black holes and gray matter. in one thousand tangos.

             
“The Romney tax returns are a prime example of our increasingly two-tiered bureaucratic system, in which there is one set of rules for poor and middle-class people, and another set of rules for people like Mitt Romney. The most common method of giving preferential treatment to the rich is through semantics. The old classic was that you called a rich kid blowing coke in his dorm room one thing, and you called a black street kid smoking crack something else, and the two got different penalties for the same crime – cocaine use. Or, and this one is still true in some states, the rich white kid who uses a fake ID to get into a club gets hit with a misdemeanor and a fine, while an immigrant who uses a fake ID to get a job at a chicken plant gets dragged in for a felony and can get up to 15 years in jail. Both offenses are simple forgery, but one is also called felony fraud and you get real prison time for it. In Mitt’s case, the money you and I make to support ourselves is called income and is taxed up to 35 percent, but the money Mitt makes raiding companies with borrowed money and extracting draconian management fees from captive companies that have no choice but to pay them is called “Carried Interest,” and taxed at a top rate of 15%.”
Matt Taibbi (via azspot)

(via azspot)

“This summer the Internal Revenue Service released data from the 400 individual income tax returns reporting the highest adjusted gross income. This elite ultrarich group earned on average $202 million in 2009, the latest year available. And buried in the data is the startling disclosure that six of the 400 paid no federal income tax.

The I.R.S. has never before disclosed that last fact.”
Can people as rich as Romney escape taxes? They can. | NYT (via markcoatney)

(via markcoatney)

Corporations Don’t Need a Tax Cut, So Why Is Obama Proposing One?

“The Obama administration is proposing to lower corporate taxes from the current 35 percent to 28 percent for most companies and to 25 percent for manufacturers.

The move is supposed to be “revenue neutral” – meaning the Administration is also proposing to close assorted corporate tax loopholes to offset the lost revenues. One such loophole allows corporations to park their earnings overseas where taxes are lower. Why isn’t the White House just proposing to close the loopholes without reducing overall corporate tax rates? That would generate more tax revenue that could be used for, say, public schools.

It’s not as if corporations are hurting. Quite the contrary. American companies are booking higher profits than ever. They’re sitting on $2 trillion of cash they don’t know what to do with. And it’s not as if corporate taxes are high. In fact, corporate tax receipts as a share of profits is now at its lowest level in at least 40 years. According to the Congressional Budget Office, corporate federal taxes paid last year dropped to 12.1 percent of profits earned from activities within the United States. That’s a gigantic drop from the 25.6 percent, on average, that corporations paid from 1987 to 2008.

And it’s not that corporations are paying an inordinate share of federal tax revenues. Here again, the reality is just the opposite. Corporate taxes have plummeted as a share of total federal revenues. In 1953, under President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, corporate taxes accounted for 32 percent of total federal tax revenues. Now they’re only 10 percent. […]

The Administration’s initiative doesn’t even make sense as a bargaining maneuver.”

— Robert Reich

New Rule: Rich People Who Complain About Being Vilified Should Be Vilified

It’s so hard for one person to tell another person what constitutes being “rich”, or what tax rate is “too much.” But I’ve done some math that indicates that, considering the hole this country is in, if you are earning more than a million dollars a year and are complaining about a 3.6% tax increase, then you are by definition a greedy asshole. 

And let’s be clear: that’s 3.6% only on income above 250 grand — your first 250, that’s still on the house. Now, this week we got some horrible news: that one in seven Americans are now living below the poverty line. But I want to point you to an American who is truly suffering: Ben Stein. You know Ben Stein, he had a game show on Comedy Central, does eye drop commercials, doesn’t believe in evolution? Yeah, that asshole. I kid Ben — so, the other day Ben wrote an article about his struggle. His struggle as a wealthy person facing the prospect of a slightly higher marginal tax rate. Ben whines in his article about how he’s worked for every dollar he has — if by work you mean saying the word “Bueller” in a movie 25 years ago. Which doesn’t bother me in the slightest, it’s just that at a time when people in America are desperate and you’re raking in the bucks promoting some sleazy Free Credit Score dot-com… maybe you shouldn’t be asking us for sympathy. Instead, you should be down on your knees thanking God and/or Ronald Reagan that you were lucky enough to be born in a country where a useless schmuck who contributes absolutely nothing to society can somehow manage to find himself in the top marginal tax bracket. 

Last week Mayor Bloomberg of New York complained that all his wealthy friends are very upset with mean ol’ President Poopy-Pants: He said they all say the same thing: “I knew I was going to have to pay more taxes. But I didn’t expect to be vilified.” Poor billionaires — they just can’t catch a break.

But you are the villains. Who do you think outsourced all the jobs, destroyed the unions, and replaced workers with desperate immigrants and teenagers in China. Joe the Plumber?

And right now, while we run trillion dollar deficits, Republicans are holding America hostage to the cause of preserving the Bush tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest 1% of people, many of them dead. They say that we need to keep taxes on the rich low because they’re the job creators. They’re not. They’re much more likely to save money through mergers and outsourcing and cheap immigrant labor, and pass the unemployment along to you. 

One of my favorites, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann said, “I don’t know where they’re going to get all this money, because we’re running out of rich people in this country.” Actually, we have more billionaires here in the U.S. than all the other countries in the top ten combined, and their wealth grew 27% in the last year. Did yours? Truth is, there are only two things that the United States is not running out of: Rich people and bullshit.

Here’s the truth: When you raise taxes slightly on the wealthy, it obviously doesn’t destroy the economy — we know this, because we just did it — remember the ‘90’s? It wasn’t that long ago. You were probably listening to grunge music, or dabbling in witchcraft. Clinton moved the top marginal rate from 36 to 39% — and far from tanking, the economy did so well he had time to get his dick washed.

Even 39% isn’t high by historical standards. Under Eisenhower, the top tax rate was 91%. Under Nixon, it was 70%. Obama just wants to kick it back to 39 — just three more points for the very rich. Not back to 91, or 70. Three points. And they go insane. Steve Forbes said that Obama, quote “believes from his inner core that people… above a certain income have more than they should have and that many probably have gotten it from ill-gotten ways.” Which they have. Steve Forbes, of course, came by his fortune honestly: he inherited it from his gay egg-collecting, Elizabeth Taylor fag-hagging father, who inherited it from his father. Of course then they moan about the inheritance tax, how the government took 55% percent when Daddy died — which means you still got 45% for doing nothing more than starting out life as your father’s pecker-snot.

We don’t hate rich people, but have a little humility about how you got it and stop complaining. Maybe the worst whiner of all: Stephen Schwarzman, #69 on Forbes’ list of richest Americans, compared Obama’s tax hike to “when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” Wow. If Obama were Hitler, Mr. Schwarzman, I think your tax rate would be the least of your worries.

— Bill Maher

©2011 Kateoplis