The need
With troops in foreign lands, and an economy in shambles, it seems to me the least patriotic thing someone could do is not pay their taxes. Complaining about tax rates, is as much a national past time as watching baseball, or eating hot dogs. But this nations need for capitol as we defend ourselves from both physical, and commercial warfare has never been more apparent. Some may complain that a majority of tax dollars may go to an unjust occupation in Iraq, and use this as an excuse to skim from their obligations. Others fight for different levels of taxation in search for what they claim to be fair. These arguments should be fought in the nations capitol, not in foreign tax shelters.
Turning the tide
The Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by (our own senator) Carl Levin, held a hearing Thursday on tax haven banks and U.S. tax compliance. The committee has produced a report on its six-month-long investigation.
In reviewing a variety of case histories, the investigation found that from at least 2000 to 2007, LGT and UBS employed banking practices that facilitated tax evasion by their U.S. clients, including assisting clients to open accounts in the names of offshore entities; advising clients on complex offshore structures to hide ownership of assets; using client code names; and disguising asset transfers into and from accounts."Senator Levin estimated offshore banks deprived the US Government of $US100 billion ($102 billion) a year in taxes. The report says US clients hold about 19,000 accounts at UBS in Switzerland with an estimated $US18-$US20 billion in assets not declared to tax authorities.
Using simple math it is clear to see that Senator Levin's target is not Ma, and Pa Sixpack hiding little Timmy's lawn mowing income from the mean ol' IRS man. The use of code names, in complex structures, implies that this is not a simple mess up on the 1040 form that many working people may struggle with every year, but a blatant disregard for the same laws every red blooded American citizen must follow.
Local impact
What is untold, is the amount of money that the state of Michigan, and others in equal need are loosing through these unpatriotic actions.
People with the means to pay are depriving their own states of the ability to pay for much needed services, and obligations. Bridge, and road repair, power lines that are past due for overhaul, better care for returning guard veterans, and workers retraining programs must now be taken care of with borrowed money, or put off to some elusive "time horizon".
We must pay our dues, while arguing their use in the ballot box.
Regardless of ones point of view on unjust wars, and levels of taxation, the money continues to be spent by our federal government. Every dollar withheld from U.S. coffers will be borrowed from outside sources. This will leave a larger debt for future generations, and a weakening U.S. economy.
What may begin as civil disobedience, will end in generational warfare.
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Taxes have become punative. We punish success and seem suprised when individuals and corporations try to avoid being punished for their success. Punative taxes where the cause of the American Reolution.
Businesses spring up in renaissance Zones, yet our Government cant figure out that by CUTTING taxes to Business more Businesses will be created.
Instead we hear how the "evil Corporations" are screwing the American People, when it's the Government Screwing the Corporations and ultimately teh American People.
TLBC: I suppose this is the reason that over 40 million Americans don't have health coverage and tens of thousands of law abiding citizens who have dutifully paid their taxes all their lives are losing their homes..... it seems to me that a more accurate statement would be that ordinary people are being punished unfairly for their successes.
To add insult to injury big corporations and financial institutions expect as a matter of course the middle class to cough up billions of their hard earned money to bail them out of the snake pit their insatiable greed they have dug for themselves.
You should read up on your early U.S. history. A primarly cause of the American Revolution was taxation without representation and not the 'punitive taxes' as such that you mention. Obviously you didn't earn a merit badge in American history.
The political pendulum swings back and forth from right to left and back again. The pendulum has swung about as far as it can to to the right. We are now entering an era when the excesses of the 'military-industrial' complex are about to be remediated. Better get used to the idea.
While the tax codes are manipulated and full of so many loopholes that even Joe Six-Pack gets a few, intentional non-payment is a crime.
The problem is that few of these tax-dodgers are doing anything illegal. An entire industry has emerged to help the rich avoid paying their fair share.
There is no income tax in Costa Rica.
The sales tax is 13%.
That seems high until you realize that most of the things poor people need to buy are sold for unreported cash or are traded.
Gringos and drug dealers that have to live high on the hog, buy the heavily taxed fast cars, lots of gas, fancy hotels stays, fashion clothing and jewelery, etc. That provides plenty of money for schools, etc.
Cash drug deals in the USA are a non-taxed $10 Billion dollar industry, as I recall. When an entertainer or sports hero has to have a lot of luxury goods a 13% sales tax would not force them to give a second thought to the purchases, in fact they could brag about how much taxes they were forced to pay.
LBS,
The nation's top 400 income-tax payers (with at least $100.3 billion in adjusted gross income) controlled 1.15 percent of the nation's total income in 2005
They pay 18 percent.
No one is being forced to evade taxes.
Taxes are punitive but a nessasary evil like death and that thing in the fridge wrapped in foil no one knows what it is untill you throw it away.
I understand sales taxes on large luxury items being more 'cause I can't afford them anyway. I understand the need for property taxes to run a government.
I don't understand the need to tax middle and low income people out of homes and away from cities that need the tax money.
Hopper: Puerto Rico has a tax system similar to the Bahamas. It's not all bad. You can make millions tax free but when you spend it you get taxed through the gazoo.
This off shore tax shelter fraud has been going on for decades in countries like the Grand Caymen Islands, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
Thirty odd years ago I was diving with a fellow underwater photographer in the Caymens. One day the two of use strolled into the lobby of the biggest and tallest building in downtown George Town. It was an office building and in the entry way was a listing of some 500 banks around the world that had agents in that building. My German banker friend looked at the lists and said, "Do you realize that everyone of those banks has assets of at least a billion dollars? I'm small peanuts; I only manage 500 million." Is it any wonder that the natives are getting restless?
Hummer,
It won't be long before you and your friend will have a hard time learning this important information unless you start learning to read mandarin and arabic.
Right to left.
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locally, we can have an impact by demanding accountablity of our elected offices. This has been sadden lacking in the last 4 years, maybe more but for sure the last 4 years.
How sad it is that many thousands of our tax dollars will be used to pay attorneys and to settle law suits brought on by the impotentence of some elected offices here in Barry Co.
Sadly, those same elected buffoons based on what I read here will continue in office, guns strapped to their hips to protect themselves from "them".
Start locally and work your way up, then you can make a difference.
TS
el Grillo: Truer words were never spoken. The multinational corporations seek the cheapest labor market to produce their wares. Because of unemployment it's getting to the point where many citizens in the developed world can't afford products made in the developing countries with cheap labor. It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out.
At this point in time the U.S. would be unable to fend off a sustained attack from a rogue aggressor. Unlike WW II when we were pretty much self sufficient we have become dependent on off shore industries and tehnology to the point that our national security is being compromised.
Grillo, your comment on Arabic, and Mandarin escapes me.
T.S., as I have said in my post, we can argue about the way money is spent in the ballot box.
Overwhelmed, I too share your concerns about the tax rate of low, and middle income people. I look forward to voting for the candidate that has the tax plan that relives their burden the most.
Colibri, thanks for the clarification on one of the issues that caused the American revolution. It is true that the amount of tax being levied on colonials (and not surprisingly in order to pay for military costs.) was increasing, yet not outlandish. Because the colonies lacked elected representation in the governing British Parliament many colonists considered the laws to be illegitimate and a violation of their rights as Englishmen.
The fact is, that many citizens of this nation are not fulfilling their patriotic duty. When legislators wanted to cut funds for the war they were accused of "Taking bullets away from our
soldiers. Yet much of the discussion, thus far in this thread, has done nothing but offer up excuses for apathetic individuals, and businesses that following the same logic, could be seen as offering aid and comfort to terrorists.
I should have been more clear in my post about the Cayman Islands that my German banker friend said that many of the 500 or so foreign banks with agents in the Caymans were laundering money and hiding assets for their clients.
"Grillo, your comment on Arabic, and Mandarin escapes me."
Agnosticrat,
I was thinking about El Colibri and a German banker looking at the building directory where vast international wealth was stored, and the predominant language on the sign was English.
As we continue to turn our national wealth into international common stock and gather our operating funds from China and the Middle East, the dominant language of business will soon be something other than English.
One of the "talking points" of the national Democrat party is that we are borrowing money from China to finance our national debt. I am amazed that the party leadership somehow thinks that an electorate focused on the American Idle would have any idea what they are talking about.
As an example. GWBII gave the impression that the costs of his expedition into the Middle East would be reimbursed by oil revenue from the bowels of Iraq. His pledge has come true, except those of us who paid for the HumVees with our Social Security Trust Fund money will watch as the bags of cash skip by our Treasury to be deposited into the treasure chests of the five biggest oil companies that are owned by foreign investors.
I am going to really cry when McCain is elected and writes a huge check to those companies to pay for modernizing the refining capacity that they have allowed to turn into scrap metal.
How do you say, "Hee, hee, hee, hee" in Chinese (Mandarin)?
How many yen does it take to buy an El Presidente?... or as some have said, "We have the greatest government that yen can buy!"
Do you know we PUNISH corporations for providing Health Benifits. That's right if you can afford to provide Health Care you can afford to be taxed for the privilage.
What we TAX we get LESS of what we SUSIDIZE we get MORE of. We TAX Success and SUBSIDIZE failure.
untrue.
The current tax system encourages companies to offer insurance, and indeed, 61 percent of the nonelderly population in the U.S. had insurance through their jobs in 2006, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. (Only 5 percent, 13 million people, bought their own insurance.)
Although,
Those with employer-sponsored coverage, however, might want to know that under McCain's plan, they will pay taxes on the value of health care benefits they receive from their employers.
TLBS,
Taxes are not punitive (as in "punishment")
If we could provide all government services by ourselves, or do without all the hand-holding we demand, taxation would be very small if required at all.
The people we elected to select which gifts we would receive and which countries we would violate are merely carrying out the wishes of "the people". The fact that many of those same people are investing in lucrative oil (and insurance) stocks (directly or indirectly) supports corporate greed.
Check it out. There are more stockholders in the USA who own oil and medical insurance stock than there are people who will vote in the upcoming election, so who gets represented?
We have a government of, for, and by the people who own stock!
"Not me", says the guy with his savings invested in mutual funds, and his retirement secure in his high-yield pension fund.
When your mutual fund or retirement / pension fund invests your money in a non-sustainable behavior such as vehicles for transporting single passengers, companies that extract minerals with finite supplies, companies that promote violence and war, etc., it is placing you at the same risk as your investment in mortgage banks that make loans to folks who can't pay them back.
It is your responsibility to (1) notify your investment broker that he is risking your money on bad investments, or (2) continue to whimper.
Most of us have forgotten the days when oil exploration and development was encouraged as a new industry.
Subsidies and depletion allowances, from their taxpaying customers, still remain a major source of income for "energy" corporations that are posting record profits as windfalls from rising prices. I'm not an investment specialist, but as a realist it seems that the "energy" companies are benefitting from the "speculators" who are "responsible" for these windfalls. I don't personally know any "speculators", but I'm pretty confident that El Presidente invites a few to his barbeque parties, and that he and his "energy" buddies don't shake their fingers in their faces.
I have received a few "subsidies" in my life. The government of the people instructed the IRS to give me an annual "subsidy" for having children, and keeping them.
Would you give up your "subsidy" of an annual exemption? Perhaps, if pried from your cold dead fingers!
Likewise, the folks who are being subsidized for being rich are going to grasp their depletion allowances for as long as they can, knowing full well that depleting our natural resources should no longer be rewarded.
How about that "Death Tax"? You worked hard all your life, telling lies, cheating and stealing to provide your kids with an income they won't need to work for, and now those damn liberals want to insist that you won't need any more cash where you are headed, and that it needs to be recycled to be stolen all over again. Why didn't you teach your kids how to steal well enough to make getting it back a bit easier?
A major problem for new businesses in the developing world is getting loans of capital. That isn't a problem for rich kids in the USA...or now in China, India, Brazil and the parts of the world that are waving goodbye from the bus.
If you think corporation pay one penny in taxes you are mistaken. The consumer pays the taxes, not the businesses, they just add it to the cost of their product.
dispachchuck,
That kind of logic would also produce a statement that
"corporations pay all of the worker's taxes, because they write the checks".
...which could even be turned into
"stockholders don't pay any taxes, etc."
simply oversimplified.
ow - buy some garbage bags and an electric lawn mower and clean up your own property first. now that would be a treat for all of us.
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