Tag: tax

The B. S. Theory

tax the rich, tax, pay, paid, paying, Common Sense

Bernie Sanders is worse than merely wrong about the rich not paying their fair share of taxes.

It’s we, the much-lauded “Ninety-nine Percenters,” who don’t pay enough!

At least, when we figure taxes paid against direct subsidies/services rendered: taxes minus transfers. And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, only the top quintile of income earners — including the much-abhorred One Percenters — pay appreciably more in taxes than they receive in “benefits.”

In a republic, you would expect the masses to pay taxes, receiving only indirect benefits, like a broadly defined “security” and “the rule of law.”

The calculation of who is and is not a net tax-payer or net tax-consumer has to be difficult. I certainly haven’t vetted the studies carefully. But previous accountings also show that the super-rich pay the bulk of income taxes in America.

How to put the system aright?

Don’t tax us more!

Bernie’s preference, to tax a whole lot more as well as to provide more subsidies and “benefits,” will only make a bigger mess.

Unfortunately, doing the right thing (cutting back on the giveaways at all levels) is politically . . . tricky.

But there’s something missing in all this: the indirect hazards of the “benefits” . . . the opportunity costs involved when we get hooked on hand-outs. The most trapped people in America are those who pay the least and take the most. The dollar-value of their received transfer payments measure neither their dependency nor their consequent lack of upward mobility.

How could we figure real harms and helps embedded in the current system, when some “benefits” are, in fact, detriments?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Americans for Tax Reform, fairness, tax, tax policy, tax the rich, the rich

crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom tax policy

Gold Leaf

cannabis, marijuana, legalization, tax, taxes, federal, Colorado, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common sense

The experiment in legalized marijuana begun by citizens in the states of Washington and Colorado has, from the beginning, faced a huge obstacle: marijuana is still illegal, federally. State nullification of federal law is not merely “problematic,” it’s hard to “get away with.”

Take Colorado’s experience. The Centennial State, which has made the swiftest and most extensive progress regarding marijuana retail sales, has come up to an inevitable problem with the federal government.

Over banking.

Interesting Reason reporting tells us that “Marijuana-related businesses in Colorado are so profitable that the government doesn’t know what to do with all of the tax revenue they’re generating. But business owners face a more immediate problem: Where to stash their own profits when banks won’t take it.”

Congress has been very active making banking less and less private and less and less free for decades now, in part because of the War on Drugs. Existing banks refused to take new cannabis clients.

So a new credit union was formed, to handle the cash.

And now, NBC News tells us, our central bank, the Federal Reserve (dubbed by NBC “the guardian of the U.S. banking system”), said “that it doesn’t intend to accept a penny connected to the sale of pot because the drug remains illegal under federal law.” Which makes modern banking difficult, even for a credit union, apparently.

What are “weed” businesses to do . . . other than what they are doing, hiring security guards for all the cash?

Maybe Bitcoin will step in. Or old gold-warehouse banking, as was not unheard of even in the 19th century.

Or, maybe, the federal government will cease its over-reach?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags cannabis, Colorado, Common Sense, drug prohibition, federal, illustration, Jim Gill, legalization, marijuana, marijuana legalization, paul jacob, tax, tax policy

Accountability national politics & policies responsibility tax policy

Raising Taxes & Truth

tax, taxes, debt, national debt, truth, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Sheila Weinberg wants to raise your taxes. So fervent is her money-lust that she even threatens to run for president, and only half-jokingly, on that single issue.

More surprising: I would enthusiastically vote for her.

What gives?

Well, Weinberg isn’t demanding a tax increase or a spending cut, per se — just one and/or the other until accounts are balanced. She points out that tax increases tend to concentrate the minds of taxpayers to oppose greater spending by government. Otherwise, as long as governments — local, state and federal — can hide the true costs of their “services,” more will be spent, and more debt incurred, than the people can afford, or want.

That’s why this friendly CPA founded Truth in Accounting, a nonpartisan, non-profit group working to “compel governments to produce financial reports that are understandable, reliable, transparent and correct.”

Too much to ask? No, if you ask me, or you, or Sheila, or anyone else . . . until we inquire of politicians, and then, well . . . apparently, yes. And not merely at the federal level.

“For years, citizens have been told that their home state budgets have been balanced,” Weinberg recently told Watchdog.org. “If that were true, state debt would be zero . . .”

Yet, last month, Truth in Accounting issued its 2014 Financial State of the States report disclosing that state governments are truthfully — whether they admit it or not — a cumulative $1.3 trillion dollars in arrears. Individually, all but 11 states are carrying debt.

Lies won’t set us free. Or pay the bills.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags debt, deficit spending, federal debt, federal spending, government spending, tax, tax policy

Accountability Common Sense initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy

Evergreen Eyman

“Initiative 1366 is blackmail,” one plaintiff charged.

No; it’s just political hardball.

Washington State voters have cast their ballots five times (by initiative measure) to require a two-thirds vote of both houses of the state legislature, or a vote of the people, to increase taxes.

Though the rule is neither hard to understand nor difficult to implement, legislators have repeatedly overruled the people they supposedly serve, overturning the measure and then, finally, suing to overturn the repeatedly re-enacted two-thirds requirement.

The Washington Supreme Court ruled that only through a constitutional amendment could citizens place upon their representatives the two-thirds mandate. And — you guessed it — the state’s initiative process doesn’t permit constitutional amendments, only statutes.

As I reported back in June, Tim Eyman and Voters Want More Choices haven’t skipped a beat. Their grassroots army collected over 335,000 voter signatures to place a new initiative on the ballot. This measure would cut a penny from the state sales tax unless legislators propose an amendment to the state constitution establishing the rule that taxes can only be raised via a two-thirds legislative vote or a popular vote.

The day after the signatures were verified and the measure placed on the ballot, a group of legislators and various special interests sued to block the measure from going to a vote. Last Friday, the court declared that Initiative 1366 would remain on the ballot for voters to decide.

So, whether “blackmail” or ingenious hardball, it looks like voters will have a chance to send a very direct message to their representatives: Do what the people want or else.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags ballot initiative, initiatives, tax, tax policy, taxation, Tim Eyman

Common Sense crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom judiciary nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Legalize, But Prohibit?

Pot Pot, legalization, collage, photo-montage, Paul Jacob, Jim Gill

Last week, I warned of marijuana legalization.

Not that I’m against it. But how much will actual freedom be increased?

Note: I’m not bemoaning, as one activist friend argued, that “if you can’t toke up and celebrate in public when it passes, it’s not legalization.”

One cannot now legally smoke tobacco in most public buildings (meaning those open for business as well as government-owned structures) or drink a beer in most public parks or while navigating sidewalks. But you can smoke and drink at home or on certain types of private property.

Ending the drug war and treating newly legalized marijuana pretty much as we treat alcohol and tobacco seems like a long overdo common sense approach.

There’s also the freedom of home cultivation. I have friends who make wine at home, for private consumption. It’s legal; it’s proper. It should also be legal to grow cannabis at home. Yet, many a politician thinks otherwise.

And they are inspired, in a sense, by the popular legalization mantra, “legalize, tax and regulate.” That sends an ominous signal: in order to maximize revenues, politicians see the revenue advantage in forbidding hard-to-tax home cultivation — cultivation that is, let’s face it, a traditional freedom, a right “retained by the people.”

The excuse for this continued prohibition could be “think of the children.” But it’s probably just greed for revenue . . . and the even more hidden enticements of “crony capitalism,” which plagues almost all industry.

You should be able to grow a plant. And self-medicate. These are basic human rights, and the state should work around those.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags courts, Drug War, law, marijuana, marijuana legalization, prohibition, tax, tax policy

Accountability Common Sense government transparency national politics & policies porkbarrel politics tax policy too much government

The Spenders’ Eternal Excuse

Post author By CS Admin
Post date August 21, 2015
5 Comments on The Spenders’ Eternal Excuse

Most modern welfare states have a huge problem: their politicians promise more than government revenue covers. So they borrow and borrow until they can borrow no more.

And then they go down. Like Greece has gone down. Banks are closed there, and the people suffer.

The problem is over-spending and over-promising (the latter being merely committing to future over-spending, so let’s just call it all over-spending). But when you confront a partisan of such extravagance — whether that person be a politician or a constituency beneficiary or an ideological socialist or social democrat — the most common defense is: THEY WOULDN’T LET US TAX ENOUGH.

The “they” in such defenses could be an opposition party, or a constituency, or . . . “the evil rich.”

But anyone with something other than a lump of coal for a brain knows the real truth: responsible people don’t make such defenses. If a political difficulty gets in the way of the extra revenue needed for something promised, it’s practically the same as an economic difficulty, so the excuse falls apart.

Say again?

If you cannot get enough revenue for your favorite program, it doesn’t matter whether the people who are the source of your “needed” revenue are broke — have nothing to give — or they simply balk at giving. The point is, you don’t have the revenue. The responsible reaction would be: cut back on spending.

Responsible people budget; irresponsible people blame others for not having the wherewithal to spend and spend and spend.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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