Spread the Wealth

Quote from wjk:

My wife was my accountant. Are you saying I could have avoided self employment tax on profit? 18% or so.

Guess I could have faked some deductions, right?

Honestly you probably did it by the book which is I'm sure the way its supposed to be done. In my experience and statistically no one else does. Everyone should do what you did, which could be accomplished by simply closing loopholes.
 
Quote from jonbig04:

Honestly you probably did it by the book which is I'm sure the way its supposed to be done. In my experience and statistically no one else does. Everyone should do what you did, which could be accomplished by simply closing loopholes.

We actually joke about it quite a bit. I know a few small contractors who skipped a little here and there, and then got caught. It cost them much, much more. In a way, though, that's why I can relate to the plumber in the article. I don't think the majority of our politicians know about that little self employment thing. Lot's of us out here.

I don't mind paying my fair share, when it's fair. The fact that I'm a self starter requires me to pay tax on an amount that someone else doesn't because he is employed by another troubles me some. I blame both parties on this one!

Edit:
After consulting with the accountant, she thinks there is a min limit where I don't have to pay on profit. She's not sure, but thinks it's $400.
 
Quote from wjk:

We actually joke about it quite a bit. I know a few small contractors who skipped a little here and there, and then got caught. It cost them much, much more. In a way, though, that's why I can relate to the plumber in the article. I don't think the majority of our politicians know about that little self employment thing. Lot's of us out here.

The people I know...very well...didn't skimp, they just take advantage of the gray areas. Full advantage lol.

I don't mind paying my fair share, when it's fair. The fact that I'm a self starter so if I pay tax on an amount that someone else doesn't because he is imployed by another troubles me some. I blame both parties on this one!

Understandable, frankly if there were more people like you we wouldn't be in this mess. Consider this though: how about we "eliminate all capital gains taxes on start-up and small businesses to encourage innovation and job creation. And support small business owners by providing a $500 “Making Work Pay” tax credit to almost every worker in America. Self-employed small business owners pay both the employee and the employer side of the payroll tax, and this measure will reduce the burdens of this double taxation."

Small business are the backbone of our econ.
 
Quote from trendlover:

Quote from Pa(b)st Prime:

You don't get the fact that I'd owe nothing. It's called an unrealized gain. You can raise capital gains to 80% and you know what? Unless Buffet or Gates sell stock their tax bill is nada. You're whole notion of higher taxes grabbing a piece of the idle rich is ridiculously flawed. [/QUOTE


What is taxable income for people like Soros and Buffet with huge unrealized gains?

Just dividends. I'll take the dynamic one step further. Let's say you pay 1 mil for a stock with a 10% dividend yield. Now the stock through inflation increases earnings to a point where it's a 10mil stock with the same 10% yield. You've increased your income 10x (you're still taxed on the 10% dividends) but the 10mil is still unrealized. You're now in moneyed class without kicking back Uncle Sam an iota in tribute. Now try being a wage earner and see how hard it it is accumulating 10mil. Hopefully you'll understand how self serving these limousine liberals truly are.

Mind you I'm not advocating changes in the system that'll make mark to market unrealized gains taxable but I'm only showing the duplicity of the wealth redistribution argument.
 
Quote from jonbig04:

Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

Come back when you've actually had a real job and paid taxes yourself. I've known plenty of self-righteous little socialists like you. Of course, they were living off mommy and daddy. When they finally started earning they were shocked at how much they had to pay. Suddenly taxes took on a different meaning.

Ha. I moved out my parents house when I was 17. I started my first company when I was 18. I bought my first house out of foreclosure for $350,000 when I was 19, and sold it less than 2 months later for $650,000. At 20 I built a house on 35 acres for a total of $700,000. So yea, as usual you don't know what you're talking about.

Lets assume I was some kid who didn't know how it felt to pay taxes, and then suddenly realized how much I hated taxes. I would still be voting for Obama because in all likelyhood he would be lowering them. Your statement doesn't make any kind of sense in all kinds of ways.


I'd love to see you explain to that plumber, who is up to his elbows in people's toilets all day, how he isn't paying enough to subsidize Obama's welfare clients.

I doubt a plumber in someones toilet is going to be making more than $250,000 a year. Under Obama his taxes WOULD BE LOWER.

Nearly 40% of americans pay no income tax at all. Another 30% pay next to nothing. The entire tax burden is resting on a smaller and smaller group. Of course a small number of the very rich are odious crooks, the options hog CEO's and Wall Street manipulators. Most however are small businessmen, the people who create most of the jobs.

The reason a smaller number of people pay most of the taxes is because that small number, lets call it the top 10%, control the VAST majority of the wealth. I understand your point, but you are assuming the income gap between normal americans and the "small number of very rich" is small or non existent. Its HUGE. For example lets look at the middle class, the people making $50k a year give or take...those people pay their taxes and right now they pay more (on a percentage basis) than the very rich people and there is a lot more of them. Yet they account for very small chunk of the overall income tax revenue. Why? Because the top 10% hold nearly all the wealth. Its not because the middle class don't pay their taxes, they do pay them...religiously, but since none of the wealth trickles down and the income is being redistributed to the wealthy they account for pretty much nothing. Taxing them is pointless because there is no revenue there.


Your ideas about taxes are so confused it's hard to unravel them. You continually confuse the concepts of wealth and income. One is taxed and one isn't.

People making $50k certainly pay next to nothing in income taxes, and they pay far less on a percentage basis than someone in the max marginal rate. I wouldn't call them middle class either, unless maybe they are living in a very low cost area. The rest of your comments about "wealth trickling down" and "income being redistributed to the wealthy" make even less sense than Obama's "spread the wealth" philosophy.

Rather than debate this stuff with you endless and fruitlessly, let me just put forth a couple of principles. One, I think the purpose of the tax system should be to fund the government with the least possible harm to the economy. We end up with suboptimal tax schemes when we start trying to punish one group or reward another using the tax system. If the objective is to cause the least harm to the economy, at least everyone is focused on the same goal and we can debate the methods rationally rather than get caught up in demagoguery. Of course, democrats object to this principle because for them, the purpose of the tax system is to buy votes and make class envy appeals.

Two, I agree with liberals that vast and persistent wealth disparity is a potential problem. But statistics can hide as much as they reveal. Is there mobility between income strata? That is a good thing. If we are constantly adding poor people at the bottom of the ladder through immigration, etc, then we will always have a "statistical" problem, but if they are able to rise over generations, then it is much less of a social problem. The way to address this issue is to limit immigration by poor and unskilled people and make it easier for wage earners to accumulate capital. Current policies do the opposite. We allow unchecked immigration but our tax system penalizes savers. Obama would make it worse.

Three, taxes should be spread over as wide a base as possible. Obama has famously claimed to "unite us", but his tax policies, like the rest of his policies, would do the opposite. He pits one class against another and had the audacity to criticize a working man for not "sharing the wealth." When a significant percentage of the population pays little or nothing in taxes, they have every incentive to want lavish government programs. After all, they're not paying for them. While a vast expansion of goverment and dependency on government are exactly what democrats want, it is clearly not in the interests of the country. We need only look at other countries that pursue such policies, such as in latin america, and we see social division, tax fraud on a vast scale with all the corruption it engenders and dysfunctional government. Obama seemed to be quite comfortable in the pervasive corruption of chicago machine politics, but most of us aspire to something better for our country.
 
Quote from jonbig04:

The people I know...very well...didn't skimp, they just take advantage of the gray areas. Full advantage lol.


When I started trading, I was able to apply that 3k write off to my other business, so my only complaint was that I could only write off 3k. My first year of trading was ugly, especially the cost.

Perhaps we should have considered LLC for the contract business. Maybe that would have provided the loopholes. We were never quite sure, so we went with what we knew. Not enough profit potential to hire a tax lawyer. Tax law = :confused:

Hopefully I'll make it to that 250k with my trading in the next year or so. Just now starting to turn a net. Actually, I think I'll shoot for 249k.:)
 
Quote from Pa(b)st Prime:

Just dividends. I'll take the dynamic one step further. Let's say you pay 1 mil for a stock with a 10% dividend yield. Now the stock through inflation increases earnings to a point where it's a 10mil stock with the same 10% yield. You've increased your income 10x (you're still taxed on the 10% dividends) but the 10mil is still unrealized. You're now in moneyed class without kicking back Uncle Sam an iota in tribute. Now try being a wage earner and see how hard it it is accumulating 10mil. Hopefully you'll understand how self serving these limousine liberals truly are.

Mind you I'm not advocating changes in the system that'll make mark to market unrealized gains taxable but I'm only showing the duplicity of the wealth redistribution argument.


Maybe I am not understanding this, but here is my question.
If Warren Buffet is saying the tax system is unfair because he pay 17% tax, and his secretary or employee pay 32% to 39% and Buffet tax rate is on (dividend) which is I think 15%, and employee are paying (income tax rate..32% )then is Buffet saying dividend tax should be raised?
 
Quote from BlindLemonBoosh:

Has McCain admitted this?

Did you see the last debate? You tell me who was the more non-committal about increased spending.

Obama:And that's why I think it's important for the president to set a tone that says all of us are going to contribute, all of us are going to make sacrifices, and it means that, yes, we may have to cut some spending, although I disagree with Sen. McCain about an across-the- board freeze.

That's an example of an unfair burden sharing. That's using a hatchet to cut the federal budget.

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Brokaw: We've run out of time. We have this one-minute discussion period going on here.

There are new economic realities out there that everyone in this hall and across this country understands that there are going to have to be some choices made. Health policies, energy policies, and entitlement reform, what are going to be your priorities in what order? Which of those will be your highest priority your first year in office and which will follow in sequence?

Sen. McCain?

McCain: The three priorities were health...

Brokaw: The three -- health care, energy, and entitlement reform: Social Security and Medicare. In what order would you put them in terms of priorities?

McCain: I think you can work on all three at once, Tom. I think it's very important that reform our entitlement programs.

My friends, we are not going to be able to provide the same benefit for present-day workers that we are going -- that present-day retirees have today. We're going to have to sit down across the table, Republican and Democrat, as we did in 1983 between Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill.

I know how to do that. I have a clear record of reaching across the aisle, whether it be Joe Lieberman or Russ Feingold or Ted Kennedy or others. That's my clear record.

We can work on nuclear power plants. Build a whole bunch of them, create millions of new jobs. We have to have all of the above, alternative fuels, wind, tide, solar, natural gas, clean coal technology. All of these things we can do as Americans and we can take on this mission and we can overcome it.

My friends, some of this $700 billion ends up in the hands of terrorist organizations.

As far as health care is concerned, obviously, everyone is struggling to make sure that they can afford their premiums and that they can have affordable and available health care. That's the next issue.

But we can do them all at once. There's no -- and we have to do them all at once. All three you mentioned are compelling national security requirements.

Brokaw: I'm trying to play by the rules that you all established. One minute for discussion.

Sen. Obama, if you would give us your list of priorities, there are some real questions about whether everything can be done at once.

Obama: We're going to have to prioritize, just like a family has to prioritize. Now, I've listed the things that I think have to be at the top of the list.

Energy we have to deal with today, because you're paying $3.80 here in Nashville for gasoline, and it could go up. And it's a strain on your family budget, but it's also bad for our national security, because countries like Russia and Venezuela and, you know, in some cases, countries like Iran, are benefiting from higher oil prices.

So we've got to deal with that right away. That's why I've called for an investment of $15 billion a year over 10 years. Our goal should be, in 10 year's time, we are free of dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

And we can do it. Now, when JFK said we're going to the Moon in 10 years, nobody was sure how to do it, but we understood that, if the American people make a decision to do something, it gets done. So that would be priority number one.

Health care is priority number two, because that broken health care system is bad not only for families, but it's making our businesses less competitive.

And, number three, we've got to deal with education so that our young people are competitive in a global economy.


But just one point I want to make, Tom. Sen. McCain mentioned looking at our records. We do need to look at our records.

Sen. McCain likes to talk about earmarks a lot. And that's important. I want to go line by line through every item in the federal budget and eliminate programs that don't work and make sure that those that do work, work better and cheaper.

But understand this: We also have to look at where some of our tax revenues are going. So when Sen. McCain proposes a $300 billion tax cut, a continuation not only of the Bush tax cuts, but an additional $200 billion that he's going to give to big corporations, including big oil companies, $4 billion worth, that's money out of the system.

And so we've got to prioritize both our spending side and our tax policies to make sure that they're working for you. That's what I'm going to do as president.

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