Stupid Tax Tricks

[AustinChief]

I just read this article... and it is EXACTLY what I was afraid of...
I think a simple five tier progressive tax with NO exemptions or loopholes is what we need to look at for the future... The Tax Code has become a joke... and G.W. and BOTH parties in the Senate are certainly not helping things...

[url]http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101010611-128937,00.html[/url]

--Kyle
~disgusted

[AustinChief]

CK_IN,

Agreed. The current tax cut is a joke...

As for paying down the debt... it would be difficult and I agree that politicians can't be trusted to actually DO IT... which is why everyone should elect me EMPEROR and I'll get the job done ;)

gh4chiefs,

NO.. I'm just saying that we need to look at deeper cuts and paying down debt BEFORE we start looking to cut taxes...

Once you elect me emperor, I'll cut spending AND lower taxes...
:D

--Kyle
(starting his campaign early...)

[HC_Chief]

17% FLAT TAX
1% Sales Tax on all goods and services

[Lightning Rod]

How about a 15% sales tax on everything except food and medical expenses. 5% to Fed 5% to state and 5% to local. An additional 3% automatically deducted into a retirement plan controlled by you. No other personal taxes.


Rod- ready to be king.

[Lightning Rod]

OK
1 more thing legalize everything. End the war on drugs. Put a 5% sin tax on booze drugs etc. That $ to be used for treatment and prevention programs.

[HC_Chief]

I like that idea :)

If you're old enough to serve & die, you're old enough to have a drink - or doobie - or whatever the hell else you want... so long as you do not infringe on another person's rights and do NOT operate machinery of any kind.

[Lightning Rod]

Great minds HC,

I would be very interesting to know what the "True" total cost of the war on drugs is. The cost of investigating, trying, incarcerating, lost income and taxes, crime from people stealing to pay artificially high prices to get their buzz on. It must be Billions a year.

[HC_Chief]

more like <i>trillions</i>!

Think about it: the DEA, FBI, ATF(that's THREE beuraucratic agencies!) - along with covert 'black' ops, and every police force... plus the endless stream of drug related cases clogging up our court system, as well as the overcrowding of our prisons with drug offenders.

A LOT of money is being thrown on the fire as a result of a 'war' on drugs - a war that is so one-sided; so laughably impossible to win.

[DanT]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by gh4chiefs [/i]
[B]Does anybody have figures available for what our gross national income is? I'm not talking about taxable income, I'm talking about what we all make on a gross basis. I don't know if that figure is available or not, and I'm talking all income, all wages, interest, net sales, capitol gains etc. It would be interesting to see what flat rate it would take given that level of income to produce revenue equal to today's Federal budget. [/B][/QUOTE]

gh4chiefs,
Start with the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis's "National Income and Product Accounts Table":

[url]http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/TableViewFixed.asp?SelectedTable=27&FirstYear=2000&LastYear=2001&Freq=Qtr[/url]

That's one of the "Frequently Requested" tables you can get to from this page on their website. The others are listed below:

[url]http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/PopularTables.asp[/url]

Table S.1. Summary of Percent Change From Preceding Period in Real Gross Domestic Product and Related Measures
Table S.2. Summary of Contributions to Percent Change in Real Gross Domestic Product
Table 1.1. Gross Domestic Product
Table 1.2. Real Gross Domestic Product
Table 1.9. Relation of Gross Domestic Product, Gross National Product, Net National Product, National Income, and Personal Income
Table 1.14. National Income by Type of Income
Table 2.1. Personal Income and Its Disposition
Table 3.1. Government Current Receipts and Expenditures
Table 4.1. Foreign Transactions in the National Income and Product Accounts
Table 7.1. Quantity and Price Indexes for Gross Domestic Product

[gh4chiefs]

Thanks DanT. I'll try to work on that this weekend.

AustinChiefs,

Thanks for clarifying your position. When someone mentions the possibility of raising taxes, I just become totally insane as I believe we are WAY over taxed.

I think people don't really realize just how taxed we are. We focus on income taxes but there are way more than that. Sales taxes, excise taxes (look at your phone bill for example) and property taxes (the most punishing tax of all). It's just ridiculous that citizens of a supposedly free country are robbed of so much of their income by the various levels of government.

[Lightning Rod]

So we could just let people make up their own minds on what they wanna do and save trillions. Hummmm, ok take 1% of the 5% sin tax and hire Taxis to troll all the bars. We could probably have one on station at every damn bar in the county. That might just save a few lives.

HC- When I'm king I'll have a cushy job waiting for ya. Like official liaison to the nudie bar industry, quality control that sort of thing. :)

[HC_Chief]

You are too kind! :)

[Oxford]

Clint -- as usual you're mistaken. In our system of government, Congress and only Congress has the power to tax and allocate monies from the US Treasury. Therefore, no president increases spending, Congress does. Presidents can veto (subject to a override of course) any measure passing the House and Senate and that includes the budget. But then of course you'd be subjected to the "shutting down the government, you're all gonna die" rhetoric. In the 1980's congress spent $1.67 for every $1 in revenue, but in the decade of the 80's we doubled revenues to the US Treasury, even with a tax cut. The more you tax something, the less you get of it (see Tobacco tax receipts and the state of New York).

[oleman47]

You can blame Greenspan. He flipped on wanting to pay down the debt to satisfy Bush and now we have this monster mirage. The actual new budget shows the debt will increase by 1.3 trillion and when you add in all expenses above 4% increase, add that to the debt. Adjusting the minimum tax will cost another 400 billion. I do not yet see how the so-called lock boxes operate but a preliminary look indicates that is a fraud. Since Bush has programs that may cost an additonal trillion and his Social Security plan would cost another trillion and Demos have at least a trillion in social programs that must be tweaked for population growth, it is easy to see this budget producing far greater deficits than the previous king, Reagan.

The expansion of personal and business debt is far above any semblance of sanity as is the growth in money supply by the Fed. Since we already have the Reagan national debt, the longer range is much like what Japan is going through. However, the American disparity between rich and poor may bring on solutions that will make the rich wish they would have forgone some of these perks.

We came to a fork in the road and ate the fork.

[Clint in Wichita]

I told you I might be mistaken.

Bush hasn't even considered lowering the gas tax, regardless of what is required to make it happen.

[Clint in Wichita]

Oxford,

Maybe your posts will put an end to the "Clinton raised taxes" b.s. on this BB.

After all, Congress was controlled by the Republicans while Clinton was supposedly raising taxes.