guys.
For the religious: isn't there some quote in the Bible about "each according to his means"?
The bottom line is that it costs a certain amount of money to run civilization and the poor may do most of the work, but they don't have enough money to pay for it.
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=629 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD colSpan=3>
This is a MASSIVE tax giveaway, Bush must be hoping the money gets used to boost job prospects.
(Unless there are strings attached, shareholders should do very nicely indeed.)
-------------------------------------------------------
Bush shakes up US corporate taxes
</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top width=416><!-- S BO --><!-- S IIMA --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=203 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
US goods have been hit by punitive tariffs
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA -->President George W Bush has signed a law scrapping a US corporate tax break which caused a trade war with Europe.
Brussels had accused the US of unfairly subsidising firms by letting them set up Foreign Sales Corporations (FSCs), which attracted special tax rates.
The new bill ditches FSCs, in what some have called the biggest corporate tax shake-up in two decades.
But in its place, the new law gives hundreds of industries fresh tax breaks worth $140bn over the next decade.
The FSC system - which relied on corporations setting up shop in offshore locations - was worth almost $50bn over a decade in export tax breaks, mostly for large corporations including Caterpillar, Microsoft, Boeing and IBM.
<!-- S IBOX --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=208 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=5>
</TD><TD class=sibtbg>It will help promote the competitiveness of American manufacturers... and help create jobs here in America
Bush spokesman
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IBOX -->The European Union complained to the World Trade Organisation, which duly decided it broke trade rules.
A law change in 2000 was ruled insufficient, and in March this year the EU levelled 5% sanctions on a wide range of products, ratched up by one percentage point each month.
Help
The new law includes a controversial one year tax relief enabling US multinational firms to repatriate earnings at 5.25% instead of the normal 35% rate.
It also includes $76.5bn in help for manufacturing - defined to include energy producers, construction firms, architects and large-scale farmers.
<!-- S IBOX --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=208 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=5>
</TD><TD class=sibtbg>George Bush filled the bill up with corporate giveaways and tax breaks for multinational corporations that send jobs overseas
Kerry spokesman
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IBOX -->But an eye-watering range of other industries are also receiving assistance, from Alaskan whalers and Chinese ceiling fan importers to bow and arrow manufacturers and car racetrack owners.
The long list of sectors included in the bill is the result of lobbying by lawmakers wanting to make sure their states, or districts, benefited.
The new legislation has been described by companies and by the White House as providing a means of safeguarding jobs, particularly in manufacturing which has lost 2.7 million posts since 2000.
"It will help promote the competitiveness of American manufacturers and other job creators, and help create jobs here in America," said a spokesman for the Bush administration.
The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said the bill was a "giveaway". "George Bush filled the bill up with corporate giveaways and tax breaks for multinational corporations that send jobs overseas," a Kerry spokesman said. If elected, Mr Kerry would call for the "unwarranted" tax breaks to be repealed, he said. <!-- E BO -->
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3946183.stm
This is a MASSIVE tax giveaway, Bush must be hoping the money gets used to boost job prospects.
(Unless there are strings attached, shareholders should do very nicely indeed.)
-------------------------------------------------------
Bush shakes up US corporate taxes
</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top width=416><!-- S BO --><!-- S IIMA --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=203 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA -->President George W Bush has signed a law scrapping a US corporate tax break which caused a trade war with Europe.
Brussels had accused the US of unfairly subsidising firms by letting them set up Foreign Sales Corporations (FSCs), which attracted special tax rates.
The new bill ditches FSCs, in what some have called the biggest corporate tax shake-up in two decades.
But in its place, the new law gives hundreds of industries fresh tax breaks worth $140bn over the next decade.
The FSC system - which relied on corporations setting up shop in offshore locations - was worth almost $50bn over a decade in export tax breaks, mostly for large corporations including Caterpillar, Microsoft, Boeing and IBM.
<!-- S IBOX --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=208 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=5>
Bush spokesman
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IBOX -->The European Union complained to the World Trade Organisation, which duly decided it broke trade rules.
A law change in 2000 was ruled insufficient, and in March this year the EU levelled 5% sanctions on a wide range of products, ratched up by one percentage point each month.
Help
The new law includes a controversial one year tax relief enabling US multinational firms to repatriate earnings at 5.25% instead of the normal 35% rate.
It also includes $76.5bn in help for manufacturing - defined to include energy producers, construction firms, architects and large-scale farmers.
<!-- S IBOX --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=208 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=5>
Kerry spokesman
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IBOX -->But an eye-watering range of other industries are also receiving assistance, from Alaskan whalers and Chinese ceiling fan importers to bow and arrow manufacturers and car racetrack owners.
The long list of sectors included in the bill is the result of lobbying by lawmakers wanting to make sure their states, or districts, benefited.
The new legislation has been described by companies and by the White House as providing a means of safeguarding jobs, particularly in manufacturing which has lost 2.7 million posts since 2000.
"It will help promote the competitiveness of American manufacturers and other job creators, and help create jobs here in America," said a spokesman for the Bush administration.
The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said the bill was a "giveaway". "George Bush filled the bill up with corporate giveaways and tax breaks for multinational corporations that send jobs overseas," a Kerry spokesman said. If elected, Mr Kerry would call for the "unwarranted" tax breaks to be repealed, he said. <!-- E BO -->
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3946183.stm
