Do You Agree With Income Tax

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Deb' post='1512091' date='Apr 27 2008, 08:21 PM']I think that when you have 300 million people living in one country and you want to make sure they have clean water and air and decent transportation and medical costs, ya know, the basics, they have to be provided somehow.
So, what are our choices? If this was a purely agricultural society and herding society like it was back in bibilical times, with small villages and communities, people would take care of each other. So, we pay taxes. We would hope that our money would be handled in a good manner. It isn't. We could dump the taxes and then what? I really can't afford to replace the 35W bridge by myself. I can't buy my own medical clinic.
Is this a God issue, no. God gave man the tools he needed and free will and man has chosen to turn the world into what it is. Seems to me the Catholic Church and the current and prior Popes have always spoken about social justice and taking care of the poor etc.
Maybe all those pentecostals and protestants could speak up and solve this?

I do remember Christ having one of his disciples catch a fish that had a coin in its mouth so he could pay a tax for both of them. I wish I could do that. I would probably be taxed on the income I caught though.

The rich and powerful have always trod on the necks of the poor and powerless, even before the time of Christ. The byproduct of being born of sin.[/quote]
watch the little vid on this page.

[url="http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/debt-and-taxes/"]http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/debt-and-taxes/[/url]

Kind of interesting.

[Cure of Ars]

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj9KHJRRUbQ&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj9KHJRRUbQ...feature=related[/url]


and I'm still freaked out

[dairygirl4u2c]

sometimes it does come down to having to spend wastefully to do our basics. if you take as a premise that the government just won't do the things they should be doing right... then you have to take the fact they spend way too much to provide fundamentals.

at a certain point though, is it right to spend 1000 on a guy's check up for medicare? considering all the hidden costs like running medicare litigation of it the government pay etc etc.
like sending the swat team to change a light bulb. there's joke potential there i'm sure.

so, yeah, htere's definitely ways to substantially reduce spending with a little smart policy planning. the problem is tha tcongress does not do smart planning as they cant agree on anything specific, only generalities. and then the regulatory agencies are left to do it, not sure why... but they smell of elderberries too.
there must be some waste, i'd venture, but not as much as there is now.

[Deb]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' post='1512301' date='Apr 28 2008, 12:58 AM']watch the little vid on this page.

[url="http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/debt-and-taxes/"]http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/debt-and-taxes/[/url]

Kind of interesting.[/quote]

It was kind of interesting. Especially if it was true that if they dumped the income tax, we would still have as much money going into the country as we did seven or eight years ago. Does that just apply to Federal Government?
Where do we start with cuts? 42 cents of every dollar goes to defense. Is that needed or just needed to be managed better?

[JesusIsMySuperHero]

[quote name='Deb' post='1512460' date='Apr 28 2008, 09:50 AM']It was kind of interesting. Especially if it was true that if they dumped the income tax, we would still have as much money going into the country as we did seven or eight years ago. Does that just apply to Federal Government?
Where do we start with cuts? 42 cents of every dollar goes to defense. Is that needed or just needed to be managed better?[/quote]
Actually, Deb, every single cent in defense comes from Corporate Income Tax. Since Corporations are not people, I think they should be paying Income Tax.

There is a tax for every single program, be it health care or any other thing we enjoy. Income Tax is a fraud, and nobody should welcome it.

The trouble is, so many times we have heard, do your part for society, even if it is to pay your taxes. It has become so engrained in our heads we don't realize we are not really benefiting society, we are benefiting some rich evil men who need their butts kicked!

[Deb]

Shouldn't the fix then be to start taxing all corporations at a higher rate and leaving us alone? Corporations get tax break after tax break and some years, multi-billion dollar businesses pay less actual tax than I do. Something has always been wrong about that.
I only took one economic class in college so the basics only stayed in my mind for about a week after it ended. I can handle my own money (mostly) but, that is about it for me.

[CatherineM]

In the movie Dave, he brought in his friend the accountant to basically go over the books for the whole government. That would be the way to do it. One person, without an ax to grind, and no hidden agenda, to just go through the budget and pull out all the stuff that we don't need.

[Laudate_Dominum]

This isn't about taxes per se but it is a good and interesting documentary that is at least somewhat related to this thread.

[url="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4840432044369494646&hl=en"]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4...94646&hl=en[/url]

[dairygirl4u2c]

i mean... income tax i can see shouldn't be used a lot... but it should be used, on everyone, to some degree.

we all benefit from the military. you can't find a tax on that taht that's anaologous to how we get money from gas for roads, at least tahti can think of .

and same goes for paying your representatives etc.

maybe i'm not being creative enough, but it seems some income tax should be inherent to everyone.
i mean... i like the sales tax etc or different ideas, becasue it allows one person to be able to be a hermit if they want. but even a hermit should have to pay something for living here, and not some whacky country elsewhere, giving what we do for them.

i guess i do adhere to it... there's two things you can't avoid in life... death and taxes. unless you go to a coutnry where they don't have it, or outter space i suppose.

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Deb' post='1512460' date='Apr 28 2008, 09:50 AM']It was kind of interesting. Especially if it was true that if they dumped the income tax, we would still have as much money going into the country as we did seven or eight years ago. Does that just apply to Federal Government?
Where do we start with cuts? 42 cents of every dollar goes to defense. Is that needed or just needed to be managed better?[/quote]
I can't speak for Ron Paul, but it has been said that America's foreign policy is the cause of a great many financial burdens and that changes in this policy could reduce expenses in a degree that would bring the U.S. back to 2002 levels. There are other similar changes/reforms that have been proposed as means of greatly reducing spending but it would require significant policy changes. If our spending was reduced to 2002 levels the income tax could be completely abolished and the government would still have more than enough revenue to play with. That's the kind of thing I've heard anyway.
There is also a "fair tax" camp but I don't really know enough to speak on that but I'm sure an internet search would turn up some websites.

[traichuoi]

I saw a guy's bumper sticker read, "If God is okay with 10% then the IRS should be as well!" hahaha I loved that. I just think it makes you a target for an audit though. hmpf.

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' post='1513663' date='Apr 28 2008, 11:12 PM']i mean... income tax i can see shouldn't be used a lot... but it should be used, on everyone, to some degree.

we all benefit from the military. you can't find a tax on that taht that's anaologous to how we get money from gas for roads, at least tahti can think of .

and same goes for paying your representatives etc.

maybe i'm not being creative enough, but it seems some income tax should be inherent to everyone.
i mean... i like the sales tax etc or different ideas, becasue it allows one person to be able to be a hermit if they want. but even a hermit should have to pay something for living here, and not some whacky country elsewhere, giving what we do for them.

i guess i do adhere to it... there's two things you can't avoid in life... death and taxes. unless you go to a coutnry where they don't have it, or outter space i suppose.[/quote]
About half a trillion dollars of the federal budget (including income tax revenues among a great many other things) will be spent on national debt interest.

According to the U.S. Treasury website the national debt as of four days ago (04/25/2008) was $9,334,965,822,890.37 USD. Just a freaky tidbit of info..

Btw, I'm not saying that people shouldn't pay their taxes but I don't see how this statement: "but it should be used, on everyone, to some degree" is necessarily true.

Even if you believe that income tax is some kind of basic element of social justice (which is utterly preposterous to my mind) I hope you would admit that the specifics of the tax system are up for debate. I tend to believe that an individual's labor is their private property and that the taxation of private labor is an abuse of government. At the very least it is short of the ideal for a free and humanistic society.

Anyway, here are a few countries that defy your income tax imperative.

Andorra: 0%
The Bahamas: 0%
Bermuda: 0%
Dubai (UAE): 0%
Monaco: 0%
Nauru: no taxes period.
New Zealand: no income tax for four year for new residents.
Norfolk Island: 0%
United Arab Emirates: no corporate or individual income tax, no value added tax, no goods and services tax and no sales tax.

And here are a few countries with pretty low income tax rates.

Liechtenstein: 1.2%
Saudi Arabia: 2.5%
Bulgaria: 10%
Syria: 5-15%
Czech Republic: 15%
Georgia: 12%
Hong Kong: 0-15%
Montenegro: 15%
Romania: 16%
Russia: 13%


[b]Unites States[/b]: up to 52.95%. - Up to 35% federal income tax (top bracket was 38.6% in 2002 and 39.6% in 2000), plus up to 10.3% state income tax and up to 7.65% federal payroll tax. For my relatively average income bracket I will pay 28% in federal income tax plus the state income tax and a local income tax. I really think that the system of banking, usury and taxes is a ghastly and archaic system of exploitation that fosters madness and domineering bureaucracy (the IRS is a good example), among other things. There are much cooler possibilities, at least on a theoretical level.

[goldenchild17]

those are some crazy numbers. I should move .

[Cure of Ars]

-We should not tax behaviors we want. We want people to work and make money so it is not a good idea to tax income. The good thing about income tax is that it does not tax the very poor because they do not have income.

-Some ideas would be to switch the income tax to a carbon tax or consumption tax or no tax. The down side to the carbon and consumption tax is that it would hit the poor harder than the rich. The down side to no tax is that the government is already in debt.

-The government is using inflation to manage its debit. This is why the value of the dollar is going down and the price of everything is going up. The government and the rich benefit most from this because they get to use the money first before the value of the money is affected.

-Inflation is a hidden tax that affects the poor more than the rich since the rich have their wealth in assets that keep its value through inflation. Inflation can help the poor if they are in debt but because of how the system works, once the poor get behind, they are not going to be able to get out of debt (because the interest rates rise so much) so this does not help them much. In the long run inflation hurts the poor because their wages don’t have the same purchasing power.

-High inflation makes saving less attractive. If inflation is 10% and you are getting 3% on your money in the bank you just lost 7% of the value of your money. This encourages speculative investment which can be good (because is drives innovation) but it also leads to bubbles which destabilize the economy.

-It is in the bank’s interest for the government to be in debit because the government pays interest. The banks and credit card companies hold more power in influencing the government than the people. The Federal Reserve is privately owned and has the power to make the money and because of this it has a lot of control on inflation. We don’t know who the owners are of the Federal Reserve. They got ride of the statistic (M3) that tells us how much money the Fed is printing.

Questions:

Are the above statements true?

Why would the Federal Reserve want inflation if it is going to lower their return from the interest that it is charging for borrowing money to the US government?

[Aloysius]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' post='1513663' date='Apr 29 2008, 01:12 AM']i mean... income tax i can see shouldn't be used a lot... but it should be used, on everyone, to some degree.

we all benefit from the military. you can't find a tax on that taht that's anaologous to how we get money from gas for roads, at least tahti can think of .

and same goes for paying your representatives etc.

maybe i'm not being creative enough, but it seems some income tax should be inherent to everyone.
i mean... i like the sales tax etc or different ideas, becasue it allows one person to be able to be a hermit if they want. but even a hermit should have to pay something for living here, and not some whacky country elsewhere, giving what we do for them.

i guess i do adhere to it... there's two things you can't avoid in life... death and taxes. unless you go to a coutnry where they don't have it, or outter space i suppose.[/quote]
let the corporations pay for the safety of their potential customer pool through corporate taxes and tariffs and stuff. that's what makes sense. the federal government has no business dealing with individuals in this way, it's called bullying and it's against the principal of subsidarity.