OK right, but let's say you buy a car for $20k, depreciate $4k, and sell it for $18k. You pay taxes on $2k right?
Barring one of the myriad of exceptions, gotchas, and other complications, yeah. Of course, this message was not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used by any taxpayer, for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer. Stupid Circular 230.
Depreciation has nothing to do with blue book value. Furthermore, depreciation recapture is generally ordinary income, not capital gains. So, no, he's not at all right, though the details of exactly how he's wrong vary with the details of the situation (which is the main reason I haven't gotten into the details).
Chances are your local broadcast stations will only be transmitting in HD those prime-time and sports programming.
That's pretty much all I watch broadcast television for anyway. All the rest of the time I'm at work. I've found the majority of the television I watch is in HD.
Either way buying an HDTV with an ATSC tuner has been a great choice, as I don't have cable in the first place. The ATSC signal comes crystal clear, much better than the analog stations. It's worth it just for the 480i shows.
Your idea about charging for fire and police services is interesting but I don't believe it's workable. By charging for fire services, for example, you give a strong incentive not to call the fire department until the fire is obviously out of control.
Not if the insurance companies cover the costs, and also not if you're subject to a lawsuit and possible criminal charges for damaging the property of others and/or killing people through such negligence.
Of course, you also ignore the fact that I agreed that charging for fire services and rolling the costs into property taxes is another reasonable solution.
Similar problems exist for police services and crime reduction. The free rider problem exists here because everyone in society benefits from these services even though only a small portion of the population actually uses them directly.
How so? You do realize that the police already charge for many of the services they provide, including my example of stationing officers at Best Buy and Circuit City on Black Friday, right? The police need not charge for all services, as some clearly benefit everyone. But many services they can and should charge for, because they clearly don't benefit everyone (at least not in any significant way).
You also propose a sliding scale for these charges. Guess what, you just reinvented the income tax! Only instead of being collected from everybody, it's "only" collected from people who directly use fire and police services (and not collected from all the other people who indirectly benefit).
I don't really consider that a sliding scale, and I think you overstate the indirect benefits of most police and fire services. I suppose in some theoretical sense I benefit by the fire department putting out a fire 2000 miles away, but we're really talking about something negligible and theoretical there.
How does the government know how rich you are so they know how much to take from you?
I never proposed charging different amounts for people simply because they are rich. I think you're taking this from my analogy to hospitals, who don't really charge people who can't afford hospital care. But they do actually charge these people, they just find that those people aren't able to pay when the collection agency comes up empty handed.
I don't see how private ownership of roads will solve anything.
Then you don't understand the tragedy of the commons which you so nicely claimed is the reason we need the government to subsidize loans.
I don't see how private ownership of roads will solve anything. Private ownership implies either altruistic maintenance done by some local property owners' association (and implies free rider problems all over) or toll roads everywhere. The cost for collecting tolls often far outweighs the cost for actually using the road, and this represents a major economic loss.
And I never suggested that we move to a situation where all roads are privately owned, I merely said that this would solve the tragedy of the commons. The problem with collecting tolls is not an example of the tragedy of the commons.
Roads can and should be (and usually are) paid for by the institution of a gas tax.
What is the governement providing you with that's dependent on the value of your land?
From Wikipedia:
LVT is often said to be justified for economic reasons because if it is implemented properly, it will not deter production, distort market mechanisms or otherwise create deadweight losses the way other taxes do. It is also said to be justified for reasons of fairness in that it recovers for community purposes the value the community creates. It is a cheap (and therefore efficient) tax to administer or pay because much less effort is required to track land ownership than to track income, deductions, capital gains, sales transactions, etc. Tax evasion on land is much more difficult than on financial wealth. For the same reason, it is also much more effective than a development or planning gain tax, which can be avoided by just keeping the land out of productive use.
As well as these pragmatic arguments, LVT may be justified with the philosophical premise that the natural world was originally the common resource of all persons, and therefore LVT is not really a tax, but simply the collection of rent on behalf of those who waive their right of access to the resources they would otherwise have been free to use. Some LVT advocates argue that in consequence, land value should be taxed at a high enough rate to recover effectively all its economic rent from users, and the proceeds should be equally distributed to each citizen in the form of a citizen's dividend. Others favor a combination of citizens' dividend and economically efficient provision of public services (i.e., government provision of services that yield an increase in aggregate land rent at least equal to their cost). Any such implementation of LVT would amount to a substantial land reform. The most influential advocate of this type of LVT was the 19th C American political economist and activist Henry George. Many contemporary American advocacy groups trace their heritage back to his thoughts and writings.
What is the governement providing you with that's dependent on the value of your land?
A deed.
The main purpose of the government is to protect property. There might not be a purely one-to-one relationship, but it's a lot closer than the relationship between items bought or income earned. Ownership of land is the right to keep everyone else off that land. You should have to pay everyone else to continue that right. Now I suppose we could collect the property tax and distribute to everyone, but since there are some services the government has to provide everyone anyway (such as police and military), we might as well use these taxes to pay for those services. Same argument as a tax on intellectual property and on exclusive access to the public airwaves.
Or the size of your inheritance?
It's only because of government laws that you are given title to that inheritance in the first place.
And regarding your view that taxes should be directly tied to serives provided
I'm pretty sure I didn't say that. Taxes should be at least approximately tied to services provided, though.
how would you fund servuces such as law enforcement? "That you for reporting that rape. The fee for our investigation will be..."?
No, investigating and locking up rapists benefits everyone. It's one place I can see a justification for a tax on everyone. Of course, fining violent criminals can probably cover some of the costs. And most likely the government could just charge a little extra for providing certain police services that don't benefit everyone (like those extra cops that hang out around Best Buy and Circuit City on Black Fridays) to make a profit which can go toward things like locking up rapists. Now eliminate victimless crimes like drug and gambling laws and your prison costs are going to drop dramatically. If there are any additional funds that are still needed after cutting costs and increasing revenues, I'd fund these services like locking up rapists with all those taxes I've already listed: inheritance taxes, land value taxes, etc.
Or fire-fighting: if your neighbour's house is on fire, you probably want the fire to be put out before if spread to your house, even if your neighbour isn't going to pay the fire fighters.
So pay for the fire-fighters yourself. Or better yet, get your insurance company to agree to pay for it. It's their loss if your house burns down, after all. Of course, for something like fire-fighting I don't see much problem with just rolling that into your property taxes. And of course charge fees for all those false reports. I used to be a volunteer firefighter (that's right, I fought fires without getting paid anything), and we spent more time responding to false alarms than anything else.
Finally, I should note that neither of these two services (police or fire) are handled by the federal government. It's handled by the states, and not all states have income tax. In fact, some states don't have sales tax or income tax.
Now, your employer is required to take the taxes out (regardless), so you might not get money back if you don't report it even if you don't have to.
Employers usually have to take out social security and medicare (there are a few fairly rare exceptions, such as eligible student employees), but they don't have to take out anything else if you are exempt and give them a valid W-4 claiming so. Read the instructions for the Form W-4 for more details.
If you buy a car for $20,000, and then sell it a year later for $18,000 but the blue book value is $16,000, then you've just made a $2000 capital gain which you have to pay taxes on.
Please don't listen to this guy, he's utterly wrong.
I find income and sales taxes attractive simply because they are straightforward to compute (most of the time) and relatively amoral.
I'm really not sure where you get the fact that they're straightforward to compute. The income tax system is horribly complicated, and I have no reason to believe that a national sales tax meant to replace it wouldn't be nearly equally complicated. As for it being relatively amoral, I suppose you're correct.
Then again, I think the same could be said of a land value tax, even moreso actually.
Income and sales are just a percentage of some liquidity in the market. It might not be 100% fair, but it's easy to figure out what'll be owed.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy that. It's easy to multiply a percentage times your taxable sales or taxable income, but defining taxable income or taxable sales is what is difficult, and that's what the tax code is all about. (If you only tax goods, and not services, using a VAT tax, then I suppose you can come up with a relatively straightforward sales tax solution, but doing so would wind up being extremely unfair and easy to manipulate.)
I have a problem with vice taxes (like cigarette or your hypothetical trans fat tax) simply because it's rather arbitrary to decide what is taxed. It ends up pushing an agenda... should canola oil be taxed more heavily than olive oil, etc.
I suppose the tax could be exempted for anyone who maintains health insurance, but cigarettes and trans fats are two huge causes of costs to the public, so unless you're going to completely privatize health care and hospital care, I think you've gotta tax these items. Of course, in the end those two taxes will likely make up a small portion of tax revenues, so we're kind of arguing over something negligible there.
It also has the benefit compared to a property tax system that it is a tax on liquid assets. It's easier to set aside a fraction of that asset than, say, to have to come up with a very large tax payment if you happen to have a small income and a large, valuable piece of real estate. You can't just carve out a few hundred square feet of your house and sell them to pay the tax man.
That's actually a relatively good point, though most people with large, valuable pieces of real estate do have liquid assets or income coming from somewhere. If not, I think they should downgrade to a less valuable piece of property. Why should we let people live in luxury if they aren't contributing anything back to society? Property taxes could easily provide enough revenue to fully fund all the government services we currently have. And really they correspond fairly well to the main service the government provides, protection of people's property, much moreso than income tax or sales tax.
Also, don't forget that an income tax is meaningless unless you also tax barter income. And with barter income there is not necessarily any cash left over to pay the tax.
I'm not one to argue that our tax rate or system is ideal, but I do note that it's hardly out of whack compared to other developed nations.
Especially since Bush took office and gave us all those tax cuts, the income tax system has been extremely light here in the US compared to other nations. My family, for instance, which is not poor, pays payroll taxes (social security and medicare), but we didn't pay a single dime in any other income taxes. And I'm not saying I'm a fan of Bush. The tax cuts he gave us was about all he did that was positive, in my opinion. And I still voted against him both times. But he sure did cut those taxes, at least for those of us who know how to play the game.
I don't see it as deeply unfair, though, and I don't see that arguing it to be unconstitutional will fix the problems with spending.
The constitutionality argument is, quite frankly, a crackpot one.
Look up Tragedy of the Commons, then think about how it can apply to things like fire and police services, roads and all sorts of other infrastructure, military protection, etc.
Umm, you're thinking about the free rider problem, which is different from the tragedy of the commons. The tragedy of the commons, which out of your examples is only really applicable to roads, is resolved through private ownership. The free rider problem applies most strongly to military protection, and that is one place I can see a need for taxation. Of course, for that I favor a land value tax, not an income tax. As for fire and police services, these are only free rider issues because the government makes them free rider issues. There's no reason the government couldn't directly charge fees for these services. They could even do so on an ability to pay basis, similar to the way private hospitals are able to provide emergency room services.
I don't think the $1M example was quantitatively significant so no need to waste your words on that. What has the state done to deserve it's cut of a baby-sitting fee in which it contributed no value? I admit it helps create the "environment" for trade - cash and regulations - but is it really worth your proposed 30% share?
Actually, the federal government doesn't even do that. Contract laws are regulated by the state government, and not all state governments even have an income tax (and I don't think any of them tax income at 30%). I'm not sure of the numbers, but I would think that the civil court system which governs contracts could run off the fees it charges. If not, maybe the fees should be raised. As for the government providing dollar bills, I for one would gladly switch to another form of currency if I could live income-tax free. I'd even go fully barter if it would mean the elimination of the taxman. But I don't have that choice - income in Euros or gold or barter is still taxable income.
The real enemy isn't just the IRS -- it is the CPAs and tax accountants and "experts" who have waged war on the common man.
Umm...first of all, let me get this out of the way. I am a tax accountant. Now...huh?
Do you hate firefighters because their job is dependent on houses catching on fire? Do you hate doctors because they make a living off people getting sick? Do you hate computer programmers because they "have a monopoly of fear" over people who don't understand the "way too complicated" computers? Just what job do you have?
I can't speak for every tax accountant out there, but I personally would be much happier if the income tax was just completely abandoned. In the mean time, I'm all for simplifying the system, though knowing as much as I do about tax laws I realize that you can't simplify the system all that much without opening up a ton of loopholes. I'll gladly get another job if my skills become obsolete. Anyway, I think your hatred is way misplaced, if you are being at all serious in your post.
The tax experts surely want the IRS to inquire to eBay and Yahoo because that means more business for them.
Actually, what I like best about this idea is that it makes it easier for those with businesses on eBay and Yahoo to prepare their income taxes. Without this reporting, the clients still are supposed to put these figures on their tax returns, they just don't have it totaled and calculated for them. Without this reporting, the government will be forced to do more audits, and the business owners will have to produce detailed records to comply with those audits, which means more work for people like me and more expenses for the small business owner. Without this reporting, I'm going to have to be the bearer of bad news when someone tells me they made $100,000 selling items on eBay and I have to tell them that it's taxable. With this reporting, my job is easier, and therefore my fee is smaller.
That said, I'm not sure if I support this reporting or not. If this reporting means that the government is going to get more money to spend putting people in jail for victimless crimes and blowing things and people up in the name of regime change, then I guess I'm opposed to it. But whether or not that's true isn't all that clear, since if this type of reporting becomes a requirement it'll probably cause people to demand lower taxes overall.
If both sales tax and income tax are bad ideas, what kind of tax isn't a bad idea to you? (I'm legitimately curious)
Excise taxes aren't too bad. A gas tax to fund roads and environmental regulations, a cigarette tax to subsidize hospital care (let's add in a trans fat tax too), various fines for breaking laws, lots of so-called "user fees", etc. A land value tax is another one which I don't mind. Inheritance taxes on million dollar (and up) estates. An intellectual property tax. Taxes on licensing of radio frequencies (television stations, cell phones, etc). There are an awful lot of types of taxes I don't mind. Basically if you're getting taxed it should be directly tied to something the government is providing you with, though. The government doesn't really provide me with anything when I earn income.
It seems like you've got to fund the government somehow.
Well, I'm a big believer that government is best which governs least, so I wouldn't mind taking a huge chunk out of the government's spending.
Your example of "Million dollar baby sitting" is a little silly simply because you've blown the cost of the exchange so far out of whack with the actual market value. Of course, it'd be absurd to pay $300,000 tax to the government simply for a barter exchange of babysitting services. It's less absurd to pay $30 of a $100 exchange and that's a more realistic cost for a service like that.
But...why? Why should the federal government get $30 just because I exchange baby-sitting services with a stranger? The federal government doesn't do anything even remotely close to helping me exchange baby-sitting services with a stranger, unless you want to say they printed the money (in which case, I'll just start using Euros). The argument for the state government is slightly better, but my state doesn't even have an income tax (they do have a sales tax, but not on services such as baby-sitting).
Actually there is no such law at all. Everyone just assumes there is one! And the IRS goons come after you if you don't pay taxes, but in actual fact the IRS is constitutionally ILLEGAL!
Who cares if there is such a law, and if the IRS is illegal, if "the IRS goons" are going to "come after you if you don't pay taxes" anyway? Murder is illegal (and unconstitutional), but if I happen to be walking through Harlem at night and some guy with a gun tells me to give him all my money, I'm still going to do it.
The fact of the matter is that there are laws requiring people to file tax returns, there are laws allowing the government to come take your possessions if you don't pay your taxes, and there have been numerous court rulings stating that the IRS is constitutional. So de facto there is actually such a law, even if de jure there isn't.
What principle is that? Taxing income seems to me like a completely horrible idea, in principle, because income is so easily created from nothing in a capitalist society. If I give you a million dollars to babysit my kids and you turn around and give me a million dollars back to babysit your kids, we've just created two million dollars of taxable income. Income taxes are a horrible idea in principle.
Something like a national sales tax would only require reporting from businesses, not citizens.
Except that citizens can be businesses. This whole e-bay reporting requirement, for instance, would still be needed, because e-bay sellers make retail sales. And sales tax is just as bad an idea in principle as income tax. Under the "FairTax" proposal, for instance, someone who did the million dollar baby-sitting would owe taxes on those phantom sales - they're retail services, after all.
And before you think I'm paranoid or blowing smoke, consider this: the current epidemic of identity theft could never have happened if it weren't for the IRS causing your social security number to become a de-facto financial identity number.
Umm, sure it would have, people would just be fraudulently getting loans under some different identifier. Or do you think credit reporting agencies wouldn't exist? And if so, do you think that's a good thing?
Identity theft would be greatly reduced by one simple action. Publish the social security number of every single person who has them in a public document accessible on the Internet. Once the SSN is no longer a secret, "stealing" it won't be useful any more.
If the IRS didn't get their cut before payday, most of the population would be in prison for defaulting on their income tax bill.
Actually, defaulting on your income tax bill (because you can't afford to pay) is not a crime.
More realistically, the government would have serious cashflow problems with very bad economic repurcussions.
Well, the government already has serious cashflow problems with very bad economic repurcussions. This might make things worse, then again it might just force the government not to tax the lower-class so heavily. Or maybe the government will - get this - spend less.
The bigger transgression is from the states that want to collect consumption tax on cross-state transactions. The federal courts have conveniently ignored the constitution a upheld this practice.
I'm 100% sure that a site that is as important as Wikipedia could negotiate a deal with everyone. No matter if it's Google, Yahoo or Microsoft. You had a Wikipedia copy, you are not the Wikimedia Foundation, so your problems with AdSense do not mean that the "official" Wikipedia would have problems too.
Well, I'm not nearly as sure. See, it's not really up to Google, or Yahoo, or Microsoft - they would have to in turn convince the advertisers. And Wikipedia content is quite explicit: violence, sex, profanity, drugs, gambling...and that's just the parts that aren't quickly deleted.
Google sells advertising on MySpace for 3(?) years and paid 900 million for that. So if MySpace Content is good enough for Google, Wikipedia has to be too.
AFAIK the Myspace terms of service don't allow explicit photographs of male and female genitalia. Wikipedia does. In fact, the admins that run the site regularly block people who try to remove these explicit images.
Granted, these "problems" could be worked around, probably through a combination of not advertising on certain articles and accepting somewhat lower than market fees for the rest. But it's hard for me to say that couldn't cause any pressure on the content producers to change the content.
So let a third party do the advertising (e.g. Google) and let a fourth party do the verification of sales und page impressions (just to make sure that Google can not do evil...).
You seem to have missed what I said. Google won't accept Wikipedia content as is. So if Wikipedia wants to go with Google, they would have to either censor their content or only put ads on approved content. I guess with the ad revenue they'd be able to afford someone whose job it was simply to designate which article versions meet Google's content guidelines. But that information will inevitably influence the "content producers".
With the right construction Wikipedia could profit from advertising, even profit big.
If by the right construction you mean if Wikipedia were a for-profit corporation instead of a non-profit charity, then yeah. But...they're not...
The point of wikipedia is that the readers ARE the contributors.
That might be the point, but it's not a fact. Most of the readers of Wikipedia never contribute.
If I don't go to wikipedia to see wikipedia content then when I see an error or a oversight I can't correct the original content.
Sure you can. It is possible to link from one site to another, you know?
Sure you might try and set up a situation where the content is distributed but the edits all get sent back to the original but one has both legal and technical issues in trying to require your distributers do this.
Oh, good, you do know.
Some people might not link back. Some will. Whatever, that's already happening today.
How about this. The bandwidth and the computers belong to the school. Doesn't the School have the right to decide how it's resources are used?
If it's a public school, I'd say no. But let's assume it's a private school. Does a private school have the right to decide how its resources are used? Not if it involves forcing third parties to enforce its policies. If a private school wants to stop its students from accessing Myspace, that's its right. But it's not the right of that school to force others to help them do it.
In college, you should get the freedom to make mistakes with how you use your time, including spending all of it gaming or surfing MySpace.
OK, but your argument was that "when school kids are on school property using school equipment, the school should get to decide what they're allowed to do". What about when college students are on school property using school equipment?
You can't edit comments once they've been posted. The ability to do so would be wide open to abuse - e.g. edit comments to change what you said to make respondents look stupid, edit highly-rated posts to add/change a link to point to goatse or similar, etc.
Didn't someone once say that about letting people edit an encyclopedia?
How can I get a copy of all the Wikipedia data? How can I get updates?
As someone else pointed out, complete database dumps of everything are available. I'm not sure how often they're updated nowadays. But getting just updates is not nearly as easy. In fact, if you try to run a live mirror which takes some load off their servers by caching results, they'll block your IP address.
Slashdot Mirror
Barring one of the myriad of exceptions, gotchas, and other complications, yeah. Of course, this message was not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used by any taxpayer, for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer. Stupid Circular 230.
Depreciation has nothing to do with blue book value. Furthermore, depreciation recapture is generally ordinary income, not capital gains. So, no, he's not at all right, though the details of exactly how he's wrong vary with the details of the situation (which is the main reason I haven't gotten into the details).
That's pretty much all I watch broadcast television for anyway. All the rest of the time I'm at work. I've found the majority of the television I watch is in HD.
Either way buying an HDTV with an ATSC tuner has been a great choice, as I don't have cable in the first place. The ATSC signal comes crystal clear, much better than the analog stations. It's worth it just for the 480i shows.
Not if the insurance companies cover the costs, and also not if you're subject to a lawsuit and possible criminal charges for damaging the property of others and/or killing people through such negligence.
Of course, you also ignore the fact that I agreed that charging for fire services and rolling the costs into property taxes is another reasonable solution.
How so? You do realize that the police already charge for many of the services they provide, including my example of stationing officers at Best Buy and Circuit City on Black Friday, right? The police need not charge for all services, as some clearly benefit everyone. But many services they can and should charge for, because they clearly don't benefit everyone (at least not in any significant way).
I don't really consider that a sliding scale, and I think you overstate the indirect benefits of most police and fire services. I suppose in some theoretical sense I benefit by the fire department putting out a fire 2000 miles away, but we're really talking about something negligible and theoretical there.
I never proposed charging different amounts for people simply because they are rich. I think you're taking this from my analogy to hospitals, who don't really charge people who can't afford hospital care. But they do actually charge these people, they just find that those people aren't able to pay when the collection agency comes up empty handed.
Then you don't understand the tragedy of the commons which you so nicely claimed is the reason we need the government to subsidize loans.
And I never suggested that we move to a situation where all roads are privately owned, I merely said that this would solve the tragedy of the commons. The problem with collecting tolls is not an example of the tragedy of the commons.
Roads can and should be (and usually are) paid for by the institution of a gas tax.
One more comment...
From Wikipedia:
LVT is often said to be justified for economic reasons because if it is implemented properly, it will not deter production, distort market mechanisms or otherwise create deadweight losses the way other taxes do. It is also said to be justified for reasons of fairness in that it recovers for community purposes the value the community creates. It is a cheap (and therefore efficient) tax to administer or pay because much less effort is required to track land ownership than to track income, deductions, capital gains, sales transactions, etc. Tax evasion on land is much more difficult than on financial wealth. For the same reason, it is also much more effective than a development or planning gain tax, which can be avoided by just keeping the land out of productive use.
As well as these pragmatic arguments, LVT may be justified with the philosophical premise that the natural world was originally the common resource of all persons, and therefore LVT is not really a tax, but simply the collection of rent on behalf of those who waive their right of access to the resources they would otherwise have been free to use. Some LVT advocates argue that in consequence, land value should be taxed at a high enough rate to recover effectively all its economic rent from users, and the proceeds should be equally distributed to each citizen in the form of a citizen's dividend. Others favor a combination of citizens' dividend and economically efficient provision of public services (i.e., government provision of services that yield an increase in aggregate land rent at least equal to their cost). Any such implementation of LVT would amount to a substantial land reform. The most influential advocate of this type of LVT was the 19th C American political economist and activist Henry George. Many contemporary American advocacy groups trace their heritage back to his thoughts and writings.
A deed.
The main purpose of the government is to protect property. There might not be a purely one-to-one relationship, but it's a lot closer than the relationship between items bought or income earned. Ownership of land is the right to keep everyone else off that land. You should have to pay everyone else to continue that right. Now I suppose we could collect the property tax and distribute to everyone, but since there are some services the government has to provide everyone anyway (such as police and military), we might as well use these taxes to pay for those services. Same argument as a tax on intellectual property and on exclusive access to the public airwaves.
It's only because of government laws that you are given title to that inheritance in the first place.
I'm pretty sure I didn't say that. Taxes should be at least approximately tied to services provided, though.
No, investigating and locking up rapists benefits everyone. It's one place I can see a justification for a tax on everyone. Of course, fining violent criminals can probably cover some of the costs. And most likely the government could just charge a little extra for providing certain police services that don't benefit everyone (like those extra cops that hang out around Best Buy and Circuit City on Black Fridays) to make a profit which can go toward things like locking up rapists. Now eliminate victimless crimes like drug and gambling laws and your prison costs are going to drop dramatically. If there are any additional funds that are still needed after cutting costs and increasing revenues, I'd fund these services like locking up rapists with all those taxes I've already listed: inheritance taxes, land value taxes, etc.
So pay for the fire-fighters yourself. Or better yet, get your insurance company to agree to pay for it. It's their loss if your house burns down, after all. Of course, for something like fire-fighting I don't see much problem with just rolling that into your property taxes. And of course charge fees for all those false reports. I used to be a volunteer firefighter (that's right, I fought fires without getting paid anything), and we spent more time responding to false alarms than anything else.
Finally, I should note that neither of these two services (police or fire) are handled by the federal government. It's handled by the states, and not all states have income tax. In fact, some states don't have sales tax or income tax.
True, see Publication 501 for all the nitty-gritty details.
Employers usually have to take out social security and medicare (there are a few fairly rare exceptions, such as eligible student employees), but they don't have to take out anything else if you are exempt and give them a valid W-4 claiming so. Read the instructions for the Form W-4 for more details.
Please don't listen to this guy, he's utterly wrong.
I'm really not sure where you get the fact that they're straightforward to compute. The income tax system is horribly complicated, and I have no reason to believe that a national sales tax meant to replace it wouldn't be nearly equally complicated. As for it being relatively amoral, I suppose you're correct.
Then again, I think the same could be said of a land value tax, even moreso actually.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy that. It's easy to multiply a percentage times your taxable sales or taxable income, but defining taxable income or taxable sales is what is difficult, and that's what the tax code is all about. (If you only tax goods, and not services, using a VAT tax, then I suppose you can come up with a relatively straightforward sales tax solution, but doing so would wind up being extremely unfair and easy to manipulate.)
I suppose the tax could be exempted for anyone who maintains health insurance, but cigarettes and trans fats are two huge causes of costs to the public, so unless you're going to completely privatize health care and hospital care, I think you've gotta tax these items. Of course, in the end those two taxes will likely make up a small portion of tax revenues, so we're kind of arguing over something negligible there.
That's actually a relatively good point, though most people with large, valuable pieces of real estate do have liquid assets or income coming from somewhere. If not, I think they should downgrade to a less valuable piece of property. Why should we let people live in luxury if they aren't contributing anything back to society? Property taxes could easily provide enough revenue to fully fund all the government services we currently have. And really they correspond fairly well to the main service the government provides, protection of people's property, much moreso than income tax or sales tax.
Also, don't forget that an income tax is meaningless unless you also tax barter income. And with barter income there is not necessarily any cash left over to pay the tax.
Especially since Bush took office and gave us all those tax cuts, the income tax system has been extremely light here in the US compared to other nations. My family, for instance, which is not poor, pays payroll taxes (social security and medicare), but we didn't pay a single dime in any other income taxes. And I'm not saying I'm a fan of Bush. The tax cuts he gave us was about all he did that was positive, in my opinion. And I still voted against him both times. But he sure did cut those taxes, at least for those of us who know how to play the game.
The constitutionality argument is, quite frankly, a crackpot one.
Umm, you're thinking about the free rider problem, which is different from the tragedy of the commons. The tragedy of the commons, which out of your examples is only really applicable to roads, is resolved through private ownership. The free rider problem applies most strongly to military protection, and that is one place I can see a need for taxation. Of course, for that I favor a land value tax, not an income tax. As for fire and police services, these are only free rider issues because the government makes them free rider issues. There's no reason the government couldn't directly charge fees for these services. They could even do so on an ability to pay basis, similar to the way private hospitals are able to provide emergency room services.
Actually, the federal government doesn't even do that. Contract laws are regulated by the state government, and not all state governments even have an income tax (and I don't think any of them tax income at 30%). I'm not sure of the numbers, but I would think that the civil court system which governs contracts could run off the fees it charges. If not, maybe the fees should be raised. As for the government providing dollar bills, I for one would gladly switch to another form of currency if I could live income-tax free. I'd even go fully barter if it would mean the elimination of the taxman. But I don't have that choice - income in Euros or gold or barter is still taxable income.
Umm...first of all, let me get this out of the way. I am a tax accountant. Now...huh?
Do you hate firefighters because their job is dependent on houses catching on fire? Do you hate doctors because they make a living off people getting sick? Do you hate computer programmers because they "have a monopoly of fear" over people who don't understand the "way too complicated" computers? Just what job do you have?
I can't speak for every tax accountant out there, but I personally would be much happier if the income tax was just completely abandoned. In the mean time, I'm all for simplifying the system, though knowing as much as I do about tax laws I realize that you can't simplify the system all that much without opening up a ton of loopholes. I'll gladly get another job if my skills become obsolete. Anyway, I think your hatred is way misplaced, if you are being at all serious in your post.
Actually, what I like best about this idea is that it makes it easier for those with businesses on eBay and Yahoo to prepare their income taxes. Without this reporting, the clients still are supposed to put these figures on their tax returns, they just don't have it totaled and calculated for them. Without this reporting, the government will be forced to do more audits, and the business owners will have to produce detailed records to comply with those audits, which means more work for people like me and more expenses for the small business owner. Without this reporting, I'm going to have to be the bearer of bad news when someone tells me they made $100,000 selling items on eBay and I have to tell them that it's taxable. With this reporting, my job is easier, and therefore my fee is smaller.
That said, I'm not sure if I support this reporting or not. If this reporting means that the government is going to get more money to spend putting people in jail for victimless crimes and blowing things and people up in the name of regime change, then I guess I'm opposed to it. But whether or not that's true isn't all that clear, since if this type of reporting becomes a requirement it'll probably cause people to demand lower taxes overall.
Excise taxes aren't too bad. A gas tax to fund roads and environmental regulations, a cigarette tax to subsidize hospital care (let's add in a trans fat tax too), various fines for breaking laws, lots of so-called "user fees", etc. A land value tax is another one which I don't mind. Inheritance taxes on million dollar (and up) estates. An intellectual property tax. Taxes on licensing of radio frequencies (television stations, cell phones, etc). There are an awful lot of types of taxes I don't mind. Basically if you're getting taxed it should be directly tied to something the government is providing you with, though. The government doesn't really provide me with anything when I earn income.
Well, I'm a big believer that government is best which governs least, so I wouldn't mind taking a huge chunk out of the government's spending.
But...why? Why should the federal government get $30 just because I exchange baby-sitting services with a stranger? The federal government doesn't do anything even remotely close to helping me exchange baby-sitting services with a stranger, unless you want to say they printed the money (in which case, I'll just start using Euros). The argument for the state government is slightly better, but my state doesn't even have an income tax (they do have a sales tax, but not on services such as baby-sitting).
Who cares if there is such a law, and if the IRS is illegal, if "the IRS goons" are going to "come after you if you don't pay taxes" anyway? Murder is illegal (and unconstitutional), but if I happen to be walking through Harlem at night and some guy with a gun tells me to give him all my money, I'm still going to do it.
The fact of the matter is that there are laws requiring people to file tax returns, there are laws allowing the government to come take your possessions if you don't pay your taxes, and there have been numerous court rulings stating that the IRS is constitutional. So de facto there is actually such a law, even if de jure there isn't.
What principle is that? Taxing income seems to me like a completely horrible idea, in principle, because income is so easily created from nothing in a capitalist society. If I give you a million dollars to babysit my kids and you turn around and give me a million dollars back to babysit your kids, we've just created two million dollars of taxable income. Income taxes are a horrible idea in principle.
Except that citizens can be businesses. This whole e-bay reporting requirement, for instance, would still be needed, because e-bay sellers make retail sales. And sales tax is just as bad an idea in principle as income tax. Under the "FairTax" proposal, for instance, someone who did the million dollar baby-sitting would owe taxes on those phantom sales - they're retail services, after all.
Umm, sure it would have, people would just be fraudulently getting loans under some different identifier. Or do you think credit reporting agencies wouldn't exist? And if so, do you think that's a good thing?
Identity theft would be greatly reduced by one simple action. Publish the social security number of every single person who has them in a public document accessible on the Internet. Once the SSN is no longer a secret, "stealing" it won't be useful any more.
Actually, defaulting on your income tax bill (because you can't afford to pay) is not a crime.
Well, the government already has serious cashflow problems with very bad economic repurcussions. This might make things worse, then again it might just force the government not to tax the lower-class so heavily. Or maybe the government will - get this - spend less.
Huh?
Well, I'm not nearly as sure. See, it's not really up to Google, or Yahoo, or Microsoft - they would have to in turn convince the advertisers. And Wikipedia content is quite explicit: violence, sex, profanity, drugs, gambling...and that's just the parts that aren't quickly deleted.
AFAIK the Myspace terms of service don't allow explicit photographs of male and female genitalia. Wikipedia does. In fact, the admins that run the site regularly block people who try to remove these explicit images.
Granted, these "problems" could be worked around, probably through a combination of not advertising on certain articles and accepting somewhat lower than market fees for the rest. But it's hard for me to say that couldn't cause any pressure on the content producers to change the content.
You seem to have missed what I said. Google won't accept Wikipedia content as is. So if Wikipedia wants to go with Google, they would have to either censor their content or only put ads on approved content. I guess with the ad revenue they'd be able to afford someone whose job it was simply to designate which article versions meet Google's content guidelines. But that information will inevitably influence the "content producers".
If by the right construction you mean if Wikipedia were a for-profit corporation instead of a non-profit charity, then yeah. But...they're not...
Geez, so now it's illegal in Sweeden to crash people's websites! What's gonna be next, a law against blowing up mailboxes?
That might be the point, but it's not a fact. Most of the readers of Wikipedia never contribute.
Sure you can. It is possible to link from one site to another, you know?
Oh, good, you do know.
Some people might not link back. Some will. Whatever, that's already happening today.
If it's a public school, I'd say no. But let's assume it's a private school. Does a private school have the right to decide how its resources are used? Not if it involves forcing third parties to enforce its policies. If a private school wants to stop its students from accessing Myspace, that's its right. But it's not the right of that school to force others to help them do it.
OK, but your argument was that "when school kids are on school property using school equipment, the school should get to decide what they're allowed to do". What about when college students are on school property using school equipment?
Yeah, if the kids want to browse the Internet, they should buy their own building! Umm, I mean no.
Didn't someone once say that about letting people edit an encyclopedia?
As someone else pointed out, complete database dumps of everything are available. I'm not sure how often they're updated nowadays. But getting just updates is not nearly as easy. In fact, if you try to run a live mirror which takes some load off their servers by caching results, they'll block your IP address.