Want to know what the OWS is rallying about?

Can I get an unbiased summary please? My eyes are too tired to read it all.

You do know you are at SWF.com, right? 

 

 

OOPS, so by unbiased I truly mean completely biased.

it is 71a pages long......will have to wait for my biased explanation.

darth (dont hold your breath) Tang

Its a study that supports the claim that America's largest/wealthiest corporations pay less taxes then your average taxpayer and goes into how they do it--basically using accelerated depreciation (tax write-offs), tax breaks on employee stock options, tax subsidies for certain industries (ie ethanol production), off-shore tax shelters, degrading the Alternative Min. Tax laws.

 

The biased crew will be along shortly to offer their slanted insight.  LOL

wont hear a peep from me. many of the loopholes, breaks, and tax credits should be removed.
it would even the playing field some between big business and small business.
darth (government killing competition) Tang

Keep in mind the US corporate income tax is second highest in the world.

 

Another thing people don't seem to be able to comprehend is WE pay corporations taxes. You raise them they just raise the price of their goods and services we buy.

 

In 2010 Exxon pay 17.2 percent federal income taxes and that's according to the left wing center for american progress. That is on top on their Royalties, lease fees gas tax, state tax, property tax and all the taxes paid by their employees, officers and shareholders. But lets go protest their 9% profit margin.

 

 

 

Translation:

The cost component of US goods and services controlled by Government is the second highest in the world.

 

 

 

Yep, corporations do not pay taxes. The extortion money the Government demands is rolled up into the cost structure like any other cost of doing business.

Thank God, otherwise my 401k would suck even more...

 

PS

The cost of regulation compliance is also rolled up into the cost structure, meaning WE pay for that too.

South Park had a great take on this on Wednesday. They basically said that the people at OWS were Obama supporters who couldn't blame Obama so they are protesting the people who can't change the laws-just profit from them. I had never thought of it that way. But who gave about $100 million to Obamas campaign in 2008? Wall Street firms. Who got all the $ from the Obama bailouts-any of the protesters? Nope, Wall Street. Who benefited from the new regulations? Wall Street-small and community banks are hurting badly now while the big banks have increased market share and profits. I share the OWS protesters frustration, but Obama has done far more to help the "evil" big banks than Bush ever did. Heck, all of his regulators and treasury officials are executives from the big banks and everything they've done has benefited the large banks. If the OWS protesters really wanted hope and change, they'd vote for whoever isn't Obama next year, but they won't.

The whole lack of logic is what gets me. 'Wall Street" is doing exactly what they exist to do. Had these idiot protesters really wanted to make a statement about this they would have done a protest at Wall Street and then marched to Washington DC.

The thing is, and I have been thinking long and hard on this so I think my logic is sound, even though the big banks and Wall Street are legalized crooks, they aren't what's wrong with our economy. We are paying $3.27 a gallon for gas. Every time there has been any encouraging economic news, the price of oil shoots up over $100 a barrel. Right now hundreds of billion of $ are pouring out of America to Canada and Mexico and Venezuela and the Middle East. The money that would normally be spent by us on TV's and cars and real estate and eating out more often, etc., is being sent to foreign countries. We cannot pull out of this downturn because as the economy improves the price of energy is rising equal, or more, to the potential economic benefit of the improvements. If we don't solve our energy crisis, we will be like this for the foreseeable future. Our economic power is being drained through oil to other nations. It still takes more energy to produce solar and wind power than it creates, so there is no way without a major breakthrough, that we can use alternative energy and jobs to work our way out of this. The solution is simple and will never be enacted. Go to pre 1997 rules regarding trading oil. Only those companies that directly sell or process the oil can trade it. You have companies like Goldman Sachs sitting on billions and billions of $, just salivating over any kind of recovery to get oil back up to $150 a barrel or more.

I forgot, all of the economic recoveries since the 1970's have had one key commonality: cheap gas. It happened with the Reagan recovery, the Clinton Recovery and the Dot com bust recovery. In every case the recovery followed gas dropping below a dollar a gallon or at least in the early 2000's below $2 a gallon.

So...I pay a higher marginal rate than that,on top of my gas taxes, sales taxes, state taxes, property taxes, school taxes, etc.  They do seem to pay a lower rate than I do.

 

 

They don't connect the dots.  They can identify the problem, and have figured out who benefited, but don't see the whole picture.  Anyway, not sure I would endorse voting for whoever isn't Obama.  Alternatives have cost us big money and losses in other ways....Iraq War for  WMD that never was.  Gosh darn, we are not even getting the biggest slice of the oil pie over there.

 

 

 

I can't imagine someone worse than 0bama ever getting the nomination but I suppose it's possible LOL! Seriously I think Ron Paul is the only one in the race I know I couldn't vote for at this point.
 

 

So what do you suppose Exxon paid in state taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, school taxes and on top of that Business equipment taxes, lease fees and royalty fees?

 

 

Exxon customers pay for all those things, not Exxon.  Exxon sets what they want for a profit, then sets the price accordingly pushing all their expense off on us, like all big businesses do. 

 

Also, I think the issue is that rich people pay more in income taxes.  Meaning a CEO who makes $15 million, gets so many income tax breaks that they end up paying a lower percentage then your average American making $50-100k.  And, there are many business tax breaks to accomplish the higher incomes of individuals.

 

I do believe that businesses need breaks, otherwise the real bread and butter of this country, small businesses, would never make it.  But the mega rich companies have so many advantages that most can't even conceive of--the biggest of which is having an "in" with our government representatives.   Their ability to lobby for what they want and get it,  and pay off elected representatives makes me feel like our vote is near pointless.

 

 

But thats a big part of what people are arguing about, wanting more taxes on corporations. The most genus idea I ever heard of was put forth by our own Bang Guy which was a flat corporate tax of say 40% reduced by the percentage of their payroll that is subject to US income taxes. If you have 50% of your payroll going to US citizens then your corp, tax is 20%. If 100% of your payroll is US citizens you don't pay any corporate tax. I LIKE IT!

 

According to IRS figures the uber rich pay an effective rate of 25%. "The rich" paid about 29%  so yeah, their could stand a little tweaking. Don't know bout you but last year mine was 9.6%. They both pay their fair share and then some as far as I am concerned but they can afford it. My opposition isn't so much to asking wealthy folks to pay a little more. I am just offended by the way they try to sell it.
 

 

While I do like Guy's suggestion, I'm not clear that I agree with zero taxes.  Everyone uses infrastructure and contributes to wear and tear on same and need to be contributing.  But giving business major tax breaks for keeping or bring their businesses back to America is something I will never argue with.