Just out of curiousity, does anyone here know ANY millionaires that pay their taxes straight up?

I'm not looking to name names, but knowing several myself I can't think of a single one that doesn't employ some "creative" accounting come tax time.

Foreign bank accounts, tax shelters, family trusts, etc... in the end after all the manipulation proportionally they are probably not too far off.

Dear idiot,
Taxable income is taxable income.


Amazing what little you actually know

I heard this interview last year, and even though they are probably not the words I would use to express it, it is pretty much how I view this situation:


full transcript here- http://marketplace.publicradio.org/d.../pm-tao-of-wu/

The idiocy of this statement is in thinking that handing over hard earned money for the government to waste, somehow helps the poor.

The smart ones use all of the legal means necessary to try to get screwed less hard. At the end of the day, unless they are committing tax evasion they are going to be hard pressed to cheat the govt out of less of a % then what the middle class is paying. Now, they can move money around and do things to not pay on it *this year* but when they take the money and use it, they paying taxes on it. Or if they die and it gets left to their heirs, the govt is taking taxes. You can legally avoid some but the "rich don't pay taxes is myth" by the uniformed common folk who would be happy to make the "rich" pay 85% of everything they make over 20 million dollars because after all who really needs that much money, its not fair, even if they give up 85% they still making millions. :upsidedow:upsidedow

money offshore is tax evasion plain and simple. If you live in the US, you better report what you make even if you send it offshore lol. If they catch you funneling money offshore and you are a US Citizen, you fucked if you not claiming it.

Sorry hate to sound cold but I don't work my ass off so someone else who isn't working as hard as me can get more hand outs at my expense. I've likely donated more money than 90% of the people on this board to various charities over the years, but what you mention is charity and its a personal choice. The govt shouldn't rape the " better to do people" so the "not so well to do people" can have more things. That is a personal choice, if someone chooses to give great for them, it shouldn't be forced on SOME PEOPLE to do it. Or at the very least if it was force on people it should be forced on everyone equally. You expect the person making 250K to give up a couple thousands but you don't expect the person making 40K to give up $500 ??? why not ?

The OP is so devoid of intellect I don't expect him to have heard of concepts like utilitarianism and the social contract. There is a philosophical underpinning to wealth redistribution in society but you are such a fucking numbskull you only read books by Glenn Beck..

He would prefer regressive taxation and the MUCH larger lower class pay for the bulk of government services and the upper class coast along on their assets. Perhaps a return a plutocracy where the poor spend a huge percentage of their wealth on sales taxes and the rich ship their assets offshore?

The worst ignorant assumption that this jackass has is that the dude on 40k who may be working 2 or 3 jobs (because the minimum wage is such a joke in the USA), is coasting along and not working as hard for that money as the guy who inherited 100k to startup his business or Paris Hilton.

so if that makes me socialist, then you're calling the US socialist? i don't charge anyone a 30% tax, last time i checked

It's very UNFAIR. He pays 61x the tax the $40k guy does, and gets the same stuff for it. Same roads, same hospitals, same police, same fire dept, same everything. It's a punishment for working better.

it would be unfair if the 40k guy didn't jump tax brackets if his income were to increase. Since it does, it's hard to call the current tax system 'unfair', when gap between rich and poor seems to be growing at an ever increasing rate

the funny thing about these taxes is they inevitably create more jobs, enabling more people to gain income and thus spend.

having ones cake and eating it too..

So basically what I get from all this... rich people are greedy and only care about the betterment of themselves, and fuck everyone else...

Sounds just like the government to me.

And let's stop bullshitting for a few minutes... those of you griping about having to pay higher taxes, bitching about how it's unfair.. blah blah...

What about the guy who actually works his ass off 80 hours a week and barely makes enough to get by? The difference is, most of the rich are either celebrities, or thieves. I doubt very few rich people got to where they are by "playing fair" and being honest.

So let me ask you.. how is it fair that those who actually work for a living end up losing everything because the rich got too greedy? How is it fair for the vast majority of you who are rich to go through your whole lives/careers cheating the system, cutting every corner you can and screwing over everyone you possibly could in order to line your pockets with more money.

Very ironic how you people talk about what's fair...

Warren Buffet...a multi...multi billionaire once stated that he pays less in taxes than his $90,000 per year personal secretary does. When billionaire Howard Hughes was alive he paid taxes on $50,000 per year...which is what he declared as his annual income.

Loop holes for the wealthy are clearly in abundance.

But they'd post here and have you believe they're actually paying so much more taxes than everyone else...

Which leads me to believe that no one crying about how unfair it is to be rich, aren't actually rich.. because if they were, they wouldn't be crying here about how unfair their tax bracket is...

Essentially we have both sides are right and this is what is wrong with the US tax code.

Besides the primary means for funding government obligations, the tax code has become a social engineering experiment by the legislative branch of the government. The code is unfair mainly to the middle class who are not rich enough to take advantage of the elitist loopholes added for the very wealthy by the very wealthy, and not poor enough to suckle the government teet.

If fairness were ever a concern for the tax code, a flat tax over a certain threshold of income with no loopholes would be the most simple way to archive fairness. But no one is interested in a fair tax code.

Sure, a couple megamillionaire's/billionaires business owners, CEOs, and high-level executives know how to exploit the system and do so. This justifies charging everyone above $250k a much higher rate? Sure, $250k is quite good money, but it's not rich status either. I say $250k because that's the number Congress originally wanted to target.

Perhaps we should ask Warren Buffett, and the others, to stop raping the system they complain about?

If I recall correctly, and I'm sure that somebody can correct me, Warren Buffett takes his income from capital gains taxes, which is significantly less than standard taxes. A married couple making $150k each a year cannot do the same if they are making that money as a salary. I am betting that Mr. Buffett's middle level executives that take six-figure salaries pay more than Mr. Buffett's secretary in taxes.

Mr. Buffett can stop raping whenever he wants. Until then, he just sounds like a hypocritical sound byte.

I keep hearing this argument that we should be taxing the rich because they all avoid taxes anyway. If that were the case, what would an increase in taxes even do? It seems to be that the real solution should be targeting those that avoid the taxes instead of raising the taxes on those that don't. Along the same line of thinking, there are also a lot of people that exploit welfare and the other forms of government assistance... should we drop all of these programs due to the ones that exploit the system? I certainly don't think so, a lot of people really need and deserve that help, let's find a way to root out the ones that don't. The counter argument to that is... "that would be too hard."

In both scenarios, seems like corruption and fraud is the issue. I don't see how punishing those that follow the rules solves the problem.

the gap between rich and poor is not the governments issue nor should it be fixed by taking from the successful and pretending to help the poor with it

the funny thing about this statement is that its not true.

you should spend less time reading science fiction.

ah yes, the lament of the unaccomplished, uneducated, loser.

all of your betters cheated their way past you.:1orglaugh

wow! well I did ask for the idiot trolls to show up in this thread.
I'm not disappointed.
pretending the loopholes of 30yrs ago are here today is typical thinking from someone in the lowest bracket.
as far as buffet goes, he paid 17% on $46mil (or $7,820,000)
for the same services his secretary paid (if you believe his lie that she paid 30% on $60k) $18,000 for.

warren is an old liar and not a very good one.

When the tax cuts...during President Bush's administration...were first put in place...Warren Buffet stated that in the first year of the cuts it would put $300,000,000 million dollars in his pocket and that he would not create a single job with the additional $300,000,000 million.

From the end of the Second World War until President Kennedy became President...the tax rate on the wealthy was 92% and it was during these same years that the biggest growth in our economy...housing boom and middle class growth took place...and the wealthy just kept getting more and more wealthy.

What does any of this have to do with the couple that is making $250k paying more taxes, the mega-billionaire exploiting loopholes that he complains about, and the rationale behind raising taxes on those that, in "common knowledge", avoid taxes anyway?

One either believes in a progressive tax rate or one doesn't. It sounds as if you don't. The income tax rates have gone down every administration since and including President Kennedy's administration. As I stated when he first became President the tax on the wealthy was 92% and it was during the years from the end of the Second World War to his Presidency that the country experienced its largest economical growth and the wealthy during those years just became more and more wealthy even with a 92% tax rate.

Now they complain...as I am sure they did during those years...when their tax rate is at 35 or 36% and would have gone back up to 39% or so.

I primarily pay capital gains taxes these days but during the years when I was paying substantial amounts on income tax...in the highest bracket...I never found it to be a problem and did not...and do not complain about paying taxes. I do sometimes...even often times...complain to my congressman about the way tax monies are spent.

I do not have a problem with progressive tax...though I think there are better ways to tax then our current system.

I'm sure you'll provide a link to this.

dear simpleton, this was during the howard hughes loophole days you want to make hay over. those loopholes no longer exist.

you speak about things you have no understanding of.

I guess all I'm learning from this thread is that apparently 12clicks needs a better accountant because obviously he isn't exploiting all of the loopholes that other GFYers are. Can anyone provide references to good accountants that make taxes disappear?

you've never paid the top rate, pathfinder. is there no end to your pretending to be something you're not?

you also have no understanding of the difference between 92% with a million loopholes and 39% with very few loopholes.

I told every accountant that I ever had not to get creative...I even fired a very good friend of mind that I once hired as my accountant...because he got creative and caused me to be audited and I had to pay additional tax. It was not having to pay the additional tax that caused me to fire him...it was because against my orders he did get creative. Being a patriot I did not and do not mind paying taxes.

BTW...I not longer use an accountant as when I sold off all of my businesses I invested all of the money into the market...and I just roll everything over.

I live off of around $40,000 per year non taxable income...which is way more than I need so I have a substantial bank account.



As for 12clicks...he is just an ignorant person.

hahaha. sure punk.

you already tried mainstream and failed... :1orglaugh





.

yeah, I failed. :1orglaugh

what is it you do again?:1orglaugh

and he gets bigger deductions that come back to him that the little guy as well.

please people dont fool your selves when someone with Millions donates millions. its just for the break and the return.

That doesn?t make sense. Since you make $40k and pay $5k so net is $35K while you make $1mil to pay $300k and net is $700k. $300k are taxes that goes to failing entitlements, that?s money that could be spent on office building lease for a year and employees. But instead the government takes the money hires government workers who become unionized and never leave the payroll and we have just added to a larger budget for the next 25 to 35 years. Besides a business man already spends money to make that million, its called over head and expenses. I dont make a million a year but I would like to someday and I hate that people think successful people need to pay a higher rate because they have the money. That sends jobs away from the USA. Turns California from the 5th largest economy in the world to 9th.

Get paid more, get taxed more. After all the "write offs" the rich guys use, it's pretty fair. :pimp

It's not money that could be spent on an office building! Its personal income! It is money that he earned as a salary, or whatever other method, it's not business gross. Even if it was business income, he could spend that $300,000 and then would be paying taxes on the $700,000 which would be quite a bit less.

This is personal income that would be spent on houses, vehicles, vacations, investing in the stock market, cosmetic surgery LOL, stuff like that.

i work at mcdonalds just like you say.... :1orglaugh




.

uh, no. actually Sly, if an LLC or S corp carries unspent money over the jan 1 time line, its taxed as if it were income. to keep it simple, if the company has profits of say 10 million dollars and they'd like to leave it in the bank for a rainy day or for expansion projects in the following year, that $10mil turns into $7mil after taxes. no way around it. If you have an $8mil need in the following year, fuck you. you're out of luck even though you originally had $10mil

thats very simplistic yet accurate.

Ah true, I was thinking more on the lines of an individual making $1M salary, not a company's actual earnings.

Feel free to not pay your taxes out of protest. The system is set up for that.

the funny thing about making baseless responses is that the response is baseless

ok tax all people with same fucking rate, lets burst the shit out of tax!

Well holy shit, lets be honest would be a bad thing if an entire costruction crew was paid for the work they did on a rich guys house or would be bad if the realestate agent got a comission. Or the hotel staff that make extra money from tips. How about that salesman who sold a car he needs the income or does he make too much money and doesnt need the sale. Do we not need investors in the economy. Why is it funny to get cosmetic surgery if you are rich? Only poor strippers or pornstars can get surgery they cant afford?

or do it your way and make so little that your tax payment *seems* to be a protest.