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Is Joe Miller a Tax Cheat?

especially in the age of blogs, its important to take note of the actual source. Of course, the Kos is going to take a juicy bit on Miller - but did they do the bit themselves or simply repost from someone else and add commentary?

In this case its a commenter on an obscure Alaska blog - the credibility of which I'm sure no one here can assess given I bet not one person on JREF has heard of Andrew Halco. Well. Maybe a few. But you get the drift.

So all we can do is assess the information, follow through to the original source if we like and then weigh its credibility after some consideration.

In this case, I find myself being persuaded by the argument.
 
Actually my first thought here before I got into the above post was with reference to the profile of individuals who dodge taxes. I imagine the large majority of people are simply greedy - but wouldn't you expect someone who holds his ideas of government to be more likely to cheat on taxes?

After all, the government is something of a bogeyman for these people: ruining everything it touches, metastasizing dangerously and deeply antagonistic to the "little guy". The word "tax" is essentially a cuss word for these people.

There are other political motivations to be sure: I bet some anti-war lefties have done something like this to avoid contributing to war funding - or other programs people take issue with (check Eldon G in the Detax Canada thread in the CT forum for an extreme example). But I really don't think its surprising at all to find a few of Miller's stripe engaged in this behaviour - perhaps at a higher ratio than for other more centrist brands of politics.
 
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Sooo, he's qualified for a spot on Obama's cabinet now eh?

Good thinking Joe!
 
I don't know if he cheated on his taxes or not, but that would at least be consistent with the politics he is running on. Unlike all the public assistance he, and his family, have been accused of taking.

This really should be evidence of him sticking up for his beliefs. Not sure the IRS would see it that way, but that is not my concern.
 
Isn't the question not how much rent he is taking but is the salary he paid himself reasonable?
The IRS has programs to compare the salary claimed on an s-corp to the business code to determine if it looks out of line.

We don't know from this statement how much income is shown on his S-Corp only how much of Salary/distributions. Whether or not that is reasonable depends on many things , location, how much time is devoted , etc

You can show 200,000 in income and take only a 50,000 income if it is reasonable for the type of work.
 
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DavidJames said:
I supposed that could be one reason you guys keep using them, you have no clue what it means.
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First I am not a republican but on the issue of Tu Quoque.

I never heard of the term before seeing it on message boards but I am tempted to use what people would call a Tu Quoque at times but not because I want to discredit the argument but because I think the person is hypocritical for taking a certain posistion when other times it wouldn't be important to them. Is it a Tu Quoque if I know it doesn't discredit the argument?

Take this case If i were to make a comment like Drysdale did , it would not be because it lessens any argument that Joe Miller is a tax cheat instead it would be to point out that some of the same people probably thought what Geitner did was unimportant. Likewise many of those who thought what Geitner did was bad would not probably not think it that bad if Miller cheated.

In this particular case I don't know if Miller reports everything correctly on his taxes but I do believe that the argument made is not valid.
The only issue is whether the salary he took is reasonable. You do not know from those statements how much income his S-Corp reported. The ability to report a salary of less than the income claimed is one of the reasons people form an S-Corp. (that and the protection of a corporation) .

Even the quoted article states this although I think the author forgot it in his zeal
This works fine as long as a reasonable salary is paid to the owner/employee. It is a major audit issue if too low a salary, or no salary is paid at all.
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See this article
http://www.fitz-cpa.com/s-corp.aspx
According to S-Corporation tax consultant San Diego CPA Michael Fitzsimmons, significant tax savings can be achieved by running a business through an S-corporation (including an LLC that has elected to be taxed as an S-corporation) and taking a salary that is lower than the amount of "profits before owner salaries". This is because FICA (Social Security & Medicare) taxes (which are equivalent to the self-employment taxes paid by sole proprietors, LLC members, and general partners) are payable on income taken as salary, but not on income left in the corporation or taken as S-corporation distributions.
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eeyore1954 said:
I never heard of the term before seeing it on message boards but I am tempted to use what people would call a Tu Quoque at times but not because I want to discredit the argument but because I think the person is hypocritical for taking a certain posistion when other times it wouldn't be important to them. Is it a Tu Quoque if I know it doesn't discredit the argument?
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The reason it's a fallacy is that it doesn't address the specific topic. While questioning the motives of the arguer may be something to consider, it's still "bad form". One should probably take discuss the actions of others separately. But this is just an interweb forum.

But that's all just my opinion.

eeyore1954 said:
Take this case If i were to make a comment like Drysdale did , it would not be because it lessens any argument that Joe Miller is a tax cheat instead it would be to point out that some of the same people probably thought what Geitner did was unimportant. Likewise many of those who thought what Geitner did was bad would not probably not think it that bad if Miller cheated.
Click to expand...

Drysdale wasn't pointing out that other people did it (which they have), but used it as a cheap shot at the opposing party.
 
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