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DaveDude
No Fear
join:1999-09-01
New Jersey

DaveDude

Member

If the facts dont fit...

I have never seen such grandstanding before in my life, with this administration. Suddenly because they said, its factual. How about lowering taxes, and free market healthcare ?
papi4baby
join:2008-01-19
Callaway, MD

papi4baby

Member

said by DaveDude:

I have never seen such grandstanding before in my life, with this administration. Suddenly because they said, its factual. How about lowering taxes, and free market healthcare ?
I agree, please so this and you should have alot of haters turn very happy.
rdmiller
join:2005-09-23
Richmond, VA

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Better still! NO taxes and FREE healthcare!
sonicmerlin
join:2009-05-24
Cleveland, OH

sonicmerlin

Member

rd, your biting yet subtle sarcasm brought a smile to my face.

IT Guy
Ow, My Balls
Premium Member
join:2004-07-29
Las Cruces, NM
Cisco ASA 5505
Cisco Meraki MX64

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This is off-topic, but an issue that bugs me all the same. Admittedly, I am no tax expert by any means. But I think it is extremely unrealistic to expect taxes to go down at all in the face of our extreme debt and economic woes.

Can someone explain to me how we can pay down our country's debt without raising taxes?

jester121
Premium Member
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL

jester121

Premium Member

Tax rate cuts stimulate the economy every time they've been tried, the problem is that the crooks in Washington (and in nearly every state capital) won't curb their spending along with it to balance a budget and pay off debt.
openbox9
Premium Member
join:2004-01-26
71144

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said by IT Guy:

Can someone explain to me how we can pay down our country's debt without raising taxes?
Cut spending. It's no different than balancing your checkbook. Basic principle, don't spend more than you earn.

huntml
join:2002-01-23
Mullica Hill, NJ

3 edits

huntml

Member

According to figures I've seen, only about 19% of US govt spending is both discretionary and unrelated to defense/'war on terror'/etc.

And non-discretionary things like Medicare and Social Security are growing at rates that are multiples of everything else.

This being the case, you could cut ALL of the discretionary spending not related to defense and security -- all transportation spending, all non-legal and non-defense regulatory spending on things like FDA, OSHA, FTC, FCC, EPA, welfare, etc. -- and we'd still be in a huge hole, budget-wise.
wentlanc
You Can't Fix Dumb..
join:2003-07-30
Maineville, OH

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Get corporations to pay their fair share, rather than having lots of loopholes to hide their money in!

Transmaster
Don't Blame Me I Voted For Bill and Opus
join:2001-06-20
Cheyenne, WY

Transmaster

Member

said by wentlanc:

Get corporations to pay their fair share, rather than having lots of loopholes to hide their money in!
How long is it going to be before people realize corporations do not pay the taxes that are levied on them they just past it on to who ever it is that consumes what ever it is they make.
nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD

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said by jester121:

Tax rate cuts stimulate the economy every time they've been tried, ....
right wing myth. all available data shows the stimulative effects of tax cuts are small, at best.

and tax cuts DO NOT pay for themselves.

from the WSJ: »blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2 ··· s-faded/
In a letter to Spratt released Friday, CBO director Peter Orszag said, “The short-term effects of EGTRRA and JGTRRA in stimulating aggregate demand in the economy have largely dissipated by now, and the supply-side effects of those policies are uncertain but are probably small.”

Congressional budget office fact sheet: »budget.senate.gov/democr ··· 2702.pdf

CBO Confirms that the Tax Cut is the Primary Cause for Deterioration of the Budget. These
new estimates confirm – despite continuing efforts by the White House to mislead the public about
this – that the President’s tax cut enacted last year is the single biggest cause of the deterioration in
the budget.

jester121
Premium Member
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL

jester121

Premium Member

said by nasadude:

right wing myth. all available data shows the stimulative effects of tax cuts are small, at best.

and tax cuts DO NOT pay for themselves.

from the WSJ: »blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2 ··· s-faded/
In a letter to Spratt released Friday, CBO director Peter Orszag said, “The short-term effects of EGTRRA and JGTRRA in stimulating aggregate demand in the economy have largely dissipated by now, and the supply-side effects of those policies are uncertain but are probably small.”

Congressional budget office fact sheet: »budget.senate.gov/democr ··· 2702.pdf

CBO Confirms that the Tax Cut is the Primary Cause for Deterioration of the Budget. These
new estimates confirm – despite continuing efforts by the White House to mislead the public about
this – that the President’s tax cut enacted last year is the single biggest cause of the deterioration in
the budget.

Typical left wing knee jerk propaganda.

(Quoting a publication like the WSJ is nice, but when they're relying on the numbers from the partisan CBO it's kind of moot. And pay special attention to the URL in your second reference:
budget.senate.gov/democratic/pre···2702.pdf

For an equally partisan response:

»www.heritage.org/Press/N ··· 807a.cfm

Throwing around phrases like "all available data" doesn't help you make your point, it just makes you sound like you think you're smarter than everyone else.
nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD

1 edit

nasadude

Member

said by jester121:

Typical left wing knee jerk propaganda.

....
I expected that response. The congressional budget office is widely accepted as non-partisan, with studies, analysis, etc. being requested and used by both republicans and democrats.

as for the heritage foundation, if they said the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, I would not believe it unless I had observed it myself.

forgot to mention: everyone knows facts have a liberal bias
openbox9
Premium Member
join:2004-01-26
71144

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Make no mistake, drastic debts require drastic measures to pay for them. There's a lot of fat wrapped up in various pieces of government. Tightening the belt isn't palatable for some, but there are a lot of programs that can be downsized or cut altogether. Federal jobs would most likely need to be cut along with several social and other government programs. None of which will be tolerated by special interests in Washington, so I predict continued growth in our debt.
openbox9

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Corporate tax rates are higher than individual tax rates

knightmb
Everybody Lies
join:2003-12-01
Franklin, TN

knightmb

Member

said by openbox9:

Corporate tax rates are higher than individual tax rates
They are except that's only the surface. Underneath the higher tax rate is tons of loops holes that basically eliminate tax.

As a business owner myself, I've yet to ever pay any tax since start my own business. As an individual, I was paying tax every year due to my low deductible.

The only reason I know is because I've always done my own taxes. When you are an individual (or married), about the only thing that helps is donations and investment accounts.

As a business, suddenly an entire world of *loopholes* opens. Now, everything I do is a *business expense* to some degree and while 50% off here and there isn't much, it all adds up in the end.

Every year, I don't pay a dime to the IRS and still get money back. Before, I payed out a portion of every pay check only to get some of it back next year (but my net gain was still really a loss). As a small business, I know what I could do if I churned more employees and money.

The tax system in this country is way, way, way over-biased to business. So much so that I tell my friends to start their own business and run it at a loss because you'll come up ahead in taxes every year for only a $15 a year fee for the business license.

Yes, I just gave away some expense tax advice, consider it a gift.

huntml
join:2002-01-23
Mullica Hill, NJ

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said by openbox9:

Corporate tax rates are higher than individual tax rates
True as far as it goes, but I've talked about this with several self-employed or incorporated people I know, who all agreed that if they were paying anything close to the marginal rate, they'd have fired their accountants for incompetence years ago.
huntml

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said by openbox9:

Make no mistake, drastic debts require drastic measures to pay for them. There's a lot of fat wrapped up in various pieces of government. Tightening the belt isn't palatable for some, but there are a lot of programs that can be downsized or cut altogether. Federal jobs would most likely need to be cut along with several social and other government programs. None of which will be tolerated by special interests in Washington, so I predict continued growth in our debt.
Yes, but even if all the discretionary parts of the budget were comprised of 50% waste, you'd only be able to shave about 10% of the bottom line. That might get us just about to the black now, or slightly above the line, but at the rate entitlements are growing we'd be in the same position in a few years.
huntml

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said by nasadude:

I expected that response. The congressional budget office is widely accepted as non-partisan, with studies, analysis, etc. being requested and used by both republicans and democrats.

as for the heritage foundation, if they said the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, I would not believe it unless I had observed it myself.

forgot to mention: everyone knows facts have a liberal bias
I've never heard a sitting congressman or senator OF EITHER PARTY accuse the CBO of being biased.

In fact, I'm sure that if there were any such case to be made, it would be part of the standard set of talking points for whichever party was in the minority at any given time, and you'd have been hearing it every Sunday on the talking head shows for years now, regardless of which party was in control of Congress.

Rogue Wolf
An Easy Draw of a Sad Few
join:2003-08-12
Troy, NY

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Sadly, many people keep forgetting this. When faced with higher taxes, a corporation's executive staff will not say "Well, let's pay ourselves less to make up for it", they will say "Well, let's raise prices to make up for it" or "Well, let's cut back on service/employees/benefits to make up for it".

Let's make taxes fairer for everyone, sure, but let's also remember that corporations get their money from us.

huntml
join:2002-01-23
Mullica Hill, NJ

4 edits

huntml

Member

said by Rogue Wolf:

Sadly, many people keep forgetting this. When faced with higher taxes, a corporation's executive staff will not say "Well, let's pay ourselves less to make up for it", they will say "Well, let's raise prices to make up for it" or "Well, let's cut back on service/employees/benefits to make up for it".

Let's make taxes fairer for everyone, sure, but let's also remember that corporations get their money from us.
I agree with you in principle, but the problem is that corporations DO NOT WANT TO PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE. It is the fiduciary responsibility of a corporation, after all, to maximize return on equity, and this necessarily involves attempting to minimize tax liabilities. Taxes are only applied to *profits*, after all, which makes them a direct hit on return to shareholders.

The Obama administration put forward a series of proposals intended to eliminate corporations' abilities to dodge taxes by shuffling their profits to offshore corporations. You know, the whole 'three thousand US corporate subsidiaries all headquartered in the same Cayman Islands office building' issue. It has been uniformly lobbied against the by most if not all of the corporate and CoC lobbying groups (even the ones that are more pro-Democrat and try to develop reputations for good corporate citizenship like the Business Software Alliance), and attacked by pro-business (mostly, but not all, Republican) legislators, and is having a hard time moving forward.
openbox9
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join:2004-01-26
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I'm talking more than just shaving discretionary spending That's also why I said it won't be tolerated by special interests groups.
openbox9

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said by knightmb:

As a business owner myself, I've yet to ever pay any tax since start my own business.
I have an LLC. I understand how taxes work. I also understand that if you continuously run your business at a loss, then you eventually raise the red flag inviting the IRS to pay you a visit.
said by knightmb:

about the only thing that helps is donations and investment accounts.
And personal deductions for dependents, mortgage interest, school interest, childcare expenses, etc... There are several credits and deductions that many taxpayers qualify for.
openbox9

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I could say the same for a lot of individual taxpayers as well. It may not be as easy to find the deductions, but it can be done.

huntml
join:2002-01-23
Mullica Hill, NJ

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said by openbox9:

I'm talking more than just shaving discretionary spending That's also why I said it won't be tolerated by special interests groups.
You are right. The obvious places where there is money to be shaved from the federal budget -- social security, Medicare, and defense -- are the ones with the widest, best organized lobbies, and the ones for whom people who'd go after them would be most susceptible to demagoguery by their defenders.

I really don't see a solution. I think the entire country is going to have to go through a California-style fiscal meltdown before anything is done to get the budget in order. Cutting spending is politically untenable, as is raising taxes, the baby boomer retirement wave is just at its beginning, so things are just going to keep getting worse until the dollar and the market for US securities collapse, and we wake up one day in late-80's Argentina with hyperinflation and a government whose finances have completely collapsed.

I personally am glad that my family still has a large tract of rural land, and I still remember how to farm from my boyhood days. I think they are going to come in handy some day pretty soon.
huntml

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said by openbox9:

I could say the same for a lot of individual taxpayers as well. It may not be as easy to find the deductions, but it can be done.
Not to the same degree. If you are a wage-earner in the legal economy, the provisions for sheltering your income from taxes simply are not there to anywhere near the extent they are if you are an entrepreneur or investor.

I personally think that the only way to fix things is to go to a consumption-based tax scheme, but that's not going to happen either.
openbox9
Premium Member
join:2004-01-26
71144

openbox9

Premium Member

said by huntml:

Not to the same degree. If you are a wage-earner in the legal economy, the provisions for sheltering your income from taxes simply are not there to anywhere near the extent they are if you are an entrepreneur or investor.
Of course the tax benefits for individuals aren't as great as for businesses, entrepreneurs, or investors, but neither are the risks.
said by huntml:

I personally think that the only way to fix things is to go to a consumption-based tax scheme, but that's not going to happen either.
I don't believe solely using consumption-based tax revenue is a viable option. As soon as you increase taxes on the things people buy, consumer-based discretionary spending will decrease. Now if you want to cut federal spending across the board, remove unnecessary and wasteful govt programs, and move to a fair and equitable flat tax to greatly simplify the tax code, I'd interest.

huntml
join:2002-01-23
Mullica Hill, NJ

3 edits

huntml

Member

said by openbox9:

Of course the tax benefits for individuals aren't as great as for businesses, entrepreneurs, or investors, but neither are the risks.
That's a separate issue, but in offering this response you seem to be conceding that your previous statement
quote:
I could say the same for a lot of individual taxpayers as well. It may not be as easy to find the deductions, but it can be done.
isn't exactly defensible.
quote:
I don't believe solely using consumption-based tax revenue is a viable option. As soon as you increase taxes on the things people buy, consumer-based discretionary spending will decrease.
True, but there is an argument to be made that modern economies are too driven by consumer spending, and that shifting tax structures to incentivize saving (lowering the cost of capital) and moderate consumer spending would serve to make them more stable and productive in the long term.
quote:
Now if you want to cut federal spending across the board, remove unnecessary and wasteful govt programs, and move to a fair and equitable flat tax to greatly simplify the tax code, I'd interest.

Depends on how you define 'fair and equitable.' A *straight* flat tax is hardly fair to my thinking, as it is income-regressive, and I happen to feel that income progressivity is a necessary requisite for fairness.

But I would certainly support a modified flat tax that was structured so as to exempt some basic level of income from taxation before kicking in.

If some of the Cato or AEI types put forward such a plan, I think they'd get a lot of lefty types to jump on board.

Flat tax advocates seem to oppose progressivity on principle, though.

With regard to cutting federal spending across the board, I don't think this is either a good idea (I think that we should be spending MORE on some areas, and A LOT LESS on others), OR that it is tenable politically. I agree that a lot could and should be done to remove wasteful spending from the budget and make the government more efficient and effective, but there are political problems there too, which we've already touched on elsewhere.
wentlanc
You Can't Fix Dumb..
join:2003-07-30
Maineville, OH

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You support metered billing for internet access, which means paying for what you use. Why is that not ok here? Sure, some may spend less, but others would pay more. I think the real answer is that everyone would end up paying their fair share, and certain people really don't want that.

cw
openbox9
Premium Member
join:2004-01-26
71144

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said by huntml:

you seem to be conceding that your previous statement
No concession here. Several deductions and credits exist for many individuals taxpayers and they're aren't as easy find and exploit.
said by huntml:

True, but there is an argument to be made that modern economies are too driven by consumer spending, and that shifting tax structures to incentivize saving (lowering the cost of capital) and moderate consumer spending would serve to make them more stable and productive in the long term.
Valid argument with economic potential. Shifting to a consumption-based tax system, while potentially taming consumer gluttonous spending, would still require slashing the federal budget otherwise we'll be in the same situation, only worse. There would also be a long painful transition for both consumers and the government if the switch is made. Just one more unfortunate reason why the status quo will most likely remain in place.
said by huntml:

Depends on how you define 'fair and equitable.' A *straight* flat tax is hardly fair to my thinking, as it is income-regressive, and I happen to feel that income progressivity is a necessary requisite for fairness.
We'll diverge on beliefs here. If you make $1 and I make $2 and we both receive the same benefits and protections that the fed govt provides, why should I pay more to the fed govt to provide those benefits and protections?
said by huntml:

With regard to cutting federal spending across the board, I don't think this is either a good idea (I think that we should be spending MORE on some areas, and A LOT LESS on others)
I should have qualified my statement a little more. I agree that balancing spending in the fed budget is necessary as well as cutting the govt's bottom line.