[snakeoil]

Charlie Rose interview with Warren Buffett:


So where would you set the (tax) rate?

Buffett: On incomes of over $1 million, the rate should have a minimum tax of 30%. Then over $10 million, 35%. The reason I'm suggesting that is because the 400 richest taxpayers for in the most recent year we have figures for, 2009, who had average incomes of $202 million, half of those paid a rate below 20%. A quarter paid at a rate below 15%. and, believe it or not, six, average income of $202 million, paid nothing, I mean, they were members of Romney's 47%, and I suspect he got their vote.

[brandon]

That's disgusting. Probably more than one of those filthy rich pieces of shit is taking tax payer money to rebuild their beach front McMansions. :evil:

[BilboBagend]

One simple tax rate for all profit.

Corporate profit
Business profit
Capital gains profit
Dividend profit
Interest profit
Wage profit (currently we tax wage revenues)

Define wage profit as:

Wage Profit = Revenue - Wage expenses

Keep it simple and fair and define Wage Expenses as the average personal revenue per tax filing, currently about $60,000.00

[RealJustme]

So where would you set the (tax) rate?

14% flat sales tax on everything except food, education and medical costs. No exemptions for anyone. With a 14% flat sales tax we can do away with all other federal taxes and actually bring in more revenue with no on getting away with cheating. The more you spend the more you pay, that simple.

[snakeoil]

Justme-I figured that you would like a regressive tax that unfairly burdens the poorer sections of the population. With a flat tax the 1% would take their "excess" cash and send it to tax havens for safekeeping or invest it in Brasil, Southern Asia or other emerging economy. The poorer section of the populace would have to spend 100% of their available cash just to survive. Therefore, the 1% pay a much, much lower percent than the poor.

Why not go after the inequities in the tax code? Have you ever investigated how your hero, Mitt Romney, made his wealth? Bain Capital is not a company set up solely as a holding company for businesses. It is an investment company that takes investor's money and attempts to grow the assets of the investors. For their efforts they charge 2% plus 20% of any gains to the capital put up by the investors. Bain often will buy a troubled company or a company where money can be made by selling pieces of the company or a company sitting on a huge pension fund. Bain will then "borrow" the pension funds and begin to load the company up with debt. For this, Bain charges the company huge "management" fees, often many millions of dollars. Bain's actions drive the company into bankruptcy, Bain has already made a fortune from the company in "loans" and management fees. The assets of the company are now a fraction of what they were BB (before Bain,) and Bain walks away grinning from ear to ear. Remember the pension fund? It is now insolvent! The pension obligations are dropped on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation which pays the pensioners a small fraction of what they would get BB (before Bain.) For this underhanded manipulation of the company Bain gets to pay much lower taxes as capital gains plus the government is saddled with the pension costs that Bain raided. The idea behind Capital Gains Taxes is that investors should be rewarded for risking their capital. How much of Bain's capital is at risk? ZERO. it is all the investor's capital but Bain pays the capital gains tax rate.

I could go on and on about how we are getting screwed daily by the 1%. Remember AIG? In 2008, Hank Greenberg made $250 million from AIG; then we bailed out AIG with taxpayer dollars. Hank Greenberg was never asked to return any of the money. The CEO of Merck took home $17.9 million while laying off 16.000 workers in 2010. The CEO of Bank of America made $10 million while laying off 30,000. Qualcomm's CEO made $50.6 million in 2011. JCPenny's CEO made $51.5 million (they're talking about filing for bankruptcy.) Many times a CEO's compensation is stock options. When he exercises his options and sells the stock he pays the lower capital gains rate.

The point to all of this is that the government, through our tax system, is subsidizing the 1%. Justme, have you ever thought about the government's subsidies of corporations. Just in the energy sector, in 2010 gas and oil got $654 Million, hydropower got $215 million, coal got $1189 million, nuclear got $2499 million, solar got $968 million and wind got $4986 million. So, before saddling the poorer citizens with a regressive tax we should revisit the tax code and our philosophy about how we treat corporations.

[BilboBagend]

A 4% flat tax on ALL revenues, corporate, business, personal would do the job. Still unfair to the poor and middle class but far better than today's extreme preferences for corporations, business, and the wealthy.

[RealJustme]

Justme-I figured that you would like a regressive tax that unfairly burdens the poorer sections of the population. With a flat tax the 1% would take their "excess" cash and send it to tax havens for safekeeping or invest it in Brasil, Southern Asia or other emerging economy.

LOL, you I'm talking about a flat sales tax, not a flat income tax. The poor claim they have very little money to spend, therefore they would pay very little taxes. They claim the rich spend lots of money, therefore they would pay LOTS of taxes. The money does the rich no good until it's spent, that's when they pay up. :lol: As it is know the current tax system allows to so many deductions they can write of their yachts and private jets as a "business" expense. A flat sales tax would tax them for those purchases no matter what they're sued for.

[snakeoil]

Justme-Reread the whole paragraph. The poor, who will spend 100% of their small income, will be paying the tax on 100% of their income since they will have to spend their entire income to exist.

[BilboBagend]

justupid doesn't like people. He only hopes to be wealthy some day. Delusional as always. justupid has no concept of fair or just. he's just stupid.

Are there any taxes that could possibly superficially look fair and be more regressive than the sales TAX? i THINK NOT.

Why not have an extremely simple tax system. The wealthy travel trough town, enter into everyone's home and take what they want. They access all financial accounts and take what they want. At least that system would be honestly stated and represented. Pretty much what we have now but is disguised.

[snakeoil]

Bilbo-I've read that in Japan they only file if they feel that their employer took too much out of their pay. I can't verify that.

[RealJustme]

Justme-Reread the whole paragraph. The poor, who will spend 100% of their small income, will be paying the tax on 100% of their income since they will have to spend their entire income to exist.

''

So? If 100% of their income is so little, they pay little taxes. Anyone with large amounts of money to spend will pay large amounts of taxes, unless they chose to live a life of poverty, then so be it.

[BilboBagend]

Relative;y speaking, the wealthy accumulate wealth. They do not spend it. Sales tax puts ALL the burden on those who have relatively nothing and gives a totally free pass to the wealthy. And what is accumulated wealth? It's a claim on the labor, invention, and production of the middle class by those who produce nothing.

[RealJustme]

Relative;y speaking, the wealthy accumulate wealth. They do not spend it.

If that's true they're living a life style of all other Americans...what's wrong with that? I'm for taxing those who buy yachts, large mansions and million dollar Hawaiin vacations like the Obama's

[snakeoil]

An important anniversery is coming up for many of us in 2013. The statute of limitations is going to run out on Wall Street's shenaigans (except in mail and wire fraud cases which is 10 years.) Of course we cannot hold Wall Street accountable because they are "big business."

There is an unwritten rule for big business; fuck the little people but bail us out if we fuck up.

[BilboBagend]

No, justupid. You need to learn that extremes are not the only way things happen. That is one of your stupidities. Or, is it simply one of your malignant dishonesties.

[RealJustme]

No, justupid. You need to learn that extremes are not the only way things happen. That is one of your stupidities. Or, is it simply one of your malignant dishonesties.

What do you have against the rich paying their fair share through a flat purchase tax? The rich would pay far more taxes under a flat consumption tax they currently do now plus "finally" the ones who spend more money will pay more than those who have little to spend. We could do away with the 80 billion a year on the IRS and ton's of tax filings...no more cheating!

Ah I get it, it's the no more means to cheat through a flat consumption tax that has liberal's panties in a wad. :lol:

[BilboBagend]

Oxymoron for morons: "Fair Purchase Tax"

How about we all pay one flat tax on all profits?

[justdoit]

Realjustme

The math really isn't that hard, your just trying to pull a few chains right?
Your math, A family of four makes a mil, spends 1/2 that, 500,000 thousand dollars, whats their gross tax that year as a percentage of their income?
A family of four makes 30k, spends 29k to live, whats their gross tax as a percentage? Is a gal of milk or a gal of gas or a loaf of bread 30 times more expensive for the millionaire? Your math would be right if it took as much to live a basic lifestyle for both. No big toys, just cost of basic living. With your math that family making a mil would need to spend 950k a year to pay the same. \Hmmm
Your just trying to pull a few chains here right?
:?:

[RealJustme]

Your math, A family of four makes a mil, spends 1/2 that, 500,000 thousand dollars, whats their gross tax that year as a percentage of their income?
A family of four makes 30k, spends 29k to live, whats their gross tax as a percentage?

The family that spends $500,000.00 at 14% consumption tax pays $70,000.00 in taxes (minus what they paid for food, medical and education which is exempt) so lets say they pay $65,000.00.

The family that spends 29K only pays $4,060.00 in taxes (minues what they paid for food, medical and education which is exempt). So lets say they pay $1,400.00 in taxes.

One family pays 65K in taxes the other pays 1.4K in taxes. Yeah I guess you're right it screws the family paying 50X more in taxes.

[justdoit]

Justrealme
You are playing
One family pays just under 7% percent gross tax.
The other just under 14%.
Lets see who could afford the higher rate, and who pays it.
to you that is fair and just?

[RealJustme]

Justrealme
You are playing
One family pays just under 7% percent gross tax.
The other just under 14%.
Lets see who could afford the higher rate, and who pays it.
to you that is fair and just?

Explain your thesis.

[Shimmer]

For the sake of argument, lets say that there were two families of 4, the one with a million dollar income and the other with a 40,000 dollar income and a flat consumption tax of 14%. Now let's also stipulate that both families spend an identical amount to support their families, with 30,000 in gas, food, clothing, entertainment etc. Both families will wind up paying 4,200 bucks worth of taxes on their consumption for a total expense of 34,200 dollars per year. So far all the flat tax consumption advocates would have us believe that this is fair.

Now it works out like this, the 40,000 dollar family of four would have wound up paying 10.5% of total income on taxes and 85.5% of total income for living expenses with 14.5% of total income or 5,800 a year to put away for a rainy day.

The Million dollar family of four would have wound up paying 0.42% of their total income on taxes and 3.42% of total income on living expenses, with 96.58% of total income or 965,800 dollars put away for a rainy day.

So in the end the fair flat consumption tax would result in a pretty huge difference in impact on total budget for each family and severely less cash to the Government to fund social programs. Now if you were to add in the State and Local taxes that people already pay on consumption which averaged about 9.6% you wind up killing the 40,000 dollar family of four. The total cost of living just shot up to 37,080 or 92.7% of total family income for that family while the million dollar family wound up with just over 3.7% of total income to live on.

Under the current tax plan even if you assume the full wages on the million dollar family was capitol gains or dividends and they payed the seemingly obscene 14% tax rate on their income, they would have added 136,206 bucks (with standard deductions and personal exemptions) to the treasury rather than 4,200 they would add by consumption.

The 40,000 dollar family of 4 would pay about 1,290 (with standard deductions and personal exemptions) to the treasury rather than the 4,200 they would have paid with a consumption tax.

Put another way the current plan would have the 40,000 dollar family pay in about 322.50 for each family member and the million dollar family would have to pay in about 34,051.50 for each family member, while the 14% flat consumption tax rate would have them both pay in in 1,050 per family member. Now in all likelihood the million dollar family consumes a lot more than the 40,000 dollar family so under a flat consumption system they would pay more than this example, but the point holds true, that they are not likely to spend the same percentage of their income on living expenses and taxes as the lower wage family.

What's fair???

[RealJustme]

Now in all likelihood the million dollar family consumes a lot more than the 40,000 dollar family ...

You're a damn genious.

Bottom line the family spending over $500,000.00 will pay 50 times more taxes than a family making 40K under a flat consumption tax plan, now you tell me why the family paying 50 times more in taxes isn't paying their "fair share"?

[Shimmer]

Just me are you really stupid enough to think that a family of 4 with annual paychecks of a million will spend half a million on consumption type purchases every year? How do you figure that someone making 25 times more income would pay 50 times more in consumption taxes? The million dollar family will never consume 50 times more than the 40,000 dollar family. Even if your imaginary million dollar family did spend a half million on taxable consumption then they would pay roughly half of what they pay now at that 14% rate on capitol gains and dividends that everyone thinks is so obscenely unfair? So you will give them a 50% tax break? I think the way the wealthy are taxed right now is fair enough since they pay a disproportionate amount of the total taxes but under a flat consumption tax they would pay way way less.

I personally know one person who makes a bit over a million bucks a year with a family of 4 and I can guarantee that the stuff they buy every year that would be covered by a consumption tax is less than 10% of their income. They already have most everything they need and their yearly expenses are mostly food, clothing, gas, insurance, utility payments and a pretty decent foreign vacation every year. I am pretty sure they would love a 14% consumption tax because it would cut their yearly tax payment by a lot, like around an 85% drop.

[Lace69]

I track every purchase in quicken. And I break down the entry to the penny including taxes.

If its a tax I categorize it as such, tolls, gas, every thing.

If everyone did this they would be shocked to see how much tax we are already paying.

In my case, 59% of what I earn goes to some form of tax.

If everyone in America had to write a check monthly for the taxes, things would change.