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Telecommuters May Owe Extra State Taxes
marct22 writes "According to Cnet News, the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by a Tennessee programmer who was forced to pay extra taxes because he was telecommuting to a job in New York. Apparently he worked in NY 25% of the time, which he didn't argue about, but the other 75% of the time he worked from home in Tennessee, which doesn't have income taxes. Also, it appears that right now, for those of us who live in one state and telecommute in another may be doubly taxed if both have income tax. There is a Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act in the Senate, but it has not emerged from committee so has not been voted on."
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Darn welfare leaches.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
What NY services does he consume? Should he also expect fractional benefits? NY and California suck ass and deserve shitty economies. Tyrany of the populos states.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
There are a lot of taxes you can point to as being bad, like the income tax, but the biggest burden right now is how there are so damn many kinds of taxes! Just keeping up with them all and doing your tax preparations is a nightmare and HUGE time/money waster for millions of Americans. If we just switched to one tax, that simplifcation alone would save billions of dollars in explicit compliance costs alone (and billions more in redirecting people to doing what they like, not what has tax advantages).
Just ask yourself: how much is your time worth, and how much time did you spend preparing taxes? How much did you pay someone to do your taxes? What things did you do differently because of tax advantages? What did your company or employer do differently? How much does it spend on compliance because of the different kinds of taxes?
But then every time someone comes up with the simplifcation idea, like a Flat Tax or the so-called "FairTax", some genius figures out it will benefit the rich. Except that reducing this tremendous burden from the economy helps the poor too. This is not about "screwing the poor". If you want to make transfers to the poor, make a separate program. Don't complicate everyone's taxes to help. Seriously, I'm beginning to think some people have a scorched earth policy toward the rich - they'll advocate policies to hurt them even if they hurt the poor even more!
Now, I'm not necessarily endorsing the Flat Tax or "FairTax", but they're on the right track - if you just had one kind of tax (or even just one kind of tax for each level of government) the savings from this simplification alone would make the world a lot less kafkaesque and eliminate complications like in TFA.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
I wonder if tax evasion would be a serious enough charge for a state to get an internet wiretap warrant.
As TykeClone pointed out, the police could never get the "goods" on Al Capone, but evading taxes on *suspected* income can get you an effective death penalty. You can do pretty much what you want as long as you can get away with it, you don't mess with the system, and you cover your butt. (See Kenneth Lay (who got too obvious), for an example of how to fail this easy system.)
Why do we tax wages at all?
... retarding sprawl. Shorter commutes for workers. Less fuel used. Less time. Less pollution.
... like the blue pain reliever pill, it works for them!
Our wages should be ours to keep. It is part of owning oneself.
There is a much better tax base. It can't go off shore, or hide behind paperwork. None of us can produce any more of it, no matter how high demand gets. What is it? LAND! As Will Rogers put it, they aren't making any more of it.
Since none of us made it, none of us is more entitled to its economic value than the next guy. So it is the perfect tax base. Tax the annual value of land, and good things happen. You haven't stolen anyone's creation (as you would by taxing wages.) You haven't distorted the demand for a product someone has made (as you do with a sales tax or a tariff). You haven't punished someone who has produced something (a house, a factory, jobs for others, for example). All you've done is collect from all the landholders something they didn't create and shouldn't be able to privatize. And you haven't disturbed title to property at all.
Better yet, the underused downtown land will get put to better use, as lazy speculators are inspired to stop waiting for their land to "ripen." They'll be motivated to lower their asking price, or put that choice location to good use themselves.
And when a downtown acre gets developed, 10 or more acres on the fringes get protected from premature development
And when you tax land values, you bring down the price of the land, making it affordable to those who need it. Our children will be able to afford a place to live -- not spend their adult years in their parents' homes. Firemen and teachers and nurses and janitors will be able to afford a place to live, and they won't spend their lives commuting.
How do we do this again? Just tax land value. Collect for the community the value that is made by the presence of the community.
Why tax commuters? Tax those who own the land they commute to! They're the big beneficiaries of everything we do today, and they aren't about to speak up and complain about this state of affairs
Today, we tax the landholder lightly, then tax the worker and the consumer in order to fund the very spending which drives up property values, so that the landlord can charge his tenant more next year, and the seller can ask a higher price for his property next year. No wonder we have problems! No wonder a few are getting rich and the rest of us are paying twice -- once to the landlord (or the mortgage lender) and once to the government.
Wise up, America!