Topic: Why are people scared of taxes? - page 34. (Read 31541 times)

No, a home-owner's association is a group who has a contract for you to sign before you move in detailing things like how high you can let your grass grow, and what colors you can and can't use to paint your house. It's annoying, but it's voluntary. This is a group of your neighbors simply deciding that you have too much money, and need to share.

Are you this stupid, or just retarded?

Perhaps he is. Perhaps he doesn't want to be. Government makes both victims and "criminals"* of us all.




(*Legally not a crime cause the government says it's OK and all).

What proportion would they have to put towards that to make it OK?

Correct. Robbery is closer.

That's called a Home Owner's Association.

That's like saying that if you choose to remain in the territory of a gang, you choose to be mugged every day.

Let me ask you something: If a bunch of your neighbors got together and agreed, by majority vote, to take half of your money, and even wrote it down to be all official, would that make it alright?

No, it isn't.  If you don't like the laws of your country or state, you are free to move somewhere else.  E.g. to North Korea, where taxes were abandoned in 1974.

Are you this stupid, or just retarded?

If you don't want to pay taxes, you can move out in international waters.  Problem solved.  If you choose to live in a country, you have to obey the laws there.  No one will force you to live in your country, unless it is North Korea.  (On the other hand, there are probably no taxes in North Korea because everything already is owned by the state, so you may be happy there.)

If a government could tax it's people to further itself OVER the interests of the population it taxes and serves, it would undoubtedly attempt to do so. There is no better business than taxing people.

True.

True.

False. This would be true if "privatized" meant "private monopoly", but it does not.

Ask, and ye shall receive. It's quite simple, really: Remove the monopoly. The rest will follow.

The problem is that you will always be losing money. If there are no taxes, and everything is privatized, you will lose exactly the same amount or more. Bills must be paid. Services you use constantly will not pay for themselves. If you can come up with a plan that would work for privatizing your lifestyle, the military, infrastructure and industry regulation, I might begin to consider taxes as replaceable. Until you have that, you're basically suggesting that we throw our money away.

So if I pull a gun on you and demand $100 and then buy you a $50 stereo, that's okay, because it's a "tax". Also, you, and a large group of others can "vote" for me or my buddy to point the gun next time, so it's fair.

Use whatever word you want, the point is that it's involuntary. Re-read my post and replace tax with involuntary appropriation of funds

Warren Buffet (the 2nd/3rd richest man in the world) was a big proponent of the Buffet Rule in America where the rich would be taxed more because he pays the same tax rate of his secretary.  In reality he does not because he owns a company and that company is an extension of him and his company pays taxes on his income that may or may not flow down to him.  This is one reason Mr. Buffet does not pay dividends for his companies because that money would be taxed twice and Mr. Buffet made his fortune by avoiding taxation.

During the 1960s he bought a textile company in America that was failing due to the textile industry not being competitive in America.  He then went on to convert this company, Bershire Hathaway, into a holding company that owned stock in other company.  He did this because the top marginal tax rate during the 1960s was in the 90%.  This would mean if he made $1 million on his own he would only be able to spend/invest $100,000 after taxes.  The corporate tax during that time was 22-50%.  Instead of investing individually he was able to make money through a corporate structure and have an extra 40% of the money he didn't have to pay to the government.  Because of this he was able to create a $50 billion company.

I think what many people fail to realize, especially when saying "the rich only pay 15% of their income", is that there are other taxes that are paid, but not directly by them.  Let's say Ms. X owns 50% of the stock in a US based company and that company made a taxable profit of $10 million.  The US has a corporate income tax of 35%.  So that $10 million profit is reduced to by $3.5 million.  The net profit of that company after taxes is now $6.5 million.  Now the company pays out dividends to its owner, lets say 50% of its earnings.  The company pays out $3.25 million to its shareholders of which Ms. X gets ~$1.63 million.  Mr. X then has to pay taxes on the dividend, which currently for his tax bracket is 15% for this qualified long term dividend.  Ms. X personally pays $244,000 in taxes.

So how much did Ms. X really pay in taxes?

If there was no corporate income tax Ms. X would have really received $2.5 million in dividends from his company, but because of the corporate tax of 35% Ms. X paid $870,000 in corporate income tax and $244,000 in dividend tax.

Ms. X pays a total of $1,121,000 in taxes for a total tax rate of 44.84% (considering that the dividend is their only income and no deductions or credits).

A lot of people, me included, don't like taxes because from January 1 to about June these "rich" people are working for free.  All the money during this time period is going to the government.  These rich people also don't receive as much benefit from the government for their taxes.  Most rich people are frugal and want value for things they purchase.  If a person can get a better value for a product and pay less, why would they not take that route?

Robbery with violence.

(Actually that's what forced expropriation is. Theft is sneaky larceny with no violence or force or threats.)

Two problems with that:
Just because they do something productive with it doesn't mean it's not theft, and
You may get to choose who steals from you, but you can't choose not to be stolen from.

Yes.  Thieves don't steal a fair share of my income and use it to build roads for me to drive on, provide me with free healthcare, give me a free university education, etc.  And they don't stand up for an election every four years and ask me to give them verdict on how they did and how I want them to proceed.

Comparing taxes to theft is just stupid.  You know the difference.

Is there a difference?

What else do you call taking money by force?