Exactly. On smaller, state level, many large "New York" firms aren't actually incorporated in NY in order to avoid high corporate tax rates (more here: http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/topic/46.html), I am sure some other states have this issue as well.

Lack of leadership - President, House and Senate
 

Large corporations employ small armies of advisors (tax lawyers, tax accountants and subject matter experts on tangible and intangible assets) to minimize state and federal tax liabilities.

The tax rates that these corporations ultimately pay are often dependent solely on their specific risk tolerance, the creativity of their subject matter experts, the unique facts (both substance and form) regarding each unique situation, the law of the specific jurisdiction or jurisdictions involved, and ultimately, negotiations - should the tax position be audited, escalated and perhaps litigated.

If one has the budget, there are folks who can work “magic” at minimizing exposure and reducing tax liability for large, diverse, multistate or multinational organizations.

The advisors and subject matter experts know that lowering the tax rates and broadening the tax base would minimize the tax games that are played. However, to do so would obviously eliminate many of them. So, unless and until legislatures act, advisors will be asked to continue to interpret tax positions that are favorable to their clients.

The politicians are equally reluctant to lower rates and broaden the base because it cuts into their power - i.e., their power to “sell” special tax treatments for certain industries and sometimes certain specific taxpayers.

Make no mistake - I am not speaking of tax fraud - I am speaking of the complex game of tax planning and dispute resolution that exists for large taxpayers - mostly very large taxpayers (VLTs). The system is set up from the get-go by the various legislatures to implement various social and economic policies - rather than solely meeting revenue goals. Thus, the revenue raising system is polluted from the start. Manipulating the system becomes de rigueur - clients demand it, advisors are rewarded for it, and legislatures use actual and even proposed tax legislation as a currency for increasing their power.

Lowering rates and broadening the base will raise revenues and minimize these games.

<Rant off>

My significant other is one of "those" accountants, so I do hear things from time to time :rolleyes:

It is a game indeed, to be the innovator, the messiah of the tax code will *almost* always give you a leg up in the political arena, however, some large corporations prefer to avoid the risk altogether, than pay that army or have some nosy journalist dig through their financial records to see which politicians they are cozying up with(gotta love NY's financial records disclosure laws, and I guess MSM IS useful for something :eek: )

This has been debated for quite some time now, while I am not an expert on the matter by any stretch, the $64,000 question that remains is always the same: Do you scale up or do you scale out? How about both? There are plenty of people who don't pay, which should, and there are plenty of people who pay to much; on the other hand, you have those who pay too little. I think this segment is bigger than people realize, forgetting those that legally pay too little, there are many(some who I know and suspect) which willfully mis-represent what they truly make. The question is though, if rate's were lower, would they be honest about it then? :munchin

Or..... how about you do what the Constitution says and let the Federal Government collect "indirect" taxes instead of "direct" taxes. Maybe people have already gone over this a few times and figured out when they laid the ground work for the country on how it would be best to collect taxes. Now, what document are most of us supposed to "support and defend"............

If rates are low the incentive to cheat or to even bother to hire an advisor (never mind an army of advisors) diminishes.

While nothing is bullet proof the current system can be improved SIGNIFICANTLY.

Gold Standard.....

No arguing that :cool:

Here's a surprise. :rolleyes:

Americans' frustration with Congress has reached historic levels, with 13% approving and 84% disapproving of the job it is doing, tying the low approval rating and establishing a new high disapproval rating by one percentage point.

Congressional Job Approval Ties Historic Low of 13%

http://www.gallup.com/poll/149009/Co..._term=Politics

Richard :munchin

Goats milk and spider webs
 

Well, there is goat's milk and spider webs.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...#ixzz1VDLqHaBr

The next Dragon Skin.

Gotta love it...I'm still waiting for a Romulan cloaking device. ;)

ZD, do you think there might be a little silver lining in the rain clouds? Young people are becoming conservatives once more. Maybe not as to the right as Alex Keating, but maybe enough to spawn another generation of Reagan style leadership.

I can only hope.

Reagan worked hard to gain republican confidence, he himself more conservative than most republicans at the time and all the while a California politician.



http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/24/yo...s-baby-palins/

It comes as somewhat of a surprise that fashion magazine Elle, which is known to feature fun, light pieces such as “Alexander Wang’s New Nail Polish” and “Khloe [Kardashian's] Killer Calves (And Thighs!),” would publish a four-page spread on conservative women and politics.

What’s not shocking, however, is that Elle would fall into the mainstream media trap and arbitrarily categorize a group of right-leaning young women as “Baby Palins.”

This month, the mag printed a story called “The Best and the Rightest,” which includes interviews from accomplished conservative females such as “Girls Just Wanna Have Guns” creator Regis Giles, Fox commentator S.E. Cupp, conservative radio host Dana Loesch, Independent Women’s Forum executive director Carrie Lukas and Network of enlightened Women (NeW) founder Karin Agness.

The article, which dubs the aforementioned women “Baby Palins,” says the interviewed females “share almost every goal of feminism” and “want to be—and in many cases, already believe themselves to be —’empowered’: educationally, financially, sexually. But they resist any effort to put advancing their fellow women front and center.”

Nina Burleigh, the article’s author, may have been guilty of this as well, having famously said in 1998 she’d happily give then-President Bill Clinton “[oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.”

Ten days after “The Best and the Rightest” hit the Internet, interviewee Agness penned a National Review Online column challenging the “Baby Palins” attribution, which of course refers to gun totin’ former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. The final sentence of the Elle piece even includes the words, “you can betcha,” alluding to Palin’s frequently criticized catchphrase.

“While an interesting read, this article turns out to be less a commentary on conservative women and more an example of how conservative women are viewed by women on the left. To them, we are all ‘Baby Palins,’” Agness writes, adding that many of the interviewed women immersed themselves into politics long before Palin’s name appeared on the 2008 Republican ticket. A University of Virginia law graduate, Agness herself started NeW four years before Palin made national news headlines.

Agness goes on to say that many choose to lump all young conservative females into the “Baby Palin” category instead of taking some time to explore each woman’s ideals. The Washington, D.C. attorney also notes that Palin’s image has been heavily tarnished by news outlets, so the association diminishes young Republican women.

“Rather than try to understand how some women could be conservative and the arguments we have against feminism, it is often much easier to explain us all away as ‘Baby Palins’ following in Palin’s footsteps,” writes Agness. “With the ‘Baby Palin’ label comes the Palin brand. The Palin brand has been so damaged by the media that the ‘Baby Palin’ label serves the purpose of quickly stereotyping and delegitimizing [sic] us at the same time. Would a typical journalist call someone a ‘Palin’ as a compliment? Ultimately, categorizing us as ‘Baby Palins’ is a way to dismiss us.”

Lukas, whom the magazine defines as a “Virginia mother of three and former Republican congressional staffer … who quit her job to be with her kids,” was “horrified” by her portrayal in the piece.

“I was totally shocked and pretty horrified by the way I was characterized by this Elle piece,” Lukas told The Daily Caller, adding that she did not in fact stop working when she had children. (RELATED: The 2010 Forbes World’s Most Powerful Women list: Empowering or embarrassing?)

Lukas, who wrote the book “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism,” says she’s “never been somebody who has been a huge cheerleader for Palin.”

NEXT>> Lukas explains why it's demeaning to say Palin sparked the pro-conservative women movement


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/24/yo...#ixzz1VyMFd87B

RE Post #26 - the original Elle article (and OBTW I do like the Gwyneth Paltrow pic on the cover):

The Best and the Rightest

http://www.elle.com/Life-Love/Societ...conservativism

The NRO Article by Karin Agness:

Conservative Women as ‘Baby Palins’

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner...-karin-agness#

And so it goes...

Richard :munchin

I predict he will make a fine ex-president. Perhaps he will be our first ambassador to the Taliban.

FACT CHECK: Are rich taxed less than secretaries?
 

FWIW, article below discusses regime's claim regarding rich versus secretaries - lowering the rates and broadening the base is the way to go on the income side and the experts know it - we touched on this earlier in this very thread.

IMO, the organizer in chief is a two bit propagandist talking to the 46% sheeple.


FACT CHECK: Are rich taxed less than secretaries?

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER - Associated Press | AP – 16 hrs ago

http://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-ric...070642868.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says he wants to make sure millionaires are taxed at higher rates than their secretaries. The data say they already are.

"Warren Buffett's secretary shouldn't pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. There is no justification for it," Obama said as he announced his deficit-reduction plan this week. "It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million."

On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.

The 10 percent of households with the highest incomes pay more than half of all federal taxes. They pay more than 70 percent of federal income taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

In his White House address on Monday, Obama called on Congress to increase taxes by $1.5 trillion as part of a 10-year deficit reduction package totaling more than $3 trillion. He proposed that Congress overhaul the tax code and impose what he called the "Buffett rule," named for the billionaire investor.

The rule says, "People making more than $1 million a year should not pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle-class families pay." Buffett wrote in a recent piece for The New York Times that the tax rate he paid last year was lower than that paid by any of the other 20 people in his office.

"Middle-class families shouldn't pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires," Obama said. "That's pretty straightforward. It's hard to argue against that."
There may be individual millionaires who pay taxes at rates lower than middle-income workers. In 2009, 1,470 households filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million yet paid no federal income tax, according to the Internal Revenue Service. But that's less than 1 percent of the nearly 237,000 returns with incomes above $1 million.

This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes, payroll taxes and other taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay an average of 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.

Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5 percent of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7 percent.
The latest IRS figures are a few years older — and limited to federal income taxes — but show much the same thing. In 2009, taxpayers who made $1 million or more paid on average 24.4 percent of their income in federal income taxes, according to the IRS.

Those making $100,000 to $125,000 paid on average 9.9 percent in federal income taxes. Those making $50,000 to $60,000 paid an average of 6.3 percent.
Obama's claim hinges on the fact that, for high-income families and individuals, investment income is often taxed at a lower rate than wages. The top tax rate for dividends and capital gains is 15 percent. The top marginal tax rate for wages is 35 percent, though that is reserved for taxable income above $379,150.

With tax rates that high, why do so many people pay at lower rates? Because the tax code is riddled with more than $1 trillion in deductions, exemptions and credits, and they benefit people at every income level, according to data from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress' official scorekeeper on revenue issues.

The Tax Policy Center estimates that 46 percent of households, mostly low- and medium-income households, will pay no federal income taxes this year. Most, however, will pay other taxes, including Social Security payroll taxes.

"People who are doing quite well and worry about low-income people not paying any taxes bemoan the fact that they get so many tax breaks that they are zeroed out," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. "People at the bottom of the distribution say, 'But all of those rich guys are getting bigger tax breaks than we're getting,' which is also the case."

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was pressed at a White House briefing on the number of millionaires who pay taxes at a lower rate than middle-income families. He demurred, saying that people who make most of their money in wages pay taxes at a higher rate, while those who get most of their income from investments pay at lower rates.

"So it really depends on what is your profession, where's the source of your income, what's the specific circumstances you face, and the averages won't really capture that," Geithner said.

lol I never say never to any idea anymore.