PS. Don't watch any of the clips. They're nothing but capitalist propaganda!

I'm a bit surprised that you pay sales tax on food. Most states don't charge sales tax on food items.

Mine does. Clothing too. School supplies, other necessities (including utilities). The state I came from does. The state I could retire to if I had no other choice does. If you don't, how nice for you. Funding shortfalls have to be made up somewhere. My state doesn't have a MasterCard Direct to China like GWB does.

You may not drive more miles for work than I do. But my gasoline taxes aren't deductible unless I am a business proprietor. I'm not, so none of it's deductible (I used to deduct 50K miles a year!). It's just the cost of getting from here to there, and it's gone up steadily. Bigger percentages of the ol' income every time I look.

I used to be a proprietor of a business. Filed my Schedule C's and everything. Got to deduct pretty much everything (except insurance), and that was really neat.

Then the insurance turned out to be a total scam, and we were sunk. So we moved, got jobs in a depressed region for minimal wages, and manged to buy land anyway. Still have puppets and costumes and unicycles and juggliing gear in the shed. It's been hanging in there for 14 years today. Can't deduct it anymore, not even the magic guillotine. Because we do other things for a living mostly. Now.

The first year I tried to "get legal" with the IRS after being out for awhile due to emergency re-alignment, we ended up paying them out over 5 years. We were finally making $20K a year, and knew that would make them interested. Our house burned down that year, and we lost everything. All those necessary tools of the trade mentioned above, along with everything else we owned. I forgot to put brackets on the 1040 that year, so they added our estimated losses to our income and told us we owed 'em $10,000.

Went around in circles until we got sent to "Section D," which when I tried to contact the idiot-in-charge ended with a hang-up - "Nobody talks to Section D!" So we paid out what we were supposed to be able to deduct over those years, just so we could hope to make more than $20K a year someday.

Which we did, but not for very long before our son and partner died. This government cannot finance itself on what little I can earn. It can't even finance the jerk-offs that practice extortion on people like me. Again, I have no problem with rich people paying their fair share. I do know you don't agree.

Parsed down to "livable wage" level, it's nearly 50% of my income. If people who earned $2 million (or the average CEO salary of $10 million) a year paid that much in taxes, they'd be paying their fair share. So don't tell me their 10-20% (if they don't jump enough loopholes) is MORE than a fair share. It's honestly not.

I think you misunderstood me. I said I pay a higher percentage of income to taxes. There's a big difference between $20,000 and $2,000,000 a year. Rich people don't necessarily eat more than I do, but that 5% sales tax on food is a much smaller bite of 2 million than 20 thousand. But it's okay with me if you want to believe that smaller bite is "more than their share." I can see that you won't be changing your mind.

It's not a matter of changing my mind, Joy. You're confusing sales taxes with income taxes and inheritances…all very different animals. Sales tax is the purview of whatever state you live in, not the federal Gov't. However, I'm a bit surprised that you pay sales tax on food. Most states don't charge sales tax on food items.

any confiscation by the government in the form of inheritance taxes is flat out government theft as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, I feel that way pretty much every April, and every time I go food or clothes shopping. Still, those darned check-out people won't let me deduct the tax from the total. And the IRS doesn't let me ignore them. If you decide to ignore them, do let us know how that works out for you, okay?

I seriously doubt that you pay more. That's not borne out by the numbers. According to the IRS, the top 1% of taxpayers, as measured by annual income, paid 34% of all taxes collected

I think you misunderstood me. I said I pay a higher percentage of income to taxes. There's a big difference between $20,000 and $2,000,000 a year. Rich people don't necessarily eat more than I do, but that 5% sales tax on food is a much smaller bite of 2 million than 20 thousand. But it's okay with me if you want to believe that smaller bite is "more than their share." I can see that you won't be changing your mind.

Well, I'm not an economist (or even a CPA), so I'm sure there's gray areas all over the place that need attention. But if your kids stand to inherit 12 million dollars when you die, I have no problem whatsoever with your estate paying taxes on 2 million of it before it gets divvied. They'll all come out ahead anyway, so I won't feel the least bit sorry for them.

But that's really not the issue, Joy. Whether the estate in $5,000,000 or $500,000,000, any confiscation by the government in the form of inheritance taxes is flat out government theft as far as I'm concerned.
If the government has no right to that property in life, they certainly have no right to it in death. Furthermore, there are many cases where the inheritance tax causes all sorts of hardships on the hiers because the bulk of the wealth isn't in liquid assets. I know of a family that was forced to sell a long standing family business, started by their father, because nearly all the estate was the value of the business of which the father was the sole owner. But the gov't needed its pound of flesh and the sons had to sell the business and lay off employees to pay the tab. I'll admit the father might have done a better job of estate planning, but in another sense why should he have to? Why should he not be able to pass his business on to his sons to take over when he died without government interference? The answer is, of course he should be able to. I've long advocated for repeal of all inheritence taxes, period.

I pay way more of a percentage of meager income in taxes - income (state and federal), SS, unemployment, Medicaid, education, property, gasoline, etc. - than rich people do. So it's a little unreasonable for people with four houses, six vehicles (uaually a Hummer among them), fancy glass buildings downtown and thousands of acres in Paraguay or Costa Rica to whine to me about paying a "fair share" to the common pool. I don't feel sorry for 'em.

I seriously doubt that you pay more. That's not borne out by the numbers.
According to the IRS, the top 1% of taxpayers, as measured by annual income, paid 34% of all taxes collected (I think this was for 2004, the most recent year for numbers to be available), whereas in the early 80''s when the top tax bracket was nearly 70%, that figure was more like 19%. In other words, as tax rates have fallen the greater the percentage of total taxes paid by the wealthiest. The top 5% paid 54% and the top 10% 65.8%. So it isn't correct to say that those at the bottom pay a higher share. Especially when you consider that the top 25% paid, collectively, nearly 89% of all the taxes paid.

The idea that the rich owe this nation at least as much as the poor and middle classes doesn't make me sad at all.

No one says they don't. And based on the above stats, I'd say they are paying more than their fair share.

As for farmers, they haven't been asked or expected to take real losses on commodity prices for a long time - we have direct ag subsidies to pay them for growing (or not) what ends up rotting because nobody eats it. This is a hefty issue with me, and the huge majority of subsidies go to ADM/Monsanto's gigafarmers (what REALLY keeps prices depressed), not Mom and Pop. I live in what used to be the nation's tobacco-basket, and these farmers actually ARE Mom and Pop - the bases are very seldom more than 40 acres. The government bought their bases back (at 19th century prices), and that was that.

Many sold out to developers (gated communities for rich retiring boomers), many others have used their heads as well as their skills and gone either organic truck or pharma/industrial (quite a bit of it in tobacco, which they already know how to grow). They're making more money now than before, and NOT getting ag subsidies to grow garbage (or not). If left to themselves, farmers will grow what sells for the best price. If we don't want them growing… erm… hemp, they need alternative cash crops and the freedom to grow them.

Profits taken on long or short term investments should be taxed as capital gains and/or income. Investment is all about growing money, and there's nothing wrong with a percentage of that growth going to the public pool. You still get richer. My Florida friend very much expects his wealth to grow over the lifetime of his investment in the project I described. He's putting his wealth to work directly, not hiding it in Switzerland or Aruba or gambling it away to the Wall Street mob (he's got other money there). He will not just get the tax breaks on the land and facilities and infrastructure to amortize over a number of years, those breaks will serve to lower his general tax bill on other wealth over the same amount of time. That's great!

But when he cashes in somewhere down the road (the facility is purchased by some oil or utility conglomerate at a hefty profit), I don't mind one bit that he should pay capital gains tax on that profit. He's still a richer man for the effort.

I pay way more of a percentage of meager income in taxes - income (state and federal), SS, unemployment, Medicaid, education, property, gasoline, etc. - than rich people do. So it's a little unreasonable for people with four houses, six vehicles (uaually a Hummer among them), fancy glass buildings downtown and thousands of acres in Paraguay or Costa Rica to whine to me about paying a "fair share" to the common pool. I don't feel sorry for 'em.

That said, spend your wealth wherever you like. Just don't ask me to cry if you pay gains taxes on your profits, sales taxes on your yachts and Hummers, property and education taxes on your houses and condominiums, capital gains taxes on your market lottery winnings, income taxes on your trust fund, or estate taxes on the gold you can't take with you when you go.

The idea that the rich owe this nation at least as much as the poor and middle classes doesn't make me sad at all.

Tax breaks on "idle" money (hoarded offshore, willed to idle offspring or playing the futures markets in oil, war and human suffering) are counterproductive. Tax breaks for real investment in jobs and the future of our nation is a wonderful idea. It puts the money back in circulation, thus doesn't contribute to wealth redistribution to the top end. And it comes back to the government AS investment income long-term.

I agree with you totally that tax breaks on real investment, job creation and the like is necessary for long term growth of the economy. I disagree with you in lumping inheritance in with other forms of investment. Inheritance on confiscatory from the get go. The fact is that every dollar of inherited wealth represents the remainder of ownership after taxes were already paid during the lifetime of the deceased. It makes not one whit of sense that just because a person dies, the government is suddently "entitled" to consfiscate X% of the value of that person's property. If it would be considered givernment confiscation of property before death, why would it be any different the day after death? I no of no good reason why the government is "entitled" to a person's wealth just because they've died.
You allusion to "idle" heirs doesn't mean much either. To me that sounds like saying that just because a particular heir might squander or waste their inheritance, the governement has the right to step in and confiscate a certain percent to prevent total wastage. Fortunately, there's no law against squandering wealth. People do it all the time. It might stupid, but there's no law against that either!

Now, taxing short term gains on futures trades and all that…sure. That's already treated as ordinary income anyway. The tax break occurs for long term gains representing long term investment. But I'm not sure I agree with you that futures investment is "idle" money. Without those speculators, prices on practically everything could be much more easily manipulated. They (the speculators) are a stabalizing force in the markets.
Thier capital is 100% at risk everytime they enter a trade, because there are no guarantees at all that they are on the right side of the market. Without them, for example, farmers would be the ones to take the brunt of the risk on crop prices at harvest time. Instead, they can, through judicious use of futures contracts, mitigate a lot of that risk by passing it on to the speculators, thereby locking in their profits for the season and keeping the price you pay for, say, cornflakes, at a more reasonable level then if the risk were wide open all the time.

This is why tax policy is always a tradeoff between the governments right to capture certain forms of income or wealth for the common good and leaving as much wealth in the hands of those who earned it to plow back into the economy in a myriad of ways thus stabalzing prices, creating jobs, and keeping wealth in circulation. When push comes to shove, I believe the people, rather than the government, are far better at making wise decisions about where and how to spend the people's money!

This sounds like a plan.