Tag: Taxes

Analysis: Corporations May Be People But They Are Definitely Not Humans

The Iowa State Fair is going strong and because Election 2012 is in full throttle, the GOP Presidential candidates have been posing for photo-ops and making statements with varying degrees of stupidity.

One of the most logical things uttered, I dare say, was done so by Mitt Romney. By now you’ve probably heard that ol’ Mitt, in between corndogs, got into a bit of a verbal joust with a few of the fair goers. Here’s the soundbite:

The statement has been examined and debated with most intelligent people coming down on the side of Romney. That is, human beings – whether it’s shareholders, employees or customers – eventually bear the cost of the taxes paid by corporations. So while a whole host of humans, including the majority Supreme Court of the United States, are stuck on this “people” thing, it’s worth noting (mostly for the sake of stupid fun) that corporations are definitely not “humans.” Maybe that’s overstating the obvious but English is complicated language and this exercise is not without its merits.

Humans, at their best, are capable of being compassionate, loving, generous and all that crap. Corporations are not. At worst, humans are disgusting, vile creatures capable of ridiculous behavior and we know this to be true mostly because of reality TV. Corporations are certainly capable of deplorable behavior but this behavior is usually at the behest of a human being’s decision.

Accordingly, let’s examine some thing that demonstrate that don’t make corporations “human.”

• Corporations don’t flash women who aren’t the age of consent.

• Corporations don’t use your bathroom and help themselves to the Goldbond Medicated Powder to an extent that you wonder if someone left the window open during a snowstorm.

• Corporations don’t eat corn dogs (humans shouldn’t either).

• Corporations can’t sign a taxpayer protection pledge.

• Corporations don’t “try out” 18 year-old women, take them over state lines and then take money in order to “protect” them.

Feel free to volunteer other examples of “human” versus “people” below but what’s important to note here is that while both humans and corporations may be people, all humans are people and it’s clear that corporations are not humans.

And if that still doesn’t help you understand the difference, just remember this – no matter the situation, for better or worse, humans are the ones who get screwed. Got it?

Any Guesses on How President Obama Feels About Warren Buffett’s Op-Ed?

Stop me if you’ve heard this before.

Obama has often cited Buffett’s call for higher tax rates on the rich, and he seized on the Monday op-ed in the Times and the coverage it’s gotten on the web and on cable news to do so again.

“He said we’ve got to stop coddling billionaires like me,” Obama said. “That’s what Warren Buffett said.”

“He pointed out that he pays a lower tax rate than anybody in his office, including the secretary,” the president added. “He figured out that his tax bill, he paid about 17 percent. And the reason is because most of his wealth comes from capital gains.”

Not to be confused with Grover Norquist’s opinion on the matter.

Obama: Warren Buffett is right on the money [Politico]

For Reasons Unknown, Some People Are Listening to Mike Huckabee Talk About Taxes

The House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee held a hearing yesterday to discuss how to best reform the Internal Revenue Code.

Oddly, former Republican Presidential Candidate and conservative stud of the Fox News stable, Mike Huckabee, was invited to give his thoughts on the matter which include eliminating the IRS and replacing it with the dead in the water FairTax:

[Huckabee] is urging Congress to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service, along with taxes on income, payrolls and estates, and replace them all with a single retail sales tax. Huckabee told the House Ways and Means Committee today that Congress should pass legislation to achieve those goals, dubbed the FairTax, which is popular with many Republican voters even as it makes little legislative progress.

Now maybe Huckabee secretly crammed in rigorous tax study during his one year at seminary but this is a guy who was convinced Donald Trump was going to run for President.

Huckabee Tells Congress to Scrap IRS for Single Retail Sales Tax [Bloomberg]

Cut, Cap and Balance Is Just More of the Same Glut, Crap and B&#$^*!

The plan approved by the House last night traded $2.4 trillion for both the Senate and House approving a balanced budget amendment, though I’m not quite sure how borrowing more money is going to help us get our financial house in order.

If I were a legislator, I’d suggest avoiding the “Let’s pay the Visa off with the Mastercard” tactic if at all possible but that’s just me.

David Brooks broke down the Republican theatrics into four categories: “Beltway Bandits,” the “Big Government Blowhards,” the “Show Horses,” and the “Permanent Campaigners.” FYI for Caleb’s knowledge, Grover Norquist was the one named as a Beltway Bandit, though in fairness to this town, anyone could be considered that.

“The Democratic offers were slippery, and President Obama didn’t put them in writing. But John Boehner, the House speaker, thought they were serious. The liberal activists thought they were alarmingly serious. I can tell you from my reporting that White House officials took them seriously,” Brooks wrote in the NYT.

“House Republicans are the only ones to put forward and pass a real plan that will create a better environment for private-sector job growth by stopping Washington from spending money it doesn’t have and preventing tax hikes on families and small businesses,” said John Boehner in a statement.

Really? So how is it that this includes an increase in the debt ceiling?

Meanwhile, this is what Ron Paul had to say in a statement:

I have never voted to raise the federal debt limit, and I have no doubt that we face financial collapse and ruin if we continue to grow our debt. We need to make major spending cuts now, in this budget, and we can no longer afford to allow more deficit spending based on promises of future cuts.

“The CCB act would add $2.4 trillion of new debt to our gargantuan $14.4 trillion debt. CCB would also only cut $111 billion from this year’s budget, allowing a deficit of nearly $1.5 trillion. This is far from the Pledge’s call for ‘substantial’ cuts. And, CCB locks us into current levels of overseas welfare, which will continue to endanger America’s security by forcing us to subsidize other wealthy nations.

See, that’s pretty much where I’m at with this. The debt trap is impossible to get out of, anyone who has gotten trapped in a pay day loan can tell you all about that.

That’s exactly where we are. That’s where we’ve been. And where we’ll continue to be unless we get the debt monkey off our back. I’m not as concerned about subsidizing China’s explosive growth as I am about compromising our national security by letting those assholes at the Fed run the show. We owe them more than we owe China.

So Norquist may be a tax troll and I’m fine with that but this Dog and Pony Debt Show has got to stop, it’s old and it’s not doing us any good.

Anyone got a better plan?

Ja Rule Wouldn’t Be in This Mess If He Had a Decent Accountant

Let’s be honest though, “decent” is probably pushing it. A “below average” accountant could have slapped some numbers on a 1040 and hit the button.

Ja got twenty-eight months for failing to file income tax returns and claims that “[I]n no way attempted to deceive the government or do anything illegal,” he said. “I didn’t know how to deal with these finances, and I didn’t have people to guide me, so I made mistakes.” Anyone near Oneida that’s looking for a new client should feel free to drop by the correctional facility to make a pitch. [HP]

Who Is Bizarro Grover Norquist?

If you’ve been keeping up with things, you’ve noticed that Americans for Tax Reform founder and president Grover Norquist is everywhere. He’s like some sort of omnipresent Swedish tax assassin superhero (it helps having an active blog and Twittertter.com/#!/GroverNorquist”>accounts).

He’s getting Presidential candidates to sign his Taxpayer Protection Pledge; he’s preparing for inevitable destruction of our nation’s capital; he’s going on the Colbert Report to make grandmothers everywhere shake in their orthopedic shoes.

This PR assault has resulted in a flurry of blog posts from us (okay, just me) on GN’s wily ways, mostly because we admire said wiliness, political tenacity and overt sarcasm and sass. However, a question has now been asked by Joseph Thorndike that we had not previously considered Who is the anti-Grover Norquist? That is, who is the progressive stalwart on tax policy? Presumably someone who would argue that we need to always raise taxes in every instance possible and any time taxes are cut, a corresponding elimination of tax expenditures would occur. Okay, maybe I’m being a tad literal. Anyway, Thorndike gives it a shot:

During the NPR interview, I was asked if I could think of a left-leaning counterpart to Norquist. I was stumped. A bunch of people came to mind, notably Bob McIntyre at Citizens for Tax Justice and Bob Greenstein at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. But neither seemed to fit the bill very well. Sure, McIntyre and Greenstein have been important and highly influential voices for progressive tax policy. But neither has reshaped political debate in Norquistian fashion.

In my opinion this is an futile exercise since the bizarro version of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge would be the political equivalent of guzzling arsenic. Americans don’t like taxes, so there’s virtually nothing to be gained by taking the 180 degree positions of Norquist (again, in their purest form). Similarly, the organization “Americans for Tax Reform” sounds quite sensible. An organization named “Americans for Keeping This God-awful Fuckshow of a Tax System the Way It Is” on the other hand, is less attractive.

Thorndike then posits that guys like McIntyre and Greenstein are “entirely too knowledgeable when it comes to tax policy to ever be compared to Norquist.” Fine. So Grover isn’t as tax wonky as those other guys. Policy wonks typically don’t make good political tacticians and certainly don’t make for good politicians. Wonks look at actual numbers, facts and statistics to make conclusions. Lots of politicians struggle with English. Norquist is acutely aware of this and relies on speaking to them in terms they can understand, such as, “You raise taxes and I’ll end your political career.” Politicians can understand that. They cannot understand Howard Gleckman.

So bizarro Grover Norquist, if you’re out there, please make yourself known. Every (super)man needs a nemesis.

Not Grover: Who’s the Progressive Counterpart to Norquist? [Joseph Thorndike]

When It Rains, It Pours: R. Kelly Hit with Tax Lien

If you’ve been poking around the web the last couple of days, you probably heard that R&B singer R. Kelly is in danger of getting thrown out of his house. It’s an unfortunate turn of events for RK who stopped paying his mortgage payments trying to strongarm JP Morgan into modifying his loan.

Unfortunately for R., it appears he also has blown off the IRS. Delinquent celebrity taxpayer scoop artist Robert Snell reports:

Music industry bad boy R. Kelly has more than foreclosure to worry about. Kelly, the controversial R&B star owes more than $837,000 in delinquent federal taxes, records show.

Snell reports that the IRS released a $1 million lien just last month against RK, so it’s unclear if this little oversight is the result of his JPM negotiating strategy or he’s still getting caught up on things.

R. Kelly believes he can fly — from tax bill [Tax Watchdog]

(UPDATE 2) News Corp. Appears to Be a Big Fan of Offshore Tax Havens

Sure, GE may have the “best tax law firm” in house but the boys and girls working for Rupes seem to have a few tricks of their own. David Cay Johnston reports:

News Corp. has 152 subsidiaries in tax havens, including 62 in the British Virgin Islands and 33 in the Caymans. Among the hundred largest U.S. companies, only Citigroup and Morgan Stanley have more tax haven subsidiaries than News Corp., a 2009 U.S. Government Accountability Office study found.

News Corp. had nearly $7 billion permanently invested offshore in 2009, money on which it does not have to pay taxes unless it brings the money back to the United States. Meanwhile, it can use that money as collateral for loans in the United States, where interest paid is a tax-deductible expense.

This and other tax planning strategies result in a 20% tax rate for the company. And not a single phone hacked!

[via Reuters]

UPDATE:
Via NPR’s The Two Way news blog, Reuters has posted this statement:

Please be advised that the David Cay Johnston column published on Tuesday stating that Rupert Murdoch’s U.S.-based News Corp made money on income taxes is wrong and has been withdrawn. News Corp’s filings show the company changed reporting conventions in its 2007 annual report when it reversed the way it showed positive and negative numbers. A new column correcting and explaining the error in more detail will be issued shortly.

As of now, Johnston’s post remains unchanged and what I blockquoted above doesn’t seem to be in dispute but the situation appears to be fluid.

UPDATE 2:
Here’s a portion from Johnston’s new column:

Readers, I apologize. The premise of my debut column for Reuters, on News Corp’s taxes, was wrong, 100 percent dead wrong.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp did not get a $4.8 billion tax refund for the past four years, as I reported. Instead, it paid that much in cash for corporate income taxes for the years 2007 through 2010 while earning pre-tax profits of $10.4 billion.

For the first time in my 45-year-old career I am writing a skinback. That is what journalists call a retraction of the premise of a piece, as in peeling back your skin and feeling the pain. I will do all I can to make sure everyone who has read or heard secondary reports based on my column also learns the facts and would appreciate the help of readers in that cause.

Johnston goes on to explain in detail how the error occurred. He also states that a number of the facts originally reported, including the number of News Corp. subsidiaries in tax haven (that we blockquoted above), remain.