Trump's tax returns

[Mader Levap]

This is some Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged ******** that assumes that everyone is, at heart, a selfish git. It's a bollocks argument.

Most people are selfish, yes. But some of them have enlightened selfishness and know paying taxes give them civilization.

That is why the rich traditionally see an obligation to give back to their community.

I don't see that. Rich don't give back anything unless forced to.

I mean, everyone would want to avoid it. But rich have more opportunity to avoid it in various ways, including and up to changing laws to suit themself and screw over rest.

Some time later - historically - for some reason they always are introduced to various execution devices, from guillotines to just being hanged from trees. Weird.

 

[Dr. Keith]

It used to be understood that great success is only to a small degree the result of personal accomplishment and mostly due to luck and circumstances.
That is why the rich traditionally see an obligation to give back to their community.

There are limits to relying on noblesse oblige.

 

[xjx388]

It used to be understood that great success is only to a small degree the result of personal accomplishment and mostly due to luck and circumstances.
That is why the rich traditionally see an obligation to give back to their community.

I don't know if that's ever been true. The rich, from my POV, have always been about creating a perception of being good little philanthropists because they think it's good for their image, good for business and a good way to make a case for lower tax burden on themselves. Not to take away the good their philanthropy does.

 

[Bob001]

They already do. The lion's share, too.

What you want to do is have them pay more and rather than call it greed, you pretend there is a "share" they have to pay and they are not paying their portion of it. Without having to define how much a share is worth.

Yeah, that's always been a right-wing talking point. The people who have money do pay more in taxes than the people who don't. The people who have a lot of money pay more in taxes, generally, than the people who have little. The question is whether the people with money are paying more in proportion to their wealth. Warren Buffett famously said his effective income tax rate is lower than his secretary's, and his secretary ain't rich. Mitt Romney famously guessed that his effective income tax rate was around 13%, and he thought that was too high, even though that's probably about half the percentage paid by a schoolteacher or police officer.

The guiding principle of our progressive tax system is that the wealthiest should pay a higher proportion of their money in taxes than the people who earn less. And income is just part of the picture. Wealth is the bigger part. Buffett et al. could easily arrange their affairs so that they would have no taxable income at all in a given year. But that wouldn't touch their wealth. Is that good for the rest of us? In a society that purports to value equality, there is just no rationalization for three men -- not corporations, three individual men -- holding personal wealth equal to the entire bottom half of the population.

Wealth concentration is at peak levels.

That was the gist of a recent report published by the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C. Using data from Forbes’ annual ranking of the 400 richest Americans, the institute reached a number of conclusions regarding wealth disparities in the United States.

Most dramatically, it found that the country’s three richest individuals—Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos—collectively hold more wealth than the bottom 50% of the domestic population, “a total of 160 million people or 63 million American households.” Roughly a fifth of Americans “have zero or negative net worth,” the authors wrote.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahki...ottom-50-of-country-study-finds/#4966760f3cf8

 

[3point14]

Most people are selfish, yes.

I think that would need to be demonstrated to be leant on as an argument.

 

[Mader Levap]

I think that would need to be demonstrated to be leant on as an argument.

My opinion about human nature is very cynical. Thin veneer of civilization and all of that.

 

[Bob001]

More from Warren Buffett:

Mr. Buffett, who probably does not feel sick when he sees his MasterCard bill in his mailbox the way I do, is at least as exercised about the tax system as I am.

Put simply, the rich pay a lot of taxes as a total percentage of taxes collected, but they don’t pay a lot of taxes as a percentage of what they can afford to pay, or as a percentage of what the government needs to close the deficit gap.
.....
“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html

 

[Giordano]

Latest revelations on how sleazy Trump’s tax filings have been:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

If paywalled I am certain summaries will soon appear on other news sites.

 

[Firestone]

Latest revelations on how sleazy Trump’s tax filings have been:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

If paywalled I am certain summaries will soon appear on other news sites.

Trevor Potter, Republican former chairman of the FEC was so kind to post the main points on Twitter.
Nothing unusual actually, just tax fraud, campaign fraud.

The @nytimes reported today that Donald Trump may have illegally financed his 2016 campaign with a secret loan that potentially exceeded legal limits. The report is the latest in a Times series examining Trump's tax returns. Thread below. (1/8)

The @nytimes reports that in September 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, Trump quietly took out a $30 million bank loan in the name of an LLC that he jointly owns with billionaire developer Phil Ruffin, with Trump Tower Las Vegas as collateral. (2/8)

Tax records show the LLC paid Trump over $21 million in 2016 & claimed a tax deduction on the payments.

6 weeks after obtaining the loan, Trump gave $10 million to his campaign.

Federal law requires that candidates disclose bank loans used in connection w/ their campaign. (3/8)

If Trump secretly financed his 2016 campaign using an undisclosed bank loan backed by a billionaire developer, then voters have been illegally deprived of important information about the true sources of Trump's financial support. (4/8)

Additionally, if the LLC took a tax deduction for the payments to Trump, it would mean that Trump secretly relied on taxpayers to help subsidize his 2016 campaign. (5/8)

Disclosure to voters in 2016 would have been important, since Trump’s claim that he was self-financing his campaign was central to his message.

The @nytimes also reports Phil Ruffin guaranteed the loan. Under campaign finance law, such a guarantee is treated as a...(6/8)

...contribution to the candidate, subject to legal limits and reporting requirements. If the loan was used in connection with Trump’s campaign, then Ruffin would have made an illegal contribution to the Trump campaign, potentially valued as high as $30 million. (7/8)

Trump would have violated the law by accepting an excess contribution from Ruffin in the form of a loan guarantee and failing to report it. (8/8)


https://twitter.com/thetrevorpotter/status/1314623991102005253

 

[Stacyhs]

Nah, Trump wouldn't do that. He's so honest.

Ok...I had to force my fingers to type that. They kept trying to slap me.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

There are limits to relying on noblesse oblige.

there is a flipside to noblesse oblige, and that is to have your property torched and your head paraded through the streets.

Traditionally, extreme inequality is dealt with by destroying the wealth of the super-rich.
The Super-rich can only avoid this by not letting inequality become too big.

Many cultures had regular debt-amnesties, exactly for these reasons.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

A suggestion I've seen floated in conversation is, in exchange for not pursuing, prosecuting or punishing any of them with US crimes, to instantly revoke their US citizenship and put them on the "illegals" deportation list. They will have to forfeit all their American real estate assets (the assumption is their bank funds are already offshore, and foreign-owned property is not within the US government ambit).

Then since they are now "illegals" without a visa, they will then be given whatever the requisite time is allowed to go find another country that will take them...I hear Russia is nice! Or Chyna... Or face deportation at the nearest border should they fail. And once they are gone, they will never be allowed re-enter the country. And they can take Roger Stone and Rudy G. with them.

Can't do that. It's a settled matter of international law that you can't revoke somebody's only citizenship.

 

[Giordano]

Can't do that. It's a settled matter of international law that you can't revoke somebody's only citizenship.

Space Force! Make Mars take them!

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Trevor Potter, Republican former chairman of the FEC was so kind to post the main points on Twitter.
Nothing unusual actually, just tax fraud, campaign fraud.

That's insane and exactly what I already expected was going on.

 

[Leftus]

Yeah, that's always been a right-wing talking point. The people who have money do pay more in taxes than the people who don't. The people who have a lot of money pay more in taxes, generally, than the people who have little. The question is whether the people with money are paying more in proportion to their wealth. Warren Buffett famously said his effective income tax rate is lower than his secretary's, and his secretary ain't rich. Mitt Romney famously guessed that his effective income tax rate was around 13%, and he thought that was too high, even though that's probably about half the percentage paid by a schoolteacher or police officer.

The guiding principle of our progressive tax system is that the wealthiest should pay a higher proportion of their money in taxes than the people who earn less. And income is just part of the picture. Wealth is the bigger part. Buffett et al. could easily arrange their affairs so that they would have no taxable income at all in a given year. But that wouldn't touch their wealth. Is that good for the rest of us? In a society that purports to value equality, there is just no rationalization for three men -- not corporations, three individual men -- holding personal wealth equal to the entire bottom half of the population.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahki...ottom-50-of-country-study-finds/#4966760f3cf8

That's a considerable number of words that don't say how much a "share" is in a fair share.

 

[Giordano]

That's insane and exactly what I already expected was going on.

I just posted in the Trump Presidency thread the latest NY Times article that reports in detail the cesspool of influence pedaling Trump has created to funnel money to him, his businesses, and his family.

Not only pay for play campaign contributions. Payouts to the Trumps personal finances too.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

That's a considerable number of words that don't say how much a "share" is in a fair share.

This is the classic barrier to any discussion whatsoever on taxing wealth.

A fair share is based on what we need as a county to pay for the wars and corona virus. Poor and middle income people cannot afford to pay more. So that leaves the rich.

For a start we should repeal the last tax cut. And Trump is a liar when he claims $2K went to middle income people. Look it up.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Three words:
Progressive Consumption Tax

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Three words:
Progressive Consumption Tax

Not useful when the rich buy anything they want/need but billions more go into savings. Unless you want to tax stock purchases. That might work.

 

[Bob001]

]That's a considerable number of words[/HILITE] that don't say how much a "share" is in a fair share.

And you didn't read any of them did you? What's a "fair" trial? What's a "fair" election? Fair is a principal and a process, not a percentage. We could start by restructuring deductions and credits so somebody like Trump wouldn't be able to get away with billions of dollars in outright fraud. And "fair" would start by enforcing the existing tax laws equally, not just against the poorest and most defenseless.

“We have two tax systems in this country,” he said, “and nothing illustrates that better than the IRS ignoring wealthy tax cheats while penalizing low-income workers over small mistakes.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/...s-at-about-the-same-rate-as-the-top-1-percent

Taxpayers in rural, poor parts of the U.S. are more likely be audited by the Internal Revenue Service than those living in wealthier counties, according to a new analysis. The county where residents are most likely to face an audit: tiny Humphreys County, Mississippi, where the median household income is less than $24,000 a year, or less than half the income of a typical U.S. family.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/where-...st-poor-rural-counties-that-are-mostly-black/

An eight-year campaign to slash the agency’s budget has left it understaffed, hamstrung and operating with archaic equipment. The result: billions less to fund the government. That’s good news for corporations and the wealthy.

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted