Tax Loopholes No Longer Patentable

Knowzy writes "A section of the America Invents Act disallows issuing a patent 'on a strategy for reducing, avoiding or postponing taxes,' according to Forbes. The article describes one such strategy in some detail. The USTPO has already issued 161 of these 'business method type' patents. 167 more were pending. The law only applies to future patent applications, leaving enforcement of existing patents an issue for the courts to decide."

Comments

FLAT TAX

[unixisc]

Introduce a FLAT $$$ tax - not even a percentage of one's income, just a flat $$$ amount, and call it that. No different from everybody paying the same price for a bottle of coke @ the store. Or should shops start asking customers their income, and then charge them accordingly?

Re:FLAT TAX

[snowgirl]

Introduce a FLAT $$$ tax - not even a percentage of one's income, just a flat $$$ amount, and call it that.

Right, so the person making $12,000 a year, who needs every single penny of their paycheck can pay exactly the same amount of tax that Bill Gates pays?

And what of people who have no income? Shall we drag them into jail for not paying their taxes, because they have absolutely no way to pay for it?

On second thought, your plan succeeds extraordinarily well in making being poor illegal; in fact, way much better than any of the numerous laws (like vagrancy) that local governments pass to making being homeless illegal. And then, once all the poor people are in jail, they'll never be able to afford paying their taxes then, so we can just keep them locked up eternally... or maybe we could just kill them all, since they're never going to get out of the grave we've already dug for them anyways. Then, maybe we could just make a protein paste out of them. You are absolutely a brilliant person, you are.

Re:FLAT TAX

[jpapon]

The person making $12,000 pays a much higher percentage of their income in sales tax than a rich person does.

And what's with this class envy nonsense? Does Buffett have class envy because he thinks the rich should pay more income tax?

Those making millions make those millions due to their own hard work, sure, but they also make them thanks to the infrastructure, security, and educational system maintained by the government, the poor, and the middle class. They should have to pay their 30+%, since they benefit from the government more then anyone else. Without government to defend them and maintain order, the rich would quickly become very poor.

Re:FLAT TAX

[GameboyRMH]

Yeah nobody's forcing you to buy food or shelter, or any of the things practically required to be employed (like communications or transportation), or any of that basic stuff that eats up almost all of your income if you're poor. Nobody's forcing you to live, you can just curl up in a gutter and die. See, no force!

Pure capitalism is the most horrific of all economic systems, because it allows for any of the horrors of any other system, as long as it's done by leaving it as your only feasible option rather than forcing. What other systems do with jackboots, an angry frown and open hostility, capitalism does with a business suit, a pearly-white smile and a liberal application of the just world fallacy.

This is why capitalism should be well-regulated. You don't want to be anywhere near pure capitalism. It's like nuclear energy: A powerful force can be good for us with oversight and moderation, or can fuck up our shit worse than anything else if we are so much as negligent.

The fact that tax loopholes were patentable

[mehrotra.akash]

The fact that tax loopholes were patentable is disturbing in itself..

let's exapand this to all law...

[vkt-tje]

I suppose a tax loophole is nothing more then a clever application of the law, right?
So, forget about tax laws, take a simple example traffic rules.

Well, then I'm filing a patent for stopping at a red light: everyone that stops at a red light must pay me 1$.

This is exactly the same as a patent on a tax loophole: the application of laws.
You must pay the patent holder for using a specific tax loophole, which is just an application of the law.
Now I'm making you all paying for applying another law.

Patents are hilarious and disastrous.