New York Times fails math and basic tax collecting courses
August 14, 2008
On Tuesday, I saw a headline at the New York Times Web site, Study tallies corporations not paying income tax. This type of story is right up our ally since our readers know that corporations don’t pay taxes; people do. I didn’t get to research the story on Tuesday, but Power Line just provided a kick in the head tonight and reminded me about it.
It turns out that Lynnley Browning and editors at the Times can’t understand basic logic. They figured since two out of three corporations in the study did not pay any taxes, they might as well take the total gross receipts of two-thirds of the companies and assume that 35 percent of that should be tax going to the feds.
They calculated that the government was being cheated out of $875 billion. Idiots. Read more
Class Envy Continues - States Extort from Aircraft Owners
May 2, 2008
In the early 1990s, the U.S. Congress enacted a new law that taxed “luxury” items 10 percent. This was a big deal, since automobiles priced more than $30,000, boats more than $100,000, jewelry more than $10,000 and aircraft priced more than $250,000 were all targeted in the effort to enrich the government coffers.
So, why would you think this is a bad idea? Heck, when your talking about the people who are actually buying these luxury items, they certainly wouldn’t mind paying a bit more for these items would they? They are rich ya know, they can afford it. Tell that to the employees that were actually making these boats in Florida or selling these cars in New York. Read more
The Kennedy Fortune is Safe
April 15, 2008
We’ve all heard about the estate tax, aka the death tax, which is a tax that the federal government levies when assets are transferred from a deceased person to someone else. So how does the super-rich work within the law to protect their family assets?
To be clear, the U.S. tax code is written so if the assets are transferred to a spouse or a charitable organization there is no tax. Also, there are credits against the tax that ensure assets up to $2 million dollars that are transferred to children, as an example, are not taxed. Read more
