Taxes – Page 6 – The Burning Platform

Many Unhappy Returns

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“Wet clean-up on Aisle 74!”

Not everyone enjoys April 15th as much as Bernie does, which we presume is good news for the nation’s dry cleaners. In fact, the day is hated by the approximately 50% of Americans who have to fork out money to go to the other 50% of Americans who pay nothing at all.

But even though the IRS is collecting more revenue in fiscal 2016 than in any previous year, free-spending, class-envying Democrats say that it’s not enough.

For instance, Bernie Sanders recently bellowed that American corporations aren’t paying their “fair share” and cited the flagrant example of tech giant Verizon, claiming “they haven’t paid a nickel” in taxes.

And he’s right. They haven’t paid a nickel. They’ve paid $35 Billion in taxes in the last two years alone. Which, granted, is simply a rounding error in the Alice-in-Wonderland economic theme park which is currently toot-toot-tootling calliope music between Bernie’s hair-sprouting ears.

Are there people and corporations who contort themselves like Russian gymnasts to wriggle out of paying taxes? Of course – but the crazy and largely legal loopholes they’re using have been built into the system by both political parties because of their desire to control commerce, as well as the direct influence of lavish campaign donations and other fiscal goodies, both above and below the table.

The IRS is now a nightmarishly complicated, inept, and thoroughly corrupt institution (yes, Lois Lerner, we’re talking to you) which needs to be abolished and replaced with a simple and straightforward flat tax which everyone pays into.

Of course, Hope n’ Change doesn’t seriously expect to ever see that happen. Which is probably good news for our dry cleaner.

The House of Cards That is Noo Joisey

Saw this article this morning and laughed out loud, one person leaves the state and the collective butt-holes of the tax-munchers pucker up.

When people move (Tepper is a hedge-fund manager so he is likely a grade-A shitheel), it really hinders the ability of others to live off their neighbors…, gotta love it

Tepper’s Move May Affect New Jersey Budget, Forecaster Warns

The decision by billionaire hedge-fund manager David Tepper to quit New Jersey for tax-friendly Florida could complicate estimates of how much tax money the struggling state will collect, the head of the Legislature’s nonpartisan research branch warned lawmakers.

Tepper, 58, registered to vote in Florida in October, listing a Miami Beach condominium as his permanent address, and in December filed a court document declaring that he is now a resident of the state. On Jan. 1, he relocated his Appaloosa Management from New Jersey to Florida, which is free of personal-income and estate taxes.

His move has state revenue officials on alert.

“We may be facing an unusual degree of income-tax forecast risk,” Frank Haines, budget and finance officer with the Office of Legislative Services told a Senate committee Tuesday in Trenton.

New Jersey relies on personal income taxes for about 40 percent of its revenue, and less than 1 percent of taxpayers contribute about a third of those collections, according to the legislative services office. A one percent forecasting error in the income-tax estimate can mean a $140 million gap, Haines said.

Tepper lived in New Jersey for more than two decades, initially as an executive at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., where he helped run junk-bond trading during the late 1980s and early 1990s. He founded Appaloosa in 1993 and now has an estimated fortune of $10.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That ranked him as the wealthiest person in New Jersey.

New Jersey residents bear the country’s third-highest tax burden, according to the Tax Foundation in Washington. Along with the nation’s highest property taxes, it’s one of two states that levy both an estate tax on the deceased and an inheritance tax on their heirs. The income-tax rate for top earners is 8.97 percent. Democratic legislators have repeatedly passed a millionaire’s tax that would increase the levy to 10.75 percent, but Republican Governor Chris Christie has vetoed it each time.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/teppers-move-may-affect-new-jersey-budget-forecaster-warns/ar-BBrovHB

LAND OF THE FREE?

ANYONE NOTICE THE 22% INCREASE IN GAS PRICES?

It’s funny how the MSM breathlessly reports the decline in gas prices and how it is truly a tremendous savings to the American consumer. But they are strangely silent when gas prices surge by 22% in the last 45 days. Is this somehow beneficial to the American consumer too? Yellen is worried about deflation. Are you? Rents are surging. Home prices are off the charts. Food costs are rising. Obamacare related healthcare cost increases are destroying middle class households. Tuition is increasing. Taxes are higher. Tolls have been increased. And now gasoline prices are skyrocketing. And Yellen doesn’t have the balls to raise rates above .25%. Yeah, she’s working for you alright.

CAN PEOPLE TAX THEMSELVES INTO PROSPERITY?

can-a-people-tax-themselves-into-prosperity

YELLEN, DRAGHI, KURODA: DERANGED LAB RATS

The stock market has regained all of its loses year to date as economic indicators continue to flash red, corporate profits continue to plunge, consumers continue to spend less at retailers, real wages continue to fall, and housing sales continue to decline. The entire dead cat bounce has been generated through corporate stock buybacks, Wall Street lemmings trying to make up for their terrible year to date investing performance, and central bankers who will stop at nothing to verbally manipulate markets higher – since their monetary machinations over the last seven years have been a miserable failure in reviving the real economy.

As John Hussman points out, the market is poised to deliver nothing over the next decade, with a 40% to 55% “dip” in the foreseeable future. I wonder how many barely sentient, iGadget addicted, non-questioning, normalcy bias dependent zombies are prepared for a third Federal Reserve generated market collapse in the last 15 years?

From a long-term investment standpoint, the stock market remains obscenely overvalued, with the most historically-reliable measures we identify presently consistent with zero 10-12 year S&P 500 nominal total returns, and negative expected real returns on both horizons. From a cyclical standpoint, I continue to expect that the completion of the current market cycle will likely take the S&P 500 down by about 40-55% from present levels; an outcome that would not be an outlier or worst-case scenario, but instead a rather run-of-the-mill cycle completion from present valuations.

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Is it Government or Oligarchs?

Guest Post by Martin Armstrong

I think what you have to understand is our structure of government being a “republic” rather than a democracy, invites oligarchy. There has never been a single “republic” that has ever proven to work. The admixture or money and power always becomes lethal. This is why I blame government, not the oligarchs. They could not buy politicians if they were non (1) career, and (2) all powerful. Taxes and regulation become the incentive for the oligarchs to buy government. If we eliminate taxes and career politicians, we will solve not ALL, but most of the problem. We then must eliminate “socialism” which at its core is predicated upon the foundation of Marxism which advocated government power by insisting that it was all powerful and COULD alter society by regulation. This serves as a fundamental pillar for taxation.

Philadelphia is trying to introduce a 3 cent tax per ounce of soda. The excuse is that “sugar” is bad for you so they have only the best interests in mind for society. They expect to get almost $100 million annually. The city is dead broke and has a 22.5% tax on parking and 8.5% tax on hotels. They have chased everyone out because anyone even having a conference there they was income tax for money earned in the city. This latest “soda tax” means a 2-liter bottle of soda typically costs $1.50, but the tax would amount to $2.04, more than the cost of the actual bottle. The cost of a 12-pack of soda would nearly double to more than $8. This is the same thing with all this global warming. They use this as the excuse to tax you for your own good. The money does nothing but line the pockets of politicians. In the case of Philadelphia, they will shop in the suburbs to avoid the tax. To appease the oligarchs, the Feds created carbon-credits which can then be sold to others who do pollute. Its all just about the money.

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45% of Americans pay no federal income tax

This isn’t actually a shocker. When 40% of the working age population doesn’t work and another 10% only hold part-time jobs, they aren’t paying any Federal Income taxes. They are paying sales taxes, gasoline taxes, excise taxes, toll taxes, phone taxes, etc. If it was up to me, I’d scrap all income taxes and replace it with a consumption tax. The politicians would lose a tremendous amount of corruptible power. The more you spend, the more you pay. Savers wold be rewarded. I do favor a High Frequency Trading tax on the Wall Street criminals, just like Bernie. We could use it to build Trump’s wall.

Guest Post by Catey Hill

77.5 million households do not pay federal individual income tax

Many Americans don’t have to worry about giving Uncle Sam part of their hard-earned cash for their income taxes this year.

An estimated 45.3% of American households — roughly 77.5 million — will pay no federal individual income tax, according to data for the 2015 tax year from the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan Washington-based research group. (Note that this does not necessarily mean they won’t owe their states income tax.)

Roughly half pay no federal income tax because they have no taxable income, and the other roughly half get enough tax breaks to erase their tax liability, explains Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center.

Despite the fact that rich people paying little in the way of income taxes makes plenty of headlines, this is the exception to the rule: The top 1% of taxpayers pay a higher effective income-tax rate than any other group (around 23%, according to a report released by the Tax Policy Center in 2014) — nearly seven times higher than those in the bottom 50%.

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This Is The Real Reason For The War On Cash

Originally posted Op-Ed via The Wall Street Journal,

These are strange monetary times, with negative interest rates and central bankers deemed to be masters of the universe. So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that politicians and central bankers are now waging a war on cash. That’s right, policy makers in Europe and the U.S. want to make it harder for the hoi polloi to hold actual currency.

Mario Draghi fired the latest salvo on Monday when he said the European Central Bank would like to ban €500 notes. A day later Harvard economist and Democratic Party favorite Larry Summers declared that it’s time to kill the $100 bill, which would mean goodbye to Ben Franklin. Alexander Hamilton may soon—and shamefully—be replaced on the $10 bill, but at least the 10-spots would exist for a while longer. Ol’ Ben would be banished from the currency the way dead white males like him are banned from the history books.

Limits on cash transactions have been spreading in Europe since the 2008 financial panic, ostensibly to crack down on crime and tax avoidance. Italy has made it illegal to pay cash for anything worth more than €1,000 ($1,116), while France cut its limit to €1,000 from €3,000 last year. British merchants accepting more than €15,000 in cash per transaction must first register with the tax authorities. Fines for violators can run into the thousands of euros. Germany’s Deputy Finance Minister Michael Meister recently proposed a €5,000 cap on cash transactions. Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan predicted last month that cash won’t survive another decade.

The enemies of cash claim that only crooks and cranks need large-denomination bills. They want large transactions to be made electronically so government can follow them. Yet these are some of the same European politicians who blew a gasket when they learned that U.S. counterterrorist officials were monitoring money through the Swift global system. Criminals will find a way, large bills or not.

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Paying for Electric Cars… Twice

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Imagine that the government decided to tax you to finance a step ladder project to the Moon.

In a very real way, that’s exactly what’s happening. In California right now – and probably soon, other states as well.

The “moon shot” in question is a $22 million project (just for openers) to build thousands of electric vehicle charging stations at $15,000 a piece in the Los Angeles area to support electric cars … which can’t get very far without an electric umbilical cord.

Electric cars like the Nissan Leaf and the electric version of the VW Golf have a full-charge range of about 80 miles under ideal conditions. Less, if it’s very cold – or very hot – outside. The efficiency of electric batteries decreases with temperature extremes as well as use of accessories such as headlights and air conditioning and heaters.

Leaving aside the luxury-car price tag of electric cars (the Leaf and electric Golf, which both list for about $30,000, are the “cheapies” of the bunch; a Tesla starts at about $70k), their limited radius of action makes them useless for other than short trips – under ideal conditions – and when there’s a place to plug in at each end.

And even when there is a place to plug in, the wait is Soviet.

It takes at least 30-45 minutes to recharge an electric car using a high-capacity “super” charging system like the ones being pushed (for you to pay for) by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and being implemented in California.

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FEEL THE BERN

Hat tip Boston Bob

THE ODDS ARE NEVER IN YOUR FAVOR

The irony of the phrase “may the odds be ever in your favor” is not lost on the readers of the Hunger Games trilogy of novels or the film adaption. Despite the grimness of the story, over 65 million copies of the books have been sold. The total box office take so far has exceeded $1.4 billion for the four movies. The dystopian series tackles real issues like severe poverty, starvation, torture, oppression, betrayal and the brutality of war. It doesn’t fit into the standard film making success recipe of feel good fluff, politically correct storylines and happy endings. Each film in the series gets progressively darker, with the final episode permeating doom and gloom. The books and the movies capture the deepening crisis mood engulfing the world today. And they realistically portray the world as a place where there are no good guys in positions of power. The ruling class, in all cases, is driven by a voracious appetite for supremacy, wealth, and control.

An Ambiguous, Confusing, Dangerous World

The world is a morally ambiguous place where those in power and those seeking power utilize the influence of media propaganda and PR campaigns built around “heroes” and “icons” to psychologically control the masses, while enriching themselves and their crony capitalist sponsors. Endless war against the latest “bad guys” further enriches the arms dealers and their political lackeys who joyfully use faux patriotism and nationalistic fervor to insist upon more boots on the ground, drones in the air, bombs dropped, and missiles launched.

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