Well- the taxes are NOT complicated- for most of us. Like you & I, Bongmaster.
There are several reasons for a complicated tax system:
Progressive taxes- Rich pay more, we pay less. Under EVERY realistic (that is “revenue neutral”) “flat tax system” I have seen the taxes for the middle class go WAY up, and the rich pay less.
Social engineering- Congress thinks it is a good idea for dudes to donate to charities, have kids, marry, buy a home, send the kids to college, go back to school, pay for that operation, etc. I think we can agree with some of these.
Lobbyist, Pork Barrel & Special interests. 99% of us will agree this is needless & stupid. However, the 1% that donates Big Bucks to the Republican National Comm gets their voices heard. (And the Dems are just as bad, when they are in power)
Businesses- most of the Tax code is really for large corps & businesses. They already have to use complicated double entry sets of books.
Tax Shelters & Tax Evaders- we should all pay our fair share. Some dudes will think of ways to crawl thru a unintended loophole, and then it must be plugged. That’s where “Alternative Minimum Tax” came from- surely the work of Satan.
Taxes are complicated in every Industrialized nation, mind you. Our Canadian brothers up North are not blessed with a "flat tax’ or a freindly tax agency either. I think in GB it is even worse. We don’t pay that much as a % of overall tax burden compared to the rest of the Industrialized nations. (Of course, in Sweden & such you get more services, so…)
DrDeath touched on a couple of good points. Most important, I feel, is that congress changes the tax code every fucking year. If they would just leave it alone for awhile and let the IRS catch up we would all benefit. I’d like to see the tax code simplified. I just don’t think it’s going to happen.
IMO, you can’t fix social problems with tax code changes and you can’t fix the economy with tax code changes. YMMV.
Progressive tax does not make for much more complicated taxes. It just means you get a tax table.
Taxes are complicated because people to complicated things with there money. If you just work for company X and only draw a paycheck you income is easy to determine. But what do you do when you buy and sell property like houses cars etc. Then if you actually run a business it gets really hard to know how much money you have made.
First, the increase in the Child Tax Credit (not the Childcare Credit) is not retroactive to 2002. The Child Tax Credit has been increased to a maximum of $1000 for 2003, up from $600 for 2002. The difference, $400, is being sent to taxpayers who qualified for the credit in 2002, though not all will qualify for the full $400. This is not a refund from your 2002 taxes. It is a partial prepayment of your 2003 credit. This means that when you file your return for the 2003 tax year, you will get a $600 Child Tax Credit per child. The check you received covers $400 per child, adding up to a $1000 credit for 2003.
Second, the Bush administration didn’t do this, Congress did. Bush proposed it, but Congress, if it didn’t blindly follow party lines, could have rejected it.
Third, the Treasury is mailing the checks, not the Bush administration.
I would suggest paying closer attention to details and facts before posting out of your butt on a message board. You’re giving ignorance a free permanent commercial.
Thank you for your corrections, isthatsowrong. Obviously I didn’t pay enough attention to my previous post. Attribute it to snarkiness.
Were I to continue my snarkiness, I would point out that the amount in question for my family was $2,000, not $1,000 as you incorrectly posted. However, that would be rude, so I won’t do it.
Geez…my whole entire point was that I wish we had gotten the audit letter BEFORE we got the rebate check so we could have used that money to pay the debt. Damn…I’m sorry I even posted.
The mistake was ours…no argument there whatsoever. We goofed. We thought we paid all the correct taxes/penalties, etc. and we had not. It’s out debt…we will pay it. Not a problem.
I was just adding to the comments about the Fucking IRS not trying to start some Great Debate about the correct wording of the tax credit.
And I do believe it is against the rules to directly quote another poster and not attribute the quote to them…even if you are just doing it to make a point.
But then I would be forced to be snarky and say that I obviously meant “per child” every time I mentioned dollar amounts.
My real point in posting the clarifications was to try to clear up some of the confusion about these “prebates”. That I got to be snarky was just a bonus.
We had our first kid in January of this year. We won’t qualify for the Child Tax Credit because our income is too high. I’m not crying about that, but I don’t look forward to next tax season when everyone points out that we must be happy about our “new little tax deduction”. What do I say? The truth – “We don’t qualify because our income is larger than the GDP of some small countries” – or do we lie and say “Yes, it’s nice to get a few dollars back”, when in fact we pay more in federal taxes than the average family makes in gross income?
According to Arnold Winkelried in an ATMB post: Falsely attributing a quote to another user, or modifying another’s post in order to cast him/her in a bad light, even if meant in jest, is grounds for revocation of your posting privileges. This does not apply to parodies to which no name is attached.
I believe my use of Sauron’s words would fall into the parody category.
Which would force me to raise my snarkiness to an even higher level and point out that there is no way to receive $1,000 as a result of these “prebates” unless one has half a child, since as you noted the per-child amount is $400.
Here is the paragraph in question with the “per child” correction:
First, the increase in the Child Tax Credit (not the Childcare Credit) is not retroactive to 2002. The Child Tax Credit has been increased to a maximum of $1000 per child for 2003, up from $600 per child for 2002. The difference, $400 per child, is being sent to taxpayers who qualified for the credit in 2002, though not all will qualify for the full $400 per child. This is not a refund from your 2002 taxes. It is a partial prepayment of your 2003 credit. This means that when you file your return for the 2003 tax year, you will get a $600 Child Tax Credit per child. The check you received covers $400 per child, adding up to a $1000 credit per child for 2003.
And it is quite possible to get a $1,000 check from the Treasury. Not everyone is entitled to the full $400 per child prebate. The amount you receive depends on what you were able to claim for the Child Tax Credit on your 2002 return. Some people were not able to claim the full $600 per child for 2002, so they will receive lesser amounts; for example, a family with four children who were limited to a total credit of $1,500 for 2002 ($375 per child, instead of the full $600) may get a check for $1,000 ($250 per child).
We can go back and forth on this all you want, but it is clear that you don’t have a strong understanding of this issue. You are exactly the sort of person Bush was counting on when he cooked up this scheme: you don’t understand that he’s giving you your own money because you don’t understand our tax system. You have demonstrated that several times in this thread.
Progress is being made. I spoke to an actual IRS agent yesterday, who told me how the offset system works. He referred me to the Financial Management Service people, who are the ones actually responsible for reporting outstanding federal debt to the IRS. It was too late to call them yesterday, so I’m calling them when they open.
Since I am able to talk to actual agents of the agencies involved, I’m going to forgo any congressional intervention for the moment.
Glad to hear that you are making a little progress Robyn and I apologize that apparently my story about our tax problem caused this huge hijack into proper tax wording and so on. Geez…
As my response seemed to initiate the hijack (although I stayed out of it until now), I would comment that it was the nature of the rebuttal of my points that started the “flaming”. My reaction was to stay away, thinking “I knew there was a good reason I’ve stayed away from the pit up to now if corrections have to be accompanied with insults.” Apparently isthatsowrong decided to retaliate.
If the response to my post had been more reasonably worded, I would have responded “yep, you’re right on the refund/rebate - my mistake. But I still think the 401k thing is your responsibility and not something to fault the IRS on.” I don’t want to re-open those actual arguments, and will not respond to any further comment on them. The point of this post is just to say that those that attack will attract retaliation. Maybe you thought my initial post was inflammatory. Maybe it was - I do get very passionate, though, if I think people are blaming others rather than accepting consequences of their own actions (again, I do not intend to debate further whether that was the case in your situation).
I completely and fully state that the 401 k issue was our fault. I don’t blame the IRS for that in the least bit. We goofed. We thought we had subtracted all the tax/penalties that we were supposed to but we had not. It was the first time we had taken money out of a 401 k and bought a house.
My entire beef was that I wish we had gotten the audit packet BEFORE the rebate check so I could have paid half of the amount owed and not have to worry about it now. The tires could have waited and the credit card bill was small but I am paying off all my credit cards. (Down to two…YAY!)
It really isn’t a big deal for us to pay the penalty. We owed it and we will send them a check.
Now, what makes me unhappy is that the child credit is only available if the child:
People who live and work in the US as nonresident aliens (on visas) are treated as resident for tax purposes. The child credit is the first thing I’ve come across where you are a resident with respect to paying tax, but denied allowances or credits because of being non-resident. Of course, the US is perfectly entitled to treat its citizens differently from visitors, but I don’t have to be happy about the consequences. “Extra taxation without representation” comes to mind. Maybe I should throw some teabags into the Chattahoochee.
Here’s the deal: In the post from Aries28, she clearly says we have five children. She also clearly says we got a $2,000 “prebate” from the government. Why you continue to say we got $1,000 is beyond me.
Just because I used some short-cut terminology and (admittedly) made an off-the-cuff mistake regarding this being a “prebate” or a rebate doesn’t mean I don’t understand the issue. As you so eloquently noted above, Bush isn’t “giving me my own money,” the U.S. Treasury is.
Do I know the tax system backwards and forwards? No. But I know enough about it to get by most of the time. I take exception to someone assuming we don’t pay enough attention to our withholding, when we would’ve gotten this $2,000 “prebate” regardless of how much was withheld from our taxes.
Please read that paragraph again, and try to understand what “per child” means. I know you received a check for $2,000. When I mention the $1,000 figure, I’m talking about the maximum Child Tax Credit per child for tax year 2003.
You are right. I should heed my own words.
I agree, but I wasn’t the one who made the remark about withholding.
Ah. I gotcha. My mistake. Thanks for clarifying that.
I understand. My initial post was a response to someone who assumed we weren’t withholding enough and were therefore “loaning” the government $2,000 we didn’t have to give them. What I was trying to explain to that person was that the amount of withholding made no difference – as long as we had five kids, and our income fell within certain levels, we were going to get that $2,000 check this summer from the Treasury.
As info (and for what it’s worth), I disagree with Bush’s plan to try to “jump-start” the economy with these “prebates.” While I appreciate the extra money, I think his plan is doomed to failure. I’m seriously concerned over the fact that we have gone from a massive surplus to a significant deficit within the space of a few years.
