RE: taxes - I do not enjoy paying for wars I do not support and did not vote for.
This is really the point. We can raise taxes to 100%, but if we continue to allow the military-industrial complex to wag the dog politically, we're just going to spend it all and more on *ahem* defense spending. Getting our financial house in order is a matter of reprioritizing government spending toward deficit elimination and debt reduction at the expense of military spending, which currently constitutes approximately 54% of the American budget.
A daffy Wall Street Journal editorial about the ???vanishing millionaires??? of Oregon lit a spark in a fairly humorless week. It offers the usual boilerplate about the rich fleeing to tax-friendlier provinces because their state raised taxes, but this time with a great visual: ???One-quarter of the rich tax filers seem to have gone missing.???
Where did they go? You picture the millionaires riding the rails to Idaho, their hobo bundles weighted with gold bars. Or a new dust-bowl-type migration of BMWs loaded up with Birkin handbags and granny, all headed to Nevada. Or Portland liberals erecting a guillotine in Pioneer Courthouse Square and sending the millionaires to the next world.
Now, I appreciate that state tax policy plays a role in attracting businesses and high-income taxpayers. But the Journal presents no evidence of a stampede out of Oregon after the 2009 tax raise. (Thanks, guys, for all those numbers, but actually they don???t make your case.)
???The state expected 38,000 Oregonians to pay the higher tax,??? the Journal states, ???but only 28,000 did.??? The 10,000 ???missing??? taxpayers probably did move ??? to a lower income level that???s not high enough to activate the new tax. In case you didn???t notice, there was an economic recession going on.
In a study titled ???Dear Wall Street Journal: No Need to File a Missing Persons Report,??? the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy noted the unexpected rise in the number of taxpayers earning under $100,000. It???s possible that lower-earning peasants rushed into Oregon as the earls took flight, but then again, wouldn???t a lousy economy be a better explanation for fewer rich people?
In noting Oregon???s new income tax rates on high earners, the Journal ominously adds, ???Only New York City???s rate is higher.???
Yeah, and all those empty apartments on Park Avenue are now filled with squatters and their Sterno cans.
The Journal contends that what happened in Oregon is ???an instant replay??? of what happened in Maryland in 2008, after the legislature passed a millionaire???s tax (which has just expired).
???There, roughly one-third of the state???s millionaire households vanished from the tax rolls after rates went up.???
Did they really go poof? Or did the financial collapse of 2008 turn many million-dollar incomes into less-than-million-dollar incomes? Stock market crashes can do that.
More than one right-leaning think tank has called Rhode Island a ???tax hell.??? This is something of an exaggeration. (???Tax purgatory??? might be more like it.) In any case, critics of Rhode Island tax policies taxes often include the cheesy claim that 8,200 taxpayers fled the Ocean State from 2005 to 2006, before the recession hit.
The less picturesque truth is that the Bush tax cuts and the doubling of the child tax credit had freed many middle-class Americans of any income-tax liability. They didn???t necessarily go anywhere ??? they just stopped paying what little federal income taxes they were paying before.
From 2005 to 2006, nearly 2 million Americans left the federal income tax rolls. Where did they all flee to, Mars?
A Tax Foundation report notes that 2008 was a record year for non-payers of the federal income tax ??? that is, those who got back every dollar withheld from their paychecks. ???Non-paying status used to be a sure sign of poverty or near-poverty,??? Scott A. Hodge writes, ???but Congress and the president have changed the tax laws to pull much of the middle class into the growing pool of non-payers.???
Anyone can spin a yarn about millionaire refugees lining up at the state border after a tax was raised. It???s easy. All you have to do is ignore the economy.
Syndicated columnist Froma Harrop is a member of The Providence (R.I.) Journal editorial board.
and what's more:
Chuck Sheketoff, director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy says the WSJ's take is "ludicrous." Sheketoff, who advocated for the tax increases, says the editorial confuses correlation with causation. Put simply, the tax measures did pass and tax revenues did drop???but one did not cause the other. "It's like saying that if a rooster crows at dawn the rooster's crowing is what causes the sun to come up," Sheketoff says. He says the shortfall in revenues compared to projections reflects the fact that when the projections were made, in the middle of 2009, forecasters under-estimated how severe the recession was and how long it would last. He says there is no evidence in the editorial or in any data source that high-income taxpayers have fled Oregon. Since the tax, which voters approved in January 2010, is retroactive to 2009, they would have had to have left the state retroactively, which is pretty tough to accomplish, even for the rich. "There is absolutely no evidence there is increased migration," Sheketoff says. In fact, figures released by the state earlier this month showed more Oregonians filing tax returns than expected, not fewer. The problem, Sheketoff says, is not that "millionaires" moved away but that high-income filers earned dramatically less in capital gains, and in some cases, salary and therefore paid less in taxes.
sabadabada said:
DrWu said:
I will be phone banking tomorrow night for a school construction bond and operating levy that we have on the ballott next month. Looking at a $3000+ increase in my property taxes. So yeah I'm in. I'lll sign up for a higher rate on capital gains too. As long as we can raise the max bracket to 39%. Plus over 2 million should be 50%.
Oregon Measure 66-67 failure now national news by In the news Tuesday, December 21. 2010
Oregon???s Vanishing Millionaires
The Wall Street Journal Editorial
December 21, 2010
Oregon raised its income tax on the richest 2% of its residents last year to fix its budget hole, but now the state treasury admits it collected nearly one-third less revenue than the bean counters projected. The sun also rose in the east, and the Cubs didn???t win the World Series.In 2009 the state legislature raised the tax rate to 10.8% on joint-filer income of between $250,000 and $500,000, and to 11% on income above $500,000. Only New York City???s rate is higher. Oregon???s liberal voters ratified the tax increase on individuals and another on businesses in January of this year, no doubt feeling good about their ???shared sacrifice.???
Congratulations. Instead of $180 million collected last year from the new tax, the state received $130 million. The Eugene Register-Guard newspaper reports that after the tax was raised ???income tax and other revenue collections began plunging so steeply that any gains from the two measures seemed trivial.???
One reason revenues are so low is that about one-quarter of the rich tax filers seem to have gone missing. The state expected 38,000 Oregonians to pay the higher tax, but only 28,000 did. Funny how that always happens. These numbers are in line with a Cascade Policy Institute study, based on interstate migration patterns, predicting that the tax surcharge would lead to 80,000 fewer wealthy tax filers in Oregon over the next decade.
The tax wasn???t enacted into law until June 2009 but was retroactively applied to January 1, 2009. So for the first half of the year wealthy Oregon residents weren???t able to take steps to avoid the tax ambush because they didn???t see it coming. This suggests that a bigger revenue loss from tax mitigation strategies will show up on tax return data in 2010 and 2011. The Revenue Office has already downwardly revised tax collection projections for the first three years by one-third.
The biggest loss of revenues came from capital gains receipts. The new 11% top tax rate applies to stock and asset sales, which means that Oregonians now pay virtually the highest capital gains tax in North America. Instead of $3.5 billion of capital gains in 2009, there was only $2 billion to tax???43% less. Successful entrepreneurs like Nike owner Phil Knight don???t get rich by being fools with their money. They don???t sell tens of millions of dollars of assets when capital gains taxes go up.
The tax defenders in the Salem legislature blame the decline on the state???s lousy economy, with unemployment having risen to 10.6%. ???This is a temporary thing,??? argues Phil Barnhart, a Democrat who helped to write the tax increase, adding that he???s ???pleasantly surprised??? that only one-third of the estimated revenue was lost.
All of this is an instant replay of what happened in Maryland in 2008 when the legislature in Annapolis instituted a millionaire tax. There roughly one-third of the state???s millionaire households vanished from the tax rolls after rates went up.
If Salem officials want to find where the millionaires went, they might start the search in Texas, the state that leads the nation in job creation???and has a top income and capital gains tax rate 11 percentage points lower than Oregon's.
RE: taxes - I do not enjoy paying for wars I do not support and did not vote for.
This is really the point. We can raise taxes to 100%, but if we continue to allow the military-industrial complex to wag the dog politically, we're just going to spend it all and more on *ahem* defense spending. Getting our financial house in order is a matter of reprioritizing government spending toward deficit elimination and debt reduction at the expense of military spending, which currently constitutes approximately 54% of the American budget.
Yeah, I wouldn't mind a tax hike on the middle class, but I think we're paying for wars that are not productive.
I would love to see the federal government standardize taxation on online sales too. Tallying up all my online purchases to pay Illinois' "Use Tax" is absurd.
I live in a non-sales tax state. I like it that way and don't look forward to a federal sales tax.
It is also the reason our property taxes and income taxes are high. I like it that way.
Jason, don't waste time calling me tonight, I am voting YES.
If we do get a federal sales tax it should apply to all business, not just internet. IMO.
I thought that [legit] internet business added a sales tax for in state sales. (NY residents add 9.2%)
No?
Took a minute to find. From Amazon:
"Orders Subject to Sales Tax
The amount of tax charged depends upon many factors, including the identity of the seller, the type of item purchased, and the destination of the shipment.
Items sold by Amazon.com LLC, or its subsidiaries, and shipped to destinations in the states of Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Dakota, or Washington are subject to tax.
For sales tax purposes, electronically delivered products (e-books, e-documents, and electronically delivered software) are considered to be shipped to your credit card billing address.
No sales tax is charged when purchasing gift cards; however, purchases paid for with gift cards may be subject to tax."
As for paying income taxes on internet sales.
Everyone is required to pay taxes on income.
Keep records of your sales and expenses.
If you want to claim it is just a hobby or the amount is insignificant, ask your accountant what your obligations are.
I'd also like to see an internet commerce tax plan be enforced.....I've been paying mine for 13 years, there's no reason everyone who sells anything via ECommerce shouldn't be paying their fair share as well.
This is a much more viable approach than just 'raising taxes'. Our tax rate is about what it should be (except I believe that the wealthiest should pay a bit more). Can anyone name a country with super high tax rates that has a healthy economy?
Germany and Sweden for starters. But, I guess it depends on what you mean by "super high".
Laserwolf, Illinois has a "use tax" that tries to collect the taxes the state loses out on when one buys from an online retailer out of state. My sentence or two about my desire to have the federal government standardize online sales tax was probably misleading. The use tax is a nightmare for taxpayers and creates a need for auditing the tax, so I would like to see it go. Instead, the federal government should require online retailers to setup their online payment systems such that the purchaser pays the tax of their respective state.
Laserwolf, Illinois has a "use tax" that tries to collect the taxes the state loses out on when one buys from an online retailer out of state. My sentence or two about my desire to have the federal government standardize online sales tax was probably misleading. The use tax is a nightmare for taxpayers and creates a need for auditing the tax, so I would like to see it go. Instead, the federal government should require online retailers to setup their online payment systems such that the purchaser pays the tax of their respective state.
Thanks.
Illinois and Amazon are throwing their weight around.
At one time Sears was one of the biggest employers in IL and the largest mail order company in the nation.
Sears (and IL) would have protested any state that tried to force Sears to collect local sales taxes on mail order items. Sears still charged IL residents sales tax on MO items.
Again, if the feds set up a national sales tax, I hope it covers all retailers, not just online ones.
Just came across this chart. First remember that income taxes didn't start until the early 1900s. The tax rate on the rich are the lowest they've been since the 1920s when you had the first wave of conservative Republican presidents in power who championed trickle down economics.
what is your point? are you saying that the wealthy should be taxed more? if they are then won't that just "trickle down" too? again, do you want me to present the scenario that happened to soybeans in Argentina?
Comments
You're welcome.
Holy shit, am I the only one who noticed this?? Welcome dude.
RE: taxes - I do not enjoy paying for wars I do not support and did not vote for.
This is really the point. We can raise taxes to 100%, but if we continue to allow the military-industrial complex to wag the dog politically, we're just going to spend it all and more on *ahem* defense spending. Getting our financial house in order is a matter of reprioritizing government spending toward deficit elimination and debt reduction at the expense of military spending, which currently constitutes approximately 54% of the American budget.
A daffy Wall Street Journal editorial about the ???vanishing millionaires??? of Oregon lit a spark in a fairly humorless week. It offers the usual boilerplate about the rich fleeing to tax-friendlier provinces because their state raised taxes, but this time with a great visual: ???One-quarter of the rich tax filers seem to have gone missing.???
Where did they go? You picture the millionaires riding the rails to Idaho, their hobo bundles weighted with gold bars. Or a new dust-bowl-type migration of BMWs loaded up with Birkin handbags and granny, all headed to Nevada. Or Portland liberals erecting a guillotine in Pioneer Courthouse Square and sending the millionaires to the next world.
Now, I appreciate that state tax policy plays a role in attracting businesses and high-income taxpayers. But the Journal presents no evidence of a stampede out of Oregon after the 2009 tax raise. (Thanks, guys, for all those numbers, but actually they don???t make your case.)
???The state expected 38,000 Oregonians to pay the higher tax,??? the Journal states, ???but only 28,000 did.??? The 10,000 ???missing??? taxpayers probably did move ??? to a lower income level that???s not high enough to activate the new tax. In case you didn???t notice, there was an economic recession going on.
In a study titled ???Dear Wall Street Journal: No Need to File a Missing Persons Report,??? the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy noted the unexpected rise in the number of taxpayers earning under $100,000. It???s possible that lower-earning peasants rushed into Oregon as the earls took flight, but then again, wouldn???t a lousy economy be a better explanation for fewer rich people?
In noting Oregon???s new income tax rates on high earners, the Journal ominously adds, ???Only New York City???s rate is higher.???
Yeah, and all those empty apartments on Park Avenue are now filled with squatters and their Sterno cans.
The Journal contends that what happened in Oregon is ???an instant replay??? of what happened in Maryland in 2008, after the legislature passed a millionaire???s tax (which has just expired).
???There, roughly one-third of the state???s millionaire households vanished from the tax rolls after rates went up.???
Did they really go poof? Or did the financial collapse of 2008 turn many million-dollar incomes into less-than-million-dollar incomes? Stock market crashes can do that.
More than one right-leaning think tank has called Rhode Island a ???tax hell.??? This is something of an exaggeration. (???Tax purgatory??? might be more like it.) In any case, critics of Rhode Island tax policies taxes often include the cheesy claim that 8,200 taxpayers fled the Ocean State from 2005 to 2006, before the recession hit.
The less picturesque truth is that the Bush tax cuts and the doubling of the child tax credit had freed many middle-class Americans of any income-tax liability. They didn???t necessarily go anywhere ??? they just stopped paying what little federal income taxes they were paying before.
From 2005 to 2006, nearly 2 million Americans left the federal income tax rolls. Where did they all flee to, Mars?
A Tax Foundation report notes that 2008 was a record year for non-payers of the federal income tax ??? that is, those who got back every dollar withheld from their paychecks. ???Non-paying status used to be a sure sign of poverty or near-poverty,??? Scott A. Hodge writes, ???but Congress and the president have changed the tax laws to pull much of the middle class into the growing pool of non-payers.???
Anyone can spin a yarn about millionaire refugees lining up at the state border after a tax was raised. It???s easy. All you have to do is ignore the economy.
Syndicated columnist Froma Harrop is a member of The Providence (R.I.) Journal editorial board.
and what's more:
Chuck Sheketoff, director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy says the WSJ's take is "ludicrous." Sheketoff, who advocated for the tax increases, says the editorial confuses correlation with causation. Put simply, the tax measures did pass and tax revenues did drop???but one did not cause the other. "It's like saying that if a rooster crows at dawn the rooster's crowing is what causes the sun to come up," Sheketoff says. He says the shortfall in revenues compared to projections reflects the fact that when the projections were made, in the middle of 2009, forecasters under-estimated how severe the recession was and how long it would last. He says there is no evidence in the editorial or in any data source that high-income taxpayers have fled Oregon. Since the tax, which voters approved in January 2010, is retroactive to 2009, they would have had to have left the state retroactively, which is pretty tough to accomplish, even for the rich. "There is absolutely no evidence there is increased migration," Sheketoff says. In fact, figures released by the state earlier this month showed more Oregonians filing tax returns than expected, not fewer. The problem, Sheketoff says, is not that "millionaires" moved away but that high-income filers earned dramatically less in capital gains, and in some cases, salary and therefore paid less in taxes.
Yeah, I wouldn't mind a tax hike on the middle class, but I think we're paying for wars that are not productive.
I would love to see the federal government standardize taxation on online sales too. Tallying up all my online purchases to pay Illinois' "Use Tax" is absurd.
It is also the reason our property taxes and income taxes are high. I like it that way.
Jason, don't waste time calling me tonight, I am voting YES.
If we do get a federal sales tax it should apply to all business, not just internet. IMO.
I thought that [legit] internet business added a sales tax for in state sales. (NY residents add 9.2%)
No?
Took a minute to find. From Amazon:
"Orders Subject to Sales Tax
The amount of tax charged depends upon many factors, including the identity of the seller, the type of item purchased, and the destination of the shipment.
Items sold by Amazon.com LLC, or its subsidiaries, and shipped to destinations in the states of Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Dakota, or Washington are subject to tax.
For sales tax purposes, electronically delivered products (e-books, e-documents, and electronically delivered software) are considered to be shipped to your credit card billing address.
No sales tax is charged when purchasing gift cards; however, purchases paid for with gift cards may be subject to tax."
As for paying income taxes on internet sales.
Everyone is required to pay taxes on income.
Keep records of your sales and expenses.
If you want to claim it is just a hobby or the amount is insignificant, ask your accountant what your obligations are.
Germany and Sweden for starters. But, I guess it depends on what you mean by "super high".
Thanks.
Illinois and Amazon are throwing their weight around.
At one time Sears was one of the biggest employers in IL and the largest mail order company in the nation.
Sears (and IL) would have protested any state that tried to force Sears to collect local sales taxes on mail order items. Sears still charged IL residents sales tax on MO items.
Again, if the feds set up a national sales tax, I hope it covers all retailers, not just online ones.
B/W
STARVE THE BEAST
If people would stop CHEATING on their taxes we would have WAY more money to work with.
what is your point? are you saying that the wealthy should be taxed more? if they are then won't that just "trickle down" too? again, do you want me to present the scenario that happened to soybeans in Argentina?
hope this helps