More taxes coming........

[brantc]

Is there anybody here who thinks this is a good thing???????

Three Devastating Tax
Waves Will Destroy Many
From Americans for Tax Reform


In just six months, on January 1, 2011, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect.

They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves.

On January 1, 2011, here's what happens... (read it to the end, so you see all three waves)...


First Wave

Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief

In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families. These will all expire on January 1, 2011.


Personal Income Tax Rates Will Rise

The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed).

The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent.

All the rates in between will also rise.

Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as highermarginal tax rates.


The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:

The 10%
bracket rises to an expanded 15%

The 25%
bracket rises to 28%

The 28%
bracket rises to 31%

The 33%
bracket rises to 36%

The 35%
bracket rises to 39.6%


<snip>

The Return Of The Death Tax

This year only, there is no death tax. (It's a quirk!) For those dying on or after January 1, 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes, a business, a retirement account, could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones. Think of the farmers who don't make much money, but their land, which they purchased years ago with after-tax dollars, is now worth a lot of money. Their children will have to sell the farm, which may be their livelihood, just to pay the estate tax if they don't have the cash sitting around to pay the tax.

Think about your own family's assets. Maybe your family owns real estate, or a business that doesn't make much money, but the building and equipment are worth $1 million. Upon their death, you can inherit the $1 million business tax free, but if they own a home, stock, cash worth $500K on top of the $1 million business, then you will owe the government $275,000 cash! That's 55% of the value of the assets over $1 million! Do you have that kind of cash sitting around waiting to pay the estate tax?


Higher Tax Rates On Savers And Investors

The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011.

The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011.

These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.

The Second Wave
Obamacare

There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:

The "Medicine Cabinet Tax"

Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

The "Special Needs Kids Tax"

This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children.


The Third Wave

The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and Employer Tax Hikes

When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they'll be in for a nasty surprise-the AMT won't be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired.

<snip>

Now, your insurance will be INCOME on your W2's!


Starting in 2011, (next year folks), your W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that's a private concern or governmental body of some sort.

If you're retired? So what... your gross will go up by the amount of insurance you get.

You will be required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen. Take your tax form you just finished and see what $15,000 or $20,000 additional gross does to your tax debt. That's what you'll pay next year.

For many, it also puts you into a new higher bracket so it's even worse.

This is how the government is going to buy insurance for the15% that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases.

Not believing this??? Here is a research of the summaries.....

On page 25 of 29: TITLE IX REVENUE PROVISIONS- SUBTITLE A: REVENUE OFFSET PROVISIONS-(sec. 9001, as modified by sec. 10901) Sec.9002 "requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employees gross income."

___________
http://www.atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171#


Joan Pryde is the senior tax editor for the Kiplinger letters.

Go to Kiplingers and read about 13 tax changes that could affect you. Number 3 is what is above.

[drkitten]

Is there anybody here who thinks this is a good thing???????

Fallacy of complex question.

Some of them are very good ideas. Some of them are questionable but can be (and are being) hammered out.

One of them is outright bad, but it's already being dealt with at the Congressional level, which makes your source to be a liar.

[jimtron]

brantc:

What do you suggest should be done about taxes?

[paiute]

http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/HR3590.asp

[wastepanel]

Starting in 2011, (next year folks), your W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that's a private concern or governmental body of some sort.

If you're retired? So what... your gross will go up by the amount of insurance you get.

You will be required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen. Take your tax form you just finished and see what $15,000 or $20,000 additional gross does to your tax debt. That's what you'll pay next year.

For many, it also puts you into a new higher bracket so it's even worse.

This is how the government is going to buy insurance for the15% that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases.

Not believing this??? Here is a research of the summaries.....

On page 25 of 29: TITLE IX REVENUE PROVISIONS- SUBTITLE A: REVENUE OFFSET PROVISIONS-(sec. 9001, as modified by sec. 10901) Sec.9002 "requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employees gross income."

This statement is false.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/hr3590.asp

[sthomson]

Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief

In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families. These will all expire on January 1, 2011.

The 2001 and 2003 "tax cuts" actually increased my taxes - I wonder why no one mentiones that. Thanks Bush! Anyway, these expire every year unless they are renewed. They usually are. I am hopeful that this year, we do not renew the tax cuts on the wealthiest brackets. This would generate billions of dollars of revenue every year.

Given that this (I assume) chain email starts out with a whiz-bang of a factual error, I can't see why I should continue reading it.

[Dunstan]

Yes, we may return to the dark days of the mid-90s, when businesses were so oppressed by taxation that they could only manage 5% unemployment and 4% real GDP growth. Oh, the horrors!

[jimtron]

Also, calling the Estate Tax the "Death Tax" is not a good way to have an honest discussion about an issue.

And here's a very recent Paul Krugman column about continuing the Bush tax cuts:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/opinion/23krugman.html

[Mister Earl]

Personal opinion: Taxes should be increased until the budget is balanced. This should be written into law. If people feel taxes are too high, then they can decide on where spending should be cut.

[geni]

Also, calling the Estate Tax the "Death Tax" is not a good way to have an honest discussion about an issue.

Well "Death duties" was the historical term at least in the UK but for some reason those opposed to them don't seem to use that term either.

[jimtron]

Personal opinion: Taxes should be increased until the budget is balanced. This should be written into law. If people feel taxes are too high, then they can decide on where spending should be cut.

Yes. For those opposed to current or proposed tax policies, tell us how to balance the budget with lower taxes, or where the tax burden should shift.

[wastepanel]

Personal opinion: Taxes should be increased AND SPENDING LIMITED until the budget is balanced. This should be written into law. If people feel taxes are too high, then they can decide on where spending should be cut.

Fixed that for you.

If you are altering a Member's post to make a "FTFY" style post please ensure that your alterations are very clear, see: http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=6261308#post6261308 for more details.

[drkitten]

Fixed that for you.

Hardly a legitimate fix. One of the problems with budgeting that happens at any level from your household finance to the Principality of Ruthenia and beyond is that spending can't be limited. Unexpected events occur and need to be paid for.

Writing into law that "spending must be limited" is just asking for trouble when a hurricane hits East Dakota or a speeding glacier wipes Santa Seesyou, CA off the map. Disaster relief money needs to come from somewhere. You'll either need to break the law or change it. Or some Pastafarian extremist will drive a boat into the Sears Tower and you'll need to invade Italy.

[godless dave]

So returning to pre-Bush tax levels will be devastating to the economy? How come the economy wasn't devastated during the Clinton administration?

Yes, I do think it's a good thing.

[Mister Earl]

Fixed that for you.

That works, too. I think (And feel free to disregard anything I say here, I'm no economic expert!) that one of the big factors going on with budget issues and careless government spending is the disconnect between the taxpayer and what the money goes towards.

If we were, for example, to illegalize deficit spending, mandate all budgets be balanced (I'd even go so far as to recommend a small budget savings of sorts, in case of disasters, ect), then people, upon seeing the higher required taxes, would take an immediate interest in where their tax dollars are actually going. No budgetary addition would pass by unscutinized to the Nth degree.

[pgwenthold]

Hardly a legitimate fix. One of the problems with budgeting that happens at any level from your household finance to the Principality of Ruthenia and beyond is that spending can't be limited. Unexpected events occur and need to be paid for.

Writing into law that "spending must be limited" is just asking for trouble when a hurricane hits East Dakota or a speeding glacier wipes Santa Seesyou, CA off the map. Disaster relief money needs to come from somewhere. You'll either need to break the law or change it. Or some Pastafarian extremist will drive a boat into the Sears Tower and you'll need to invade Italy.

It doesn't make any sense, really. Why do you have to limit spending? I thought republicans were supporters of the free market and fiscal responsibility? If you don't want to raise taxes, you can always cut the spending. Nothing is stopping you.

But if you require that any spending is paid for, then that provides the incentive to cut spending. It's trickle down economics, right? :)

As an example, you might be more reluctant to start a second war knowing that you are going to have to pay for it.

[drkitten]

That works, too. I think (And feel free to disregard anything I say here, I'm no economic expert!) that one of the big factors going on with budget issues and careless government spending is the disconnect between the taxpayer and what the money goes towards.

If we were, for example, to illegalize deficit spending, mandate all budgets be balanced (I'd even go so far as to recommend a small budget savings of sorts, in case of disasters, ect), then people, upon seeing the higher required taxes, would take an immediate interest in where their tax dollars are actually going. No budgetary addition would pass by unscutinized to the Nth degree.

Yes, but that's unrealistic, frankly. Not even households abide by that standard, or you'd never be able to get a car or a mortgage. When people talk about deficit spending, they're generally talking about the government selling bonds to raise money now that they don't have in the current tax revenues. That's more-or-less exactly how my mortgage works; I can afford to live in a house that costs well more than my annual salary for some tiny fraction of my take home pay. The difference is that I will be buying one house but paying for it for thirty years.

And, frankly, deficit spending is good for the economy; on the macroeconomic level, it expands the money supply and encourages investment. In times of financial trouble (like the current times) deficit spending can even be a necessity. (This is true for households as well; if you don't have a dime in the bank, but your car needs $1000 worth of repairs, put it on the VISA card. That's a better option than losing your job because you can't get to work.)

And conversely, if the government did run a surplus,.... where would it put it? The government running a surplus would actually take money out of the economy and produce deflation,... which is bad. (It wouldn't be as bad right now, because the government could plough the current surplus into the accumulated long-term debt, but what happens when the debt is paid off and the surplus continues?)

Of course, you can have too much of a good thing, and deficit spending is one of those things you can have too much of. But that's true of water, too, as the Pakistanis are finding out.

[wastepanel]

Hardly a legitimate fix. One of the problems with budgeting that happens at any level from your household finance to the Principality of Ruthenia and beyond is that spending can't be limited. Unexpected events occur and need to be paid for.

Writing into law that "spending must be limited" is just asking for trouble when a hurricane hits East Dakota or a speeding glacier wipes Santa Seesyou, CA off the map. Disaster relief money needs to come from somewhere. You'll either need to break the law or change it. Or some Pastafarian extremist will drive a boat into the Sears Tower and you'll need to invade Italy.


Fixed spending can not be changed. Using the household budget as an example, (for the most part) spending can not be changed on fixed expenses (such as mortgage, minimum loan/credit card payments, etc.). Utilities can go down only slightly, but that's not where you get your savings from. A household budget must be able to fund its groceries, entertainment, clothes, etc. (which I'll refer to as variable expenses).

When I create my household budget, I look at what my household expected income and what my fixed costs are. I assume that utilities savings/rising are minimal, so I consider them fixed. That gives me my variable expense budget.

If I go above my variable expense budget, I'll have to put it on a credit card if I don't want to cut spending (or can't if it's an emergency). Any amount left over can go into savings, or left out for a special night or two.

I use this same philosophy when budgeting for companies. There's certain expenses that are just there. It's how you handle the variable expenses that make you solvent.

When it comes to government spending, everything is now an emergency. It's like me saying "I can't cut back on groceries! We need to eat!" when I spent $100 the night before drinking and $300 the day before on clothes for my kids. You have to look at all the expenses and put them into perspective.

There is a lot of waste in the government. If spending is cut and taxes raised, it will create a surplus. That surplus can be used to pay for things like speeding glaciers, paying down debt, and boat attacks. It just depends on what priority you set to this.

Paying down debt is very important, but you shouldn't leave yourself cash strapped for emergencies. A rainy day amount should be set aside (although politically bad) for extraordinary items. With this fund established, there won't be as much of a need for credit when emergencies arise.

[LibraryLady]

I'm paid with tax money. Guess I'm not the best person to ask.

[Dr. Keith]

Yes, we may return to the dark days of the mid-90s, when businesses were so oppressed by taxation that they could only manage 5% unemployment and 4% real GDP growth. Oh, the horrors!


My primary fear is that if we make a concerted effort we may have a real economy in place for the Republicans to screw up in another 6 years.

[Dr. Keith]

So returning to pre-Bush tax levels will be devastating to the economy? How come the economy wasn't devastated during the Clinton administration?

Yes, I do think it's a good thing.

Agreed. And let's not forget the tax rates under Saint Ronald.

[wastepanel]

Yes, but that's unrealistic, frankly. Not even households abide by that standard, or you'd never be able to get a car or a mortgage. When people talk about deficit spending, they're generally talking about the government selling bonds to raise money now that they don't have in the current tax revenues. That's more-or-less exactly how my mortgage works; I can afford to live in a house that costs well more than my annual salary for some tiny fraction of my take home pay. The difference is that I will be buying one house but paying for it for thirty years.

And, frankly, deficit spending is good for the economy; on the macroeconomic level, it expands the money supply and encourages investment. In times of financial trouble (like the current times) deficit spending can even be a necessity. (This is true for households as well; if you don't have a dime in the bank, but your car needs $1000 worth of repairs, put it on the VISA card. That's a better option than losing your job because you can't get to work.)

And conversely, if the government did run a surplus,.... where would it put it? The government running a surplus would actually take money out of the economy and produce deflation,... which is bad. (It wouldn't be as bad right now, because the government could plough the current surplus into the accumulated long-term debt, but what happens when the debt is paid off and the surplus continues?)

Of course, you can have too much of a good thing, and deficit spending is one of those things you can have too much of. But that's true of water, too, as the Pakistanis are finding out.

So deficit spending is like a check cashing business on the corner? "I get paid on Friday, but I have expenses now!"

So what happens next month when the $1000 credit card bill is due? Do you cut spending to pay this bill, or borrow more to not skip a beat? If deficit spending is the only answer, your debt will continue to rise.

[Loss Leader]

Is there anybody here who thinks this is a good thing???????


I don't think that it's a good thing for Bush to have passed a bunch of tax cuts by lying about their overall impact. Sunset clauses were built into them so that budget estimates would show them as having only a limited impact on future defecits. However, the people who passed them never intended for the taxes to sunset and assumed that they would be renewed by a later administration.

Why did they make this assumption? Because otherwise, the later administration could be accused of raising taxes, a false claim that certainly would look true.

So now, Obama has to either let these tax breaks expire as per their own terms and look like he's raising taxes. Or, he has to resubmit the tax cuts even though it would be further devastating to our bottom line at a time when the government needs the money.

[drkitten]

When it comes to government spending, everything is now an emergency. It's like me saying "I can't cut back on groceries! We need to eat!" when I spent $100 the night before drinking and $300 the day before on clothes for my kids. You have to look at all the expenses and put them into perspective.

There is a lot of waste in the government. If spending is cut and taxes raised, it will create a surplus. That surplus can be used to pay for things like speeding glaciers, paying down debt, and boat attacks. It just depends on what priority you set to this.

Paying down debt is very important, but you shouldn't leave yourself cash strapped for emergencies. A rainy day amount should be set aside (although politically bad) for extraordinary items. With this fund established, there won't be as much of a need for credit when emergencies arise.

Er, no.

First of all, while it's a very common meme that "there's a lot of waste in government," no one has actually been able to find it. It turns out simply to be a Republican talking point, but the fact is that the government is in fact a very good steward of our money, precisely because there are so many tax activists who will go through every line of every agency's budget looking for something they can ridicule. Even the much vaunted "earmarks" total only about $15 billion (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/02/congressional-earmarks-worth-n.html). Out of a three and a half trillion dollar budget, that's works out to be something like one-half of one percent.

What "waste in goverment" usually ends up meaning is "programs that I personally don't like, despite the fact that they're very popular among a group to which I don't happen to belong.

Where do you expect to find enough "waste" to make a significant dent in a $500 billion dollar annual deficit or a $13 trillion total debt?

Second, no, it's not the case that everything in government is an emergency; by far the largest categories of Federal spending are three stable and predictable expenses -- Social Security, Medicare, and defense. The problem is that there are serious political risks involved in cutting expenditures in any of these areas, so people end up arguing about "bridges to nowhere" that cost millions.

And third,... a "rainy day fund," if enacted at a national level, would be likely to destroy the economy. Building a rainy day fund would be taking money out of circulation, which decreases the money supply, which produces deflation, which reduces investment and industrial productivity, which is about the worst thing you could do to the economy.

[brantc]

My primary fear is that if we make a concerted effort we may have a real economy in place for the Republicans to screw up in another 6 years.


Thats funny. You think your neighbor the Republican has his hands on the same knobs that congress does. LOL

I case you have not been paying attention.
Its not about liberal vs conservative, or Repugs vs Dumbocrats.

Its about Americans vs the ruling class.....

[drkitten]

So what happens next month when the $1000 credit card bill is due? Do you cut spending to pay this bill, or borrow more to not skip a beat? If deficit spending is the only answer, your debt will continue to rise.

... which isn't a problem if I have reasonable expectations that my income will eventually rise as well.

I can roll a credit card debt over for months or years if necessary as long as I feel confident that I've got a job at the end of the tunnel that will let me pay it off. Hell, I have done that, as a graduate student, knowing that I will have an income of about $800/month during the school year and then be able to consult for $800/day during the summers. I've done the same thing in the "real world"; dodging the landlord for three months and then paying him off when I sell something and collect the $50,000 the contract was worth.

The United States can easily do the same thing; there are twenty million people out of work who could be producing goods and services to support the economy and bring in money from exports if the employers felt confident enough to hire them. Employers aren't hiring because they don't see demand for the products. The public isn't buying products because they don't have money. They don't have money because they don't have jobs. They don't have jobs because employers aren't hiring. It's a vicious cycle. Break the cycle in one spot and the whole thing collapses and we can return to full employment.

The obvious spot to break the cycle is to put money into the public's hands. Via deficit spending. Basically, pay the repair bill to fix the broken economy on credit, and then use the new money from the economic growth to pay it off.

[brantc]

And, frankly, deficit spending is good for the economy; on the macroeconomic level, it expands the money supply and encourages investment. In times of financial trouble (like the current times) deficit spending can even be a necessity. (This is true for households as well; if you don't have a dime in the bank, but your car needs $1000 worth of repairs, put it on the VISA card. That's a better option than losing your job because you can't get to work.)


Money is created out of debt, fractional banking. We pay interest on the money we are loaned by the FED reserve, which we shouldnt have to if we were to print our own money.
If we didnt pay interest on this money created with a ledger entry doesnt that mean that we wouldnt have a national debt to the bankers that loaned us the money?

Why cant we have a10% flat sale tax???

Most of the taxes we pay do nothing for our "services" anyways.

The Grace Commission Report.

PRESIDENT'S PRIVATE SECTOR SURVEY ON COST CONTROL

[The first twelve, m/l, pages]

A REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT

VOLUME I


APPROVED BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AT

ITS MEETING ON JANUARY 15, 1984


January 12, 1984

The Honorable Ronald Reagan
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, D.C.

<snip>

Resistance to additional income taxes would be even more widespread if people were aware that:

* One-third of all their taxes is consumed by waste and inefficiency in the Federal Government as we identified in our survey.
* Another one-third of all their taxes escapes collection from others as the underground economy blossoms in direct proportion to tax increases and places even more pressure on law abiding taxpayers, promoting still more underground economy-a vicious cycle that must be broken.
* With two-thirds of everyone's personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal debt and by Federal Government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their Government.
http://www.uhuh.com/taxstuff/gracecom.htm



No more taxes. We dont need them. Anybody(liberal or conservative) that thinks we do does not understand the money system and how its a transfer of wealth..

[drkitten]

Money is created out of debt.

Ah, yes. Brantc reveals himself to be not just a clueless Faux News groupie but also a goldbug anti-Fed conspiracy nut.

Nothing to see here, move along.

[brantc]

The obvious spot to break the cycle is to put money into the public's hands. Via deficit spending. Basically, pay the repair bill to fix the broken economy on credit, and then use the new money from the economic growth to pay it off.


How about putting the money in peoples hands by not taking it away in the first place???

[drkitten]

How about putting the money in peoples hands by not taking it away in the first place???

Quiet, grownups are talking.

[brantc]

Ah, yes. Brantc reveals himself to be not just a clueless Faux News groupie but also a goldbug anti-Fed conspiracy nut.

Nothing to see here, move along.

So you are saying fractional reserve banking doesnt exist??

So you have 20 dollars in your bank. You loan out 19 and you still have 20(fractional reserve in case).

See, new money is created with the stroke of a pen. Now there are 39 dollars in existence.

Money created out of debt(loan).

If money was tied to the existence of some tangible you would not be able to do that. And you would not be able to run the banks.
That amount of money would be tied to the amount of tangible even though the tangible may be stored.

So this is the shell game that the FED plays with us. Being a private institution they charge(prime rate) us every time they "loan" us(the central banks) money into circulation.
Thats where our national debt comes from.

Money is only a representation of real goods and services so there should never be more money than real goods or services

[ksbluesfan]

By the time all of the exemptions are taken out, I paid 6% of my net income to the IRS last year. I would consider myself to be middle- to upper-middle class for the Kansas City area. I have a feeling most people pay far less than they believe to the federal government. Once the economy recovers, I'm willing to pay higher taxes.

[brantc]

By the time all of the exemptions are taken out, I paid 6% of my net income to the IRS last year. I would consider myself to be middle- to upper-middle class for the Kansas City area. I have a feeling most people pay far less than they believe to the federal government. Once the economy recovers, I'm willing to pay higher taxes.

How much of your gross income did you pay? I pay ~660 a month in taxes.

500 a month of my money goes to paying the interest on the national debt(the money the private FED prints for us use). It pays for no services, no nothing.
That interest does nothing except make the bankers rich. Is that what you want???

DO you know how to stop that wasteage???? Instantly???

Dont let the private FED print our money.

Make the FED public and dont charge us interest for the money we the people print(loan into circulation).

This is the fastest way to recover the United States of America.

[sthomson]

How much of your gross income did you pay? I pay ~660 a month in taxes.

500 a month of my money goes to paying the interest on the national debt.

Cite or go home.

Edited to add: In even stronger terms, no f'in way. I pay around $300 bi-weekly and half of that goes to SS and Medicare.

[Chucky]

In the 1950's we had as high as a 90% federal tax rate. JFK was elected in part because he was willing to bring the upper rate down into the low 70 percentile. How can anyone claim that the possible upcoming taxes are the largest hike in history? These don't come close.

Furthermore I have heard the rates will still be lower those after the tax hikes Reagan signed into law by the end of the 80's, which stand to this day as the highest peace time tax hikes in US history.

[KoihimeNakamura]

How much of your gross income did you pay? I pay ~660 a month in taxes.

500 a month of my money goes to paying the interest on the national debt(the money the private FED prints for us use). It pays for no services, no nothing.
That interest does nothing except make the bankers rich. Is that what you want???

DO you know how to stop that wasteage???? Instantly???

Dont let the private FED print our money.

Make the FED public and dont charge us interest for the money we the people print(loan into circulation).

This is the fastest way to recover the United States of America.

That interest also drives our economic engine. So, yeah, uh.. net.kook detected.

[brantc]

Cite or go home.

Edited to add: In even stronger terms, no f'in way. I pay around $300 bi-weekly and half of that goes to SS and Medicare.

Fed taxes. 250 per pay period. State 81.00. Plus there is another column on my check that says CASDI, medicare etc..

From the Grace Commission report posted previously.
With two-thirds of everyone's personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal debt and by Federal Government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their Government.

Some people say that is not correct, that it is only 6%. But what they dont take in to account is that every dollar in circulation has been loaned into circulation with an associated cost(national debt).
You can cook the books however you want, the bottom line is that we pay the banks to use our own money.

[sthomson]

Fed taxes. 250 per pay period. State 81.00. Plus there is another column on my check that says CASDI, medicare etc..

From the Grace Commission report posted previously...

A politically-biased report from over 20 years ago is insufficient evidence for your current assertion that 5/6th of your tax withholding is used to pay for interest on national debt. To be clear (which you were not before), you are only talking about your federal withholding and not Medicare or SS taxes. Medicare and SS, of course, making up the largest portion of our federal budget every year.

[brantc]

That interest also drives our economic engine. So, yeah, uh.. net.kook detected.

What happened to goods and services??? Exported to China and Mexico.

The only thing that gets driven by interest is the bankers pockets.

You dont get any of that interest do you???

You dont need interest to drive an economy. Interest is charged on money loaned(created from thin air).
If you could make money by an entry in your ledger, wouldnt you?
The banks do it. And from their track record they are definitely not honest. As a matter of fact didnt we just bail those buttwipes out??? Why? Its the ruling class.
That has nothing to do with driving an economy.
Money is just a tool to facilitate trade. It aint worth crap by itself. Thats what people dont get.
It is not something to make money off of(interest.) People have forgotten about what economics really means.

If you have enough money do you need a loan?
Why dont you have enough money??
Because you get taxed....

[brantc]

A politically-biased report from over 20 years ago is insufficient evidence for your current assertion that 5/6th of your tax withholding is used to pay for interest on national debt. To be clear (which you were not before), you are only talking about your federal withholding and not Medicare or SS taxes. Medicare and SS, of course, making up the largest portion of our federal budget every year.


Yeah, but Federal withholding is the largest portion that they take out of my check!!!!:eye-poppi

[Loss Leader]

Money is created out of debt, fractional banking. We pay interest on the money we are loaned by the FED reserve, which we shouldnt have to if we were to print our own money.
If we didnt pay interest on this money created with a ledger entry doesnt that mean that we wouldnt have a national debt to the bankers that loaned us the money?

Why cant we have a10% flat sale tax???

Most of the taxes we pay do nothing for our "services" anyways.

No more taxes. We dont need them. Anybody(liberal or conservative) that thinks we do does not understand the money system and how its a transfer of wealth..


After the first sentence, literally nothing else you wrote is in any way true.

Also, the reason not to have a flat sales tax, to me, is that it would be regressive. The poor spend a far, far greater percentage of their earnings than the rich, so you're impact on the poor is going to be greater.

Furthermore, everyone of every income needs certain basics of food, shelter, clothing and transportation. The rich may upgrade from the basics considerably, but there is still some amount that they would have to spend just to stay alive. Taxing these necessities unfairly burdens the poor.

[Finn McR]

...{quote shortened by Finn}... Taxing these necessities unfairly burdens the poor.

Surely this is a moral argument? In the sense that morality is not absolute? What is the judgement that we do or should use (two different things) to resolve what individuals owe to the government for the benefit of all? Is it true that police or fire services respond faster or better to the rich than to the poor? Should the amortized cost of defense and social spending (education, medicine, etc.) be spread out on a per-person basis or on a per-wealth basis?

I'm pretty much median income, etc. but can sympathize with the apparent feeling that the somewhat wealthy are being unfairly squeezed (the *really* wealthy should be able to afford good accountants to cheat the system, right?). Pragmatically the answer is to squeeze the wealthy a bit above fairness levels. After all, that's where the money is. However, decrying per-person based tax burden as unfair seems like moralizing.

[Loss Leader]

Surely this is a moral argument?


It can be. But, in that case, any argument for any tax is a moral argument. A flat tax, or a nat'l sales tax, are both based on some moral justification or other.

However, I think I could make an argument against a regresive tax on non-moral grounds. In order for a state to be successful, it's citizens have to work. They have to convert their labor into capital. This increases the wealth of a society. A country where no one went to work would be a sad place full of starving people with nothing to watch on TV (because the cast of Glee is refusing to show up at the studio to work).

It appears to be the case that not all labor is equal. The largest portion of the populace will end up in the employ of a small minority. The owners need the workers to make the food, work the assembly line, etc. And the workers need the jobs because, let's face it, not everybody has the skills to be a doctor, lawyer, or industrial tycoon.

By instituting a flat tax that has a greater impact on the poor than the rich, the government is disincentivising unskilled labor. But unskilled labor is necessary for society and it's the only work many people can get. You'd be punishing the people who make up the musculature of your society. That drives down happiness, which drives down productivity, which harms the owners, which creates less wealth for the nation.

So, moral argument or not, a flat tax seems like a bad idea.

[Sceptic-PK]

Money is created out of debt, fractional banking. We pay interest on the money we are loaned by the FED reserve, which we shouldnt have to if we were to print our own money.
If we didnt pay interest on this money created with a ledger entry doesnt that mean that we wouldnt have a national debt to the bankers that loaned us the money?

It is awfully kind of you to announce that nobody needs to waste their time discussing things with you anymore. Thanks!

[jimtron]

Related tax threads here (for reference):

It seems we already have a flat tax (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=75508)

Is a flat tax regressive? (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=172584)

What does fair mean when it comes to income taxes? (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=171469)

[lomiller]

Surely this is a moral argument?

I wouldn’t consider it a moral argument; rather it’s a simple value equation. If you are poor and can either afford to eat or pay taxes to support a large military, which is more valuable to you? If you are rich enough to afford reasonable food/shelter/clothing then the value of the military goes up because you have things they are helping defend, while the pain of paying for it is decreased because you can afford it.

In point of fact, if a country needed to tax to it’s lowest common denominator, IE it only provided services that the poorest of it’s poor considered important enough to forgo some daily necessity in favor of the service, it would not provide the services it’s more wealthy citizens expect.

Is it true that police or fire services respond faster or better to the rich than to the poor?

For the rich man the fire department protects a mansion, for the poor it protects the cardboard box he shelters under. Why should they both pay equally?

Should the amortized cost of defense and social spending (education, medicine, etc.) be spread out on a per-person basis or on a per-wealth basis?


What do the poorest need with defense spending, what is it they would lose if there were none? Even if they stood to lose something of value would it be more valuable then food?

Better educated and healthier populations supply more productive workers that make their employers the richest people in the world. How rich would Bill Gates be if no one had the education required to use a computer? On the other hand when faced with the choice between food or education people all over the world rightly choose food. Sure education it great for the future, but it doesn’t keep you from starving to death now.

[Chucky]

I wouldn’t consider it a moral argument; rather it’s a simple value equation. If you are poor and can either afford to eat or pay taxes to support a large military, which is more valuable to you? If you are rich enough to afford reasonable food/shelter/clothing then the value of the military goes up because you have things they are helping defend, while the pain of paying for it is decreased because you can afford it.

In point of fact, if a country needed to tax to it’s lowest common denominator, IE it only provided services that the poorest of it’s poor considered important enough to forgo some daily necessity in favor of the service, it would not provide the services it’s more wealthy citizens expect.



For the rich man the fire department protects a mansion, for the poor it protects the cardboard box he shelters under. Why should they both pay equally?



What do the poorest need with defense spending, what is it they would lose if there were none? Even if they stood to lose something of value would it be more valuable then food?

Better educated and healthier populations supply more productive workers that make their employers the richest people in the world. How rich would Bill Gates be if no one had the education required to use a computer? On the other hand when faced with the choice between food or education people all over the world rightly choose food. Sure education it great for the future, but it doesn’t keep you from starving to death now.

If I may be so bold as to add a couple more points to lomiller's post: the rich probably use the courts to provide and protect contracts far more than the average person. They likely use more electricity and use more water than the poor to run their factories. They probably chew up the roads more because of trucks loaded with their goods going to market. lomiller mentioned military protection, they probably have greater needs (arguably) for policing the facets of their wealth more than the average worker. They need an educated work force that's mostly publicly educated. They simply use far more government provided resources than the average person and as such, why would it be unfair for them to pay more for it?

I've heard that the top 5% of the wealthiest individuals in this country own about 50% of all its wealth. Should that be the case, shouldn't they pay 50% of the taxes? If you want fair and moral, shouldn't tax breaks and loopholes go to those with the least and more of a straight up, no-breaks rate go to the top 5%?

[thaiboxerken]

If we cut all taxes then the economy would recover, world peace would occur and we'd live in utopia.....

[Puppycow]

Personal opinion: Taxes should be increased until the budget is balanced. This should be written into law. If people feel taxes are too high, then they can decide on where spending should be cut.

I'm don't think that's a good idea. It makes it impossible for the government to stimulate the economy in a recession. Or respond to emergencies.

You don't want to have tied yourself to the mast when the ship catches on fire.

[wastepanel]

Yeah, but Federal withholding is the largest portion that they take out of my check!!!!:eye-poppi

Do you normally get a refund?

[sthomson]

Yeah, but Federal withholding is the largest portion that they take out of my check!!!!:eye-poppi

Then you are (probably) voluntarily withholding too much, especially if you receive a refund when you file your taxes.

[drkitten]

A politically-biased report from over 20 years ago is insufficient evidence for your current assertion that 5/6th of your tax withholding is used to pay for interest on national debt.

Yeah. A more recent (and less partisan) set of numbers -- Wikipedia's article on the US budget -- suggests that "Budgeted net interest on the public debt was approximately $189 billion in FY2009 (5% of spending)."

Since Medicare and SS account for 19% and 20%, respectively [ibid] of the expenditures, but are taxed separately, interest on the debt accounts for 5%/(100-39)% of brantc's tax expenditures, or just over 8% of his total tax burden from Federal withholding. While he may not like paying $55/month in interest payments, that's a far cry from "500 a month of my money goes to paying the interest on the national debt." He's off by nearly 90%.

... and if he gets a refund or is otherwise overwithholding, the amount he pays in interest drops even further, because he's overestimating his tax burden.

Of course, the real problem is that I don't think there's a single correct sentence in the Grace commission report, and even in 1984 there wasn't a single correct sentence in it. The three major findings that anti-tax kooks love to quote have never been replicated or confirmed by any third-party sources.

[Finn McR]

It can be. But, in that case, any argument for any tax is a moral argument. A flat tax, or a nat'l sales tax, are both based on some moral justification or other.

However, I think I could make an argument against a regresive tax on non-moral grounds. In order for a state to be successful, it's citizens have to work. They have to convert their labor into capital. This increases the wealth of a society. A country where no one went to work would be a sad place full of starving people with nothing to watch on TV (because the cast of Glee is refusing to show up at the studio to work).

It appears to be the case that not all labor is equal. The largest portion of the populace will end up in the employ of a small minority. The owners need the workers to make the food, work the assembly line, etc. And the workers need the jobs because, let's face it, not everybody has the skills to be a doctor, lawyer, or industrial tycoon.

By instituting a flat tax that has a greater impact on the poor than the rich, the government is disincentivising unskilled labor. But unskilled labor is necessary for society and it's the only work many people can get. You'd be punishing the people who make up the musculature of your society. That drives down happiness, which drives down productivity, which harms the owners, which creates less wealth for the nation.

So, moral argument or not, a flat tax seems like a bad idea.
I agree with most of what you wrote (though certainly not the choice of the word "disincentivising" - you should be horse-whipped for that abomination of language;) ).

I did not mean to support a pure flat tax (though the text of my post could certainly be read to imply that). In terms of moralizing on what is fair, I currently think that a flatter base tax rate plus national sales tax and some sort of luxury tax is the best system. As you can tell by my gross generalizations, I'm no economist.

There are probably also good arguments for setting a lower-limit cut-off on income ("poverty level" or whatever), and imposing a set tax rate for all income above that.