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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."
The fact that tax loopholes were patentable is disturbing in itself..
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.
120 chars is not enough!
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.
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But seriously: A startup hit by a Patent Troll will spend $1M to $5M to fight it off. How does bogging down startups like this help America invent? It doesn't.
Patents were never designed to do any such thing. It may have been post hoc rationalized as something to increase inventiveness, and honestly, I don't think there is any compelling data supporting either side.
Patents were intended to give a person an exclusive right to produce a new invention and make money off of it. Thus, patents are about greedily hording inventions and technology away from others in exchange for disclosing how they actually work, so that later (100s of years) that information would not have gone to your grave with you. (Like many kinds of stained glass that we no longer know how to make, because no one passed it on.)
It's basic purpose is to exploit greed to provide a benefit to mankind at a later date... this of course has the obvious effect of stunting the development and innovation cycle, because you can't use other people's ideas once they're actually available. I read an interesting piece about fashion, as it turns out that one cannot patent, copyright, or trademark fashion designs, and thus anyone can just steal an idea from someone else. Yet, they have a vibrant, active, and rapid development cycle. Of course it also renders old things "out of fashion" quite quickly as well, as soon everyone will have it, if it is popular enough.
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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.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
What world do you live in?
In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth and the top 1% owned 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth.
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The rich actually spend proportionally much less. E.g. if you have your own estate, with your own servants and your own cooks, you have food cooked for you based on local produce. This makes a meal which would cost hundreds of dollars per person but, since it's all your own property, you don't buy it and so you don't pay sales tax.
If you or I go on holiday, we go to some resort where we pay for everything; every little bit of water you use ends up being taxed. When Richard Branson goes on holiday he flys in his own jet to his own island and the only sales taxable expense is his jet fuel. When his rich friends do the same they go to his island sometimes, and he comes to their islands in exchange other times. In a sense this is completely fair. I would get annoyed if you tried to tax me for having friends over for dinner rather than going to a restaurant, but the scale of the thing means that in the end, the really rich show much less income compared to the resources they use than you or I and pay even less tax.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Right, no one could possibly live off of $1000 a year. You know, looking back on it, if you exclude foodstamps, I've earned not a single penny in income. I don't live under a bridge (because I have carrying friends and family, who wouldn't let that happen), and get food entirely through foodstamps...
You've never earned anything other than food stamps? Seriously? How much longer do you expect your "carrying" friends and family to continue doing so?
As noted below, there was information missing. The lack of income comment was over the previous year. I have earned money before, and I've paid more well than my fair share of taxes. (How have I pay more than my fair share? Well, I had the opportunity for a full refund, and decided instead to not file taxes as my income had not exceeded the amount that makes filing mandatory. What you read is correct, I was below the poverty line and still paid my goddamn taxes. I walk the walk, not just talk the talk.)
I think there was a system in the older times prior to currency, where people exchanged goods and services in exchange for other goods and services directly. As it turns out that living with a brother and his bachelor roommates presents plenty of opportunity for one to justify the charity provided by providing cleaning.
As also noted, I am currently applying for disability, as I am unable to work. (Yes, I've tried.) That is why I lack any income. It's kind of difficult to have an income, when one is unable to work. (But you said you're cleaning to earn your room and board; no, I said it justifies my charity, not that it is sufficient to fully offset the monetary value that I am receiving.)
It amazes me that people in America love to jump to the assumption that anyone receiving government assistance is simply inept and lazy. As if every person earns their rightful place in society of their own achievements. As if Bill Gates were born in a cave with parents who use stone tools, yet managed to claw his way to the top reinventing everything about math and computers himself to produce Microsoft DOS... what am I taking about? Even "stone tools" is an advantage that many homo sapiens may not have even had. ... or wait, maybe there's a remote possibility that Bill Gates was born into a family, where the father was a noted and well respected lawyer, and thus born with a silver spoon in his mouth. I mean, it just wouldn't be the American "conquer all" story that we so love if he were born into the top 10% of society, and clawed his way up to the pinnacle. I mean, because likely larger than 50% of the people are born into families that earn under the mean income of the society, so we obviously want to look at someone born into that disadvantaged substrate and yet managed to claw their way to the top... except, you know, they're exceedingly rare, like less than 0.01% of those born into the under 50% population, so we simply hold this dangling carrot in front of the laboring masses with sweat poisonous words of "you can get there, too! just try harder!" All the while knowledgeable that it is simply an impossibility that each person who works every day to the bone could not possibly make it into the top 10% of the population.
But then, Americans do so love that mirage in the distance... after all, we sell it like it's bottled water, and the Americans just lap it right up. "I'm going to work hard so I can be a billionaire!" Keep dreaming Jimmy... keep dreaming.
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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.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel