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I expect them to not to have loopholes they can take advantage of that ordinary citizens can't. For example, Bain converted fees for service into capital gains.

I expect them to not to have loopholes they can take advantage of that ordinary citizens can't. For example, Bain converted fees for service into capital gains. A plumber or electrician can't treat his fees as capital gains, they are treated as income. But if you're in financial, you can use all kinds of loopholes -- equity swaps, blocker corporations, fee-waivers+fund-investment in order to treat income as cap gains. Then, if America votes in Romney and Ryan, we may end up with even lower capital gains rates, meaning financiers can escape most taxes, while ordinary people are faced with inescapeable income taxes. I don't mind people investing in risky ventures, but they must pay taxes on their winnings like everyone else. And as Buffet said, the idea that higher taxes will scare away entrepreneurs isn't historically supportable. There are risk takers in every environment, it wasn't like before 1980 there weren't any entrepreneurs.

mudil 14y ago
Perhaps it is not Romney and Ryan's fault. Maybe we need to simplify our tax system, so everyone pays equal share of taxes? But as it stands now, we have tax code of thousands of pages, so people in the know will figure out the loopholes. The analogy would be doing an SEO of a website. Sure I want everyone's site be optimized. But only people that understand all that is involved with the SEO process can properly configure pages and a server.
- cromwellian 14y ago
  I'm all in favor of closing loopholes and simplification, but almost every single mainstream simplification that has ever been proposed has amounted to nothing more than an attempt to remove progressivity from the tax system. What makes the system complex is not the existence of more than one tax bracket, it's the bewildering array of itemized deductions one can take. Most of the 'simplifications' set out to accomplish two goals it seems: 1) simplify code 2) somehow lower rates. Unfortunately, when they try to be "revenue neutral" by closing loopholes, those hardest hit are the middle and lower class because of the mortgage interest deduction. So ultimately, many of these plans look like a tax cut for the rich and raising taxes for the middle class by taking away their deductions.
mudil 14y ago
Perhaps it is not Romney and Ryan's fault. Maybe we need to simplify our tax system, so everyone pays equal share of taxes? But as it stands now, we have tax code of thousands of pages, so people in the know will figure out the loopholes. The analogy would be doing an SEO of a website. Sure I want everyone's site be optimized. But only people that understand all that is involved with the SEO process can properly configure pages and a server.
pc86 14y ago
I'm not a fan of loopholes either, but they exist and it'd be ridiculous to expect those able to not to take advantage of them. They'd just be burning off a percentage of their income. Everything Romney's done has been legal, if impolitic. I challenge everyone acting like he's the antichrist to show us their tax returns where they made a gift deposit to the US Treasury, because that's essentially what a lot of people expected him to do.

mudil 14y ago

Perhaps it is not Romney and Ryan's fault. Maybe we need to simplify our tax system, so everyone pays equal share of taxes? But as it stands now, we have tax code of thousands of pages, so people in the know will figure out the loopholes. The analogy would be doing an SEO of a website. Sure I want everyone's site be optimized. But only people that understand all that is involved with the SEO process can properly configure pages and a server.

cromwellian 14y ago
I'm all in favor of closing loopholes and simplification, but almost every single mainstream simplification that has ever been proposed has amounted to nothing more than an attempt to remove progressivity from the tax system. What makes the system complex is not the existence of more than one tax bracket, it's the bewildering array of itemized deductions one can take. Most of the 'simplifications' set out to accomplish two goals it seems: 1) simplify code 2) somehow lower rates. Unfortunately, when they try to be "revenue neutral" by closing loopholes, those hardest hit are the middle and lower class because of the mortgage interest deduction. So ultimately, many of these plans look like a tax cut for the rich and raising taxes for the middle class by taking away their deductions.

mudil 14y ago

pc86 14y ago

I'm not a fan of loopholes either, but they exist and it'd be ridiculous to expect those able to not to take advantage of them. They'd just be burning off a percentage of their income. Everything Romney's done has been legal, if impolitic. I challenge everyone acting like he's the antichrist to show us their tax returns where they made a gift deposit to the US Treasury, because that's essentially what a lot of people expected him to do.