I'd rather just start with them taking the appropriate taxes out of my check rather than me paying a company for them to tell me I owe another 2-5k
Intuit bribed trump to kill irs autofile.
Yet this isn't all on Trump, his is just the most recent insult
True
Thank that company for lobbying against automated taxes.
Either this is highly exaggerated, or whoever is doing your taxes hasn't explained to you the various deductions you should be claiming or enjoying, from standard/basic deductions, to tax credits and programs, not to mention tax brackets.
That being said, is there a massive discrepancy in how little tax corporations and the rich pay compared to the little guy? He'll yeah there is.
My hypothesis is that the tax system does not explicitly favor the rich - it favors those who can navigate its complexities. Which is the rich. Not because they are smarter - because they can hire accountants and tax consultant.
For nearly everyone the standard deduction is the way to go lately. If you itemize it's absolutely not the same as businesses being able to deduct their business expenses. There's a good argument businesses should be able to deduct these expenses in my opinion, but for individuals itemizing their deductions it's absolutely not comparable.
May?
They’re giving them an extra month, how charitable?
Well yeah, at this point the corporation and government are the same person.
I'm a Democrat. Not specifically in the party sense but in the genuine belief Democracy is the very best organizational form of government we have... But damn if it isn't dependent on having a well informed, educated citizenry to thrive. Wealth inequality got so out of control and foreign governments undermined us to such an extent our citizens are mostly clueless to being played.
People usually call that a "lowercase D democrat"
I always mix those up, let alone wonder how well other people know the difference so I just tend to explain as I go kind of thing, if that makes sense
“D” is capitalizing a proper noun, the name for the political party. Proper nouns should be capitalized.
“d” for the system of governance, not a proper noun.
Anyone that cares to know the difference will likely note it. Hope that helps.
/uj
The "money spent on survival" is the standard deduction and deductions in general. Deductions are viewed as if you never made that money in the first place. Whether standard deduction should be larger is another question.
Corporations can tell the government what their deduction is, the government tells normal humans what their deduction is.
Person: $16k for food is part of standard deduction. No deduction for car or rent if you are an employee.
Corporation (which is legally treated as a person): $150k for food for one party. $150k for CEO's Mercedes. $500k for condo for ceo to use when visiting.
Yeah, because $16k is enough to survive.
A diet of nothing but rice and beans, living in a rented room in a garage, and dumpster diving for all the remaining necessities and you can almost live in California!
That’s the thing. Corporations report their own deductions, but individuals have to follow existing law, when there’s a high variance among necessary spending
People can report their own deductions, too. It's just not worth it for most people.
The problem is that the IRS "doesn't have the resources" to audit corporations and millionaires. They basically only audit small business owners.
Edit for sarcasm quotes
Even that though, you can only deduct part of your living expenses. There is no food deduction afaik, there is no deduction for insurance as far as I know.
I'm pretty sure I read that auditing the wealthy is a huge profit center for the IRS, because they find people who aren't paying what's owed. Naturally conservatives (of any party) hate this and gut it whenever possible
Auditing in general is profitable, but it's mostly due to it being automated for people that aren't making 7 figures. Auditing the not absurdly wealthy is also generally a positive revenue. Auditing the extremely wealthy tends to not be a great net benefit as the costs of lawyers and court time outweighs the settlement check at the end. There's an argument to be made it's worth the cost to ensure the ultra wealthy do actually pay though.
It's billions of dollars of tax "avoidance", cheating, and simply not paying. Unfortunately, the wealthy who are calling the shots don't really want to pay millions for IRS lawyers
Yeah, if you look at the numbers it's obvious. But libertarians don't let facts get in the way of a good narrative.
Which is ass backwards. Audit those with the highest amounts and they made way more money. It's proven it worked that way until they cut funding for it
You can also report your own deductions if you itemize. If your income is low, the standard deduction is probably just significantly bigger than your itemized deductions.
Legal deductions are extremely limited if you are an employee. You can't deduct your car, your rent, or the big screen TV you bought.
For employers, anything that didn't end up in the bank at the end of the year is a deduction.
Pretty sure that's the point
I'm pretty sure you are correct.
I don't know about you guys and your local tax laws, but I can deduct the costs of earning my income from my taxable income.
Transportation to the job, further education for the job, (if I had any) the costs of having my kids looked after while I work, that sort of thing.
Fundamentally very similar to how the business deducts operating cost from revenue, before paying taxes on profit.
I'd argue the necessary upkeep to remain alive and functional as an employee should be included as a cost of earning your income. Where I am you definitely can't deduct housing, food or transportation costs. Limited deductions for child related stuff.
This is the case in most jurisdictions but the line between expenses that are incurred in the course of earning your income and those which are not will vary to some extent.
For example, the cost of driving to and from work is generally not deductable, but if you need to travel to some third location then that is generally deductable.
It doesn't really matter exactly where the line between deductable and non-deductable is, because the same rules are applied to everyone in the jurisdiction. For example, if you decide that everyone can claim the cost of driving to work, then the tax rates need to be higher to ensure sufficient tax revenue for the government.
That said, you're correct that the difference between a corporation and a person is the extent to which their activities are income producing. Everything a company does is in the pursuit of profit, so all expenses are deductable against income. In fact tax law prohibits company's spending money for other purposes.
the costs of having my kids looked after while I work
Uh, this sounds like a "not in America" thing. Can you confirm that and/or link to the rules that let you deduct childcare expenses?
Ive got family members who would love to hear about that if it is a thing.
He's on a German server but I'm in the US you can deduct some childcare expenses. I use the Child and Dependent Care Credit
It's very little. You can easily pay thousands out of pocket for child care to get a fraction of it removed from taxes / "back"
It is very little and qualified. The place one of my younger kids go qualifies but not where one of the older one's is.
Good catch on the German server bit. Def escaped my notice.
Hmm... Sounds like we should do some tax magic to file our cost of living as operating expense in some way, we can't earn those income if we are not alive after all.
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