Interested to see logical / non biased argument to a proposed federal tax plan

Discussion in 'Budget & Taxes' started by philthompson, Feb 28, 2014.

  1. philthompson

    philthompson New Member

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    I would like to introduce this topic by stating the nature of it. I am a M.A.C. student currently and am considering furthering my education in the legal/political side of tax. However, I simply do not understand the logic behind some political stances. It seems to me that no tax systems proposed are designed to have positive financial benefits. In a nutshell, I do not want to enter a field of study that is purely political. Below is a federal tax system that I would like to get feedback on. I will also list my basis behind each figure.

    I also listed my thoughts on a few other topics including a few S.C. state taxes. I'm looking for FACTS to maybe help me "open my eyes"...Not looking to be ripped apart by somebody who disagrees.

    Income Tax (proposed rates are placeholders, relationship between rates are of interest. also, i do not want to make this post take an hour to read so this is for a single person and relationship qualifications can be implied)

    - $0-$25,000: lump sum (maybe 15% of 25,000)
    ANYBODY (obviously excluding disabled vets, etc) can make $25,000. Short a sweet, I worked 6 summers at a state farmers market..absolutely grueling "bottom of the barrel" work. I worked with black, red, white, yellow, green, etc people. I worked with immigrants, mentally handicapped, illiterate, and one guy literally had 4 total fingers. Minimum wage with overtime and random tips was well beyond 25,000 before tax. ANYBODY CAN EARN $25,000, it is expected. And everybody should pay the same amount for what is expected.

    - $35,001-$67,000: flat tax rate A
    People hit hard times, but the MAJORITY has to be looked at..this is the real world and there are winners and losers. Congrats to those who fall in this category-you did what should be done.

    - $67,001-$185,000: untaxed.
    Everybody can hit this mark, the required effort to get here will vary but its possible for all. However, not everybody wants to be here and that is a-okay. don't take anything away from those who put in the extra effort. and yes i realize that some people get "daddy's business" but that's the way the cookies crumble...ignore the few who "get it" in order to honor the people who earned it. This creates a desire to enter the middle class, but keep pushing to the upper-middle.

    -$185,001- $500,000- flat rate B (10% higher than "A")
    -$500,000+ : flat rate C (12.5% higher than "B")
    I think these two are self explanatory. hit 'em hard because they "can afford it", but make the rate flat so there is incentive to keep pushing forward.



    [/B]Capital Gains[/B]
    Treat everything as indvidual income for payouts and dividends. That's what it is...it was earned

    Payroll taxes
    Required 75-25 split between employee and employer...and a good employer should be willing to do this as a token of appreciation..while a hardworking employee should not expect more of his boss's money.

    absolutely no property or inheritance tax!

    I get that the ultra-wealthy "rule America" but what happens when America doesn't even have an option to become wealthy? The untaxed bracket is the backbone to this plan. That area (the top of that cut) is what everybody should strive to achieve. This is all spurred by a situation that my boss and mentor fell into...

    He started a business from the ground up. One man, one truck, no warehouse turned into 45 trucks, 150 employees, and a 40,000 square foot house. However, his standard of living has increased 10% of his EARNED money. He pockets less because of income tax and can't spend because of property tax. NOTHING IS WRONG with him wanting a lake lot and new boat...thats the American Dream
     
  2. unrealist42

    unrealist42 New Member

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    If you wan to simplify the tax system:

    How about no taxes on the first $40,000 of income from any source and a flat rate after that determined by actual government spending the year before with no exemptions?

    How about a 0.0002% tax on all electronic transactions that would eliminate all other taxes at all levels of government and pay off the national debt within two years and all other public debt within five?
    Or is a nickle on every $100 that changes hands somehow to onerous?
     
  3. philthompson

    philthompson New Member

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    So with the untaxed "first" $40,000...what is the basis or ideology behind that? That is pretty much what I don't understand about modern tax and over all political mindsets. If there was an untaxed bracket, it would seem to make more sense to make it maybe $50-$90k.

    While technically a "tax break", untaxed income is cash money. If there is gonna be a "tax break" or reward to an income class, why not give it to people who achieved greater income
     
  4. unrealist42

    unrealist42 New Member

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    Well, if the government is to fund itself it should try do so in the least burdensome way possible, which if it is through an income tax, means taxing incomes at some level above that which would allow most people to afford their living expenses. A $40,000 income would allow the average family in the US to afford the median living expense. It is a sort of rough and ready number. I am sure some expert economist would come up with something more accurate.

    The reality is that most high income people have no clue what to do with their income left over after living expenses. The proof of that is that is the $Trillions they have given over to other people to manage. Taxing that money would be the least burdensome route. Though not so remunerative for the stockbrokers and fund managers and investment advisers that prey on these clueless high earners and make their $Billions from them, it would be the least burdensome place in the economy for the government to extract its revenues.
     
  5. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Today each American's fair share of federal income tax is $12,380 per year.

    Every year each American should receive a Federal invoice for their fair share of running the nation.

    Each American, or the heads of household, can either write a check for the full amount, or write a check for a lessor amount, and for the unpaid portion of their fair share, they can earn dollar-credits by volunteering; for example picking up litter five days a week earns them $20K in federal tax credits.

    If people are alarmed by owing $12,380 each year, then people can actually take steps to reduce government spending.
     
  6. OldRetiredGuy

    OldRetiredGuy New Member Past Donor

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    The current tax code is an absolute mess. If I was king for a day I'd throw it all out and institute a flat tax with an exemption of $10,000 for you, $10,000 for your spouse, and $10,000 for one or more dependents. Not $10k each, $10k for any number above zero. That's it, no more exemptions, deductions, credits, tax breaks, loopholes or anything else. Start the rate at 1% for income over your adjusted gross, and graduate it going up to about 20%. No breaks for investment, charity, mortgage, nothing.

    On the business side, pretty much same deal. A graduated flat rate of 1% over profit starting at $50,000, and going up to say 20% max. No breaks, no credits, no deductions, nothing. Income earned overseas can be brought back here tax free if taxes were paid on it in another country. Everybody else does that and we should too, and besides it encourages growth domestically.

    I would require a two thirds majority in both chambers of Congress to increase the tax rate, and no decreases until and unless the debt is finally paid off. Which won't be any time soon IMHO. AND I would require spending to be limited to the dollar amount of increased revenue from the previous year; emergency spending would be permitted but the extra spending would have to be offset in the following fiscal year. And THAT would also require a two thirds approval in both houses of Congress too.
     
  7. CourtJester

    CourtJester Well-Known Member

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    What most people miss is that tax rates are not really relevant to the desire to increase income. No matter what the rate if you earn more you still end up with more after taxes.

    I would also postulate that the truly wealthy, whatever that means, are probably not as motivated by money as the rest of us and work for other reasons.
     
  8. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    What I always find amusing about 'flat tax' proposals is that they are NEVER a flat tax! They always include exemptions or deductions and in your business example you show a progressive rate policy.

    It is logical that the best tax policy is a national sales tax...period. The rate is determined by the demand for government revenue. Perhaps the tax is not applied on food items or medical care? But whatever it is, it is EQUAL for all Americans.

    Then there are those who cry or whine about the lower and middle classes paying too much...give me a fricken break! If a person is American then pay taxes! If the national sales tax was 5%, and if we assume the poorest people spend ~$15K/year, and assume only 50% of this is taxable (excluding food and medical), 5% of $7500 is $375 per year. Broken down weekly this is $7.21...seems a fair share to live in the USA.
     
  9. unrealist42

    unrealist42 New Member

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    Government raise revenue by taxing either economic activity or accumulated wealth. A sales tax raises revenue from specific economic activity, a property tax raises revenue from specific accumulations of wealth.
    The problem with these types of taxes is that they are so specific that they distort the entire economy by placing the tax burden entirely on just a few activities, which creates an incentive to concentrate economic activity and wealth accumulation in areas that avoid taxation.

    If you are for freedom in the marketplace and against government interference then you would have to agree that if the government is going to tax it should do so in a way that is economically neutral.
    If the government is to raise its revenues from accumulated wealth it should tax all accumulations of wealth the same.
    The way to do that is with a wealth tax. People report their wealth and have some of it confiscated.

    If its is to raise its revenue from economic activity it should tax all economic activity the same.
    The way to do that is with an electronic transaction tax. The tax is collected automatically at the time of transaction, no one needs to do anything else or pay any other tax.

    Some years ago a few economists were given access to the raw data from some of the largest electronic transaction processors in the US. They wrote up their findings which concluded that an electronic transaction tax of 5 cents on every 100 dollars that changed hands electronically would generate enough revenue to eliminate the need for all other taxes at all levels of government and pay off all government debt within ten years. The tax would be collected at the time of the transaction by the exchange processors and transferred immediately to the Treasury. The IRS would need only a few employees to keep these companies honest.

    Think about that for a minute, no more income tax, no more sales tax, no more property tax, no more gas tax, no more federal state and local taxes of any kind, all for paying a nickle in every 100 dollars that changes hands. Since they published that paper electronic transactions have moved from 89% to over 96% of all economic activity.

    The Wall Street Journal objected, claiming that a $50,000 transaction tax on a $1Billion money transfer would cause the entire world economy to immediately collapse, like they expected people to actually believe it.
     
  10. OldRetiredGuy

    OldRetiredGuy New Member Past Donor

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    I just don't think we should hit somebody with a 20% tax bite on their first dollar earned. I can live with a somewhat progressive tax, if you strip out the deductions, breaks, credits and loopholes. There are a few countries that are doing that right now I think.

    Fine by me if we go to a consumption tax, still better than the nonsense we got now.
     
  11. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    We have local, county, state and federal sales taxes today and they work just fine. My only question would be if their tax rates are set correctly to fund whatever it is that needs to be funded?

    A sales tax on nearly everything is not 'so specific'.

    Whatever wealth I have achieved is mine and I can do anything I wish with it...I have paid all applicable taxes and whatever is left over to accumulate wealth belongs solely to me. If you're going to tax me on my wealth then I'll invest most everything I have outside of the USA. It's a fool's game to attack people's wealth.

    I see no problem with having a national sales tax separate from capital gains tax.

    You cannot take 5 cents out of every $100 in electronic transactions without having an impact elsewhere. You actually think a few people doing electronic transactions are going to fund the entire USA and pay down debt and it won't have a serious negative economic effect?

    You need to think about it for a moment; you want to extract $4 trillion per year to fund government and another $2 trillion to pay down debt and you don't think this will negatively effect the economy??
     
  12. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    IMO every American should be paying something...and $7 a week is a small price to pay to obtain all that the USA has to offer. When the masses stop pissing away their money on alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and frivolous and extravagant purchases, then I will have a little more compassion. Until then IMO it's a matter of prioritization of spending and when poorly done government steps in to fill the void growing larger and larger. Or perhaps a significant percentage of the USA has become helpless, uneducated, unskilled, unmotivated, unwilling, criminals, and their burden on government simply needs to be funded by others? Wealthy people have options to relocate and take their money with them; they will only tolerate paying a majority of taxes up to some point. The ONLY solution IMO is to educate the masses, to remove the current public education drop-out factory, but this will take a couple of generations and more money and will than Americans currently have to offer. We're on an unsustainable trend...
     
  13. unrealist42

    unrealist42 New Member

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    Sales taxes typically leave out retail transactions like stock and bond trades, food and clothing, gas purchases, and all wholesale transactions. They create a regressive distortion in the economy.

    A few people doing electronic transactions?????
    You do not seem to understand what electronic transactions are.
    Let me put it this way, the only transactions that are NOT electronic are transactions paid with cash, cash transactions are less than 2% of all daily transactions in the US economy. In other words, over 98% of all the economic activity in the US is through the electronic transaction networks and that is an enormous amount of money changing hands, so enormous that a tax of 5 cents on every $100 that changes hands is more than enough to fund the government and pay down the debt.

    It has been estimated by economist who had access to data from leading electronic transaction firms that somewhere around $1Trillion of electronic transactions occur in the US every day. That is, a 5 cent tax on every $100 that changes hands will generate $50Billion a day in tax receipts, or over $15Trillion a year, which is why the economists actually recommended a 2 cents tax on every $100, which will generate $6Trillion in revenue, which is enough to fund not just the federal government but also all the state and local governments and pay off all their debts within ten years.

    All economic activity is taxed exactly the same except for cash transactions, which are negligible and quickly realized in the electronic transaction market anyway.
    It is also the only way that governments can gain revenues through taxation without creating large distortions in the economy, like it does now.

    There will be impacts elsewhere. There will be winners and losers. The winners will be everyone who has to spend time and money on tax filings and tax accountants and tax lawyers. The losers will the all the tax accountants and tax lawyers. Other losers will be the operators of high velocity computer trading, which is currently under investigation as a sort of illegal insider trading. Other losers will be the thousands of IRS employees, who will suddenly have nothing to do since all the tax gathering activities will be in the hands of a small squad of geeks and auditors to oversee the transaction exchanges.

    The only complaint about this idea when it was first floated was from a Wall Street Journal editorial which complained that paying a measly $50,000 tax on a $1Billion bank transfer would cause the entire global financial system to grind to a halt, which is completely implausible because the brokers who facilitate these exchanges typically make far more than that in commissions.

    There would be no other taxes, none. No income tax, no capital gains tax, no property tax, no gas tax, no taxes at all except 2 cents on every $100 that you spend or receive. Since it is collected at the time of the transaction you probably would not even notice it, and the other party pays half so really, it is 1 cent on every $100 to you.

    How is that a bad thing?
     
  14. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    If the current convoluted income tax system was going to be replaced with a national sales tax then it would be designed to achieve the government revenue targets. Whether this would include tax on food or other things would need to be analyzed. My only caveat is that ALL Americans contribute something...have a horse in the race.

    I don't care if it's electronic transactions or other areas, you cannot extract $4-$6 trillion per year from these areas without critical negative economic impacts. If they involve stocks or capital instruments then capital gains taxes should apply. If someone electronically transacts $1 million today and at the end of the day they still have $1 million, then why should they pay taxes on no income or gains?
     
  15. unrealist42

    unrealist42 New Member

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    Why should stock and bond transactions not be taxed along with every other transaction?
    Everyone would be paying tax on every transaction except stock and bond trades?
    How is that fair or equitable or reasonable or even logical?

    Besides, that is how taxes become such a complicated nightmare, one little loophole, then another and another and another and soon enough the tax code is 10,000 pages long and the government is unable to fund itself.

    In any case, the markets are more of a drag on the economy than a boost, sucking up all national savings and making it unavailable for things like capital expansion, business and personal loans and other activities that actually generate widespread economic growth. If market activity is to be taxed separately it should be taxed at double the rate of other economic activity so that capital can be encouraged away from the frenzy of speculative gambling that produces nothing and what little does trickle out to the wider economy is less than the savings that flow in from it.

    It used to be that markets provided the opportunity for excess capital to be deployed as investment in business growth but since the entire economy has become monetized they have become an end in themselves with their original function reduced to a vestigial sideshow, almost lost among the massive daily flows of purely speculative gambling money.
     
  16. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Capital gains IMO should be separate...would you like to pay a flat 5% tax on the capital gain when you sell property? Or when you sell stocks? This would be much lower than current capital gains taxes.

    You can't collect taxes on 'electronic transactions'. A significant portion of these transactions might be capital losses or break even. Just collect taxes on gains.

    There is no need for 10,000 pages of tax policy to keep capital gains separate...maybe one page.

    No one is suffering because we have a stock market?

    People and business have already purchased what they need and it's the extra money that goes into investing with hopes of realizing a gain in the short or long term. How many Americans have pension or retirement portfolios which contain public stock...you want to suck more money from these people on every electronic transaction?

    If you eliminate investment opportunities in the USA the cash will simply move offshore to other investment opportunities. Capital gains are taxed today so why dream up taxing electronic transactions...too much political BS...
     
  17. unrealist42

    unrealist42 New Member

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    Why?
    You have yet to make the case for why stock trading is so different from other economic activity that it should be treated differently.

    A 5% capital gains tax would be orders of magnitude greater than the transaction tax on the gain realized by the sale of your home.
    Consider a $100,000 capital gain on a $400,000 real estate sale. A 5% capital gains tax would be $5,000. A 0.005% transaction tax would be $200, a 0.002% transaction tax would be $80.
    Think about that.
    Do stockbrokers collect commissions only on gains?
    No, they do not. Since people are already paying brokers there is no reason their transactions should not be taxed at a tiny fraction of what brokers charge. In fact, many brokers would probably make promises to reimburse the investors portion of the transaction tax as a way to attract investors who do not understand how small the transaction tax actually is.

    That's what they said when the tax code was first tweaked.

    Consider this, if they paid a tiny tax on their stock portfolio and 5 cent on every $100 they spend on everything they buy they would pay no other taxes at all, none. This would be a huge boon to the middle class who have their pensions and savings in the stock market because they are now paying 20- 30% of their gross income in taxes. With a 5 cents on every $100 transaction tax someone who makes $60,000 a year would pay $300 in taxes, not the $10,000 they pay now after deductions.

    About 40% of Americans have investments in the stock market. But, over 90% of stocks in the US are owned or controlled by less than 5% of the population, who make over 95% of all stock trades on any given day, with most of the rest being made by foreigners. The other 35% of the population that owns stocks owns them mostly through mutual or pension funds that trade far less frequently.

    A small transaction tax on stock trading would most likely result in a reduction in fees by mutual fund managers because fund managers would no longer be subject to income or capital gains tax on the fees they charge clients and would reduce them as a competitive move. This would result in a greater portion of stock trading gains going to the small investor mutual fund holders.

    Eliminate investment opportunities???
    A transaction tax would vastly improve investment opportunities by completely eliminating the incomprehensible market distorting complexity of gaming to minimize taxes. Corporations would no longer have to hide income overseas or use shell companies to shield income from taxes and neither would individual investors, many of whom use offshore shell corporations and other ways to get around paying capital gains taxes.

    Maybe you are one of those, a wealthy investor who dodges paying capital gains taxes on their income and does not want a transaction tax because there is no way around it.
    All I can say to that is pay up you deadbeat.

    The thing about a transaction tax that is so different, and so hard to comprehend for so many people is that it is about providing government revenue from the movement of money rather than its resting places. The current taxing regimes arose from historical limits of technology that caused taxation to be targeted to where it can be most conveniently collected, which has generated vast distortions in the economy and a massive corruption of the political process.

    Well, times have changed and technology has advanced and it is time to rethink how governments are to be funded in a more reasonable manner. The biggest problem to accomplishing this is powerful interests whose economic and political power requires adherence to such specific views that alternatives, even if they are more reasonable and profitable, are anathema because thinking beyond the established view is not allowed, heretical.
     
  18. Casper

    Casper Banned at Members Request Past Donor

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    The only Fair tax would be either a Falt or Consumption Tax and both have their detractors also, sliding scales are not fair to ALL Americans.
     
  19. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    I have made my case; if you don't like my case this is fine.

    Stock broker commissions are wages...not investments.

    I'm not going to think about a transaction tax because I 100% disagree with the politically motivated concept.
     
  20. Ndividual

    Ndividual Well-Known Member

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    Ideally, the 16th amendment should be repealed and the Federal government should only be allowed to tax the States proportionate to their population of the whole as suggested in Article I, section 9 of the Constitution. House members should be answerable to the constituents of their respective districts, and with repeal of the 17th amendment Senators would be selected to represent their States and its' citizens as a whole as originally intended for good reason. THEN, Congress both house and senate members would be held accountable for the spending bills they passed which would require their State government to find ways of producing their population proportionate share of the revenue to be sent to the Federal government, AND State governments would have to become more involved in providing an environment attractive to businesses adequate to provide gainful employment for the population of their State capable of providing both the support of their States population inclusive of any forms of entitlement programs such as now provided by the Federal government and in addition allowing taxation adequate to provide their proportionate share needed to fund the remaining, but much fewer Federal government programs. Both States and the citizens of each State would then regain not only much of their individual sovereignty, but the politicians sent to Washington would be more directly accountable to their own constituents from both their State and respective districts, who their actions at the Federal level of government makes them responsible for the funding of. Taxes collected by State governments would be applied more directly and without strings attached along with its return by the Federal government. In the end the Federal government spending could be reduced greatly allowing the debt to be eliminated, and except on rare occasions such as wars or wide spread or large devastating natural disasters would the Federal government ever be required to borrow money to assist the States or the Nation.
     
  21. unrealist42

    unrealist42 New Member

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    If you say so.

    According to the stockbrokers and the IRS commissions are not wages. If they were they would be taxed as income instead of as capital gains.

    It was not politics that drew me to the transaction tax but simple market economics, in particular the notion that an indiscriminate tax on all transactions removes the ability of any actor in the economy to gain economic advantage through preferential tax treatment. Funding the government through an unavoidable but tiny tax taken directly from the flow of money is the easiest to implement, least intrusive, and least disruptive to the economy than any other methods of taxation.

    Of course, there are many who object to the transaction tax because they are currently enjoying the economic and market advantages of preferential tax treatment. They seem to have an aversion to any suggestion that there is some other tax scheme that makes the markets and the economy more open and competitive, even if it means that their personal benefit is likely to increase. They are as ignorant as religious fanatics, so bound to only one way of thinking and so defensive about it that any actually reasonable suggestion outside their narrow train of thinking is immediately labelled as a politically motivated attack to steal their money.

    My consideration of the transaction tax is purely economic, a matter of adopting the least distorting method of taxation in a market economy.
     
  22. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Sales commissions, whether by your car sales person or a stock broker, are taxed the same as wages.

    Nothing about an electronic transaction tax makes an ounce of sense? ALL GAINS derived from electronic transactions are taxed at applicable rates!

    An electronic transaction tax is nothing but a political soundbite...
     
  23. TastyWheat

    TastyWheat New Member

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    I like the idea of having a bracket in the middle that doesn't have tax applied. It's an incentive to be successful, not just scrape by. While in principle I don't like progressive tax systems I think this could be pleasing to both conservatives and liberals. I also like the no inheritance tax rule, but that's definitely harder for liberals to swallow.

    I think you should revisit property taxes though. Again, in principle I dislike property taxes since it's antithetical to the idea of ownership, but property taxes are inescapable. You can hide income pretty easily, but it's much harder, if it's even possible, to hide land or buildings. Someone may own a piece of land and make it look like they don't own it, but at the end of the day someone will pay the tax so it's pretty irrelevant who pays it. In general my preference is to use one type of tax (sales, property, income, etc.) rather than a mixture.
     
  24. unrealist42

    unrealist42 New Member

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    Maybe for everyone but stock brokers. Seriously, fees and commissions to stock market traders and fund managers are taxed as capital gains through a sleight of hand called carried interest whereby these charges are magically transformed into investment income by being immediately and directly invested in the markets. Since the stock traders and fund managers income comes from the apparent investment of these monies it is declared and taxed as capital gains.

    You should look into it yourself if you don't believe me because there is a lot of publicity and controversy over this activity.


    Maybe you should actually take some time and reread the third paragraph in my post that you just quoted. If you have any particular questions about it I will be happy to provide and explanation.

    Not all, in fact almost none of the gains made from electronic transactions end up being taxed. The only tax that can be considered a tax on electronic transactions these days is a severely limited sales tax on some retail transactions. All other electronic transactions are taxed only on the basis of totalling up at the end of the year, a taxation which is easily avoided gamed and distorted through massive and pervasive accounting subterfuge enabled by an overly complex tax code.

    Obsessing over capital gains taxes is a political sound bite.
     
  25. Ndividual

    Ndividual Well-Known Member

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    Aug 21, 2013
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    From all the posts it looks like most people have come to accept the Federal government taxing individuals directly. If we are to try and reduce the size, power, waste, corruption, and debt of the Federal government the ability to tax individuals directly needs to be eliminated entirely. That would be accomplished by repealing the 16th amendment. Additionally, repealing the 17th amendment would return accountability of senators to their State governments who would bear the responsibility of providing the revenues required to implement the programs created and passed by both houses of Congress and the President. As the tax system exists currently, the Federal government by the use of direct taxation of inhabitants/citizens/businesses/corporations of ALL the States has acquired the means by which it can and must apply redistribution in funding of programs which in many cases would either not exist in some States, or would/could exist and be implemented much more reasonably and rationally by each State, under more direct control by the voters within each State.

    Until enough people begin to recognize that the Federal tax system created by passage? of the 16th amendment is A problem which should be eliminated NOT fixed, we are only going to see the problem grow more complex and more difficult to fix. The people have less and less control of their government simply because they have allowed the Federal government to gradually take power from them, leaving the consequences to be passed on to future generations.
     

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