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So if paying your taxes doesn't put you in a bind or prevent you from paying your bills they must not be taxing you enough. Great logic.
Well , I thought it was all Bush's fault.
So if paying your taxes doesn't put you in a bind or prevent you from paying your bills they must not be taxing you enough. Great logic.
according to Ruff,
the rich are supposed to fund the entire country.
Socialism at its best.
"When I'm elected, I'm going AFTER THE PROFITS OF THE OIL COMPANIES" - Hillary
Well, that's entirely unreasonable. As I stated, the Wiki entries I sourced are themselves well sourced from government data, and well written. They are not a collection of bull like some wikis. I know that wiki is not a primary source, but in this case it is a good collection of primary sources that I could not easily find elsewhere. If you'd bothered to look at them you'd see what I mean.
T Park, I don't believe the wealthy should "fund the entire country", I believe in a fair tax system where each pays according to his/her ability to do so. Under your system, those with money (top 2%) continue to get richer (which happens anyway), while everyone else goes to . Oh, and BTW, as I already pointed out, the MIDDLE CLASS are the ones slugged in your tax system, not the rich. And if you are rich and paying the top bracket of income tax you don't have a very good accountant. Kerry Packer, richest man in Australia, uses loopholes in the law and high-powered number crunchers to pay a pittance in tax. You're just not very good at being a robber-baron!
As for going after oil company profits, a-freakin-men. Oil companies have been polluting the world without paying a cent for the damage they've done for over 100 years - about time they paid the piper. But I'm sure you're all for corporations doing whatever they please, environmental and social consequences be damned...
Ah, yes, I understand.
The rich have received no benefit for doing business in this country. They got rich in spite of it. It's only patriotism that keeps them here even though they are being taxed into near bankruptcy.
Oops, don't look at the statistics behind the curtain.
again, what does that have to do with the original premise of the thread? the left can be so funny when it comes to simple points of fact.
yeh but when you look at the income data, its fukn skewed cause you got the ppl earning millions who are pushing up the avg salary earners wages, which doesnt represent what is the ACTUAL avg, due to guys who are outliers pushing up the national avg. If you take out those guys, you will get a clear identification of the real actual avg earners income....
Sorry to tell you, but thats straight out communism.As for going after oil company profits, a-freakin-men. Oil companies have been polluting the world without paying a cent for the damage they've done for over 100 years - about time they paid the piper. But I'm sure you're all for corporations doing whatever they please, environmental and social consequences be damned
Seriously.
btw
national sales tax
no loopholes, no cheating. Everyone pays equally, everyone even the drug dealers pay.
just use the median.
Yeah, trying not to kill the planet that sustains us, and working for some modi of social justice = communism.
The fossil fuel industry has benefited modern human civilisation enormously by providing a piggy bank of non-renewable energy that sparked the industrial revolution and enabled us to reach the living standards we have today. In doing so, fossil fuels also polluted, and continue to pollute, the atmosphere, land and water which sustains all life on the planet.
Fossil fuel companies have paid very little for the damage they have done to life-sustaining natural systems on local and global scales, damage that will affect, into the future, public and common goods and thus the lives of everyone alive today and for generations to come.
Please explain to me why companies which damage the environment we ALL live in shouldn't be: a) forced to minimise the environmental damage they do, and, b) forced to pay compensation to the public for their pollution. And then explain to me how raising those issues makes me a Communist.
Stick to basketball commentary. You are out of your depth.
Last edited by RuffnReadyOzStyle; 02-16-2008 at 02:45 AM.
We already have one in Australia (10%), as does most of Europe, but by their nature and without proper compensation to low income earners through the rest of the tax system, consumption taxes are regressive (ie. affect the poor more than the rich).
Actually, I'm for vastly increasing consumption taxes in an effort to slow down consumption, but that's another kettle of fish.
If you'd bother to read about these issues you'd know they are complex problems and require involved, complex solutions. Occam's razor does not apply to intervention in most human systems.
So raising consumption taxes on those with low incomes is good because...?
So it's the impersonal "fossil fuel companies" that have caused the problem and not the demand of the peoples of the earth for reliable energy sources to generate the power to heat and cool their homes, to cook, to use the internets and tell us that fossil fuel companies have paid very little for the damage they have done to life-sustaining natural systems on local and global scales, to provide on a mass scale what was previously not even available to kings, to travel so they can hold down jobs and make money to provide for their families, to make it to hospitals before they croak, and the other mundane and necessary parts of our lives? Not to mention to make the plastics that provide for safe and sanitary food storage among a million other worthwhile uses.Yeah, trying not to kill the planet that sustains us, and working for some modi of social justice = communism.
The fossil fuel industry has benefited modern human civilisation enormously by providing a piggy bank of non-renewable energy that sparked the industrial revolution and enabled us to reach the living standards we have today. In doing so, fossil fuels also polluted, and continue to pollute, the atmosphere, land and water which sustains all life on the planet.
Fossil fuel companies have paid very little for the damage they have done to life-sustaining natural systems on local and global scales, damage that will affect, into the future, public and common goods and thus the lives of everyone alive today and for generations to come.
Please explain to me why companies which damage the environment we ALL live in shouldn't be: a) forced to minimise the environmental damage they do, and, b) forced to pay compensation to the public for their pollution. And then explain to me how raising those issues makes me a Communist.
Does that not translate to some penalty on individuals for their impact on the planet's environment? Humans release collectively an enormous amount of gases and other material harmful to the environment. We should begin to eradicate the useless ones and then perhaps shoot their bodies into interstellar space.
AUSTRALIA has a (gst) goods + services tax 10% something along the lines same as canadas GST. Only some stuff has tax inc, while some stuff are tax exempt, but ppl dont go through the fuss of identifying each item has GST attached to it.
The only problem i have with the collection of GST from the fed govt, is the redistribution of it to other states. Some states contribute jack all, but collect alot of funds back, while the state that contributes alot, gets the less back, its fokn lame.
I think CC's story is a good analogy for anyone advocating a flat tax to think about. The majority of Americans who support a flat tax have no idea that the poor and the middle classes will all end up paying significantly more tax with a flat tax according to most of the models that are out there.
What's actually hurting upper middle class taxpayers right now is the AMT tax, which basically is a flat tax, and because of changes to the regular tax structure, AMT is kicking in for folks a lot more regularly than a few years back.
If you think about all the tax you are subject to either directly or indirectly through your employer or the things you do/buy/visit it's staggering actually..
Federal income tax
State income tax (most states)
Social security (essentially a tax)
Medicare
Futa
Suta
Workman's comp assessments
Sales taxes
Property taxes
Personal property taxes
City taxes (in many areas)
Compensating taxes
Special use taxes
Hospitality taxes
Excise taxes
I'm sure I'm forgetting some....
Interestingly there were some folks in the 1700's who had grown tired of paying so many taxes and started their own country.
Taxes aren't a big concern and tax cuts are "giveaways to the rich" when you don't have to pay them. A federal income tax rate of 10%? Oh noes.
No kidding. We barely missed having to pay the AMT this year. That would have added $2K more to the $32K we already paid to Uncle Sam.
registration/stamp duty
Going after the profits of a company, is communism yes.Yeah, trying not to kill the planet that sustains us, and working for some modi of social justice = communism
Any company it doesnt matter.
Thats straight out communism, not liking a company cause they make money and wanting to take away their profits is straight from the book of Karl Marx.
you pay federal income tax, so the gov can give handouts to farmers, poor people, illegal aliens(they get free health care), civilian contractors(that have strong political ties), foriegn countries, and stupid wars........the time to end the federal income tax law is coming soon, and it won't be pretty.
First of all, any model that shows a significant increase would never fly. Some models show very little change. Most models have the same or similar standard deduction and exemption levels we currently use, but only have one marginal tax rate, and all other deductions are removed. It could be said, the middle class and rich are affected more by it. Some will pay more, some will pay less. The poor will seldom pay anything different. The rich have deductions up the yin-yang they take off then pay taxes at a higher margin, but on less of a percentage of their income. The middle class also often deduct retirement plans, medical, education, interest on loans, etc. They also generally pay a 25% or higher margin. The idea of a flat tax is to make things simpler and more fair.
Last time I saw a calculation of it, the rate was 17%. That was in the early 90's however. The standard deduction and exemptions for a family of four was at $30,000 also. More than what was in place at the time. This was to account for the 2% increase in the marginal rate, and then some to make it attractive. I don't advocate making more people pay nothing however. When 51% of the population pay no extra money on tax increases, watch your wallet and arm yourself. Time for a revolution.
Speaking of the poor paying taxes, I say they should. Not because I want them to pay more, but because I want them to have a reason not to raise taxes on the rest of us. It's just not fair to have 47% of the tax payers pay no income tax, and be voters who can say "yes, raise taxes" when tax increases are talked about.
Some thing I have advocated more than once is to do a one time mandatory wage increase on all workers who pay payroll taxes (social security and medicare). Most of us see the 6.2% and 1.45% come out of our checks. What some of you don't know is that the employer matches this to the federal government, so they get 15.3% of your wage level. Say you make $100 per day. (simple for calculation) After you pay the payroll taxes, you have $92.35 per day. You would now get enough more with a mandatory wage increase to still make the $92.35. This would make a mandated wage increase of 7.65%. This 7.65% would take that $100 to $107.65. Once both sides of the tax are paid, and seen by the employee (taxpayer,) they see what they really pay. Oh, I forget. When you apply the new rate of 14.213% to the $107.65, the payroll tax is now $15.3 per $100 instead of $7.45. The employee still gets the effective $92.35 per day, but now sees nearly all the tax paid that goes to the feds on his or her behalf.
This concept also needs a change in name. We rename the tax to something like "Social Tax." We can maintain the current income tax system, go to a flat tax, etc. However, what ever we do. When tax rates are to be raised or lowered, the other systems stay the same, and this new social tax increases or decreases so that everyone has a share of burden. We need some type of restrain on the voters to beep taxes manageable, because we all know.... Congress won't!
I didn't double-check my math, but I think you all get the idea.
S had a profit of 30 billion last year. They are spending 4 billion to expand their refining capability in Port Arthur. That's 13% of their profit for the year already tapped for new infrastructure, not accounting for any other new expenditures (for sake of argument, drilling a new deep water well costs about 100 million for every mile of water they go down.As for going after oil company profits, a-freakin-men. Oil companies have been polluting the world without paying a cent for the damage they've done for over 100 years - about time they paid the piper. But I'm sure you're all for corporations doing whatever they please, environmental and social consequences be damned.
There's lots of other companies out there that on a comparison of percentage of profits pocket more than what the oil companies do when you factor in their costs of doing business.
But by all means, don't let those facts stop your ing witch hunt of big oil. Demos and Republicans both have big oil money in their pocket, this is nothing new. The fact is demand is increasing world wide, and until people come up with some good alternatives (and the bull ethanol mandate isn't an improvement or quality alternative), we're all stuck with big oil.
But big oil isn't a drop in the bucket compared to the 800 pound gorilla that is SS, Medicare, and Medicaid. Big oil doesn't have the potential to bankrupt the USA in our lifetimes. The other three do, but you won't hear a ing word from our elected (or potentially elected) leaders about how to address those issues, just tired rhetoric from hos like Hillary wanting to go Robin Hood on big oil.
I ing hate the leadership in this country.
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