Tag: tax breaks

MONEY: The Gooferment maintains a playing filed that tilts in favor of employers over workers

Published on by reinkefjLeave a comment

https://www.cato.org/blog/new-cato/yougov-survey-health-savings-accounts

OCTOBER 6, 2021 9:11AM
New Cato/​YouGov Survey on Health Savings Accounts
By Michael F. Cannon

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Many call the “tax exclusion” for employer‐​paid health insurance premiums a tax “break.” In fact, it denies workers control over an enormous share of their earnings. It coerces workers into letting employers control roughly $1 trillion of their earnings each year as well as their health insurance. Along the way, it leaves workers vulnerable to losing coverage when they change jobs, divorce, or retire. 

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Thanks to the market distortion introduced by FDR’s WW2 wage and price controls, “benefits” for employees were a way that employers could “pay” employees more without running afoul of the “law”.  

Back in the Seventies, leave at night in an AT&T datacenter watching accounting programs run, a wise old AT&T Treasury executive opened my eyes to how unfair that “benefits” were to me.  I didn’t realize that the “benefits” were more valuable to AT&T than to me.  Every benefits “expense” was a tax deduction to AT&T.  As well, all those “expenses” were added into the “rate base” used in front of the FCC and various PUCs to justify higher regulated rates.  The old exec pointed out that I was “paying” for the benefits in salary reductions.  And, the wicked kicker was that if I left my “servitude” I’d lose most and in some cases all of those “benefits”. Argh!

Now decades later, the USA has evolved to realize that while you don’t lose your car insurance if you change jobs, you do lose your “health insurance”.  (Don’t make me laugh about COBRA; who can afford those rates?)

OK, so you decide to get your own “health insurance”, and you find that expense is not tax deductible to you as an employee that has “benefits” with your master.  I meant employer.

If you have a niche that permits you, then you can become a “corporation” and the premiums for all your employees is deductible.  Just don’t have any other “employees” and you have found a loophole.  Of course, there are setup and ongoing expense to “being a corporation” but it’s no where near as much as you think.

Bottom line: The tax code needs to change to allow you to deduct your private health care insurance.  What’s good for the employer should be good for the worker!

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MONEY: Tax deferred maybe a trap!

Published on by reinkefjLeave a comment

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324050304578412932073225110.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

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That’s the message in President Obama’s budget for fiscal 2014, which for the first time proposes to cap the amount Americans can save in these tax-sheltered investment vehicles. The White House explanation is that some people have accumulated “substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.” So Mr. Obama proposes to “limit an individual’s total balance across tax-preferred accounts to an amount sufficient to finance an annuity of not more than $205,000 per year in retirement, or about $3 million for someone retiring in 2013.” 

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Interesting. 

When the big IRA / 401k accounts are thought about logically, are they not converting “capital gains” into “ordinary income”?

Would they be better off making investments in taxable accounts?

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POLITICAL: Big Gooferment is even bigger than we think?

Published on by reinkefjLeave a comment

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/report-govt-may-be-bigger-than-you-think/

Business Report: Gov’t May Be Bigger Than You Think
Posted on April 2, 2012 at 6:45pm by Becket Adams

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But the tax break isn’t counted as spending. In fact, while the check for $2,100 is classified as “federal spending,” the tax break doesn’t even show up on the federal budget. So when you hear a policymaker talk about lowering the deficit or expanding/reducing the size of government, most of them don’t factor in tax breaks.

The CNN report goes on to argue that because tax breaks get the same results as government checks (e.g. giving homeowners deductions on mortgage interest, giving tax credits to “green” energy companies, etc), they’re practically interchangeable, right?

Not quite: the government check is directly funded by taxpayers while the tax break comes at a cost to no one.

But this is not to say that tax breaks should be disregarded from the deficit discussion. As taxes generate income, and fixing the deficit is all about balancing revenue with expenditures, then tax breaks should be included.

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That makes me ill.

Bigger?

Seriously. Are you kidding me!

23.7%

Argh!

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Business Report: Gov’t May Be Bigger Than You Think
Posted on April 2, 2012 at 6:45pm by Becket Adams Becket Adams

POLITICAL: Corporate Tax Rate should be ZERO!

Published on by reinkefjLeave a comment

https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/end-corporate-income-taxes/

End corporate income taxes

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So why isn’t this done?

Because it’s against the interests of the Political Class.

Think about the typical political demagogue. Early in his speech, he promises to end “tax breaks” to corporations. Then, later in the speech, without any sense of irony, he says there should be “tax incentives” to encourage companies to do certain things.

Of course, the tax incentives he says he wants to create are exactly the same as the kind of tax breaks he says he wants to end, but the demagogue doesn’t want you to connect the dots.

So what he’s really saying is that he wants to end tax breaks to some corporations he doesn’t like (probably the ones that have received bad press) while extending tax breaks to other corporations who will do what he wants.

Politicians couldn’t care less how much revenue the corporate income tax generates. The revenue isn’t the point. The point is the complicated laws, breaks, and loopholes that the politicians can manipulate to enhance their own power and importance.

Your interest lies in the opposite direction. You should fight to ABOLISH THE CORPORATE INCOME TAX, FOR YOUR OWN BENEFIT. The side benefit is that you’ll make the Political Class weaker!

Doing this will also reduce corporate influence in Congress, by removing a major incentive for lobbying. Tell Congress that you want corporate taxes abolished completely!

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Corporations don’t “pay” taxes; only real people do.

Corporations are a legal fiction that is the logical summation of the Owners, the Employees, the Customers, and Suppliers.

Note that the Owners, may in fact be other corporations like Pension Funds which guard the hopes and dreams of Pensioners.

So, when you tax “corporations”, you really are taxing all these people.

And, you are distorting the free market. Making some choices more expensive than they have to be.

Let’s make the corporate tax rate ZERO.