Tax Season Blues (1 Viewer)

[nolesrule]

Obviously, you left a bit of information out of your story. You don't pay taxes on nothing, so you must have had income coming from somewhere.

I'm married, and the only number that shows up on Line 7 of my 1040 is my wife's W-2 income. None of the income I generate from my businesses or investments shows up on line 7 because I don't draw a salary.

 

[Todd Hochard]

Surely you're not giving us the whole story. $7000 on 110K is low- magically low.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

So I sold a 1040 square foot house in San Jose in which I had lived since 1981.

 

[Eric_L]

I have three living tax deductions - children. I also have alot of mortgage interest and a bit of some itemization from work. That's all the magic there is. I actually had a little bit higher itemized this year than last.

The children are the reason it was so low last year - and so high this year. I became ineligible for alot of tax breaks by my wifes income.

 

[Brad M]

Make April 15th just another day.

fairtax.org

 

[KurtEP]

Interesting group. I find it amusing that they advocate no exemptions, but immediately say that education will not be taxed, and of course, the poor won't. Actually, I think that the poor, despite their obviously reduced income, should at least pay a token tax. They are, after all, members of society and have responsibilities like the rest of us.

Anyway, back on topic. This was my first time with a 1099-Misc, so I got wacked with the old self employment tax (I was expecting it, of course). As a student, I'm making far less than I used to, so it's bizarre to be writing larger checks to the IRS, but different situation, obviously. The worst thing about paying my taxes was standing in line at the post office, with all of the local nuts who have 400 packages to send to their neighbors' cats. I hate the general public

 

[Eric_L]

trouble with a national sales tax is the same as the trouble with a local sales tax; it is too easy to increase.
I can rembmer getting a call years ago from some local leaders who asked me (and many other people) for input on what they should propose to spend the revenues on when asking local voters to renew the temporary "extra penny" tax. You should have heard the long silence which followed my suggestion of "If it is that hard to think of what to spend it on just let it expire and proove to be temporary."
They have never asked for my input again. Weird.

That's the trouble with a sales tax - tax and spend politicians call it a 'penny' tax. "Awww - it's just a penny! - lets go ahead and raise it. I'm sure we can think of something useful to spend it on!" I can hear it now.

I think the real solution should be to allocate votes according to proportion of income paid to taxes - you know : taxation with representation. The more you pay the more votes you get. Currently we have too many people with representation without taxation. If everyone were allocated 1 plus (tax adjustment) vote the people paying the most tax would be the ones with the most say in how it is spent. That is fair. People who advocate taxing them more would simply be giving the targeted group more political clout - and the more clout that group may want the more of their income it will cost. Lowing their tax rates would simply even the representation. That is the fairest and quickest way to determine if a flat tax or a progressive tax is better. Genius.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> I can rembmer getting a call years ago from some local leaders who asked me (and many other people) for input on what they should propose to spend the revenues on when asking local voters to renew the temporary "extra penny" tax.

We just went through that here to keep our 6% "temporarily" raised to 7%. Local cable was running a "documentary" about all the wonderful things that would be done with the extra tax... it made me wonder what was being done with the 6%, as if the extra percentage point was magical money that would be 100 times more effective.

With the higher rate: state-of-the-art schools, all students become Rhodes scholars, all teachers make 500K/year, streets paved with gold, solar-powered monorails.

Without: classes have to be held in dumpsters, every child becomes an axe murderer, all teachers have to sell heroin to pay their rent, all streets revert to dirt roads and travel by horse.

What was disgusting was how they brainwashed people into thinking "it's only a penny."

Yeah, it's only a penny... when you spend $1. How often do you buy something and only spend $1?

If you spend $500, it's $5, etc. They forgot to mention that.

 

[Brad M]

I can see by that statement we think a lot alike.

Back to the topic at hand, I file my taxes as soon as I have my W2. Every year, so far, I have overpaid so I have seen a return. If I knew I was going to have to pay, I'd wait until last minute.

 

[KurtEP]

Conceptually, I kind of like the Fair Tax idea. I haven't taken the time to read their book, but I can think of at least a few potential issues with a national sales tax.

First, it would pretty much obliterate the current tax treaty structure with the U.S. and the rest of the world, which is structured around income tax both at the individual and corporate levels. Maybe this wouldn't be the worst thing, but I'm sure it would cause much gnashing of teeth among our trading partners.

Next, how do you deal with corporations. Normally, they'd be viewed as legal persons and taxed, I'd assume, when they purchased something. That could put them at a competitive disadvantage with other business forms. Of course, you could sidestep the issue by exempting them. Unfortunately, most Americans seem to think that the taxes the corporations pay doesn't filter down to them in the end, though, so I can imagine that there might be a lot of resistance to this idea.

I also wonder about tax compliance issues. There are a lot of cash based businesses that would have an even bigger incentive than they have now to dodge taxes. Plus, how far down the ladder to collection efforts go? If I have a yard sale, do I have to collect tax? What if I sell something on Ebay? What if I sell something on Ebay every week? Also, will there be use taxes if I go out of the country? Will they go through my luggage when I come home from France? Can I set up a tax home in the U.S. and spend half my time abroad, thus reducing my tax bill?

In any event, you'd have to get a constitutional amendment to really give the plan legs. I can't imagine that would be easy. It's been a long time since I heard any significant buzz about serious tax reform, and that never went anywhere. That was merely tax reform, a constitutional amendment is much harder to get through.

Anyway, that's rambling about that topic for me :frowning:

Actually, I filled out my local tax sheet today. One page. It took about 15 minutes. It's a pity it's not all that easy.

 

[MarkHastings]

I understand what you're saying, but I wonder how well that would work out? In my town, half the town is super wealthy (i.e. million dollar homes) and the other half is super poor (i.e. trailer parks). If the rich really got to decide how the money was spent, you'd probably see a lot of that money going toward issue that benefit the rich and not the poor.

Flooding in the trailer parks (obviously) is a real big problem in my town. Do you think any of the tax money would be spent in controlling the river that creates the flooding? Probably not. The people with the most votes, would be the rich people.

 

[Eric_L]

Not to sound trite - but when was the last time anyone voted on flood controls? The wealthy of America have a long tradition of charitable giving - both privately and through authoring and supporting government programs. I doubt that is likely to change any time soon. There are also many times more lower and modest income households than wealthy ones.

If turns out to be too much a worry then well, we could always just increase the lower tax brackets and/or decrease the higher ones -thereby giving everyone equal votes!

 

[alan halvorson]

Why would you do this? I use TaxCut and file electronically. I don't like the charges for this but it sure is easy and worlds better than standing in line.

 

[KurtEP]

It's just me at my most masochistic :frowning:

I used TaxCut too. I like paper, largely because I'm sure it was sent that way. Maybe someday I'll completely trust computers for this kind of thing, but it's unlikely.

 

[KurtEP]

Deleted Double Post

 

[DaveF]

This is an interesting sentiment, but arguably incorrect based on what I've read. The ultra-wealthy have long given very large sums charitably -- though often post-humously. But proportionally, the middle and upper middle class are fairly stingy, giving away rather low percentages of their income. I don't know who you classify as wealthy -- $100k? $500k? $1M? $1B? And even the current hyper-wealthy are not specifically "charitable" in many cases. Many plead their monies are better spent creating new jobs than going into charities (a case worth making, IMO). I've heard that the extended Walton family are just plain stingy, but I don't know the facts. So, who's charitable?

As for the voting notion: wealth is not a measure of a man's citizenship and should never be.

But to taxes: Thankfully I'm getting a refund this year -- with recent wedding / marriage expenses I was hoping for some money back as a budget buffer. And if other tax schemes would lower my taxes, I'm all for it! As it is, I live in the one of the top taxed states -- great ol' NY. High sales, high gas, stratospheric property, and high income taxes. But it's where the jobs are at.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Sounds downright un-American!

Actually the franchise was originally limited to men who either owned real estate or had something like 20 GBP invested.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Furglisher double post.

 

[MarkHastings]

Agreed.

In fact, some of the least paying jobs are the same jobs that keep most towns running.

 

[Eric_L]

Nobody said wealth was a measure of a man's citizenship. Taxes, however, are one valid measure. My proposal is not to allocate votes by wealth or income (two seperate items) but instead by tax rate. If everyone pays the same rate then everyone gets the same vote. If one group feels the need to not pay tax - then they give up some of their voting power. If one group gets selected for a disproportionate burden - they get additional voting power. Quite simple.