HAPPY TAX DAY, now please bend over...

Ah, Spring, the most glorious time of year.

How does that song go: In the springtime, in the springtime, in the springtime of yore/ I met a young lady who looked like a...         but enough about Melania.

It's also Tax Time, time for those glorious bastions of unfettered capitalism to stick it to you.

"FEW THINGS TRANSFORM us into frustrated baboons like navigating Turbotax each year. It’s incredible any computers physically survive April.

"First there’s the maddening fact, when all is said and done, that the U.S. has something approaching a flat tax system. It’s true that, as right-wing think tanks constantly bleat, the top 1 percent pay a much higher rate than everyone else in federal income tax. But most people pay higher rates than the rich do in payroll and state and local taxes. Add everything together, and everyone from the middle class on up is paying about the same percentage in taxes overall."

The above are the opening paragraphs of this article:

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/17/happy-tax-day-heres-how-corporations-plan-to-screw-you-over/

Read it. Weep.

So you back a 35% corp tax?

What does it tell you that somebody does not know when it is happy tax day?

You pay quarterly too.

PkrBum wrote:So you back a 35% corp tax?

What I back is that corporations behave responsibly, being ever mindful of the duty they have to the society which has given them the extraordinary privilege of limited liability.

From the above article:

"Oxfam determined that as of the 2015 tax year, the 50 largest U.S. multinational corporations have a gargantuan $1.6 trillion stashed in other countries. That’s about one-tenth the size of the entire U.S. economy."

Large corporations aren't taxed on the overseas money they stash, which is why so many of them have moved their headquarters overseas.

This is from CNBC:

The 'Made in America' exodus

"America has lost the right to call a lot of iconic companies its own over the past several years.

"Whether through overseas acquisitions or inversion deals, in which a U.S. company reincorporates overseas following the purchase of a foreign company, names many people grew up with have flown the coop. But that could be changing.

"Last week Pfizer agreed to terminate its $160 billion acquisition of Botox maker Allergan one day after the U.S. Treasury unveiled new rules meant to curtail inversions. (The rules prevent stock accumulated through a foreign company's U.S. deals in the last three years to count toward the book value needed to meet the inversion threshold, according to Reuters.) And those changes may impact other pending inversion deals, such as Johnson Controls' $16.5 billion merger with Ireland's Tyco International and IHS's $13 billion takeover of London's Markit.

"When it comes to corporate expatriates, the cost isn't in jobs so much as it is lost tax revenue. But there's also a loss of business bragging rights for the United States. Here are 10 major companies that have moved their headquarters offshore."

— By Chris Morris, special to CNBC.com
Posted on 21 April 2016

Personally, I think the US could break up five of the ten largest corporations into five parts every five years--the five to be selected by lot at the start of every quinquennial. What a great New Years Spectacle that'd make.  

Maybe roast someone like Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan or Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs on a spit over a bed of coals at the same time. Think of the ratings!

We should scrap the IRS altogether and just tax all financial transactions, a couple mills on the dollar. When you deposit $100 in your bank account, you only get credit for $99.98. When you buy your groceries, the same thing happens when the money is moved into the grocer's account.

The common objection to such a scheme is that everyone would just use cash and avoid banks altogether but the solution to that is so obvious I won't insult your intelligence by mentioning it.

You pay quarterly too.

Not since I have been sick. When my wife retired, we simply upped the amount of tax they take out. Even though Illinois has a state income tax, they exempt state employee pensions. Illinois could get out of a fiscal bind by one simple bill being passed into law. All government pensions are taxed. Done. I had my first loss in my primary business in 36 years, but that is because it depends on me being there and I have reduced my time by 90% the last two years. Fortunately, we had a record in the other business which I am spending more time and is not as demanding. I do have to make an IRA deposit Tuesday, and write a pretty good check to the IRS because of the one business, but the days of quarterly payments are over.

I think most of America is ok with taxes because they don't have to write a check. It's taken bit by bit and they are used to it. It's really crazy when you think about it.

I was talking to woman the other day who was justifying the way they take taxes. Because of roads, or whatever you want to insert. It's still extortion.