What if the best thing there is is bitching at the moment? :P

The simple part is what I said, that these executives game the system with their 1$ salaries to pay smaller rates than you. Not really sure why you and the other guys are trying to make this so complicated.

Pretty much anyone earning in the top quintile of earners ($250,000 per year and up) is doing some significant jujitsu on their tax returns to lower their taxes; you can see this by looking at tax paid as a percentage of adjusted gross income, which increases steadily until you start moving through the top quintile and it caps out right around 20% (and once you get into the top 0.1% of earners it actually starts dropping down a bit). The main point I would make is that directing anger towards the people lowering their tax burden in such a way is not useful- you'd essentially be arguing that they should be paying more taxes than they're legally obligated to (and how often do you pay more taxes than you have to?). What I think is useful (at least to some very small degree) is recognizing the problems with the system itself, and understanding the aspects of the tax system that these problems arise from. This at least provides a notion of what one should actually be looking to change in the tax system, and also allow one to better evaluate proposed changes to the tax system so that one isn't bamboozled into supporting changes that actually make the system worse.

You could always have a flat tax rate. But then there would be no deductions (like in my country). So you'd end up paying even more overall. Yes the tax system in the US is very complicated, but at least the overall taxation rate is pretty low. In my country if you have a $1000/month salary (which is already the top 20%) - and by salary I mean the total cost for your employer... then you'd get $550 from that at the end of the month. If you spend it all, you'll pay at least 24% VAT, which leaves you with $418 to spend effectively. That is if you don't buy gas, since about 60% of the price of gas is taxes. Also cars are taxed heavily, buying a car costs you usually from 10% to 100% of the cars value in extra taxes (these are especially high when buying used cars).

What's the reason behind high taxation on gas and cars?

Beats me, some of it they "say" they use for fixing the roads, gasoline costs around 0.5 euros when it leaves the refineries, but it costs around 1.4 euros at the pump. For cars they have invented a pollution tax, which you have to pay for every car (new or old). This goes up with the CC of the car and goes down with euro number and age. However a 10 year old euro3 car is taxed of course more than the same engine-sized 2 year old euro5 car. On the other hand a larger engine new euro 5 car might have a higher tax then the small engined 20 year old car etc. It's pretty complicated and confusing. But if you ever consider buying an old american muscle car, then you'd pay like twice the cars value in taxes :D.

Yes , but these 1$ guys are surely doing that on top of it, too. So I can't agree with your "who cares" attitude.

When government steals around 60% of my monthly income before I even ever see the money (before it gets to my account) and wastes large part of it (every other day there is political corruption scandal, and I am not really using hyperbole here), it really really makes me not want to go vote (and thus choose who will steal from me next), in fact it just makes me want to leave for another country (I hear Switzerland, New Zealand or Hong Kong are nice).

Let me know if I'm wrong here, but are you either a child or a person with very little life progress? Because as a professional, American taxes are absolutely out of control. I don't know where you came up with third lowest but we actually have some of the highest effective tax rates, depending on who you are and whether you paid off our governemnt to get carve outs in the tax code.

I pay 1/3 of my income in federal + payroll taxes, 5% in state income tax, ~5% for property taxes, then everything else I touch is taxed through sales taxes, gas taxes, etc. This is in what's considered a "low tax" state (Virginia). For perspective, I get to keep $1500 out of every $2300 check, and have to sock away $150 of THAT into savings to pay property taxes and the like.

As others mentioned, the biggest problem is how the money is spent. Do governments need money to operate? Sure. Do I need to give up half my life so a bunch of bumbling bureaucrats can waste my money on Hawaii trips and harrassing pot farmers? Hell no. When you've been around for a minute it's not hard to see that the tax scam going on in this country is disgusting. That's exactly why the TEA party movement became popular enough for you to even hear about it.

A big issue in America is the government spends its money poorly.

We throw money at education and healthcare but we don't do it effectively. If we were disciplined with it and enacted real reforms we could spend the same amount of cash and have socialized medicine and free public college. Instead we bicker, fight and avoid reforms while expanding or contracting budgets like it means anything.

A big part of this, and a huge factor in American politics in general, is that Americans are raised to see government as the enemy and something to avoid. That frontier mindset invades everything we do as a country, from gun laws to social programs to election reform.

A flat tax would end up being even more regressive, which is one of my major criticisms of the current US tax system. Also, if you read my earlier posts you'll see my major criticisms of the tax system isn't how much we're taxed, but how little we get from it and the regressive way in which taxes are collected.

I think you're mistaking the attitude I'm taking. I care quite a bit about how broken the system is and would very much like to see it fixed. I do think the individuals you're talking about do need to be paying a higher share of taxes, but the mechanism by which this needs to occur should be changing the system so that there are fewer loopholes available and as a consequence they are required to pay taxes more in line with the actual marginal rates. I simply see criticism of individuals for not paying more taxes than they are legally required as useless noise that actually gets in the way of trying to improve the tax system.

I wouldn't say very little life progress, just a little uneducated, I guess.


Being homeless four times in my life at 24 means there have been times when I was out of touch with the world at hand, and I guess I need to do a bit more research. Sorry.

Taxes suck. Nuff said.

You have nothing to be sorry for. If you had been aggressive with your perspective throughout the thread that might be different. Too often do I see people completely chained to their ideological fantasies who cannot and may never see the truth of reality.

At any rate, while I have never spent more than 1-2 nights outdoors, I came up hard and I know what it feels like to be less informed with the world in general than I wanted to be. As with most things in life, you don't know them until you experience them. When I had nothing all I wanted (and all I did ) was work. Now that I've conquered that time in my life, I am very resentful of having so much taken away for so little in return.

I would honestly give just about anything to have a steady job right about now. Instead, I'm stuck waiting to get on a program to get job training, because the government will prosecute me if I work, currently. Danger to myself and others and all that because I'm a diagnosed psychotic.

In any case, here I sit on disability, getting less than I need to live off of, to the point where my disabled (Physically) mother and retired grandfather live with me so we can pool our resources and try and eke it out month to month. I do physical work around the house and for the landlady to lower the rent slightly, but the rent is still more than I make a month for a two bedroom house in the ass end of eastern Washington.

I guess I'm just bitter that every time Welfare and Disability are brought up, I'm called a worthless eater or some such thing. I was, at one point, told that the fact I have a home comes out of someone else's pocket and I should be shot for violating the liberty of every tax paying American, and that seems to be the general attitude of my town. My house has been grafiti'd and egged multiple times this week.


I'm not as well educated as I should be, I'll admit that much. I spend what little disposable income I have (Once we pool our resources in the house it's usually ten bucks a month for each of us for disposable income) and I buy a game off of GOG, or some snack food. Never both.

I guess I'm just tired of being told by local Tea Partiers that I should go die, because I live such a comfortable life on their dime or something. I'm just tired of being told "We don't feed the poor because of the same reason we don't feed stray cats, because they breed".


And yes, I'm quoting that verbatim from what someone at Safeway said to me today.