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Thread: for anyone who truly believes that the 'rich' will ever pay their 'fair share' of tax

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    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default for anyone who truly believes that the 'rich' will ever pay their 'fair share' of tax

    (snip)"Swiss halt deal with U.S. that IDs Americans with secret UBS bank accounts

    Americans who hid money from the Internal Revenue Service in secret Swiss bank accounts may escape exposure, at least for now.

    An agreement between the U.S. and Swiss governments that was supposed to blow the cover on 4,450 accounts at Switzerland's largest bank is in danger of collapse.

    The Swiss government said Wednesday that it has suspended the disclosure of information to the United States under the agreement and may seek to renegotiate the deal.

    The announcement came days after a Swiss court ruled that it would be illegal for Switzerland to comply with the August accord. The court essentially declared that long-standing secrecy protections trumped the agreement. The decision came in a test case involving a UBS account holder who was fighting to stay in the shadows."(snip)

    (snip)"In a brief statement, the IRS offered no hint of a compromise.

    "The United States has an agreement with the Swiss government to produce information on US account holders at UBS. We expect the Swiss government to continue to honor the terms of the agreement," the IRS said.

    Since the agreement was signed, Switzerland has turned over information in six cases. Those account holders consented, Swiss Justice Ministry spokesman Folco Galli said.

    The latest developments reopen a long-running legal and diplomatic battle over UBS, which admitted last year that it defrauded the U.S. government by helping Americans dodge taxes. Under a February "deferred prosecution" agreement, UBS agreed to pay the United States $780 million, and the United States agreed to not pursue a potentially crippling criminal case against the bank -- at least temporarily. The U.S. government later ratcheted up a civil suit against UBS, trying to force it to divulge details about 52,000 accounts that had not been declared to the IRS. The Swiss government said it would block UBS from complying with any such court order."(snip)

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    Default Re: for anyone who truly believes that the 'rich' will ever pay their 'fair share' of

    No-one believes that the rich will pay their fair share if there's any way that they can get out of it. What else are tax lawyers for?

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    Default Re: for anyone who truly believes that the 'rich' will ever pay their 'fair share' of

    ^^^ unfortunately there are a lot of congress members in Washington DC who haven't figured that out yet ! They are borrowing / spending money based on the premise that they WILL be able to squeeze more tax money from the 'rich'. Unfortunately, when the borrowed money must be paid back and the 'rich' are in fact contributing LESS tax revenues than they were before the tax rate increases, they will inevitably be forced to turn to increasing taxes on the middle class to stem the tax revenue shortfall.

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    Featured Member flickad's Avatar
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    Default Re: for anyone who truly believes that the 'rich' will ever pay their 'fair share' of

    ^^

    I guess the way out is to close the remaining tax loopholes, but I'm not sure that's fool proof. It always seems to be possible to find a loop hole.

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    Default Re: for anyone who truly believes that the 'rich' will ever pay their 'fair share' of

    ^^^ actually that's somewhat of a self-defeating principle. For example, if the gov't closed the tax free interest loophole re municipal bonds, California and a dozen other US states would go broke tomorrow ( actually cash flow broke ... they are already balance sheet broke !). If the gov't closed the 'green energy tax credits' loophole re solar / wind / ethanol / hybrid cars, all of these products would lose 9/10ths of their customers tomorrow.

    It's a rather well known 'dirty little secret' that the gov't and the 'rich' have worked together for decades ... with the gov't protecting the 'rich' against high de-facto tax rates as long as the 'rich' agree to invest their money where the gov't needs / wants them to ! And you can do the same, as long as you can afford the $50,000 price of a muni bond or the $100,000 price of a green energy partnership share.

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    Featured Member flickad's Avatar
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    Default Re: for anyone who truly believes that the 'rich' will ever pay their 'fair share' of

    ^^

    I neither live in the US nor have that kind of income, but I don't know that I'd be interested if I did. If you're making good money, why is it such a wrench to just pay up? I mean, I get that nobody wants to, but not being overly materially-focused, it's not really a mentality I particularly identify with. To me the nicest thing about making great money would be being able to help out those I'm close to.

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    Default Re: for anyone who truly believes that the 'rich' will ever pay their 'fair share' of

    Quote Originally Posted by Melonie View Post
    ...
    It's a rather well known 'dirty little secret' that the gov't and the 'rich' have worked together for decades ... with the gov't protecting the 'rich' against high de-facto tax rates as long as the 'rich' agree to invest their money where the gov't needs / wants them to ! And you can do the same, as long as you can afford the $50,000 price of a muni bond or the $100,000 price of a green energy partnership share.
    At least those are useful incentives, as opposed to the real methods the rich use to 'gyp' the rest of us. But maybe that's how the rich got to be the rich.
    I loved going to strip clubs; I actually made some friends there. Now things are different for the clubs and for me. As a result I am not as happy.

    Customers are not entitled to grope, disrespect, or rob strippers. This is their job, not their hobby, and they all need income. Clubs are not just some erotic show for guys to view while drinking.

    NOTE: anything I post here, outside of a direct quote, is my opinion only, which I am entitled to. Take it for what you estimate it is worth.

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    Default Re: for anyone who truly believes that the 'rich' will ever pay their 'fair share' of

    Her's an example sketch of how some money can be hidden from taxes; probably everyone knows this:

    A cash business (or predominantly so) doesn't report all its gross income. But it carefully manages expenses and withdrawals so that bookkeeping reasonableness can be maintained for those things needed for the business. The remainder of the cash is laundered in some way until later when some way is found that it can be converted into goods or investments. Of course another way is for a person to never obtain a SSN and thus bank account or many other accounts, or to depend on another to make transactions or accounts where the other person's SSN will be required. Sounds like an underground society to me.
    I loved going to strip clubs; I actually made some friends there. Now things are different for the clubs and for me. As a result I am not as happy.

    Customers are not entitled to grope, disrespect, or rob strippers. This is their job, not their hobby, and they all need income. Clubs are not just some erotic show for guys to view while drinking.

    NOTE: anything I post here, outside of a direct quote, is my opinion only, which I am entitled to. Take it for what you estimate it is worth.

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    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default Re: for anyone who truly believes that the 'rich' will ever pay their 'fair share' of

    Bloomberg TV just reported an interesting statistic. Of the 400 highest income households in America the de-facto average tax rate paid for 2008 taxes was 16.5% !!!

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    God/dess threlayer's Avatar
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    Default Re: for anyone who truly believes that the 'rich' will ever pay their 'fair share' of

    And that is a pretty low marginal rate. Well done, rich guys.
    I loved going to strip clubs; I actually made some friends there. Now things are different for the clubs and for me. As a result I am not as happy.

    Customers are not entitled to grope, disrespect, or rob strippers. This is their job, not their hobby, and they all need income. Clubs are not just some erotic show for guys to view while drinking.

    NOTE: anything I post here, outside of a direct quote, is my opinion only, which I am entitled to. Take it for what you estimate it is worth.

  11. #11
    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default Re: for anyone who truly believes that the 'rich' will ever pay their 'fair share' of

    well, they had a lot of 'help' from the gov't ! Tax free municipal bonds ... tax credits from partnership investments in ethanol / wind / solar ... trusts ... long term capital gains etc.

    Even so, more total dollars in tax revenues were collected from the 400 highest earing American households than ever before.

    (snip)"Each household in the top 400 of earners paid an average tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest since the agency began tracking the data in 1992, the Internal Revenue Service statistics show. The top 400 paid $23 billion in taxes in 2007, up from $18 billion a year earlier, and a bigger amount than any year since 1992.

    Their average effective tax rate was about half the 29.4 percent in 1993, the first year of President Bill Clinton’s administration, when taxes were increased. The top 400 earners reported an average of $46 million of income that year.

    Income ‘Exploded’

    The statistics underscore “two long-term trends: that income at the very top has exploded and their taxes have been cut dramatically,” said Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington-based research group that supports increasing taxes on high-income individuals.

    The top 400 earners received a total $138 billion in 2007, up from $105.3 billion a year earlier. On an inflation-adjusted basis, their average income grew almost fivefold since 1992, the data show. The data doesn’t disclose the identities of the top 400 taxpayers, and the people on the list change from year to year as their incomes rise and fall. "(snip)

    from

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