You didn build that !

I have to laugh. I have had several conversations with a hard core far right Chicagoland neighbor of mine over the last few years. He always said we must cut spending, cut taxes, cut government programs, and quit giving handouts to the freeloaders ect. All the usual stuff. Two Toyotas and a Lexus in the driveway, IPhone and all the stuff, along with three kids, two in high school and one in college.
Then he lost his job as a biotech engineer when his company moved its research to India about 1 1/2 to 2 years ago. His wife became ill and lost her job. First his family lost their health care, then he couldn't pay the tuition for his daughter to stay in college, then his unemployment ran out. The daughter got a job at 7-11 and the high school kids cut lawns and shoveled snow last winter and did whatever they could to make a little money. When I came home from the cottage last week their house was empty. A neighbor told me that they were evicted and all of their belongings were put on the curb. They were going to try to live in their cars until they could find somewhere to live. It serves them right, they got what they asked for the lazy freeloaders! Next time they may be more careful of what they wish for.

There is a saying that money will always migrate to where it is best treated.

If someone elsewhere in the world can provide a delivered service at a lower cost with same quality, eventually they will be awarded the contract. Tariffs can stop that, but that just shifts the cost to others.

Best way to stay afloat is to be the best in your industry.

I thought you guys would be dancing in the streets with this story. You succeeded in getting another family of freeloaders off the dole. It's what your plan is all about. Those lazy loafers should get a job, why should we have these entitlement programs that encourage people not to look for work? I think the IRS should investigate them to see if they paid their taxes on on their lawn mowing and snow shoving jobs. I'll bet they paid a higher tax rate than Mittens, as they should.
BTW, the developing story of Mittens failure to pay ANY income tax for the years he is refusing to release his returns is interesting to me, how about any of you tax payers.

john b wrote: BTW, the developing story of Mittens failure to pay ANY income tax for the years he is refusing to release his returns is interesting to me, how about any of you tax payers.

A state election and 2 presidential primaries and now the best they can do is an anonymous source says he has not paid taxes in 10 years.

This is the way O has won every election he has been in, throw a ton of crap out there and hope that some of it sticks.

Sums up where we are.

An article from the Czech Republic Observer.

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the Presidency.

It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama Presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their President.

The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America.

Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.

The Republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their President."

LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!
An editorial in the Czech Republic Observer.
I may need oxygen after I stop laughing!!!!!!!!

Romney = Tax harvesting.     There is your zero tax rate.

Not that it is illegal, but it sure isn't right in my book.   I suspect Romney thinks the same, otherwise he'd release the records too.



Really, could someone here explain how a middle class family making 50K yearly pays 25%, and Romney making 20 mill, pays 13.9%?

"avoidance" or "evasion" make your choice.

If you have the money available to employ an accountant or tax specialist then one of the above methods is a very legitimate method to reduce your tax burden. The UK is full of schemes which make this possible, I am sure the US is no different, as long as you work within the law then why should there be an issue?

If Romney really just blatntly didn't pay taxes do you really think he would have got this far, (Governor, Pres canidate etc) without the government coming after him?

If he on the other hand through legal loopholes, and good acountants paid little or even no tax because the system allows it and his people knew the system then good for him. You may not like it but given the same advantage all of you would take it.

Romney, like Obama both know that giving the press and the opponent something to gripe about they can control takes the pressure of other items, allowing them time to stratigize their campaign.

Every day we hear new stories of government waste, parties, golden toilet seats, benefits and entitlement abuse, and congress taking more liberties and the answer is tax. No one seems to have anything they can cut.

Bothe sides are going to promise the world and if lucky we get 5% of what is promised. Both tell stories and lies about the other party. Question is, which side tells the story you want to hear? Then you vote.

harddock wrote: golden toilet seats, benefits and entitlement abuse, and congress taking more liberties .

Jack(WW), I want to buy you a beer. And yes John and Seth, I'll give yall a dime for the toilet.

I should know better than to feed into this but it is Friday and raining so...

when you include FICA taxes it is pretty close to a 25% tax rate for 50k of taxable income... minus all the allowed deductions of course.

I don’t think any reasonable person is thinking that Romney has broken any laws, half the country technically doesn’t pay any federal income tax and certainly they are not all breaking the law. But there was a time when we held a person that wanted to be the leader of the free world to a slightly higher standard than someone who technically didn’t break any laws.    It seems silly to even suggest now that there was a time when a president could say something like ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country and we wouldn’t spend the next week debating on whether he was a communist or a socialist.

The thing that should make you fearful for the future of your country that so many have fought and died for is that it only costs these billionaires 1% of their income to buy your votes so that the laws are written so that they can spend .1% of their income on great accountants/lawyers that allow them to save 15-35% of their income on taxes.    Billionaires don’t mind large deficits and debts, once they get big enough the interest rates will be high enough on government bonds for them to pull their money out of the Ponzi scheme that is the stock market and lend it to the government make a safe 7-8% a year untaxable for the next hundred generations of their families… while your kids are born in debt to their kids… the new Feudalism.    

A tax code isn’t designed to make people feel better, or punish the rich. Taxes are necessary to pay for what we get and what we have already spent. You may think you or your daddy built your business without any help from anyone but if you can’t minimally acknowledge the soldiers currently overseas protecting you and everything you have… then move to Mexico build a wall around your compound, hire a bunch of armed guards and good luck to you.. but get the hell out of the country that great men have and continue to fight and die to provide for you. For the rest of us we elect a government, decide what we want it to do and empower it to collect taxes to pay for it. We have created an income tax system where economics and fairness is taken into account. We take economics into account to encourage behavior that benefits all by driving growth. One of the most important drivers of growth in a functioning market is access to capital by those that would innovate. Encouraging those that have amassed capital in quantities greater than they can put back into the market by spending to invest it rather than burying it is key to creating the type of vibrant and growing economy that raises everyone up, cures cancer, invents gps based cruised control for watersports boats, and god willing gets a ski nautique to do 70mph.

15% Capital gains rate isn’t something at helps retirees.. the typical retiree is not making 250000 in capital gains a year and if they are paying the same tax rate as someone that is working their arse off to make 250000 a year while putting the kids through college wouldn’t exactly be an punishing burden.   The 15% capital gains rate was a give-away to wallstreet that Clinton and Newt share responsibility for, it has some economic justification in that it theoretically encourages investment by increasing the reward and decreasing the risk, however in practice it has proven to be a really bad idea.
Unlike a tax code that favors work, business profit, or even just quarterly dividends.. Favoring capital gains has led to many private sector companies to make short sighted decisions that increase their stock price temporarily but never actually show profits. (It also contributed very heavily into the housing bubble). Some of these stock price driven moves which have proven to be long term failures… like moving production to china… buying up all your competitors and “consolidating” operations, making a gabillion loans to people that can’t afford them and then bundling them up and selling them off.   Or basically everything companies like Bain do when they buy a company and sell it off rather than transform it into something that produces long term profit.    I am not saying that these things are necessarily something we don’t need in the economy … but we now have 15 years of data showing that we should not have a tax code that favors them 2:1 over actual work, or actually building a business and making profit. It has led to an America that builds less, has less opportunity for workers/builders and more for inheritors,… and it concentrated great wealth in the hands of a few - while not achieving the goal of making it easier for the average entrepreneur to access capital to start a business.

You combine that great wealth now with the ability to spend whatever they want to influence an election or the electorate- without even having to disclose their activities to influence that election and I don’t see how you ever get that one fixed.    But it probably doesn’t start with cutting out the middle man and simply putting .01%er directly into office..

But but joe…. What about the golden toilet seats, the welfare queens, and the out of control spending… and all the waste… it’s the spending dummy.   Yes there is some waste… but it aint enough to make much of a difference. All this spending cutting talk doesn’t actually cut spending… it just moves it to the state level, or gets you to spend more of your money on things the government could have provided you cheaper like health insurance, disability insurance, public education, etc. It also serves the inheritor class because they would much rather be taxed at the state level on their property, rather than at the federal level on their income. The rest of the 99.98% of us however feel those property taxes as much or more than we would the income taxes. It also works heavily against the small business owner/entrepreneur who can’t avoid state property taxes or health care costs… which kills the innovation that made this country great.

So what's the answer, OBamma for another 4 years and vote the Dems in to take control of Congress and the Senate and the country will get backon track?

What other choice have we left ourselves? The republican party has all but jumped the shark here, we are miles right of Reagan and these high-paid special interest groups are taking out in primaries any conservative willing to acknowledge the government has any role to play in society. Romney has been pushed so far to the Right of his own positions from 10 years ago that it is hard to believe he is the same person. If by some miracle Romney gets elected and actually implements the budget and tax code he claims to support on his website the results will destroy the republican party for at least a generation.   Bush put a pretty good hurt to it already, but with a few wars as a distraction and by not actually limiting any spending he was apparently able to distract attention from the fact that all the economic justifications that were used to justify his tax cuts have now been tested and have proven completely and utterly to be failures, we got all the debt and none of the growth. Maybe the death of the republican party is what is needed to bring up a viable alternative.. but with how money driven and centrist to right centrist the democratic party has become the alternative is likely to come from the left.   

Maybe there is no solution, maybe the rich guys are now rich enough, have enough unfettered access to media and enough americans are willing to accept the fake news that is delivered to them by that media that those that have now will always have and those that don’t won’t ever have much of a chance to.. and maybe as long as we have 500 channels and big macs we just won’t care.

Riley wrote: So what's the answer

Simple, it's time to flush the toilet. Vote the skum out on both sides of the isle starting at the top.