I am a small business owner that makes about $150,000/year after business deductions. My wife is a professor at a university and makes $84,000/year. We have two kids that we have to put in daycare to allow us to work. Out of curiosity I wanted to see what our life would look like if I closed my business and stayed home to raise our kids. Interestingly our lifestyle would be roughly the same as it is now. The way the tax code is written it penalizes work to the point it financially makes more sense to not work. How so? The $150,000 I earn is taxed at the 25% rate; additionally I am paying roughly 14% in self-employment taxes on top of that. With an income of over $200,000, I am not eligible for a host of tax credits, deductions, and exemptions that lower income workers are eligible for. My wife and I both have large student loans that when put on government payback programs that cap payments at 10% of gross income, incentivizes earning less to lower payments. Then there are the non-governmental incentives to not work, like not having to put your children in daycare, lowering your transportation costs, cooking at home instead of eating out to save time, etc. It all amounts to very little incentive to work. So basically instead of putting in 50 hour weeks, having the anxiety of meeting payroll week-after-week, missing seeing my children grow up, etc., I could just stay home and really not notice any significant change to our lifestyle by not working. Something seems wrong about that.
I don't understand your student loan complaint. You and your wife are making really good money - just pay them off - why would you keep accruing interest?
But, the Republicans are only right on taxes if you want our country bankrupted, falling apart, and devoid of civil society. Maybe you'd be prouder of your contribution to our nation if your taxes went to bridge repair and public schools instead of to corporate welfare and drone strikes.
Donna, I think you missed the point. From a lifestyle perspective, there is really very little difference between making $234k/year and making $84k/year. I think one would assume that there would be a major difference between the two incomes and that difference would provide the incentive to work harder/earn more money, but what I'm saying is that incentive doesn't really exist the way our tax code/American culture is set up.
Do you feel relatively secure that you will be able to offer your children a lifetime of sufficient food, shelter, health care, and an education? That is the difference. Embrace that because it is an exceptional luxury.
Incentive doesn't work because it's designed to not work. It exists as a rhetorical device through which those of us of means have the justified position to berate and bemoan those of us below our means as lazy and thriftless while the reality is that we will never be allowed to move upwards, because those above us have a vested interest in keeping us where we are. God forbid the unwashed masses start accruing wealth.
Before I opened our business a few years ago, we were making a 1/3 of what we make now. At the time, if you told me that if we would make 3x our current income, I would have assumed we could buy a bigger house, get a new car, buy some new clothes, go on vacation, etc. Three years later we're still in the same house, driving the same 13 year old car, wearing the same clothes, working harder than ever. There has been little to no difference in our day-to-day lives, and in fact we are working harder.
I am truly grateful for what we do have which is a lot, but I do think there is a disconnect between work and reward and that policy is contributing to that disconnect.
Out of control military spending is one reason your taxes are so high. Welfare payments for generations of inner city students who were taught nothing in spite of extremely high cost per student expenditures is another. Supporting millions of people in their 50s because their jobs were shipped offshore is another. And hiring H1B non-citizens to do STEM jobs at very low wages when the existing American STEM graduates can't find a job is another. Add in the supplemental costs paid for by the taxpayer for medical care, housing, ect., for illegal aliens whose jobs don't provide enough for them to support themselves is another. Now we can add in refugee costs for caring for refugees from a war that we helped create. You might want to consider getting a second job, never mind giving up the first; the Treasury needs the money.
My wife and I are at a point where we're ready to have kids, and our student loans will be gone within months - we'll be debt free.
We are thinking of leaving the great metropolitan region we have enjoyed living in to move to a small college town. Its pretty isolated, but its walkable, has good ammenities, and inexpensive, pretty houses on big lots.
I don't want to raise spoiled brats competing for admission to Stanford, I want free range kids who can go tromp around in the woods, and I want to be able to spend time with them.
This means that my wife and I will accept limits on our careers, and we won't make a lot of money. Sounds great to me.
Won, welcome to ownership. Even better will be the year you make $0 or negative in order to keep the ship afloat. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
Volunteer you are spot on. The news used to show images of of 1940s era trucks still driving around Moscow in the 1970s but we felt the need to spend a few trillion dollars to out militarize them in the 1980s. There's a lot of blame to go around for collective debt from both parties.
won: If the numbers are pretty close if you were to quit your career, I would think it would really make sense for your wife to quit, and for you to throttle yourself back to an $84k level. She would have total freedom and your burden would be presumably reduced significantly.
I'm calling BS. You say your income has tripled, yet you haven't seen any increase in disposable income, or a change in lifestyle? I don't buy it. Do you have the bank records and receipts to back up your claims? I think you are conveniently leaving out details to fit the narrative you want to believe.
Won, I'm generally inclined to agree with you regarding our tax system, but I'm very curious about your numbers.... It looks to my like you are making just over $91,000 net. If only your wife worked you'd have 72,000 after taxes (15% bracket?).
In comparison my wife and I are at roughly $100,000 after taxes (15% bracket, wife works part time, by choice) I guess I'm having a really hard time wrapping my mind around this. Day care for us is about $10,000, student loans are about $800 a month.
Not sure about the income based repayment, we used that when I was unemployed, but now 10% of our income is greater than the min. required payment.
Just really curious how you arrive at this conclusion
I should add that my wife is REALLY happy about working part time, don't think she'll ever really go back. There is a lot to be said for staying home with the kids.
Over 3x median income and you're complaining that you're poor? Cry me a river.
Wake up and smell the roses. Money is the illusion of happiness.
And thanks for working so hard to support the military industrial complex and rotten to the core corporate financial sector. Just curious, have Bank of America, Goldman Sachs or Martin Marietta ever sent you a thank you card?
Don't take this personally, but money makes people stupid.
Why do you need a new car to be happy? Mine is 15 years old, and will be over 100,000 miles with my next trip to Indianapolis, and runs great still too boot. I could go lease a new car tonight if I wanted to do so, but I'd rather spend the money elsewhere (currently paying extra to my student loans to pay them down).
geezertect, the problem is that my wife is the one who has a great university benefits package and 401k match. If she quits, I have to add our family to our business group health insurance policy (easily $25K+ annually). Also, I look at her career track as being more critical than mine and more challenging to sustain. I wouldn't want her to leave it.
quondam, there is some additional savings, but not a lot. Taxes are part of the problem, but the cost of raising children in a dual income household accounts for an equal if not greater challenge. The cost of child care, particularly in cities, as well as associated transportation costs, etc. offsets a large proportion of the benefit accrued from dual incomes.
shuellmi, total taxes on the $150k are roughly 40-45% including payroll taxes. Other child-related tax credits are phased out at higher incomes. We have two kids; childcare is $20-25k annually. Because of the two jobs plus school, transportation gets very expensive. Instead of buying a second car, we're becoming uber addicts to make it work. Two working parents means you're eating out a lot because you are too busy to cook. All these little expenses keep adding up to the point where it makes better financial sense to go back to being a single income household even at relatively high incomes. But again this seems to fly in the face of a socio-polical system that rewards hard work. Our current system isn't set up that way.
Miles, I never said I was poor, really just making an observation about work that may have some policy implications. Also, I'm only looking at the revenue side of things; government spending is its own separate thing that I don't want to touch, at least not here.
won and williams is asking a legitimate question about our country's tax policies and incentivization to be a small business-owner and employer. It's not a dual-income question of won working or not working at all, or making more or less money. It's about the lack of incentivization to build a company and employ others. won's situtation is specific - and shouldn't be used to make broadbrush generalizations, but how many more people in the country are in won's shoes and decided to move on from their businesses because of constraining taxes contributing to profit loss?
Hmmm, I have always (since birth) been part of a two-working-parent household and we have always cooked 85% of our meals at home. Guess I'm super good at time management? No, I just can't afford restaurants every night.
won do you pay yourself as an employee? My taxes were less when I did it that way than when I paid self-employment tax. YMMV; I have a brilliant accountant.
l3wis, I worry more about people closing their businesses or not opening them in the first place because they can't afford health care for their families. I took a full-time job specifically for this reason and I'm 100% certain I'm not the only one in this boat; in fact won even says his wife would keep her job because her benefits are good. If none of us had to worry about our profit-driven (even after Obamacare) health care expenses the business world would be a far more interesting place.
won, why would policy change? should we cut taxes for those with $200k incomes and put it on the shoulders of people making $50k, or do what the republicans really abhor (contrary to the title of the post) and raise taxes on the rich to offset the tax break you want to benefit yourself?
or, a different way to look at this, is to say why would wealth accumulation be the driving force in developing policy? why is it in the government's interest to help you succeed, especially if at my expense (or the other end, the koch brother's expense)?
if you were to stop looking for work and become a stay at home dad, you could in theory have a stronger family structure and lower unemployment. focusing your time on building a stronger family and stronger community would be a more appropriate goal for the government to focus their policy on, right?
if you're math was right and not based on some tea partier's facebook post, then why not quit and be a stay at home dad? i think that lifestyle could be very rewarding.
curtkam, the issue: those 200k don't go that far in NYC. the fact that income tax deduction maxes aren't indexed to geographical price indices is pretty fucked up. it encourages assholes to build mcmansions in the suburbs.
First thing I would say is fire your accountant.
Second thing would be that taxes and regulation are huge obstacles for small business. In many municipalities across the country your kids need a permit to set up a lemonade stand. This resonates throughout the entire chain of business licensing and certification. A small business will have to spend an inordinate amount of cash just to keep the doors open.
Lastly, $150k goes a lot farther in Emporia Kansas than San Francisco. Depending on the location, I can understand the challenges Won is discussing. While not poor, 150k is not winning the lottery. I would even say that in many areas, it is the minimum required to support a family comfortably and have a chance at improving their quality of life instead of just surviving.
All that said, I second quondam's last post... double down.
^^^^The object is to enslave everyone to healthcare so that being an employee is the path of least resistance…..employees have few if any options to paying full taxes which keeps the military industrial complex lubricated…this is by design….when self-employed I rarely paid any income taxes, the company paid for most everything, even my house…the tax code is a cornucopia of loopholes to the self-employed, which too is by design – by the rich.
l3wis is right and that's why I started this thread. When there is little incentive to open or keep open a business, it does have a ripple effect. If I were to close up shop, it would not only be me leaving the workforce, but my one employee having to look for a new job, and my contractors losing business. How can the tax code and larger economic policy better support the creation of small business? It's not doing a great job right now.
Donna, I run a single-member LLC and file a schedule C; all business profit passes through as personal income from which I pay social security and medicare. Even if you "pay yourself as an employee," you still have to pay those taxes as you are also the employer.
These issues are always made out to be so black and white. It's either balancing the budget on the backs of the poor or sticking it to the corporate hedge fund manager. There's gotta be better policy than that. Based on my experience and observations, I would:
Eliminate all personal tax credits and deductions
Eliminate social security and medicare taxes and pay for those programs out of the income tax
Tax all capital gains as income (except for the sale of a primary residence)
Keep a tiered tax system, but radically alter the tiers. Something like: less than $50k = 0%; $50k-$500k = 15%; $500k-$5m = 25%; $5m-$25m = 50%; greater than $25m = 75%.
i think it's phrased as shifting the burden to the poor or hedge fund managers because all of your proposals would disproportionately affect one group or the other, right? (not saying they would all favor the same group though)
null, your issue is a valid concern, but it doesn't seem that's why won was leaning towards becoming a republican does it? his point was that making about $80 v $200 gave the same quality of life, because of not only the tax penalties faced by people who make more money, but the increased expense in not having someone stay at home.
i agree that 200k isn't going to get you near as far in new york as it would in the suburbs. the cost of government is a lot different in new york compared to the suburbs as well, with very different needs. i guess i'm not sure how to address that from a policy position.
What I said in the other thread a few moments ago:
I will proudly make a blasphemous/ heretical statement which given the transcendental nature of eternal truth, was true a million years ago and will still ring true a million years from now:
Women (on average more inclined to making behavioral choices based on emotions) who can have children but elect not to as well as emotionally driven, childless beta males should not be voting. Or at least if they do vote, their vote needs to be far removed from issues which affect the long term best future interests of a given city/ county/ state/ nation. This would include anything that affects taxes and budgetary matters.
Voluntarily childless beta males and females are the cancerous tumor of society financially speaking. They busy themselves parasitizing off of society for their own short term megalomaniacal gain. These fools are running things right now and stealing the average father and mother blind of time and efforts through taxes. Fathers and mothers are too busy raising their kids to fight back.
^ let me add then, that anyone receiving any form of government derived (taxes as the source) benefits immediately be deprived of voting privileges until such time as they are no longer receiving them. Immediately.
The welfare state as established in the 60s is completely unworkable given today's problems.
The welfare state as established in the 60s is the mechanism by which the prophecies in the movie idiocracy are being fulfilled.
including our soldiers and veterans? post office employees? those working for or attending state universities? those who attended public schools? does this extend to people who use roads, sanitation, and other infrastructure expenses funded by tax dollars, because those are obviously benefits and the source of their funding is government derived.
^ Yes. Except for military and post office. Absolutely. And end the FED. The FED is the real source of misery for all concerned. Its a consortium of all the largest private banks who can print money on paper or digitally at the expense of the 99%. Contrary to basic common sense and its name there is nothing Federal about the Federal Reserve: its totally private. Talk about big corporations and the 1%...its the grand daddy of them all.
the FED is what makes it so my paycheck can be transferred from my company's bank account to my bank account. why would i want to end the fed and lose my paycheck?
Do some research curtkram if you really want to know the answers are readily available. The FED is not your ally. A dollar today was worth something like 100 dollars when the FED got started. The difference is in the bank accounts of the FED "capitalist" (in name only) owners/ individuals...and not yours
Yeah do some research. Why should I cite my sources when I can just ask you to do it, knowing you won't, and then use your lack of fact checking my rambling accusations as proof that I'm right?
Yeah do some research. Why should I cite my sources when I can just ask you to do it, knowing you won't, and then use your lack of fact checking my rambling accusations as proof that I'm right?
If you really want to know you'll put in the effort yourself. Your gain. If the question is just a trouble making question then you won't. Your loss.
LOL what do you know of my accounting outside of what I've written? If anything this is precisely why we need a new tax code. Our current system is built on a system of hiding true income behind specious "business expenses" and countless other "deductions" intended to prop up one special interest or another (mortgage, construction, alternative energy, etc.) Much of our accounting industry is built on legalized tax fraud. Let's write a tax code where you don't even need an account. Make it simple and clear, fit on one page, rather than the bloated and convoluted mess we have now.
You know, the Republicans are sort of right on taxes...
I am a small business owner that makes about $150,000/year after business deductions. My wife is a professor at a university and makes $84,000/year. We have two kids that we have to put in daycare to allow us to work. Out of curiosity I wanted to see what our life would look like if I closed my business and stayed home to raise our kids. Interestingly our lifestyle would be roughly the same as it is now. The way the tax code is written it penalizes work to the point it financially makes more sense to not work. How so? The $150,000 I earn is taxed at the 25% rate; additionally I am paying roughly 14% in self-employment taxes on top of that. With an income of over $200,000, I am not eligible for a host of tax credits, deductions, and exemptions that lower income workers are eligible for. My wife and I both have large student loans that when put on government payback programs that cap payments at 10% of gross income, incentivizes earning less to lower payments. Then there are the non-governmental incentives to not work, like not having to put your children in daycare, lowering your transportation costs, cooking at home instead of eating out to save time, etc. It all amounts to very little incentive to work. So basically instead of putting in 50 hour weeks, having the anxiety of meeting payroll week-after-week, missing seeing my children grow up, etc., I could just stay home and really not notice any significant change to our lifestyle by not working. Something seems wrong about that.
What exactly are you complaining about? You're rich. Enjoy it. If you want to be less rich and have more time, enjoy that.
I don't understand your student loan complaint. You and your wife are making really good money - just pay them off - why would you keep accruing interest?
But, the Republicans are only right on taxes if you want our country bankrupted, falling apart, and devoid of civil society. Maybe you'd be prouder of your contribution to our nation if your taxes went to bridge repair and public schools instead of to corporate welfare and drone strikes.
Couldn't have said it better myself, Donna.
Donna, I think you missed the point. From a lifestyle perspective, there is really very little difference between making $234k/year and making $84k/year. I think one would assume that there would be a major difference between the two incomes and that difference would provide the incentive to work harder/earn more money, but what I'm saying is that incentive doesn't really exist the way our tax code/American culture is set up.
Making 84k a year still puts you ~30k over the US median household income.
I'm curious what differences in lifestyle you expect between being pretty well off and being slightly more well off.
Do you feel relatively secure that you will be able to offer your children a lifetime of sufficient food, shelter, health care, and an education? That is the difference. Embrace that because it is an exceptional luxury.
Incentive doesn't work because it's designed to not work. It exists as a rhetorical device through which those of us of means have the justified position to berate and bemoan those of us below our means as lazy and thriftless while the reality is that we will never be allowed to move upwards, because those above us have a vested interest in keeping us where we are. God forbid the unwashed masses start accruing wealth.
Before I opened our business a few years ago, we were making a 1/3 of what we make now. At the time, if you told me that if we would make 3x our current income, I would have assumed we could buy a bigger house, get a new car, buy some new clothes, go on vacation, etc. Three years later we're still in the same house, driving the same 13 year old car, wearing the same clothes, working harder than ever. There has been little to no difference in our day-to-day lives, and in fact we are working harder.
I am truly grateful for what we do have which is a lot, but I do think there is a disconnect between work and reward and that policy is contributing to that disconnect.
Out of control military spending is one reason your taxes are so high. Welfare payments for generations of inner city students who were taught nothing in spite of extremely high cost per student expenditures is another. Supporting millions of people in their 50s because their jobs were shipped offshore is another. And hiring H1B non-citizens to do STEM jobs at very low wages when the existing American STEM graduates can't find a job is another. Add in the supplemental costs paid for by the taxpayer for medical care, housing, ect., for illegal aliens whose jobs don't provide enough for them to support themselves is another. Now we can add in refugee costs for caring for refugees from a war that we helped create. You might want to consider getting a second job, never mind giving up the first; the Treasury needs the money.
My wife and I are at a point where we're ready to have kids, and our student loans will be gone within months - we'll be debt free.
We are thinking of leaving the great metropolitan region we have enjoyed living in to move to a small college town. Its pretty isolated, but its walkable, has good ammenities, and inexpensive, pretty houses on big lots.
I don't want to raise spoiled brats competing for admission to Stanford, I want free range kids who can go tromp around in the woods, and I want to be able to spend time with them.
This means that my wife and I will accept limits on our careers, and we won't make a lot of money. Sounds great to me.
Volunteer, cite your damned sources.
Welfare as a portion of the budget and / or debt depends on your definition of welfare.
So pony up your sources, otherwise your paragraph is a collection of useless words.
This seems relevant.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/17/map-happiness-benchmark_n_5592194.html
Hey, I am all for quality education for the inner city kids and would be happy to pay for it. They are the ones getting shortchanged here.
Won, welcome to ownership. Even better will be the year you make $0 or negative in order to keep the ship afloat. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
Volunteer you are spot on. The news used to show images of of 1940s era trucks still driving around Moscow in the 1970s but we felt the need to spend a few trillion dollars to out militarize them in the 1980s. There's a lot of blame to go around for collective debt from both parties.
won: If the numbers are pretty close if you were to quit your career, I would think it would really make sense for your wife to quit, and for you to throttle yourself back to an $84k level. She would have total freedom and your burden would be presumably reduced significantly.
I'm calling BS. You say your income has tripled, yet you haven't seen any increase in disposable income, or a change in lifestyle? I don't buy it. Do you have the bank records and receipts to back up your claims? I think you are conveniently leaving out details to fit the narrative you want to believe.
Won, I'm generally inclined to agree with you regarding our tax system, but I'm very curious about your numbers.... It looks to my like you are making just over $91,000 net. If only your wife worked you'd have 72,000 after taxes (15% bracket?).
In comparison my wife and I are at roughly $100,000 after taxes (15% bracket, wife works part time, by choice) I guess I'm having a really hard time wrapping my mind around this. Day care for us is about $10,000, student loans are about $800 a month.
Not sure about the income based repayment, we used that when I was unemployed, but now 10% of our income is greater than the min. required payment.
Just really curious how you arrive at this conclusion
I should add that my wife is REALLY happy about working part time, don't think she'll ever really go back. There is a lot to be said for staying home with the kids.
Over 3x median income and you're complaining that you're poor? Cry me a river.
Wake up and smell the roses. Money is the illusion of happiness.
And thanks for working so hard to support the military industrial complex and rotten to the core corporate financial sector. Just curious, have Bank of America, Goldman Sachs or Martin Marietta ever sent you a thank you card?
Don't take this personally, but money makes people stupid.
I wish I had your $200k problem.
geezertect, the problem is that my wife is the one who has a great university benefits package and 401k match. If she quits, I have to add our family to our business group health insurance policy (easily $25K+ annually). Also, I look at her career track as being more critical than mine and more challenging to sustain. I wouldn't want her to leave it.
quondam, there is some additional savings, but not a lot. Taxes are part of the problem, but the cost of raising children in a dual income household accounts for an equal if not greater challenge. The cost of child care, particularly in cities, as well as associated transportation costs, etc. offsets a large proportion of the benefit accrued from dual incomes.
shuellmi, total taxes on the $150k are roughly 40-45% including payroll taxes. Other child-related tax credits are phased out at higher incomes. We have two kids; childcare is $20-25k annually. Because of the two jobs plus school, transportation gets very expensive. Instead of buying a second car, we're becoming uber addicts to make it work. Two working parents means you're eating out a lot because you are too busy to cook. All these little expenses keep adding up to the point where it makes better financial sense to go back to being a single income household even at relatively high incomes. But again this seems to fly in the face of a socio-polical system that rewards hard work. Our current system isn't set up that way.
Miles, I never said I was poor, really just making an observation about work that may have some policy implications. Also, I'm only looking at the revenue side of things; government spending is its own separate thing that I don't want to touch, at least not here.
interestingly, I just read a story on realclearmarkets.com basically saying that no one knows why there are so few working men in the U.S.
won and williams is asking a legitimate question about our country's tax policies and incentivization to be a small business-owner and employer. It's not a dual-income question of won working or not working at all, or making more or less money. It's about the lack of incentivization to build a company and employ others. won's situtation is specific - and shouldn't be used to make broadbrush generalizations, but how many more people in the country are in won's shoes and decided to move on from their businesses because of constraining taxes contributing to profit loss?
Hmmm, I have always (since birth) been part of a two-working-parent household and we have always cooked 85% of our meals at home. Guess I'm super good at time management? No, I just can't afford restaurants every night.
won do you pay yourself as an employee? My taxes were less when I did it that way than when I paid self-employment tax. YMMV; I have a brilliant accountant.
l3wis, I worry more about people closing their businesses or not opening them in the first place because they can't afford health care for their families. I took a full-time job specifically for this reason and I'm 100% certain I'm not the only one in this boat; in fact won even says his wife would keep her job because her benefits are good. If none of us had to worry about our profit-driven (even after Obamacare) health care expenses the business world would be a far more interesting place.
won, why would policy change? should we cut taxes for those with $200k incomes and put it on the shoulders of people making $50k, or do what the republicans really abhor (contrary to the title of the post) and raise taxes on the rich to offset the tax break you want to benefit yourself?
or, a different way to look at this, is to say why would wealth accumulation be the driving force in developing policy? why is it in the government's interest to help you succeed, especially if at my expense (or the other end, the koch brother's expense)?
if you were to stop looking for work and become a stay at home dad, you could in theory have a stronger family structure and lower unemployment. focusing your time on building a stronger family and stronger community would be a more appropriate goal for the government to focus their policy on, right?
if you're math was right and not based on some tea partier's facebook post, then why not quit and be a stay at home dad? i think that lifestyle could be very rewarding.
curtkam, the issue: those 200k don't go that far in NYC. the fact that income tax deduction maxes aren't indexed to geographical price indices is pretty fucked up. it encourages assholes to build mcmansions in the suburbs.
First thing I would say is fire your accountant. Second thing would be that taxes and regulation are huge obstacles for small business. In many municipalities across the country your kids need a permit to set up a lemonade stand. This resonates throughout the entire chain of business licensing and certification. A small business will have to spend an inordinate amount of cash just to keep the doors open. Lastly, $150k goes a lot farther in Emporia Kansas than San Francisco. Depending on the location, I can understand the challenges Won is discussing. While not poor, 150k is not winning the lottery. I would even say that in many areas, it is the minimum required to support a family comfortably and have a chance at improving their quality of life instead of just surviving. All that said, I second quondam's last post... double down.
^^^^The object is to enslave everyone to healthcare so that being an employee is the path of least resistance…..employees have few if any options to paying full taxes which keeps the military industrial complex lubricated…this is by design….when self-employed I rarely paid any income taxes, the company paid for most everything, even my house…the tax code is a cornucopia of loopholes to the self-employed, which too is by design – by the rich.
l3wis is right and that's why I started this thread. When there is little incentive to open or keep open a business, it does have a ripple effect. If I were to close up shop, it would not only be me leaving the workforce, but my one employee having to look for a new job, and my contractors losing business. How can the tax code and larger economic policy better support the creation of small business? It's not doing a great job right now.
Donna, I run a single-member LLC and file a schedule C; all business profit passes through as personal income from which I pay social security and medicare. Even if you "pay yourself as an employee," you still have to pay those taxes as you are also the employer.
These issues are always made out to be so black and white. It's either balancing the budget on the backs of the poor or sticking it to the corporate hedge fund manager. There's gotta be better policy than that. Based on my experience and observations, I would:
i think it's phrased as shifting the burden to the poor or hedge fund managers because all of your proposals would disproportionately affect one group or the other, right? (not saying they would all favor the same group though)
null, your issue is a valid concern, but it doesn't seem that's why won was leaning towards becoming a republican does it? his point was that making about $80 v $200 gave the same quality of life, because of not only the tax penalties faced by people who make more money, but the increased expense in not having someone stay at home.
i agree that 200k isn't going to get you near as far in new york as it would in the suburbs. the cost of government is a lot different in new york compared to the suburbs as well, with very different needs. i guess i'm not sure how to address that from a policy position.
^anyone who relies on an accountant to avoid taxes is naïve.
Won, what "profit"? What "income"? It's a Zero-Sum Game you need to learn how to play.
What I said in the other thread a few moments ago:
I will proudly make a blasphemous/ heretical statement which given the transcendental nature of eternal truth, was true a million years ago and will still ring true a million years from now:
Women (on average more inclined to making behavioral choices based on emotions) who can have children but elect not to as well as emotionally driven, childless beta males should not be voting. Or at least if they do vote, their vote needs to be far removed from issues which affect the long term best future interests of a given city/ county/ state/ nation. This would include anything that affects taxes and budgetary matters.
Voluntarily childless beta males and females are the cancerous tumor of society financially speaking. They busy themselves parasitizing off of society for their own short term megalomaniacal gain. These fools are running things right now and stealing the average father and mother blind of time and efforts through taxes. Fathers and mothers are too busy raising their kids to fight back.
What about voluntarily childless alpha males?
Oxymoron. Alpha males reproduce.
Sorry won, sounded like a complaint. And NO, the reptilicans are not "right" on taxes, and neither are the dumbocrats.
good knight, you're confusing 'alpha males' with 'lower income people'
http://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/
^ let me add then, that anyone receiving any form of government derived (taxes as the source) benefits immediately be deprived of voting privileges until such time as they are no longer receiving them. Immediately.
The welfare state as established in the 60s is completely unworkable given today's problems.
The welfare state as established in the 60s is the mechanism by which the prophecies in the movie idiocracy are being fulfilled.
Why.
including our soldiers and veterans? post office employees? those working for or attending state universities? those who attended public schools? does this extend to people who use roads, sanitation, and other infrastructure expenses funded by tax dollars, because those are obviously benefits and the source of their funding is government derived.
^ Yes. Except for military and post office. Absolutely. And end the FED. The FED is the real source of misery for all concerned. Its a consortium of all the largest private banks who can print money on paper or digitally at the expense of the 99%. Contrary to basic common sense and its name there is nothing Federal about the Federal Reserve: its totally private. Talk about big corporations and the 1%...its the grand daddy of them all.
Good_Knight speaks with the authority of someone who got a B- in community college civics.
the FED is what makes it so my paycheck can be transferred from my company's bank account to my bank account. why would i want to end the fed and lose my paycheck?
^ because a comm college civics teacher is so removed from self interest in such a debate.
Do some research curtkram if you really want to know the answers are readily available. The FED is not your ally. A dollar today was worth something like 100 dollars when the FED got started. The difference is in the bank accounts of the FED "capitalist" (in name only) owners/ individuals...and not yours
Yeah do some research. Why should I cite my sources when I can just ask you to do it, knowing you won't, and then use your lack of fact checking my rambling accusations as proof that I'm right?
Yeah do some research. Why should I cite my sources when I can just ask you to do it, knowing you won't, and then use your lack of fact checking my rambling accusations as proof that I'm right?
If you really want to know you'll put in the effort yourself. Your gain. If the question is just a trouble making question then you won't. Your loss.
Op needs a better accountant.
LOL what do you know of my accounting outside of what I've written? If anything this is precisely why we need a new tax code. Our current system is built on a system of hiding true income behind specious "business expenses" and countless other "deductions" intended to prop up one special interest or another (mortgage, construction, alternative energy, etc.) Much of our accounting industry is built on legalized tax fraud. Let's write a tax code where you don't even need an account. Make it simple and clear, fit on one page, rather than the bloated and convoluted mess we have now.
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