Deep in Taxes!!!

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FreeBird

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This is my last season of doing this. I'm so looking forward to retiring from it. But right now I'm in full swing and don't get out much now.
 
Congratulations! Both my daughter and SIL are CPAs and worked for one of the big accounting firms in audit, so I understand how grueling busy season is. My SIL left a couple of years ago, and daughter just at the end of last year. Good moves for both of them.

Being retired is great - you will love it. And think of all that time you’ll have to make soap.
 
Oops! I thought it said "Deep in Texas!" and I was wondering what you were doing in Texas?
Smack Laugh.gif
 
We need to switch from the repressive income based tax system that we currently have to a strictly consumption based one (similar to the FairTax.org plan). Eventually, you are going to spend your money on *something* and the government can get its share at that point. It would also get the underground economy since all that drug money or whatever has to get spent *somewhere*. I don't know if it would actually save me any money, but having April 15th as just another day of the year would be worth it.
 
@Jake I agree wholeheartedly. :thumbs: There simply has to be a better way. Other options:

1) My understanding is that in Europe, instead of income tax, they apply a VAT (Value Added Tax) to purchases to secure income to fund the government.

2) When we lived in Hong Kong individuals & corporations paid a flat 15% income tax. Worked well. The form was a single page with a few adjustments allowed (dependents & hardship as I recall) but the whole thing took all of 20 minutes to fill out and file. :thumbs:
 
@Jake I agree wholeheartedly. :thumbs: There simply has to be a better way. Other options:

1) My understanding is that in Europe, instead of income tax, they apply a VAT (Value Added Tax) to purchases to secure income to fund the government.

2) When we lived in Hong Kong individuals & corporations paid a flat 15% income tax. Worked well. The form was a single page with a few adjustments allowed (dependents & hardship as I recall) but the whole thing took all of 20 minutes to fill out and file. :thumbs:

From what I've gathered, in Europe, there is an income and a VAT. The VAT is a consumption tax, like what has been proposed by FairTax.org, but they still have the income tax. We would need to repeal the 16th Amendment so that the government would not be allowed to collect an income tax and at the same time authorize the consumption tax. We can't let both of them exist at the same time since history has shown that if you let a government have a source of taxation, they are extremely resistant at giving up that source. We can't do it by phasing the consumption tax in, we have to have a clean break.

It's been said that businesses do not actually pay taxes -- they just pass those costs along to their customers. As such, if you were to change the tax system so that no one (including businesses) had an income tax, that would result in lower prices (assuming that it is a business that is not a monopoly). As it is now, a business might have quite a bit of expenses that they need to deduct on their taxes. A company might have $1M in income, but if it has $900K in expenses that were necessary in order to make that $1M, it is not fair to tax them on the $1M -- they should only be taxed on the $100K that was actual profit. As such, a flat tax that does not allow for any deductions will not help. Besides, you are still having to fill out forms and "tax day" still exists. By going with a consumption tax, the tax gets spread out throughout the year and "tax day" is just another day of the year that you don't have to do anything special for. Also, with a strictly consumption tax, all of your income is "pre-tax" and you can invest it as you see fit. It basically gives everyone a tax-deferred retirement account (e.g. Keogh, SEP, etc) to invest their money. It would promote savings and most economists consider that a *good* thing. Also, you get to choose whether to pay consumption taxes to some degree. If you don't like the current government, you could choose to put off certain purchases so that that administration does not have that income. Not that it would make a difference, but it could be a symbolic gesture that some people might choose to do. The government could still promote certain industries if so desired by making those industries not subject to the consumption tax or maybe having a reduced tax rate for those items. For example, let's say that the government wants to encourage people to buy American made cellphones instead of foreign made ones. They could say that American made ones were not subject to the consumption tax, possibly making them more price competitive with foreign made ones. Whether it is a good idea to do this sort of thing is an entirely different discussion though. :)

On a side note, our repressive income tax system is the fault of Lincoln so that he could pay for his little war and his raping of the Constitution. At that time, the Republicans were the liberals and the Democrats were the conservatives. Somewhere along the way, things changed and the Democrats moved further and further to the left to the point where now they are basically socialists / communists.
 
Hmmm. A lot to think about. TY.
BTW Socialism & Communism, in their purist conceptual forms, aren't bad. Think of communes here in the USA in the 60's & 70's. And the fallout for every-day Russians when the USSR collapsed. Ordinary Joes suffered without the security of a guaranteed job and guaranteed housing. In countries like China and India with a large % of the population being poor and/or illiterate, the State takes care of them. Unfortunately, the opportunity for corruption under those systems is rife -- i.e., North Korea.
But then, when I think about it, Capitalism generates a fair share of corruption and fraud as well, i.e., Big Pharma runs our medical system; Big Money runs elections; etc. Sigh. Now I'm depressed. Think I'll go work on my taxes... ;)
 
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