though self employed consultants could probably pull it off..
Most self employed consultants should be taking as much as they can off of their business income instead of from their total income - it will save on self employment taxes.
No, I don't think it would - it would just force them to deal with people who aren't as afraid of them as your individual W-2 filers.
Sales tax is simple for the vast majority of consumers, but it can be a headache for businesses.
For example, in Iowa we have a 5% sales tax rate (+1 % local + 1% school in most communities). But "heating fuel" is taxed at a 3% rate. A couple of years ago when ATM surcharging was first allowed in the state, the department of revenue tried to dictate that surcharges from ATM's based in Iowa and from a checking account should incur a "use tax" (the money was meant to be spent - and apparently in Iowa!) - and the bank who holds the checking account (and not the ATM owner) would be required to collect the use tax. Bank service charges are taxable - if they are on a checking account (any service charges - even the exact same ones! - on savings accounts are not taxable).
Going to a national sales tax would not put the IRS out of business - they would just start enforcing the sales tax on businesses. It would, however, get them off of the back of most consumers.
Did you know that the IRS is prohibited from offering online filing services themselves for free?
The IRS does so well with internal IT project (http://www.cio.com/archive/040104/irs.html), I'm sure you'd have no problems trusting them to safely and securely accept an online return.
And given how well the IRS knows the taxes that they're to collect (URL: http://www.freep.com/money/business/taxhel12_20040 412.htm>) you'd have no problem believing that what they calculate is correct.
but don't you realize that you are indirectly costing everyone else more money?
I agree with your point - but do you really think that taxes would be lower if everyone reported every cent of income and paid the proper taxes on it?
He's balanced out by those who don't know about the existing (or new!) credits and fail to take advantage of them and those who do a bunch of small (individually insignificant, but things can add up!) things that they could take advantage of but don't.
That was good of him. Most people have the wherewithal to do their own taxes - but it doesn't take too many "extras" to make the returns much, much more complicated.
"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely"
But it rocks absolutely too!
Re:How Israeli Companies Are Succeeding...
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Business Under Fire
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· Score: 1
It is - it's just a different kind of invasion - not that it's a bad thing.
I live in a small town where most of the population is old retired farmers. There's another nearby town that was essentially identical to mine 10 years ago, but they got an egg production facility. Since then, that town's demographics have tilted from an older population to a younger, hispanic population (not that there's anything wrong with that). The people living there are as much residents of the community as they were 10 years ago, but the makeup of the community has changed.
I'd call that an invasion. It's not one where you've got the Vikings landing at the beach and running around with swords, but it is a slower event that is changing the very face of the community.
Having said that, I've got no problem with it - In the case of small town Iowa, we need some population growth to keep the vitality of the communities. Immagration is one such way. I suspect that England in particular and Europe in general are the same way.
Year end is always an adventure - and is always good to be done with. We typically try to get as much done on 12/31 as possible so we don't have to do too much on 1/1, but that doesn't always work out.
For Y2K, one of our contingency plans was to run all statements as of 12/31 - yuck! We do enough statements during a normal year, but that was much, much worse. As a matter of fact, I think that we were live and running with 2000 data long before all of the printing (between the statements and the various contingency reports) was done.
BTW, our vendor found "one more bug" late in December 1999. We had to install a Y2K patch while we were doing year-end processing on 30 December. Fortunately, I had insisted we close 31 December to give us time for just such emergencies.
Good God! Are you still with that vendor? We chose to stay open on 12/31 (it was a FRB business day) because we are an ag bank and usually do a tremendous amount of business on 12/31.
I think that at one point I figured that the amount of paperwork I had to do to "prove" that we were in good shape doubled the amount of work involved in preparations.
I ran our core system's "test bank" in updates past 1/1/2001. For each "critical date" I calculated interest accruals and compared them to what the system calculated. I ran transactions and made sure that they posted properly.
The people I really felt sorry for during the process was our Board of DIrectors. They had to listen to me for 1 or 2 hours at each meeting talk about Y2K preparedness.
As a side note, I was home before midnight that night - and I was the last one out of the bank.
I did technical support for a Y2K team for a large bank. I know what I'm talking about. I saw the systems that would fail, and what it would do. I saw them fixed.
Same here, but for a small bank. The one thing that royally sucked about it was that the regulators got their hands into it - and decided that the proper way to prepare for Y2K was to paper it over instead of getting work done. They made it a safety and soundness issue so everyone in the industry had to jump for them.
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Data storage wasn't the problem - it was integer space :)
Most self employed consultants should be taking as much as they can off of their business income instead of from their total income - it will save on self employment taxes.
Sales tax is simple for the vast majority of consumers, but it can be a headache for businesses.
For example, in Iowa we have a 5% sales tax rate (+1 % local + 1% school in most communities). But "heating fuel" is taxed at a 3% rate. A couple of years ago when ATM surcharging was first allowed in the state, the department of revenue tried to dictate that surcharges from ATM's based in Iowa and from a checking account should incur a "use tax" (the money was meant to be spent - and apparently in Iowa!) - and the bank who holds the checking account (and not the ATM owner) would be required to collect the use tax. Bank service charges are taxable - if they are on a checking account (any service charges - even the exact same ones! - on savings accounts are not taxable).
Going to a national sales tax would not put the IRS out of business - they would just start enforcing the sales tax on businesses. It would, however, get them off of the back of most consumers.
Yes - call it "Professional Services"
The IRS does so well with internal IT project (http://www.cio.com/archive/040104/irs.html), I'm sure you'd have no problems trusting them to safely and securely accept an online return.
And given how well the IRS knows the taxes that they're to collect (URL: http://www.freep.com/money/business/taxhel12_20040 412.htm>) you'd have no problem believing that what they calculate is correct.
You're a brave individual to file a Schedule F using only tax software.
I agree with your point - but do you really think that taxes would be lower if everyone reported every cent of income and paid the proper taxes on it?
He's balanced out by those who don't know about the existing (or new!) credits and fail to take advantage of them and those who do a bunch of small (individually insignificant, but things can add up!) things that they could take advantage of but don't.
That might be 50% of what they collect in audits. The US federal government is inefficient - but not that inefficient :)
That was good of him. Most people have the wherewithal to do their own taxes - but it doesn't take too many "extras" to make the returns much, much more complicated.
But it rocks absolutely too!
I live in a small town where most of the population is old retired farmers. There's another nearby town that was essentially identical to mine 10 years ago, but they got an egg production facility. Since then, that town's demographics have tilted from an older population to a younger, hispanic population (not that there's anything wrong with that). The people living there are as much residents of the community as they were 10 years ago, but the makeup of the community has changed.
I'd call that an invasion. It's not one where you've got the Vikings landing at the beach and running around with swords, but it is a slower event that is changing the very face of the community.
Having said that, I've got no problem with it - In the case of small town Iowa, we need some population growth to keep the vitality of the communities. Immagration is one such way. I suspect that England in particular and Europe in general are the same way.
That's why towns like Lakota changed their name during WWI
http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/genealogyInfo.php?l ocIndex=7436
No one is doing so overtly, but...
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/206802_moha mmed06ww.html
Not that there is anythin wrong with that.
Or you could encourage the spouse to take up carpentry as a trade. I think that it pays well and she could take care of that kind of work on her own!
For Y2K, one of our contingency plans was to run all statements as of 12/31 - yuck! We do enough statements during a normal year, but that was much, much worse. As a matter of fact, I think that we were live and running with 2000 data long before all of the printing (between the statements and the various contingency reports) was done.
Good God! Are you still with that vendor? We chose to stay open on 12/31 (it was a FRB business day) because we are an ag bank and usually do a tremendous amount of business on 12/31.
I think that at one point I figured that the amount of paperwork I had to do to "prove" that we were in good shape doubled the amount of work involved in preparations.
I ran our core system's "test bank" in updates past 1/1/2001. For each "critical date" I calculated interest accruals and compared them to what the system calculated. I ran transactions and made sure that they posted properly.
The people I really felt sorry for during the process was our Board of DIrectors. They had to listen to me for 1 or 2 hours at each meeting talk about Y2K preparedness.
As a side note, I was home before midnight that night - and I was the last one out of the bank.
Same here, but for a small bank. The one thing that royally sucked about it was that the regulators got their hands into it - and decided that the proper way to prepare for Y2K was to paper it over instead of getting work done. They made it a safety and soundness issue so everyone in the industry had to jump for them.
I should have been awarded a "funny" mod point - it was more of a joke and it was meaningless to the conversation.
That sounds like the combination an idiot would put on the atmospheric lock on a planet!
Things to keep water in the river.
Therefore, like all taxes collected for a specific purpose, they're going towards something else.
ARGH! - Sorry about that - I knew that, but did a lazy search to get that link.
He's been playing GTA: Vice City and listening to the commercials too much.
Try angband http://www.phial.com/angband/
Actually - that's because of the drug companies - don't want to lose out on the cumadin market!