[VIDEO] JFK: Democrat or Republican?
Posted: June 26, 2017 Filed under: Education, History, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Abortion, Democrat, GOP, Gun rights, JFK, John F. Kennedy, Larry Elder, Liberal, media, Prager U, Republican, Taxes, video Leave a comment
John F. Kennedy lowered taxes, opposed abortion, supported gun rights, and believed in a strong military. And he was a proud Democrat. But would he be one today? Author and talk show host Larry Elder explains.
Source: PragerU
[VIDEO] CNN’s Van Jones on Trump’s Taxes: ‘That’s a Good Night for Donald Trump’
Posted: March 14, 2017 Filed under: Breaking News, Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Anderson Cooper, Anderson Cooper 360°, Bernie Sanders, CNN, Donald Trump, IRS, MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, Taxes, United States, Van Jones Leave a comment
On CNN Anderson Cooper 360, Political Analysts and Commentators Van Jones, Ryan Lizza, Matt Lewis, Gloria Borger, Paul Begala and Jason Miller discusses the 2005 President Trump’s Tax returns released by the White House showing that Trump paid $38 millions in taxes, though the legitimacy of the tax return has not been verified.
.@VanJones68: If all we get tonight is that Trump paid $38M to America’s government, that’s a good night for Trump https://t.co/kvYlq8udPf
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) March 15, 2017
Death by Taxes
Posted: November 5, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Economics, History, Law & Justice, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Accountants, Bureacracy, Complexity, corruption, Death, Enterprise, Investment, IRS, Legislation, Tax Lawyers, Tax Planning, Taxes Leave a comment‘None of these people have any incentive to undertake the job of decreasing the complexity of the tax system.’
primatologist writes: If most people in the US knew the truth about the tax system in their country, there would be blood in the streets. Most individuals file a very simple federal income tax return – perhaps they take a few deductions for their mortgage interest, medical costs and the like. But this annual experience for the vast majority of Americans gives them a very skewed view of the great mass of the US tax system – it is the tiniest visible sign of an enormous tumor that grows beneath the surface, invisible to most US citizens and tax payers.
“This is how it works: To escape the high tax rates on business activities in the US, armies of lobbyists work ceaselessly to insert arcane, narrow exceptions and exemptions into federal and state tax laws at the legislative level. The exceptions and exemptions are as narrow as possible and often use very convoluted and technical language. The use of opaque language is intentional: it helps legislators avoid the kind of political trouble that comes from handing out tax exemptions.”
Two facts that are rarely discussed by the US media and which never come to the attention of the majority of US individual taxpayers illustrate this: The US has by far the highest corporate income tax rate of any developed country (and among the highest marginal tax rates for individuals who live in high tax states), and the US has an incredibly large and complex structure of tax laws. While most US taxpayers don’t know about the relatively high rates of US taxation, the crucial reality of the US tax system that is hidden from almost everyone is the insane complexity of the US tax code that applies to investment and business activities.
“Why uncertainty? Because as the tax laws and regulations become more and more complex, and the language in which they are expressed becomes more and more divorced from normal usage, only very intelligent people who spend all their time doing nothing but learning and manipulating tax language can even begin to know what the laws and rules mean.”
This is how it works: To escape the high tax rates on business activities in the US, armies of lobbyists work ceaselessly to insert arcane, narrow exceptions and exemptions into federal and state tax laws at the legislative level. The exceptions and exemptions are as narrow as possible and often use very convoluted and technical language.
[Yes, We Still Have the World’s Highest Corporate-Tax Rate]
The use of opaque language is intentional: it helps legislators avoid the kind of political trouble that comes from handing out tax exemptions. (There is also the factor that legislators all play the game of “I’ll vote for your campaign contributor’s tax exemption if you’ll vote for mine.”) Tax authorities (that’s the IRS for the federal government, but it happens at the state and local level, too, in high-tax states and cities) create voluminous regulations to implement these tax laws. Lobbyists also work to influence that process, as well as returning to the legislature to create exceptions to the exceptions to the exceptions created in the regulations.
“Trying to undo the complexity of the tax code would reveal all this incredible responsive complexity: And it would cause massive economic losses. Trillions and trillions of dollars worth of value is invested in ways that are structured in response to the complexity of our tax laws. Without those giant stacks of tax rules and exceptions and exceptions to exceptions, etc., those investment and business operations structures would not make sense legally or economically.”
Meanwhile, “tax planning” to take advantage of this constantly growing and increasingly complex web of laws and regulations becomes a bigger and bigger part of how businesses structure their enterprises and investments. “Tax planning” is carried out by armies of accountants and lawyers and consultants, all of whom are handsomely paid to do work that contributes nothing to economic growth or prosperity.
[Also see – Nobody Knows How Many Federal Agencies Exist]
The work of the “tax planning” professionals becomes more and more complex and incomprehensible to those outside their fraternity, as it is essentially the incantation of linguistic “magic spells” that have nothing whatsoever to do with the actual business enterprise, and everything to do with fitting into the ever-more-convoluted language of the tax codes. More and more layers of complexity are added, each with additional cost and uncertainty.
“The same process applies to entirely domestic business. Entrepreneurs and investors spend huge amounts of money on lawyers, accountants and consultants to create complex – and completely unnecessary – corporate and operational structures aimed solely at taking advantages of complex tax benefits.”
Why uncertainty? Because as the tax laws and regulations become more and more complex, and the language in which they are expressed becomes more and more divorced from normal usage, only very intelligent people who spend all their time doing nothing but learning and manipulating tax language can even begin to know what the laws and rules mean.
“One consequence of this process that everyone who is involved in international business knows very well is that no one wants to do business in the United States if they can help it.“
And they won’t all agree – until a very clear case is litigated to conclusion in a court or the IRS issues a “clarification,” it’s all just educated guesses. By the time a term comes to have well-understood meaning, the exceptions to the rules that use that term – using new words that were intentionally difficult to understand in the first place – have to be interpreted and clarified.
“And here’s the real horror: No one outside the fraternity of tax regulators, lobbyists, tax lawyers, accountants and consultants really perceives how enormous the structure of tax complexity is. Investors and entrepreneurs learn no more than they have to – just what they have to know to do the specific deal they’re working on or carry out their own narrow business operations.”
This process has been going on for well over a hundred years with no let up. In fact, the scale and complexity of the tax codes continues to grow exponentially, as the feedback process of high tax rates leading to exceptions leading to exceptions to exceptions continues ad infinitum.
“Unwinding all that complexity would wipe out huge swathes of the US economy – and create a whole new set of winners and losers that has nothing to do with the underlying matter of actually creating real value in the real world.”
One consequence of this process that everyone who is involved in international business knows very well is that NO ONE WANTS TO DO BUSINESS IN THE UNITED STATES IF THEY CAN HELP IT. This is the world I work in. In my professional world it is simply taken for granted that people with money to invest will do anything in their power to structure their business so that no possible argument can be made that they did business or invested in the US. Companies and wealthy individuals go to extreme lengths to avoid putting any kind of investment into the US if it is at all possible.
[More – Reminder: The Federal Tax Code & Regulations are Now Over 10 Million Words in Length]
Does this mean that no one invests in US businesses? No. The US consumer market is too big, and innovation in the US is too valuable for that to be true. What it does mean, though is that below a certain very large scale, it just doesn’t pay. Even more important, it also means that every investment in the US is “taxed” in a way that does no one (outside of the business of avoiding tax) any good: Huge amounts of money are spent creating unnecessary complexity to minimize US taxation as much as possible: Extra layers of incorporation and complex accounting structures are created to do everything possible to minimize the amount of income earned in the US. All that time, effort and money spent avoiding US taxation adds to the cost of investment without creating one dime of revenue for the US government. Finally, foreign investors in the US do everything they can to get their money out of the US as quickly as possible: The more time an investment is exposed to US tax law, the larger the chance that some tax law magic spell will be countered by some other tax law magic spell and – BANG! – there go all the profits. Read the rest of this entry »
On Soda Taxes and Purported Health Benefits
Posted: October 22, 2015 Filed under: Food & Drink, Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: Cato Institute, Health Benefits, Progressivism, Soft Drinks, Taxation, Taxes 1 CommentChicago to Apply 9% ‘Amusement Tax’ for ‘the Privilege of Witnessing, Viewing or Participating in the Chewing of Gum’
Posted: July 12, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Entertainment, Food & Drink, Humor, Law & Justice, Politics | Tags: Amusement Tax, Arrest, black market, Blue State Model, Chicago, Democratic Party, Gum Tax, Illinois, Law, Netflix, Netflix Tax, Regulations, Tax law, Taxation, Taxes 1 Comment[See also – Chicago to Apply 9% ‘Netflix Tax’]
Chicago to Apply 9% ‘Netflix Tax’ for ‘the Privilege to Witness, View or Participate in Amusements that are Delivered Electronically’
Posted: July 11, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Economics, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Amazon Web Services, Bowling, Chicago, Netflix, Online service provider, Pinball, Sales (accounting), Sales tax, Service provider, Spotify, Streaming media, Taxes, United States 2 Comments“The amusement tax applies to charges paid for the privilege to witness, view or participate in an amusement.”
Netflix service in Chicago is about to get notably more expensive. On the hunt for new revenue, Chicago’s Department of Finance is applying two new rules that would impact companies like Netflix and Spotify. One covers “electronically delivered amusements” and another covers “nonpossessory computer leases”; together they form a unique and troubling new attempt by cities to tax any city resident that interacts with “the cloud. According to the Chicago Tribune, streaming service providers need to start collecting the tax starting September 1.
“This includes not only charges paid for the privilege to witness, view or participate in amusements in person but also charges paid for the privilege to witness, view or participate in amusements that are delivered electronically.”
The new tax is expected to net the city of Chicago an additional $12 million annually.
“The amusement tax applies to charges paid for the privilege to witness, view or participate in an amusement,” states the city’s new ruling (pdf).
“This includes not only charges paid for the privilege to witness, view or participate in amusements in person but also charges paid for the privilege to witness, view or participate in amusements that are delivered electronically.” Read the rest of this entry »
Victor Davis Hanson: ‘When Law Becomes Negotiable, Civilization Collapses’
Posted: May 7, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Economics, History, Law & Justice, Think Tank | Tags: Al Sharpton, Clinton Foundation, Eric Holder, Fox News Channel, Internal Revenue Service, Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC, National Review, Taxes, Touré Leave a comment
US’Tax Enforcement Is Harbinger of Decline:When law becomes negotiable, civilization collapses http://t.co/JrczvhIEf9pic.twitter.com/3NfgIUSKcp
— Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) May 7, 2015
Who will police the tax police?
Why did Rome and Byzantium fall apart after centuries of success? What causes civilizations to collapse, from a dysfunctional fourth-century-B.C. Athens to contemporary bankrupt Greece?
The answer is usually not enemies at the gates, but the pathologies inside them.
What ruins societies is well known: too much consumption and not enough production, a debased currency, and endemic corruption.
Americans currently deal with all those symptoms. But two more fundamental causes for decline are even more frightening: an unwillingness to pay taxes and the end of the rule of law.
Al Sharpton is again prominently in the news, blaming various groups for the Baltimore unrest. But Sharpton currently owes the U.S. government more than $3 million in back taxes, according to reports. His excuses have ranged from insufficient funds to pay them to sloppy record-keeping and mysterious fires.
Sharpton, a frequent White House guest, apparently assumes that his community-organizing provides him political exemption from federal tax law. He seems to be right, at least as long as the current administration is in power.
The Clinton Foundation is expected to refile its tax returns for 2010, 2011, and 2012 after failing to separate government grants from donations. If an average citizen tried to amend his taxes for such huge sums and from that long ago, he would probably be under indictment.
[Read the full text here, at VictorHanson.com]
News reports of undocumented donations from foreign governments caught the foundation underreporting its income. The well-connected Clinton clan apparently had assumed that their political status ensured them immunity. Read the rest of this entry »
Ex-Im Officials Blow Through Millions of Tax Dollars on First-Class Luxury Travel
Posted: September 6, 2014 Filed under: Economics, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: BANKING, Boeing, corruption, Ex-Im, Export-Import Bank, Export-Import Bank of the United States, Federal Agency, First Class, General Electric, House Financial Services Committee, NASA, Taxes, Taxpayer subsidies, Travel Budget, United States House Committee on Financial Services Leave a commentWashingtonExaminer reports: Officials of the Export-Import Bank of the United States blew the agency’s travel budget by millions of dollars after taking 400 first-class flights over the last three years, according to records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
“Conservatives in Congress have long sought to defund Ex-Im as a corporate welfare program, while President Obama has defended it as a job creator.”
Ex-Im is a federal agency that provides taxpayer subsidies to U.S. exporters such as Boeing, General Electric and Caterpillar.
“In fiscal 2012, Ex-Im budgeted $1.7 million for travel expenses but spent $2.7 million. In fiscal 2013, Ex-Im budgeted $1.2 million but spent $2.2 million. And in this fiscal year, Ex-Im budgeted $1.3 million but expects its end-of-year spending to total $2.3 million.”
Last month, the Hill reported that “officials with the Export-Import Bank have exceeded their travel budget over the last three years by $3 million, according to disclosures filed with the House Financial Services Committee.
[Also see Timothy P. Carney’s The Export-Import Bank and the German model]
“A NASA employee flew from Frankfurt to Cologne, Germany, for $6,851, a flight that cost almost 52 times more than the $133 coach fare.”
But documents newly obtained by the Washington Examiner show that it was not just the frequency of the travel that caused Ex-Im officials to exceed their budget, but the way they chose to travel. Read the rest of this entry »