Yeah…he’s a cold SOB. I mean, I know next to nothing about FLDS or LDS or whatever. But my own code of conduct says you don’t screw over people who are loyal and good to you and support you when you need it. Is it hypocrisy to screw over Don? I don’t know, but I do know it’s wrong no matter what religion you are. He may think he’s doing the right thing, but it’s wrong to me. As is not forgiving his son.
Tax fraud??? Please explain.
Healthcare benefits are not currently taxable.
Generally, employers pay anywhere from 0 to 100% of healthcare premiums. When employees pay a percentage of those premiums, that comes out of pre-tax dollars; employees pay FICA out of what’s left after healthcare premiums are deducted.
When employers pay a percentage of those premiums, the company is committing tax fraud: they are not paying the full percentage of taxes on each employee of record that they are supposed to because the employees are not getting paid. 28% of 0 is still 0.
Or something.
My brother owns a small drugstore (about 10 employees) and provides health insurance to his employees through a consortium of independent drugstores. When I went to graduate school and lost my health insurance (and COBRA was prohibitively expensive) I asked if there was any way I could be covered on his plan. He checked with the administrators and the answer was ‘No’, in order to be covered I would have to be an officer of the corporation (which understandably he was not willing to do) or a tangible hourly W2 filling out employee (I asked about a $1 per year consulting type deal but again, no- certain number of hours and all that). My sister does relief work for him (she’s retired but has to work x hours per year to maintain her license so its’ a symbiotic relationship- she works when he’s on vacation- she gets paid whatever going rate is but more importantly she keeps her license and he has somebody he trusts) but she was ineligible as well since she doesn’t work enough hours per month. (She tried because her premiums for private insurance, considering she and her husband are in their early 50s now and he’s had a stroke, are exorbitant.)
While Bill’s a much larger employer than my brother, his insurer would surely have similar requirements, so if non-employees are on the insurance registry then it is theft of services. It would also imply (even though it wasn’t said) that his two plural wives receive a paycheck from the company as well since he’d probably have to show they worked x hours per month, which I would think would also be tax fraud (both state and federal) as well as perhaps money laundering.
Of course if I were him I’d hire Margene and Nicki in some capacity. He probably could always use office help or extra register people or some other factotum type work.
Besides what Dogzilla mentioned, there would also be a problem of Home Plus using these insurance premiums as business expense and thus being able to write them off. Just because Home Plus is privately owned, it doesn’t mean that the government doesn’t expect the company to keep accurate books.
I’m probably dreaming this, but didn’t they make HomePlus a public company when they split it from Roman?
Don’t know if we have a more recent thread but in last Sunday’s ep, why was the lobbyist character so angry at Bill at the end? He was saying bad stuff about her? If so, when?
ETA: And did Sarah give back the Indian baby?
Yes and yes. Bill called her a liar and a thief to the tribal leaders behind her back. Apparently they shared his comments with her when she met with them alone. She told Bill that she could sue him for it, but it seems she has something much, much worse in mind.
Your post is very confusing.
So if the cost of my annual health insurance coverage is $15,000, and I only pay $3,000 through payroll withholding, and my employer pays the other $12,000, my employer is committing tax fraud since they are paying 80% of the premiums?
That can’t be right, since almost any company which offers health insurance benefits would be committing tax fraud under your definition.
If Margene is on the payroll at Homeplus for $15,000 per year, and she has payroll deductions of $2,000 for her share of health insurance benefits, she would still have federal, state, fica, etc. tax taken out after that.
Still no tax fraud.
You are foolish to think that the federal government is concerned about whether employee A came into the office and worked that day. They are concerned whether or not the company actually paid the payroll to employee A and that employee A paid his income taxes on the money he received.
No tax fraud.
Nope. Didn’t say that.
Well, we don’t know that Margene is taking a paycheck from Home Plus. We think the three wives are just receiving healthcare coverage, without a paycheck from which to deduct these FICA taxes.
Then again, I’m no HR expert, nor do I know jack squat about taxes v. tax fraud. Now, exmormon issues I can discuss intelligently, but this nonsense about tax fraud? A) This is hardly germaine to discussing Big Love, aside from the fact that it’s uncool to give people employer-paid benefits when they don’t actually do any work for the employer. Which laws that breaks or why is not really my concern. The main point of the discussion was that Bill, who believes in being honest in all dealings with others, is a big fat hypocrite. B) Perhaps it’s insurance fraud we’re actually talking about.
Which leads me to wonder… if I worked for Home Plus and I found out that the boss’s wives were all getting healthcare on the company dime, I’d be pissed off. All those babies = more claims paid out, which in turn could mean higher premiums for everybody. Which could be a moot point if Bill just took Nikki and Margene and got 'em on Medicaid or something. Then we’d all be paying for Bill’s polygamy, not just the other Home Plus employees. Who actually work there.
Maybe laws aren’t being broken. But certainly what Bill was doing is unethical. No?
Added thought: If Margene was taking a paycheck from Home Plus, then why would she needed to start a line of jewelry to hawk on a shopping channel? She started out doing it just for extra money, never expecting to bring in big bucks.
No question about Bill’s wavy line on ethics…but posters start claiming illegal activities by certain characters of the show, without any evidence of illegal activity…just fighting ignorance.
That doesn’t seem to be the case.
It’s been two weeks now, so my memory is spotty on how it played out, but wasn’t Don concerned that people were going to be going over the books and find that insurance was being paid for people who weren’t employees? In other words, the number of insured vs. the number of employees and dependents didn’t match. Those insurance premiums are business expenses on the books, but they are false expenses (ie. no matching employees). Falsifying business expenses is fraud.
They are only false expenses to the extent that society doesn’t recognize plural marriage. Barb is also under that healthcare plan but there is nothing fraudulent about it because she’s Bill’s wife. There is nothing unethical whatsoever for Bill to cover his immediate family on his work’s healthplan given what we have been shown of their religious beliefs. (eg: It’s perfectly fine to open a casino to fleece the unfaithful.)
They are false because Utah law doesn’t recognize plural marriages. They (the plural dependents) are not legally acknowledged as belonging to Don, nor has Don made the attempt (ie. legally adopting the children, etc.). Don was actively hiding the connections. Having them on the policy for Home Plus would be the same as insuring random people off the street.
So going back to Wilbo523’s statement about nothing illegal being done, we have Don (and probably Bill) channeling money from Home Plus to pay for his plural family’s health care premiums. There’s a word for that, embezzlement. Even if you don’t think the IRS would care about the tax thing, there were illegal activities going on at Home Plus.
[QUOTE=RogueRacer]
It’s been two weeks now, so my memory is spotty on how it played out, but wasn’t Don concerned that people were going to be going over the books and find that insurance was being paid for people who weren’t employees?
[/QUOTE]
He also stated that the wives had all had dummy timecards as well, meaning for a while they had evidently received paychecks for work not done as well.
There are only nine episodes this season so there are only three left. The first couple had twelve episodes and last year was only ten. I don’t expect them to have as many episodes as network television shows, but this is ridiculous IMHO
I’m not sure why so many people have so much trouble grasping such a simple concept.
The government doesn’t dictate morality. Whatever it’s called legally is 100% irrelevant to the question of whether or not it’s illegal or unethical for Bill and Don to insure their immediate family on their work insurance like everyone else in America is allowed to do.
By your logic, the fact that Utah doesn’t recognize plural marriage means that Bill and Don being in plural marriages is immoral and/or unethical. Right? So why cling so strongly to such tedious rules lawyering? Just call them immoral for being polygamists and wipe your hands of it.
Not hardly. Bill and his wives live quite comfortably, especially with Margene’s new business. Bill could afford to purchase health insurance for his 2nd and 3rd wives and their children but it is CHEAPER for him to use HomePlus in a way that is against the law. Just like he and Don ignore the church’s feelings about gambling to make money with Weber Gaming because it is convenient for them to do so, they ignore that what they are doing is bending the rules for their own gain. You can argue up one side and down the other that what they’re doing by cooking the books is no big deal but apparently it is or Don wouldn’t have been in a tizzy about it.
He’s not some poor person who is struggling to get by. Bill is well off and doesn’t need to do things that could get him and his company in trouble just to save money on health insurance. He chooses to.
Personally, I do not care if plural marriage would be legal as long as it doesn’t involve marrying off minors. I have no issue with it so pretending that anyone who disagrees with your opinion of this situation (or even Bill or Don) means they have a problem with polygamy is ludicrous. Some people might have a problem with it, but to assign it as the reason as you seem to do in what I quoted is disingenuous.
Mostly bullshit. Don wasn’t in a tizzy because they cooked the books. They’ve been doing it for years without a single moral qualm. Don was in a tizzy because he was worried that the auditors might out them as polygamists. Period.
The rest of your post is more of the same: simply not getting it. Bill and Don and the UEB council and pretty much every episode of the show that’s aired to date have made it abundantly clear that they do not conform to or even recognize the majority view of morality. Your appeals to majority view morality are therefore completely irrelevant.
EDIT: In other words, yes, they are immoral by our standards. But so is polygamy itself, so pointing out that they’re doing immoral stuff by our standards is pointless at best, plain stupid at worst.
Cheating a company has nothing to do with polygamy and I can’t imagine the contortions you need to perform to get it there. Plain and simple: they could purchase insurance LEGALLY for their wives and children but that would cost more. PERIOD. They choose to manipulate the business to allow them to do what they want for money. Just like they ignore their church teachings for Weber Gaming. There are millions of ways to make money that don’t involve going against the teachings of the church they say they serve yet they choose gambling because it’s fast and easy money. Hopefully you’ll perform some acrobatic work to explain how that makes perfect sense too. I could use a little entertainment this evening.
Of course people have different standards of morality. What’s laughable is that you choose to see that at an explanation for doing the wrong thing. People who cheat on their spouses obviously have a different set of morals as do people who rob banks or do any other number of things.
To proclaim to be living in a way that puts you closer to the teachings of your God while willfully disobeying the set of MORAL codes set forth by said religion makes you a hypocrite. I’m not holding Don and Bill’s characters to my moral code, I’m simply expecting them to follow the ones that match the religion they claim to honor.
I get it just fine as do the other people that don’t agree with you. Funny how anyone who disagrees with you doesn’t get it.