Taxes

Posts Tagged ‘Taxes’

Taxes: Blood From A Stone

November 10th, 2008 by Richard Warren | 4 Comments | Filed in Blogs, Commentary, Real Estate, Taxes

Tax the rich, tax the rich! We can have everything if we just tax the rich. One question: how do we define

rich? Would the top ten percent of income earners be considered the rich? The top ten percent already pay 71% of all Federal taxes despite only earning approximately 39% of all pre-tax income. The top one percent could certainly be considered rich, let’s get them to pay! The fact is that they already do, 40% of all Federal tax dollars come from the top one percent of income earners.

How much more can they reasonably be expected to give? The wealthy constantly seek out ways to shelter income from taxation. Capital gains, dividends and other targeted deductions and credits allow some taxes to be avoided. One way of having the “rich” pay more taxes is by eliminating these tax breaks. Guess what, some of the poor and many of the middle class take advantage of these deductions and credits as well. If these items are eliminated as a way of “taxing the rich” the poor and middle class earners who utilized them will see a tax increase as well. So much for taxing the rich.

Progressiveness

There was so much talk on the campaign trail about redistributing wealth. Some were saying that we should model ourselves after many of the European nations in regards to the way they handle the haves and have-nots. I recently came across a column by Jonah Goldberg that talked about that very thing. It seems that we already redistribute more wealth than European countries like France and Sweden do. The article states that the bottom 40% of income earners receive more from the Federal Government than they pay in taxes, isn’t that spreading the wealth?

Let’s remember what wealth redistribution really is. It is taking from the productive members of society and giving it to the unproductive ones. Isn’t that really teaching the unproductive to stay that way? The recently completed political campaign was full of talk about what everyone was going to get. Somehow it was all going to be paid for by magic. If you believe that, I know a bridge you can buy!

Tax Reform

Many people have been calling for tax reform or simplification for decades. There have been proponents of flat-tax, value-added tax (VAT), national sales tax, fair tax, this that and the other tax. There is one big flaw in all of this talk, it doesn’t greatly alter the need for revenue, it just changes how it’s collected and who pays it. Sure some plans call for the elimination of the IRS bureaucracy, but will the Government really eliminate all of those jobs or just shift them elsewhere? And what about all of the businesses that are built around the tax code? It’s not as easy as it is made to sound.

In the interest of satisfying the Governments unquenchable thirst for more tax dollars, I have my own proposal for tax simplification and reform. Filing your taxes will be incredibly easy, just follow this simple form and instruction.

New Tax Form:

What did you earn?
Send it in.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
-Winston Churchill

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Tags: tax reform, Taxes, wealth redistribution

New Twist on the Dilemma of City vs. Suburbs

November 15th, 2006 by Bea Chenowitz | 4 Comments | Filed in Blogs, Commentary, New York Real Estate

For city dwellers with children, there is always this dilemma of whether one should move to the suburbs. The case for the suburbs is pretty cut and dry: there are the obvious lifestyle reasons such as more space for children to run around, and also financial ones, like being able to send kids to great public schools where you don’t have to fork out private school tuitions in the $25,000-to-$30,000 range (per child, that is).

In our family, thoughts about moving to the suburbs always lurk in the background, even as we go apartment hunting in the city. In fact, one year, the lure of the suburbs was so strong for my husband that we even went house hunting in various towns in Westchester and New Jersey. Obviously in the burbs, you get more for your money. A spacious house, a nice yard, maybe even a swimming pool if you’re lucky. The pitfalls of moving to the suburbs seem so few, aside from the inconvenience of having to drive everywhere (it’s a given anywhere else, I know, but for Manhattanites, it’s a huge deal!). And oh yes, the high taxes. This is especially true in good school districts in Westchester and Long Island.

According to the New York Times (“Leaving the City for the Schools, and Regretting It,” November 13, 2006) however, there is an interesting upward trend of people who move to suburbs like Westchester choosing to send their children to private schools. That seems to defeat the whole purpose of moving to the suburbs in the first place. The high property taxes AND the tuitions? Apparently, many of these families did not plan to do this when they moved out there but decided to do so after finding public schools a little less than ideal, even in the good districts. The common complaints are that the programs are under-funded, too many kids in each classroom (many of them unmotivated), the administration is not responsive to parents’ needs, and the list goes on.

Guess you can’t have everything, even in the burbs. I’m just glad that we are still in the city, paying just the tuitions but not the high taxes. Of course, it’s not a given that you’ll find the schools in the burbs unacceptable; plenty of families are very happy there. But there is always that “What if?” You can bet that I will be showing my husband this article every time he muses about moving out of the city.

Tags: city, estate, manhattan, New, real, schools, suburbs, Taxes, Westchester, York