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Author Topic: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?  (Read 23330 times)

Lagslayer

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #135 on: April 04, 2011, 04:07:46 pm »

A. Higher taxes on the rich would not be enough, even if they paid what you call "their fair share".
It would still contribute rather a lot though.

B. These loopholes you speak of are deductibles. With enough deductibles, they can move to a lower tax bracket, which wouldn't exist in the first place if there was a flat income tax rate, or no income tax at all (just a sales/service tax). While I agree some of these deductibles are a load of bull, to remove all of them AND keep the taxes incredibly high on the rich would devastate a lot of charities that rely on their deductible donations.
They're not really.  Loopholes are generally found by moving money around in really odd ways (putting it through certain skeleton companies or holding it in certain countries) decided by accountants in order to minimize the money you have to pay in tax.  Exempting charities from taxes would be completely separate, surely.

Then the government would get to decide what is a legitimate charity. Maybe they would call their "sea slug research" a deductible charity. Deductibles in general allow all sorts of government favoritism.

Another thing on loopholes: by definition, it is exploiting poor wording within the rules. They are not breaking any laws. If the loopholes are to be closed, the politicians need to fine tune the law. A rewrite or an addition, not just exceptions. Making exceptions to the law, even with good intentions, set the precedent that you can exempt or prosecute anything you want, even if the rules say otherwise. I just wanted to clarify this

Leafsnail

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #136 on: April 04, 2011, 04:20:04 pm »

Then the government would get to decide what is a legitimate charity. Maybe they would call their "sea slug research" a deductible charity. Deductibles in general allow all sorts of government favoritism.
Just use a standard definition then.  It's not like the government would get to decide every one personally.  Works fine in the UK anyway.

Another thing on loopholes: by definition, it is exploiting poor wording within the rules. They are not breaking any laws. If the loopholes are to be closed, the politicians need to fine tune the law. A rewrite or an addition, not just exceptions. Making exceptions to the law, even with good intentions, set the precedent that you can exempt or prosecute anything you want, even if the rules say otherwise. I just wanted to clarify this
Well, yeah, obviously.  "Closing loopholes" = "Removing the poor wording within the rules".  There's also a fair amount of tax avoidance going on too (if my searches on the Republican Party's line on tax avoidance is anything to go by) so giving tax collection authorities the funding to deal with that would also be a possibility.
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Aqizzar

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #137 on: April 04, 2011, 04:22:01 pm »

"Loopholes", especially in the tax code, aren't just about crazy wording.  It's often just taxes not being enforced, because the IRS doesn't have the manpower to do it.  General Electric (which I screeded about earlier in the thread) has a tax-accounting department of more than 900 people, many of them former IRS accountants, who know exactly what to say and when to say it to keep the IRS chasing after the same deferrals and credits until the end of time.
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Lagslayer

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #138 on: April 04, 2011, 04:37:34 pm »

Which comes to the root of the problem. The tax system is too complicated. As far as I'm concerned, the government made this hole for itself, and now we all suffer because of it.

lemon10

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #139 on: April 04, 2011, 04:43:39 pm »

Which comes to the root of the problem. The tax system is too complicated. As far as I'm concerned, the government made this hole for itself, and now we all suffer because of it.
Yes, it is. What you seem to be saying is that corporations/rich people should be able to exploit (all businesses can honestly if they know how, but only large corporations/rich people put the effort into it that it needs) this and we shouldn't change it because ???.
Making it less complicated is actually pretty hard, seeing how politicians actually try to do it and end up making it even more confusing in the process.
Then the government would get to decide what is a legitimate charity. Maybe they would call their "sea slug research" a deductible charity. Deductibles in general allow all sorts of government favoritism.
Just use a standard definition then.  It's not like the government would get to decide every one personally.  Works fine in the UK anyway.

so giving tax collection authorities the funding to deal with that would also be a possibility.

Yeah, for every dollar the IRS gets in funding, it takes in more then 1 dollar in taxes. And they are thinking about slashing the IRS budget for some stupid reason.
« Last Edit: April 04, 2011, 04:48:25 pm by lemon10 »
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Lagslayer

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #140 on: April 04, 2011, 04:47:11 pm »

I'm saying the tax code should be simple enough so that any exploits and/or outright cheating can be detected and dealt with accordingly. Right now, the tax code is thousands upon thousands of pages long, way too much to try and uphold every company and individual to. I say write a whole new, simplified tax code, then set a date to scrap the old system and set in place the new one. Some exploits are unavoidable, but don't get the idea that I think they should be able to do anything they want.

edit: spelling and grammar
« Last Edit: April 04, 2011, 04:50:48 pm by Lagslayer »
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Leafsnail

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #141 on: April 04, 2011, 04:52:14 pm »

It's probably complex because a simple tax code is very easy to dodge legally by, say, putting all your profits abroad into a tax haven or something.
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Lagslayer

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #142 on: April 04, 2011, 04:54:57 pm »

It's probably complex because a simple tax code is very easy to dodge legally by, say, putting all your profits abroad into a tax haven or something.

Yeah, but is that enough to make the tax code this huge? The bulk of the tax code is probably a bunch of BS exceptions so the government can get it's kickbacks and suppress anyone without connections.
« Last Edit: April 04, 2011, 04:56:51 pm by Lagslayer »
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lemon10

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #143 on: April 04, 2011, 04:55:34 pm »

It's probably complex because a simple tax code is very easy to dodge legally by, say, putting all your profits abroad into a tax haven or something.
No, they could probably prevent tax avoidance fairly easily (well, have the laws in place to do so, stopping it would take actual enforcement).
It's complex because it's been around for 200 years and small rules and exceptions and subsidies and such are added, as time goes on the relationship between them gets more complex and more confusing.
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And with a mighty leap, the evil Conservative flies through the window, escaping our heroes once again!
Because the solution to not being able to control your dakka is MOAR DAKKA.

That's it. We've finally crossed over and become the nation of Da Orky Boyz.

Lagslayer

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #144 on: April 04, 2011, 04:58:55 pm »

No exceptions to the rules, as I said earlier. Subsidies are a type of favoritism which is forbidden under the constitution.

ed boy

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #145 on: April 04, 2011, 05:00:59 pm »

3. Eliminate interest. Money should reflect value. Money is the tool, not the master. That means that society gets to decide what society values and not money. Therefore, it should be obvious to all inhabitants that we do not value the property whereby a million dollars can easily produce $60,000.00 per year through literally no effort. It should enrage Americans that the rich make millions by doing nothing while the rest of us slave away at demeaning jobs for pocket change. This will have the extremely desirable property of allowing the poor to build wealth and also will make it harder for the rich to keep egregious amounts of it.
Interest is not some artificial construction of the monetary system - it is a certianity. It is an inescapable fact that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. You can't simply get rid of interest. You might be able to stop banks offering interest on money stored with them, but it would rear its head in other forms (like rising property prices).

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4. Eliminate the war hawk stranglehold on the federal budget. Appoint someone with balls to clean up the obvious corruptions of the military complex, but make sure the livelihoods of people who depend on that income remains intact in some form. After all, this pointless hoarding, at its root, is because people feel insecure about their sustenance. Remove any doubt that it will be forthcoming. There's no need to perpetuate the cycle of pettiness.
Just because an orginisation is large does not make it corrupt.

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5. Alter the legal definition of corporations. Currently, they enjoy the rights of individuals without any of the liability. It's incredible simple: either make them liable or limit their rights.
They do not. Corporations already have their own rights systems.

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6. Wealth caps for all individuals and corporations.
That just wouldn't work. There are questions of who would set it, how non-monetary wealth would be valued, or what to do with extra income, etc.

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7. Banking outlawed.
From reading this and your other posts, that only conclusion that I can come to is that you do not actually know what a bank is and does. I'm therefore going to ask you what you think a bank is and does.

A. Higher taxes on the rich would not be enough, even if they paid what you call "their fair share".
It would still contribute rather a lot though.
Nowhere near as much as you think. Consider this]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom]this information from the UK. Consider the following table:
Taxpayer typeUK averagetop 10% to 1%top 1% to 0.1%0.1% and above
Mean income£24,769£49,960£155,832£780,043
Ratio of income to average income12.026.2931.49
Ratio of income tax contributions to average income tax contributions13.079.5642
As you can see, the richest already pay even more than their fair share.

Quote
B. These loopholes you speak of are deductibles. With enough deductibles, they can move to a lower tax bracket, which wouldn't exist in the first place if there was a flat income tax rate, or no income tax at all (just a sales/service tax). While I agree some of these deductibles are a load of bull, to remove all of them AND keep the taxes incredibly high on the rich would devastate a lot of charities that rely on their deductible donations.
They're not really.  Loopholes are generally found by moving money around in really odd ways (putting it through certain skeleton companies or holding it in certain countries) decided by accountants in order to minimize the money you have to pay in tax.  Exempting charities from taxes would be completely separate, surely.
Lots of people throw around the words "closes up tax loopholes" all the time, as if the current government is doing nothing of the sort. This is not the case. There are large numbers of very smart people, with years of education and even more years of experienced, who are working constantly to do exactly this.

I'm saying the tax code should be simple enough so that any exploits and/or outright cheating can be detected and dealt with accordingly. Right now, the tax code is thousands upon thousands of pages long, way too much to try and uphold every company and individual to. I say write a whole new, simplified tax code, then set a date to scrap the old system and set in place the new one. Some exploits are unavoidable, but don't get the idea that I think they should be able to do anything they want.
The tax code is conplicated because the economy is complicated. A tax scheme that is simplified for the sake of simplification would be even easier to get round and would hold less relevance to the economy.

It's probably complex because a simple tax code is very easy to dodge legally by, say, putting all your profits abroad into a tax haven or something.
No, they could probably prevent tax avoidance fairly easily (well, have the laws in place to do so, stopping it would take actual enforcement).
Tax avoidance is something that is bloody hard to stop people doing. If it was simple and easy to do, then governments would do it from the start, rather than risk losing votes by cutting spending.
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lemon10

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #146 on: April 04, 2011, 05:01:37 pm »

No exceptions to the rules, as I said earlier. Subsidies are a type of favoritism which is forbidden under the constitution.
No they aren't. Where are you getting that from? We have tons of subsies currently (certain types of energy, farm).

EDIT: ed boy, currently I at least am talking about the USA, not the UK.
EDITEDIT:
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They do not. Corporations already have their own rights systems.
In the US, corporations are legally people.
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Lots of people throw around the words "closes up tax loopholes" all the time, as if the current government is doing nothing of the sort. This is not the case. There are large numbers of very smart people, with years of education and even more years of experienced, who are working constantly to do exactly this.
In the US, republicans are against closing loopholes (at least from what i can tell of the senate).
Quote
Just because an orginisation is large does not make it corrupt.
It's pretty fair to say that the millitary industrial complex is, while not corrupt itself, corrupts the political process. (Again, only talking about the US).
« Last Edit: April 04, 2011, 05:07:15 pm by lemon10 »
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And with a mighty leap, the evil Conservative flies through the window, escaping our heroes once again!
Because the solution to not being able to control your dakka is MOAR DAKKA.

That's it. We've finally crossed over and become the nation of Da Orky Boyz.

Bauglir

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #147 on: April 04, 2011, 05:07:53 pm »

3. Eliminate interest. Money should reflect value. Money is the tool, not the master. That means that society gets to decide what society values and not money. Therefore, it should be obvious to all inhabitants that we do not value the property whereby a million dollars can easily produce $60,000.00 per year through literally no effort. It should enrage Americans that the rich make millions by doing nothing while the rest of us slave away at demeaning jobs for pocket change. This will have the extremely desirable property of allowing the poor to build wealth and also will make it harder for the rich to keep egregious amounts of it.
It is an inescapable fact that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. You can't simply get rid of interest. You might be able to stop banks offering interest on money stored with them, but it would rear its head in other forms (like rising property prices).

Actually, not really. You can have deflation in theory, but the financial system (in the US, at any rate, can't speak for others) after the Great Depression has been expressly constructed to prevent significant deflation from happening (because screw the Great Depression, which was apparently the one giant financial clusterfuck that didn't result from inflation, and thus everybody gets it wrong on tests because they've learned that the go-to guess for financial problems is that it was caused by inflation).
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Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
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At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

Lagslayer

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #148 on: April 04, 2011, 05:09:58 pm »

No exceptions to the rules, as I said earlier. Subsidies are a type of favoritism which is forbidden under the constitution.
No they aren't. Where are you getting that from? We have tons of subsies currently (certain types of energy, farm).

EDIT: ed boy, currently I at least am talking about the USA, not the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidy
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/subsidy
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/subsidy

The government giving sums of money to whatever business they choose, for whatever reason they see fit? Sounds like favoritism to me.

Leafsnail

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Re: Government Shutdown... TV says it's bad. Is it?
« Reply #149 on: April 04, 2011, 05:12:14 pm »

Nowhere near as much as you think. Consider this]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom]this information from the UK. Consider the following table:
Taxpayer typeUK averagetop 10% to 1%top 1% to 0.1%0.1% and above
Mean income£24,769£49,960£155,832£780,043
Ratio of income to average income12.026.2931.49
Ratio of income tax contributions to average income tax contributions13.079.5642
As you can see, the richest already pay even more than their fair share.
...Define "fair".  It's not gonna be a flat percentage of income because those lower down the income scale just wouldn't be able to pay it at all.

The government giving sums of money to whatever business they choose, for whatever reason they see fit? Sounds like favoritism to me.
Uh, I think the bigger point of contention is where the constitution bans all forms of "favoritism".
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