No Taxes, No Services

Here's a great message by Stephen D. Foster Jr. about the "102 Things NOT To Do If You Hate Taxes."

So, you’re a Republican that hates taxes? Well, since you do not like taxes or government, please kindly do the following.

1. Do not use Medicare.
2. Do not use Social Security
3. Do not become a member of the US military, who are paid with tax dollars.
4. Do not ask the National Guard to help you after a disaster.
5. Do not call 911 when you get hurt.
6. Do not call the police to stop intruders in your home.
7. Do not summon the fire department to save your burning home.
8. Do not drive on any paved road, highway, and interstate or drive on any bridge.
9. Do not use public restrooms.
10. Do not send your kids to public schools.
11. Do not put your trash out for city garbage collectors.
12. Do not live in areas with clean air.
13. Do not drink clean water.
14. Do not visit National Parks.
15. Do not visit public museums, zoos, and monuments.
16. Do not eat or use FDA inspected food and medicines.
17. Do not bring your kids to public playgrounds.
18. Do not walk or run on sidewalks.
19. Do not use public recreational facilities such as basketball and tennis courts.
20. Do not seek shelter facilities or food in soup kitchens when you are homeless and hungry.
21. Do not apply for educational or job training assistance when you lose your job.
22. Do not apply for food stamps when you can’t feed your children.
23. Do not use the judiciary system for any reason.
24. Do not ask for an attorney when you are arrested and do not ask for one to be assigned to you by the court.
25. Do not apply for any Pell Grants.
26. Do not use cures that were discovered by labs using federal dollars.
27. Do not fly on federally regulated airplanes.
28. Do not use any product that can trace its development back to NASA.
29. Do not watch the weather provided by the National Weather Service.
30. Do not listen to severe weather warnings from the National Weather Service.
31. Do not listen to tsunami, hurricane, or earthquake alert systems.
32. Do not apply for federal housing.
33. Do not use the internet, which was developed by the military.
34. Do not swim in clean rivers.
35. Do not allow your child to eat school lunches or breakfasts.
36. Do not ask for FEMA assistance when everything you own gets wiped out by disaster.
37. Do not ask the military to defend your life and home in the event of a foreign invasion.
38. Do not use your cell phone or home telephone.
39. Do not buy firearms that wouldn’t have been developed without the support of the US Government and military. That includes most of them.
40. Do not eat USDA inspected produce and meat.
41. Do not apply for government grants to start your own business.
42. Do not apply to win a government contract.
43. Do not buy any vehicle that has been inspected by government safety agencies.
44. Do not buy any product that is protected from poisons, toxins, etc…by the Consumer Protection Agency.
45. Do not save your money in a bank that is FDIC insured.
46. Do not use Veterans benefits or military health care.
47. Do not use the G.I. Bill to go to college.
48. Do not apply for unemployment benefits.
49. Do not use any electricity from companies regulated by the Department of Energy.
50. Do not live in homes that are built to code.
51. Do not run for public office. Politicians are paid with taxpayer dollars.
52. Do not ask for help from the FBI, S.W.A.T, the bomb squad, Homeland Security, State troopers, etc…
53. Do not apply for any government job whatsoever as all state and federal employees are paid with tax dollars.
54. Do not use public libraries.
55. Do not use the US Postal Service.
56. Do not visit the National Archives.
57. Do not visit Presidential Libraries.
58. Do not use airports that are secured by the federal government.
59. Do not apply for loans from any bank that is FDIC insured.
60. Do not ask the government to help you clean up after a tornado.
61. Do not ask the Department of Agriculture to provide a subsidy to help you run your farm.
62. Do not take walks in National Forests.
63. Do not ask for taxpayer dollars for your oil company.
64. Do not ask the federal government to bail your company out during recessions.
65. Do not seek medical care from places that use federal dollars.
66. Do not use Medicaid.
67. Do not use WIC.
68. Do not use electricity generated by Hoover Dam.
69. Do not use electricity or any service provided by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
70. Do not ask the Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild levees when they break.
71. Do not let the Coast Guard save you from drowning when your boat capsizes at sea.
72. Do not ask the government to help evacuate you when all hell breaks loose in the country you are in.
73. Do not visit historic landmarks.
74. Do not visit fisheries.
75. Do not expect to see animals that are federally protected because of the Endangered Species List.
76. Do not expect plows to clear roads of snow and ice so your kids can go to school and so you can get to work.
77. Do not hunt or camp on federal land.
78. Do not work anywhere that has a safe workplace because of government regulations.
79. Do not use public transportation.
80. Do not drink water from public water fountains.
81. Do not whine when someone copies your work and sells it as their own. Government enforces copyright laws.
82. Do not expect to own your home, car, or boat. Government organizes and keeps all titles.
83. Do not expect convicted felons to remain off the streets.
84. Do not eat in restaurants that are regulated by food quality and safety standards.
85. Do not seek help from the US Embassy if you need assistance in a foreign nation.
86. Do not apply for a passport to travel outside of the United States.
87. Do not apply for a patent when you invent something.
88. Do not adopt a child through your local, state, or federal governments.
89.Do not use elevators that have been inspected by federal or state safety regulators.
90. Do not use any resource that was discovered by the USGS.
91. Do not ask for energy assistance from the government.
92. Do not move to any other developed nation, because the taxes are much higher.
93. Do not go to a beach that is kept clean by the state.
94. Do not use money printed by the US Treasury.
95. Do not complain when millions more illegal immigrants cross the border because there are no more border patrol agents.
96. Do not attend a state university.
97. Do not see any doctor that is licensed through the state.
98. Do not use any water from municipal water systems.
99. Do not complain when diseases and viruses, that were once fought around the globe by the US government and CDC, reach your house.
100. Do not work for any company that is required to pay its workers a livable wage, provide them sick days, vacation days, and benefits.
101. Do not expect to be able to vote on election days. Government provides voting booths, election day officials, and voting machines which are paid for with taxes.
102. Do not ride trains. The railroad was built with government financial assistance.

The fact is, we pay for the lifestyle we expect. Without taxes, our lifestyles would be totally different and much harder. America would be a third world country. The less we pay, the less we get in return. Americans pay less taxes today since 1958 and is ranked 32nd out of 34 of the top tax paying countries. Chile and Mexico are 33rd and 34th. The Republicans are lying when they say that we pay the highest taxes in the world and are only attacking taxes to reward corporations and the wealthy and to weaken our infrastructure and way of life. So next time you object to paying taxes or fight to abolish taxes for corporations and the wealthy, keep this quote in mind…

“I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

It is time to face facts. Without the rich and the large corporations paying a higher tax rate, society will suffer. The American dream will be difficult unless you are rich and pay lower taxes than the rest of us.

Is Your State Giving Corporate Welfare?

David Cay Johnston, a Reuters columnist, expresses his opinion about some employers being allowed to keep state income taxes, particularly in Illinois in "Paying taxes your employer keeps."

Hard earned income taken as a state tax is being given to some employers, not the state of IL

Painful as it feels to have a lot of hard-earned income taken from your paycheck for taxes, a new Illinois law does something Americans may find surprising. It lets some employers pocket taxes for 10 years.

You read that right — in Illinois the state income taxes withheld from your paycheck may be kept by your employer under a law that took effect in May. Continental Corporation, the big German tire maker; Motorola Mobility, the cell phone maker; and Navistar, the maker of diesel trucks for industry and the military, are in on the deal. State officials say a fourth company is negotiating a similar arrangement.

Chrysler and Mitsubishi arranged deals with the state in the depths of the Great Recession in 2009; Ford got one in 2007, since revised to let it keep half of its Illinois workers’ state income taxes. (See chart below.)

Instead of paying for police, teachers, roads and other state and local services that grease the wheels of commerce, Illinois workers at these companies will subsidize their employers with the state income taxes they pay.

Diverting taxes from public purposes to private gain

The deal to let employers keep half or all of their workers’ state income taxes represents a dramatic expansion of a little-known trend in the law: diverting taxes from public purposes to private gain.

Throughout the United States, big box retailers like Wal-Mart, Lowe’s and Cabela’s, and in some cases entire shopping malls, often negotiate deals to keep sales taxes that customers pay at the cash register, using the money to finance construction of their stores. This gives them a huge advantage over retailers without such subsidies, while reducing revenue to local governments, which in turn creates pressure for higher taxes.

The pipeline industry

COMPETITION BETWEEN STATES

The pipeline industry, a collection of legal monopolies with rates that are regulated, gets to include the federal corporate income tax in the rates charged customers even though nearly all pipelines are exempt from the federal corporate income tax because they are organized as master limited partnerships. Evidence in one federal court case showed that collecting this tax, plus state income taxes, and then pocketing the taxes increased ultimate net after-tax profits by 75 percent.

The Illinois deal shows how competition between the states, and with other countries, helps big corporations wring subsidies from state governments even as the states are being forced to fire teachers and other public workers because of a weak economy that has cost jobs and tax revenue.

Why would the state let companies do this? Most big companies pay little or no state corporate income tax, because companies arrange to take expenses in higher tax states and profits in states with little or no corporate income tax. So the only way to finance incentives without the state writing a check is to let the companies pocket their workers’ state income tax.

Corporate Socialism

The Illinois deal also shows how government, rather than the market, picks winners and losers. While America promotes the dream of a free market and competition, this sort of corporate socialism has been around since before the founding of the republic and has played a key role in the rise of many industries, including railroads, aircraft, as well as computer hardware and software.

Warren Ribley, director of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, said “it’s a fair question” as to whether taxpayers should be subsidizing businesses. He said elected leaders and the public should debate the issue.

“In the meantime,” Ribley said, “I am out there competing every single day with states and countries across the entire globe and I have got to have the tools and I have to use the tools provided by the General Assembly,” as the Illinois legislature is formally known.

State Representative Jack Franks, a Democrat from the northern end of Illinois, said the deals “are fundamentally unfair” to taxpayers and other companies.

“Our current governor had the genius idea of giving to Motorola and Navistar and others, he said to retain their business here, yet he is allowing Navistar to fire up to 25 percent of their workforce and still get millions from the state” by holding onto the income taxes of employees.

Money diverted from state needs to private corporate coffers

OTHERS LIKELY TO FOLLOW

The Illinois law lets companies retain all of the income taxes withheld from the paychecks of workers whose hiring expands the payroll and half of the taxes for existing workers whose jobs are retained.

For Continental the deal means $22 million over 10 years diverted to its coffers from the state income taxes withheld from worker paychecks to help pay for a $224 million expansion of its Mount Vernon tire plant in southern Illinois. The deal will retain 2,500 jobs and create 400 more rather than prompt the plant to move to Mexico, Brazil or another state.

The hourly tire workers, under a two-tier pay scale that means lower wages for new hires, make either $19.35 an hour or $16.31 an hour. For a year that is pay of just under $34,000 to $40,000.

Based on a 3 percent average Illinois state income tax rate for people in that income range, and assuming Continental’s 2,500 hourly workers remain at the higher wage rate and 400 new workers are hired at the lower wage rate, the annual diversion of their income taxes would be as much as $1.9 million of the average $2.2 million annual benefit from the deal. Taxes paid by supervisors and managers, and expected higher wages in future years, account for the other $300,000 per year or so for the next decade.

Failure to create or retain jobs

Navistar is getting the deal even though its application shows it plans to reduce its workforce of 3,100 to about 2,200.

Ribley said companies that got earlier deals in which they avoided the state corporate income tax and then failed to create or retain jobs as promised have actually paid back the benefits.

The three companies that got the deal are not named in the law enacted in May, but the language of Public Act 97-2 defines them by describing the industry, employment level and other specifics that show how the law was tailored to benefit just them.

Here’s a prediction: other states soon will also authorize diverting income taxes withheld from worker paychecks to their employers, if some have not done so already — unless, of course, voters speak up on behalf of competitive markets and against this sort of corporate socialism.

WATCH:

The message to employers from the State of Illinois is to hold out for corporate welfare. The message to the voter from the state of finances in Illinois is to fight against corporate socialism.

Corporate Tax Rate

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Who's Not Paying Taxes

The Tea Party, the Libertarians, and the Conservatives are angry at government. They don't want government telling them what to do and they don't want taxes. Perhaps they should redirect their anger to the corporations who milk the system and pay no taxes. Or they should be angry at the government officials who write the laws that allow the loopholes that these corporations use to their advantage.

How do profitable corporations have a lower tax rate than you? The answer is surprising. Here are examples of large corporations that pay NO taxes or low taxes and reap in huge profits.

Exxon mobile Paid No Federal Income Tax in 2009

Last week, Forbes magazine published what the top U.S. corporations paid in taxes last year. “Most egregious,” Forbes notes, is General Electric, which “generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.” Big Oil giant Exxon Mobil, which last year reported a record $45.2 billion profit, paid the most taxes of any corporation, but none of it went to the IRS:

Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. No wonder that of $15 billion in income taxes last year, Exxon paid none of it to Uncle Sam, and has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas.

Mother Jones’ Adam Weinstein notes that, despite benefiting from corporate welfare in the U.S., Exxon complains about paying high taxes, claiming that it threatens energy innovation research. Pat Garofalo at the Wonk Room notes that big corporations’ tax shelter practices similar to Exxon’s shift a $100 billion annual tax burden onto U.S. taxpayers. In fact, in 2008, the Government Accountability Office found that “two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005.”

How can it be that you pay more to the IRS than General Electric?

As you work on your taxes this month, here's something to raise your hackles: Some of the world's biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do--that is, if they pay taxes at all.

The most egregious example is General Electric ( GE - news - people ). Last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.

Avoiding taxes is nothing new for General Electric. In 2008 its effective tax rate was 5.3%; in 2007 it was 15%. The marginal U.S. corporate rate is 35%.

It's GE Capital that keeps the overall tax bill so low. Over the last two years, GE Capital has displayed an uncanny ability to lose lots of money in the U.S. (posting a $6.5 billion loss in 2009), and make lots of money overseas (a $4.3 billion gain). Not only do the U.S. losses balance out the overseas gains, but GE can defer taxes on that overseas income indefinitely. The timing of big deductions for depreciation in GE Capital's equipment leasing business also provides a tax benefit, as will loan losses left over from the credit crunch.

But it's the tax benefit of overseas operations that is the biggest reason why multinationals end up with lower tax rates than the rest of us.

What the Top U.S. Companies Pay in Taxes, In Pictures

Eliminating Deferrals

Naturally the Obama administration wants to put an end to this. It has proposed doing away with tax deferrals on overseas income. If the plan passes, a U.S. company that pays a 25% tax on profits in China would have to pay an additional 10% income tax to Uncle Sam to bring it up to the 35% corporate rate.

Of course, large corporations are against Obama's plan.

It's the Money, Stupid!!!

Legalizing marijuana is a hot topic issue. It is now being discussed by the media as well as some lawmakers. There has been a growing consensus that legalizing marijuana makes sense.

In the past few weeks, commentators like David Sirota (The Nation), Kathleen Parker (Washington Post), Paul Jacob (TownHall.com), Clarence Page (Chicago Tribune), and Jack Cafferty (CNN) have all expressed sympathy for regulating pot. Even Joe Klein at Time Magazine weighed in on the issue, writing this month that "legalizing marijuana makes sense."

Here are a few thoughts:

1. Makes Cents

According to a 2005 analysis by Harvard University senior lecturer Jeffrey Miron -- and endorsed by over 500 distinguished economists -- replacing pot prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcohol would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year.

A separate economic analysis, conducted by George Mason University professor Jon Gettman in 2007, estimates that the total amount of tax revenue derived from cannabis could be far higher. According to Gettman, the retail value of the total U.S. marijuana market now stands at a whopping $113 billion per year. Using standard tax percentages obtained from the Office of Management and Budget, he calculates that the diversion of this market from the taxable economy deprives taxpayers of $31.1 billion annually.

2. Taxes & Regulation

Taxing and regulating cannabis would have the added bonus of taking the production and trafficking of pot out of the hands of criminal enterprises and, increasingly, drug gangs. According to the Associated Press, marijuana is the "biggest source of income" for Mexican drug cartels. Legalizing pot would eliminate this primary income source for these cartels and, in turn, eliminate much of the growing violence and turf battles that currently surround the drug's illegal importation from Mexico.

High Times's has 10 top reasons that marijuana should be legal, part of its 420 Campaign legalization strategy.

A Taxing Issue

Politico sent an email to all Senate press offices requesting personal tax information from each Senator. The information they collect, including info on who does not respond, will be part of a database that they will construct.

How are the Senators dealing with this request?

An FBDC source says "the e-mail has created a raging controversy among the Senate press offices over whether to respond or not. Many staffers believe it is meant to intimidate each office into complying."

It will be interesting to see the results. Here is the email that was sent.

From: FBDC DELETED NAME

Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 10:12 AM
To:

Subject: Tax Story

Hey XXX,

We're doing a story about how all 100 senators prepare their taxes, and we're putting together a chart of how everyone responded and whether people didn't respond. My editors want to start posting answers this weekend, so we'd like answers by end of the day Friday, if possible.

You may recall that we did something similar last year in asking all 100 senators about their mortgages. Here's just one story from that series.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11353.html

Thanks for your help, I appreciate it. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Here are the questions:

1. Do you prepare your own taxes?

2. If not, who does?

3. Have you or the IRS ever discovered an error on a tax return you've filed?

4. Have you ever paid back taxes?

5. If the answer to either 3 or 4 is yes, please explain.

NAME DELETED BY FBDC

Politico