Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!
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Looks like the next stop is going to be
The Garage...Twats, the lot of ya.
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@Rhywden said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
YMBNH
Meh. Not totally unexpected, as noted in the OP.
Just my last attempt at doing such a thing in an OP got respected....
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@PJH respect? YMBNH :P
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@Arantor said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
@PJH respect? YMBNH :P
Oh - I know I don't get much round here. Or at work actually...
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@Rhywden said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
Listen, if the guy himself says this:
Ensure the rich will pay their fair share, but no one will pay so much that it destroys jobs or undermines our ability to compete.
And then doesn't pay any taxes at all. How on Earth does that make him look anything but a hpyocrite?
What the heck are you talking about? How was what he did (we're still talking about the ~$1B loss carried forward, right?) not fair?
Don't make me put this in the Garage.
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@Captain said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
Considering that he is known to have used an illegal maneuver to escape paying taxes, nope not possible. That billion dollar "loss" wasn't his to claim. It was his creditors' to claim, when they got hosed on his business losses.
I hadn't heard this one before. Do you have any links about that?
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@Rhywden said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
this kindergarten-level argument of "Everyone does it so it's okay!" doesn't wash either.
As long as "it" is avoiding, not evading, it is OK. As I-don't-remember-who said (paraphrased, because I CBA to look up the actual quote), no man is compelled to order his affairs so as to pay more tax than necessary. If the law allows someone to arrange their finances so that they pay little or no tax, bully for them. I may not like the fact that the wealthy have a lot more available ways to do that, and I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to removing some of the more dubious ways, but if I were in the same position, I'd be doing a lot of the same (strictly legal) things.
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Or you could take the approach, as the Danish largely do, that you're not a victim of the taxation system, but an active contributor to the welfare of the country.
Of course, that would mean not having a ME ME ME ME ME ME ME attitude to life.
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@Captain said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
he is known to have used an illegal maneuver to escape paying taxes
You mean this?
Trump's Tax Avoidance: Breaking Down The Basics
As a CPA who has prepared thousands of tax returns for business owners during the period of time in question, I am compelled to speak to the facts regarding the tax rules in question. Not because I am a fan of Mr. Trump. In fact, I am not. Nor am I a fan of Secretary Clinton. So wait until you...
Perhaps the New York Times is being full of shit. Check your premises.
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@xaade said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
If I could, I'd find a way to pay no taxes
And you seem to assume that everybody is the same.
It's not a black and white thing, where you either get as close as humanly possible to paying no tax or just pay everything. There are lots of ways to reduce your tax bill, some explicitly set up by the government as incentives (pensions to encourage savings, tax breaks on green energy to encourage take up etc.), some just arise naturally from tax law and some are loopholes worked out by highly paid accountants (offshore tax havens, manipulation of figures to make your business look less profitable etc.)
Different people have different limits on what strategies they find acceptable. I'm mostly of the opinion that I have enough income to give a decent portion back to the country so roads, the NHS, schools and other important infrastructure can continue to be funded. I've been a recipient of benefits in the past, and don't have a problem with spending more than I personally get out at the moment. I still take advantage of things like pensions, but I'm not about to go looking for technical loopholes that can help me out more.
I don't particularly blame people or companies who take advantage of loopholes, but I do think they should be closed off as they are discovered. It is the duty of a public company to maximise shareholder returns, which includes minimising tax revenues by obeying the letter of the law rather than the spirit. It's the duty of the lawmakers to make the letter and spirit as close as possible so taxes bring in what's expected
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@Jaloopa I agree with you. On the tax loophole thing, I think there is a relatively (morally, if not in the law) clear distinction between "taking advantage of a tax break that the governement has explicitly set up to encourage something" (e.g. pensions, or -- at least in France -- large energy-saving building work such as changing your boiler etc.), and "finding how to combine various laws to slip something around the taxman".
That's why, on principle, I am not opposed to laws that penalize any tax avoidance, even if it's supposedly legal, unless it's a tax break specifically designed as such. Obviously, the devil is in the details and how that law is written may change everything (someone mentionned one such law in Poland that seems to be badly written), but the idea doesn't strike me as bad.
And in any case there will always be grey areas in complex matters, but nothing is perfect...
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@Jaloopa said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
I don't particularly blame people or companies who take advantage of loopholes, but I do think they should be closed off as they are discovered.
Fair enough.
Loopholes that don't perform as intended should be closed.
But you can't fault people for avoiding taxes.
@Jaloopa said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
And you seem to assume that everybody is the same.
No.
The only thing I'm assuming is that line out of HR Block is real.
I don't assume that everyone would want to pay zero taxes. However, I think it's a safe bet that everyone does what they can to lower their taxes to a comfortable level based on how much they disagree with how the taxes are being used.
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@remi said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
That's why, on principle, I am not opposed to laws that penalize any tax avoidance, even if it's supposedly legal
No, you have to make the law explicit to stop that.
You cannot fault people for being advised by a tax professional to take a tax deduction, and not spending time to understand the spirit of the law.
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@xaade I disagree. Sure, if there is a clearly identified loophole, it's easier to make that explicitly illegal rather than rely on some "catch all" clause. But there are many laws that rely on the intent of the person committing the offense (starting with the murder/manslaughter (GBH?) ones -- not sure on the english exact words here, but you get my idea -- and also some laws about scams/fraud/..., again I am not sure of the technical names in english, sorry), so why not the same thing with taxes?
(scams are interesting for what we're talking about in that they deal with something similar -- money and not physical harm -- and there are cases where the intent makes the difference between something being an offense or being perfectly fine)
That's what the laws about this that I have heard about do, mentioning something like "knowingly working around the tax code". Judging that is exactly the same as judging murder etc., it's up to the prosecution to prove that there was an intent to fraud.
It's not easy, I agree, and there will be many edge cases. But again, nothing is perfect and I believe it's worth trying to improve the current situation. I know you and some other are going to disagree, and I think that at the core is (partly) the question of whether an imperfect law is worse than no law. But we won't resolve that one so easily...
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@remi here's an idea. Completely off the top of my head, so there's probably massive flaws with it, but what about adding powers to retroactively claim tax at a higher rate after closing a loophole? So, say someone avoided 100k through a loophole last year and that's closed. That person is now liable for 150k. It would disincentivise abusing these loopholes to some extent because if the're closed you've lost out for having used them, but doesn't require lengthy court cases trying to work out if you were told by your accountant that it's fine
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@remi said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
so why not the same thing with taxes?
Because murder is obvious. There's a dead body.
The intent of tax law is not so obvious, and it's purposefully made to be that way, because there are incentives for politicians to introduce loopholes.
So, you can blame someone for a dead body, but not ALWAYS for misinterpreting the intent of the tax law.
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@Jaloopa Then you'll also have to retroactively pay if a tax break wasn't functioning correctly.
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@xaade depends how the law is implemented, surely
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It starts off slow, but read the first page for context (his lawyers are warning him as strongly as they can), and then at least through page 3.
The "Classification of the Bonds" section is interesting too.
In short, Trump got a bunch of debt forgiveness when he filed for bankruptcy, which should have counted as income (that would have offset the 900+ billion loss), except he issued new bonds and called them equity.
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@Jaloopa said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
what about adding powers to retroactively claim tax at a higher rate after closing a loophole? So, say someone avoided 100k through a loophole last year and that's closed. That person is now liable for 150k.
That would be an ex post facto law, and in the US it would be utterly unconstitutional. An act that was legal — whether it was tax avoidance, possession of a not-yet-illegal new drug, or whatever — at the time the act occurred cannot be prosecuted under a law that later makes it illegal. The courts would throw that out in 5 seconds flat.
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@HardwareGeek fair enough. I thought there would be some massive problem with it
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@HardwareGeek said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
@Jaloopa said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
what about adding powers to retroactively claim tax at a higher rate after closing a loophole? So, say someone avoided 100k through a loophole last year and that's closed. That person is now liable for 150k.
That would be an ex post facto law, and in the US it would be utterly unconstitutional. An act that was legal — whether it was tax avoidance, possession of a not-yet-illegal new drug, or whatever — at the time the act occurred cannot be prosecuted under a law that later makes it illegal. The courts would throw that out in 5 seconds flat.
@HardwareGeek said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
@Jaloopa said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
what about adding powers to retroactively claim tax at a higher rate after closing a loophole? So, say someone avoided 100k through a loophole last year and that's closed. That person is now liable for 150k.
That would be an ex post facto law, and in the US it would be utterly unconstitutional. An act that was legal — whether it was tax avoidance, possession of a not-yet-illegal new drug, or whatever — at the time the act occurred cannot be prosecuted under a law that later makes it illegal. The courts would throw that out in 5 seconds flat.
Well, then, you need to tell FEMA that.
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@Captain said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
In short, Trump got a bunch of debt forgiveness when he filed for bankruptcy, which should have counted as income (that would have offset the 900+ billion loss), except he issued new bonds and called them equity.
That seems a bit incorrect:
Trump Tax Gambit May Not Have Been Legal
Donald Trump sought a tax opinion letter before employing the gambit to shelter hundreds of millions of dollars in forgiven debt and was warned the IRS might frown on it.
The Times said Trump employed a strategy known as a “stock-for-debt” swap, meaning investors take stock, regardless of market value, instead of the money owed so the forgiven debt would not have to be reported as taxable income.
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Before employing it, however, Trump sought a formal tax opinion letter. Trump was warned in the letter there was no “definitive judicial or administrative authority” for the partnership gambit, and there was a “substantial” chance of tax consequences for the plan.Congress and the IRS tried to curb the practice in the 1980s. Stock-for-debt was finally banned in 1993 and the equity-for-debt swap by partnerships in 2004. Clinton was among those who voted to close the loophole.
It is unclear if the IRS ever challenged Trump’s maneuver. Trump’s accountants said in a financial disclosure statement Trump had been under audit as of 1993, a year after the debt was forgiven. Results of the audit have not been released.
Difficult to say what actually happened, but I suspect the IRS looked at it given he was audited (which shouldn't be a surprise), and it wasn't an obviously illegal thing to do back then, though it was apparently banned shortly thereafter.
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@xaade said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
Well, then, you need to tell FEMA that.
Context, please?
Anyway, I will amend my statement:
The courts
wouldshould throw that out in 5 seconds flat.The courts don't always do what they should, and even SCOTUS has occasionally
ignoredinterpreted the literal words of the Constitution to make itsay what they wanta "living document".
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@xaade said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
H&R Block literally runs a business on doing the same for everyone else.
Yep. That's what H&R Block is actually in business for, not for charging insane rates for simple tax returns.
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@boomzilla It was obviously illegal, and the IRS successfully sued people for using that loophole for years and years. Which is why his lawyers drafted that letter warning him of "uncertainties." Trump managed to slip through the cracks, and got away with a few hundred million.
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@Jaloopa Ex Post Facto. Illegal.
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@xaade said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
@remi said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
so why not the same thing with taxes?
Because murder is obvious. There's a dead body.
And did the person who killed the other intend to? That makes a huge difference in the sentencing (and in the qualification but in a sense that's just legal technicalities). Someone who stabs another in anger and happens to kill him will not get the same as someone who deliberately wanted to kill. The only difference may be the intent.
And I was foreseeing this, so that's why I'm also mentionning scams and other financial abuses (
did you skip that bit on purpose? ). Again, apologies if it's not the right technical word, but let me clarify.Say someone pays some money to someone else, in exchange for a service that is never given. There is of course the contractual liability (i.e. the second person has to repay the money or other contractual arrangements) but there is also a criminal aspect: if the second person repeatedly does that, we are in clear scam territory. What matters here is the intent: someone may be clearly willing to render the service but fails (for any reason, including incompetence, but that's not a crime), or he may want to trick the other. The intent makes the difference between legal or not.
The intent of tax law is not so obvious, and it's purposefully made to be that way, because there are incentives for politicians to introduce loopholes.
I agree on that, and I think the intent of each law should be made clearer. There are laws where part of the text is not strictly legal dispositions (i.e. "doing so and so is punished by so and so"), but introductory text expressing the intent of the law (e.g. "we want to encourage people to save for their retirement"). It's part of the law, so judges can use that to help them interpret it, and I think it should be always present.
So, you can blame someone for a dead body, but not ALWAYS for misinterpreting the intent of the tax law.
That's why we have judges and tribunal and everything else. Even for a dead body, it's not obvious whether the person who killed wanted to kill or not. Yes, that's difficult. Yes, there are cases where not everyone agrees on the final conclusion. But on the other hand, there are many cases where there is no doubt.
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@HardwareGeek said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
Context, please?
They offered assistance during Rita, and then tried to demand everyone's money back, being knowingly quiet dishonest, retroactively changing the qualifications.
I had to jump through hoops to pretty much tell them, politely, to go fuck themselves.
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@Jaloopa said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
but what about adding powers to retroactively claim tax at a higher rate after closing a loophole?
Nah, as commented already, that would make absolutely no sense. Government needs money, decides to strip tax exemption from - hey, I dunno - people with disabilities, then turn up on their doorsteps and say "hey, crip, you pay us X or we throw your ass in jail and take all your stuff". You literally wouldn't be able to do anything without fear of it being subsequently made illegal and prosecuted.
What should be done is stripping person status from companies, and putting liability directly on the board of directors, financial advisors, and shareholders. Then start aggressively prosecuting tax evasion with punitive fines, clawbacks and hard time in proper "nasty" prison, along with all the
chicanosrapists,niggersmurderers andj-pop fanskiddie fiddlers and other fuckers who ruin lives, handed down to those having profited from it. Offer immunity / leniency to whistleblowers.After the first set of board members and their tax advisors get sent down, and the shareholders start getting big bills based on the dividends they've collected, I suspect you'd find people racing to be first in line at the tax office.
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@Captain said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
@boomzilla It was obviously illegal, and the IRS successfully sued people for using that loophole for years and years. Which is why his lawyers drafted that letter warning him of "uncertainties." Trump managed to slip through the cracks, and got away with a few hundred million.
I dunno...seems like they investigated him and would be very interested in a few hundred million in taxable income. Were the IRS in on it or something?
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@boomzilla said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
I dunno...seems like they investigated him and would be very interested in a few hundred million in taxable income. Were the IRS in on it or something?
So here's something you might not know about the IRS. They have to negotiate with ultra-rich tax payers. Because the ultra-rich can just move their money out of the country, and then the IRS can't collect anything. Also, the ultra-rich can hire enough lawyers to keep the IRS tied up in court for years.
So there's an economic/business choice the IRS has to make: try to collect and possibly drive capital out of the country, or not.
I dunno, doesn't that seem like a system where the rules don't apply to everybody the same way? But that's kind of how it has to be, as a practical matter, because the rich could just invert corporate structure and live nearly tax free.
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Oh, Trump's tax plan is regressive, too. Yippee!
www.forbes.com/sites/anthonynitti/2016/11/09/president-trump-what-does-it-mean-for-your-tax-bill
In addition, as highlighted above, the bottom rate of 10% will be replaced with a new bottom rate of 12%. Combine this with the lost deductions described above — as well as the elimination of the “head of household” filing status under the Trump plan — and according to a study performed by Lily Batchelor at NYU, you have a perfect storm in which approximately 7.8 million low-income large families will experience increased tax bills under the Trump plan.
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Hey @Captain, as long as you're OK with the IRS revoking the Clinton Foundation's obviously fraudulent not-for-profit status, soaking its shareholders for back taxes, and charging them under RICO and money laundering statutes, I'll listen to you yammer about Trump's alleged tax fraud.
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Oh neat, Trump's AgCzar is a former big sugar lobbyist. So much for draining the swamp.
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@lolwhat said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
obviously fraudulent
So far you've proven that you call it fraudulent, but nothing anywhere near proving it actually being fraudulent.
In fact, I can do the opposite:
Pence wrong on Clinton Foundation's charitable work
In the vice presidential debate, Republican Mike Pence tried to skewer Hillary Clinton by talking about the multi-billio
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@ben_lubar OK.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/8561/7-things-you-need-know-about-clinton-foundation-aaron-bandler
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@Jaloopa said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
Tax avoidance/minimisation is a tragedy of the commons type thing.
It benefits each individual to pay as little as possible, but if everyone manages to pay diddly squat then there's nothing left for infrastructure and all the other benefits taxes pay for.
Yup, and also a normal result from game theory chart:
Other pay fair tax Other pay less tax You pay fair tax Everyone wins and you pay more Everyone lose but you pay more You pay less tax Everyone lose but you pay less Everyone lose but you pay less
P.S.: The "win" and "lose" here is defined as "whether the governement will have more funding to support economy, in theory doing so will allow everyone to earn more"
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@lolwhat said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
@ben_lubar OK.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/8561/7-things-you-need-know-about-clinton-foundation-aaron-bandler
Alright, I can count to seven. Let's try:
- The Clinton Foundation was established in 2001.
OH WOW WHAT A SCANDAL 2001 THE SAME YEAR AS A SPACE ODYSSEY?
- For an organization that is supposedly a charity, the Clinton Foundation spent very little money on "direct aid."
This is a more vague form of the claim from Mike Pence, which was rated false (see my previous post for a link to the explanation)
In fact, here, have another one:
False: 80% of Clinton Foundation costs aren't 'overhead'
In a radio interview Aug. 23, 2016, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus wrongly interpreted tax forms
- The Clintons have listed their foundation as a charity for tax write-off purposes.
HOW CAN THEY LIVE WITH THEMSELVES CALLING THEIR CHARITY A CHARITY wait
- The Clinton Foundation's donors include countries with awful records on women's rights.
Fact-checking Rudy Giuliani on Meet the Press
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani says Hillary Clinton is only pretending to be a feminist. On NBC’s Meet the Press Oc
Fun fact: the Clinton Foundation does not run those countries. If a deli sold a sandwich to Bill Cosby, would they be guilty of rape?
- The Clinton Foundation was used for the Clintons to provide quid pro quo deals to their donors.
Ok, I'll just search for that:
- Numerous journalists and media organizations donated to the Clinton Foundation.
JOURNALISTS DONATING TO CHARITY? WHAT?
- The Clinton Foundation pledged to clear any foreign donations with the State Department before Clinton became the Secretary of State.
Correct. And they did publicly disclose the donation that your article cherry-picks:
"This donation was disclosed publicly on the Clinton Foundation website, however, the State Department should have also been formally informed," the statement said.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, "The fact that the process has ... was not followed in this particular incident does not raise concerns with us."
Did the Clinton Foundation keep its promises? A PolitiFact scorecard
As they say at the ballpark, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. When Hillary Clinton was nominated as secre
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@Captain said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
So there's an economic/business choice the IRS has to make: try to collect and possibly drive capital out of the country, or not.
I'm not familiar with the history of this particular thing, but you told me that they had been suing lots of people over this, so it sounds like they were pretty serious about it.
@Captain said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
I dunno, doesn't that seem like a system where the rules don't apply to everybody the same way? But that's kind of how it has to be, as a practical matter, because the rich could just invert corporate structure and live nearly tax free.
Yes, this very thing is one of the reasons why I think lower taxes make sense, because then those rich people are less likely to spend their time and money hiding from the tax man and more time putting the money to use.
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@ben_lubar Politifact is like...Breitbart / PuffHost level credibility, though.
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@boomzilla … says the man who posted an infowars "story" about someone being beaten by an anti-trump mob.
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@tufty said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
@boomzilla … says the man who posted an infowars "story" about someone being beaten by an anti-trump mob.
Huh?
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@boomzilla This one. Yeah, sure, you posted the NYT renewsing of it, but it came direct from infowars.
http://www.infowars.com/shock-video-black-mob-viciously-beats-white-trump-voter/
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@tufty So what would you do if infowars noticed that the sky was blue?
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@boomzilla Check for alternate sources, same as you would if it was reported by Breitbart. Hell, same as I would if it were reported by Breitbart.
2 days later, and there's still no independent verification, no complaints made to the police, nothing except a video that's viraled from a single use, now deleted, facebook account, via (and solely via) infowars.
That sounds entirely truthy and certainly not doubtful at all.
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@tufty said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
@boomzilla Check for alternate sources, same as you would if it was reported by Breitbart.
I didn't even know that Infowars had posted about that video. Pretty much the only time I see stuff from them is when someone posts about it here (usually to mock them, as is appropriate).
I suppose I could have been more verbose in my denunciation of Politifact, though. They are legendary for "fact checking" some statement and essentially going, "Well, yeah, that's a true statement, but I don't really agree with some of the implications because X, Y and Z, so this one is only partly true / mostly false."
And then, when someone called out Obama as having lied about (IIRC) "If you like your plan you can keep it," that person got "Lie of the Year." A year or two later, they totally backtracked and Obama's original statement was the lie of the year.
"Fact checking journalism" is just opinion journalists trying to get some unearned credibility.
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@boomzilla said in Line up, line up, pay your taxes here!:
I didn't even know that Infowars had posted about that video.
And yet it's mentioned and linked in the NYT article (which, at least, mentions that nothing has been substantiated). Don't tell me you simply saw an article that made Trump's detractors look bad and posted it blindly without reading it.
