U.S.: In state of denial over taxes?

Obvious differences in ideologies...we have increased federal spending from 18 to 25%. One side believes the answer is to raise taxes. The other believes the answer is to get the fed to stop spending like crack addicts.

Mach said:

That's absurd. The vast majority of the reasons any corporation might pay no U.S. federal corporate income tax are:

1. They had losses which meet or exceed their earnings.
2. They were engaged in foreign business and paid as much or more than the federal rate, in the country they are doing business, as per U.S. treaty agreements.

It makes no sense to say you want to spend a lot of time finding way to tax people who lost money, or who already paid in the nation they are doing business.

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or

3. They maintained a fake foreign office in a low-tax country and funneled their income through it in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Aunt Spiker said:

How do we not have enough money? :shrug:

all I see is a constant appeal to increase budgets - borrow more - spend more. . .in the meantime every year we just hand away BILLIONS in corporate and foreign aid to less than deserving countries and corporate entities.

YOu think we need ot adjust our view of our tax-status from 'too high' to 'moderate' or even 'low' . . . .andI think you and others need to adjust your view of our SPENDING HABITS and what we do wit hteh money that we DO HAVE.

Everywehre I look there's excessive waste, poorly managed funds, handouts for no reason, endless war and on and on.

End all the excess and THEN tell me how we stand.

Last year I did a report in the subject of agency waste - there are more than 5 government agencies that give money to foreign countries ON TOP of what our Congress directly stipends out each year. . . Holy crap - with that kind of excess kicking around it's amazing we have fallen into this pit already.

Oh WAIT - we HAVE. HAH! Several times.

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Since you did research about that and you're concerned, have you contacted your represented about it or thought taking action in some way?

Bottom line: the American people very clearly want Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and a strong defense, and we cannot pay for those programs unless we raise taxes to historical norms.

sangha said:

Then tell us who is making a "Government cares for your every need" argument?

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Nobody wants the government to care for their every need... take a ****ing poll. It's just an empty slogan, and he probably think it's clever sounding.

AdamT said:

or

3. They maintained a fake foreign office in a low-tax country and funneled their income through it in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

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We are NOT talking about the Kennedy family at this time. Knock that **** off and stay focused on the problem.

VanceMack said:

We are NOT talking about the Kennedy family at this time. Knock that **** off and stay focused on the problem.

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No, we're not. Now perhaps you want to address the issue?

Middleground said:

First off, let's make this discussion adult and cease the name calling.

As for your point, where exactly does it state that the US was never intended to be socialist? That is surprising to me since many of your programs (SS, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, etc.) are, no?

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And when were all of those prgrams enacted and why? Not to become socialist but to provide a safety net for those in need and far after this country was founded. Those programs evolved to be much larger than they should and have now become a safety blanket. A system founded on the principle of less government by definition couldn't have intended to be socialist.

VanceMack said:

Horse****...if it wasnt for democrats pandering to their base and liberals losing their minds over loss of their handout programs, this **** would come up once...twice a blue moon. This is typical...you and others start threads on this bemoaning how unfair life is that the wealthy people dont give you enough of their money and then piss and moan about how the right obsesses about it.

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The only place we are going to get revenue from is slash entitlement programs or raise taxes, and know which side everybody is on. When is the last time taxes went up? When is the last time a US president didn't run of the deficit?

It looks to me like the left have been doing a lot more negotiations and agreeing to cut entitlement programs, even this debt ceiling agreement has a lot of cuts. But like Spiker said there is a lot of wasteful spending going on, and none of them have offered a committee to research wasteful, unnecessary spending and cut that out. It's always presented as entitlements vs tax rates.

AdamT said:

No, we're not. Now perhaps you want to address the issue?

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I did. I told you...stop bringing up people that hid their families wealth to avoid paying taxes...

SheWolf said:

The only place we are going to get revenue from is slash entitlement programs or raise taxes, and know which side everybody is on. When is the last time taxes went up? When is the last time a US president didn't run of the deficit?

It looks to me like the left have been doing a lot more negotiations and agreeing to cut entitlement programs, even this debt ceiling agreement has a lot of cuts. But like Spiker said there is a lot of wasteful spending going on, and none of them have offered a committee to research wasteful, unnecessary spending and cut that out. It's always presented as entitlements vs tax rates.

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I totally agree there has to be BOTH spending cuts AND tax increases to pay down the debt. Been saying it for months. But there has to be REAL cuts. What we have seen is a slight reduction in deficit spending...which means less new debt, but still...new debt. That solves NOTHING. Real cuts...deeeeep cuts. Across the board.

sangha said:

Not true

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Photobucket, can't see it at work. However, I'm going off the numbers put out by the official Government Printing Office's site.



You'll note for that particular graph that the DOD's budget INCLUDES the spending for "Overseas Contingency Operations" such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Entitlements (SS, Medicare/caid, and other mandatory spending not counting debt payments) make up over 55% of that. DOD and Veterans Affairs make up about 20%.

Please, rather than just posting pictures and acting like that is debating or proves something, use your words and explain to me exactly what is incorrect about my numbers regarding 2010 spending. Slapping some graphics up and acting like that's an answer isn't a response. Especially when, I"m guessing based on another posters post, you tried to show just DISCRETIONARY spending where as my post was clearly speaking about spending, as a whole. Mandatory spending is just as much money being spent by the government as discretionary. $1 of mandatory spending is = to $1 of discretionary. Looking at the matter from only one side of it is a bit ridiculous and highlights the exact type of denail I am speaking about.

While I can't see your images at this time, and can only go off what others have said, I truly hope you weren't being so purposefully obtuse as to think that attempting to counter my point which clearly was speaking of ALL spending by posting up a picture of discretionary spending with no additional comments or statements at all somehow was going to actually counter my statements.

I think what you have explained here is one thing missing in these income tax comparisons. Does England, France and Germany have a second tier of taxes like our state taxes to pay? Our states provide things to us that federal government does not. A centralized national government would necessarily have to have a higher income tax rate to provide everything. More apples and oranges. Our government has much more money that it will ever need. We are taxed enough.

Mach said:

That's absurd. The vast majority of the reasons any corporation might pay no U.S. federal corporate income tax are:

1. They had losses which meet or exceed their earnings.
2. They were engaged in foreign business and paid as much or more than the federal rate, in the country they are doing business, as per U.S. treaty agreements.

It makes no sense to say you want to spend a lot of time finding way to tax people who lost money, or who already paid in the nation they are doing business.

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I posted links, and I know a lot about taxation... and NOL carry overs are fair. The IRS doesn't even have to award them if a company back files prior year taxes, but that isn't the real problem with the tax code, and I have been writing posts on this for hours in another thread. There are dozens of tax credits companies can qualify for for ordinary expenses, and expenses they would have incurred anyway. Yes, tax credits, not tax deductions... and it's easy to incur massive expenses by managing a shell company and taking full benefit of those tax credits and getting million dollar refunds. The IRS knows is, and is currently working on issuing a new tax form that would require better tracking of credit transfers through a company.

Mach said:

That's absurd. The vast majority of the reasons any corporation might pay no U.S. federal corporate income tax are:

1. They had losses which meet or exceed their earnings.
2. They were engaged in foreign business and paid as much or more than the federal rate, in the country they are doing business, as per U.S. treaty agreements.

It makes no sense to say you want to spend a lot of time finding way to tax people who lost money, or who already paid in the nation they are doing business.

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No To Oligarchy | The Nation

But it's not just wealthy individuals who grotesquely manipulate the system for their benefit. It's the multinational corporations they own and control. In 2009, Exxon Mobil, the most profitable corporation in history made $19 billion in profits and not only paid no federal income tax—they actually received a $156 million refund from the government. In 2005, one out of every four large corporations in the United States paid no federal income taxes while earning $1.1 trillion in revenue.

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Mach said:

Sangha,

Why did you post a graph that exlcludes entitelements spending, when Zyph was specifically contrasting that to defense spending? Are you being intentionally dishonest?

Wiki is more honest, hopefully people would go wiki it for themselves.

And amusingly your graph of military spending looks wonderful compared to the *other* problems we have with our budget!

United States federal budget - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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SS provides more in revenue than it disburses. It is a net profit center, not an expense. It does not increase our debt; it decreases it

And your budget #'s don't include off-budget spending, like the Iraq War under bush*

SheWolf said:

Nobody wants the government to care for their every need... take a ****ing poll. It's just an empty slogan, and he probably think it's clever sounding.

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It's a straw man, but he has denied this

jambalaya said:

And when were all of those prgrams enacted and why? Not to become socialist but to provide a safety net for those in need and far after this country was founded. Those programs evolved to be much larger than they should and have now become a safety blanket. A system founded on the principle of less government by definition couldn't have intended to be socialist.

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Actually, they were passed in order to preven the nation from going socialist

MrVicchio said:

FCNL

Not an honest resource.

REALITY

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In all reality, you can't include SS which pays for itself (and other programs). It's more of a revenue stream than an actual cost.

VanceMack said:

But you CANT compare tax rates. Its not even logical. We dont have the same expenditures, the same costs, and certainly not the same ideals. What does that tax rate look like when you add in State taxes? local? property?

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But we CAN compare tax rates and spending, and we just did... Many people have done it in the past. In fact CPwill is in a thread comparing territorial taxes to non territorial, income taxes and arguing those would be better for America. I have seen other people argue VAT taxes over the American system of sales taxes or capital gains tax. I have also seen some people try to compare a hypothetical flat or fair tax to other countries tax codes, and make an argument. It's all fair game.

Some people argue that American tax rates are too high, and that is why we are loss jobs... however, our tax rates really aren't that high compared to the rest of the world. Canadian posters don't complain about job loses to China like the American posters do, so it has to be something else. On top of that, you have people continuing to argue American taxes are too high and need to be cut more in this very thread. I'd say making these comparisons is VERY relevant in the face of some commonplace arguments we hear about taxation right now...

VanceMack said:

I did. I told you...stop bringing up people that hid their families wealth to avoid paying taxes...

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The issue was "corporations", not "families" You're moving the goal posts

sangha said:

SS provides more in revenue than it disburses. It is a net profit center, not an expense. It does not increase our debt; it decreases it

And your budget #'s don't include off-budget spending, like the Iraq War under bush*

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You're suggesting social security raises more than $695 Billion dollars in revenue? I'd need to see some legitimate sources showing that, and not some liberal blog throwing up a random image without any numbers of information backing up how they got it.

Unless you're talking about Social Security taxes as opposed to social security payouts, in which case no dice. That social security tax is part of the overall revenue generated. So its already taken into account in regards to the total federal revenue generated, which is still leaving us with a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit. If you have accurate and official numbers for what the total revenue would be sans SS tax and we remove the SS spending from the equation and judge the whole thing there, I'd be interested in seeing it.

But as it stands. Both SS taxes and SS spending is included in the total budget regarding the amount of revenue and the amount of spending. You can not erase one and ignore the other.

Zyphlin said:

Photobucket, can't see it at work. However, I'm going off the numbers put out by the official Government Printing Office's site.

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Not realisitic. There's plenty of defense spending tucked away in the budgets of depts other than the DoD

jambalaya said:

I think what you have explained here is one thing missing in these income tax comparisons. Does England, France and Germany have a second tier of taxes like our state taxes to pay? Our states provide things to us that federal government does not. A centralized national government would necessarily have to have a higher income tax rate to provide everything. More apples and oranges. Our government has much more money that it will ever need. We are taxed enough.

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They aren't "income tax comparison". They're a comparison of ALL taxes

And what makes you think the regional govts of europe provide no services, or less than US states. In general, they provide more

VanceMack said:

Obvious differences in ideologies...we have increased federal spending from 18 to 25%. One side believes the answer is to raise taxes. The other believes the answer is to get the fed to stop spending like crack addicts.

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Our tax rates are low in comparison to other countries, if people want to preserve their entitlements then they have to realize they will have to eventually agree to a higher tax rate. This debate is eventually going to reach a point where a lot of people will say enough cutting my entitlements, and then the debate will be about raising or not raising taxes.