Hmmm. It seems that you’re the one (unsurprisingly) unable to grasp the question. The one I put to you. Twice. It kept it nice and short for you. So for the third time:
How much income tax above what you were required to by law did you pay last year?
Amusingly, you seem to think that’s both relevant to the topic and your damn business. Care to explain why, if only for entertainment value? And then explain to us if you do or do not see societal values as being distinct from the sum of individual values?
I’ll try to dumb it down enough for you: Do you want someone in charge of the tax code who cannot be trusted to put societal interests in it above his own, or would instead always be suspected of wanting to revise it to his own financial benefit, to the neglect and even detriment of society and the government we use to operate upon them? Or maybe that’s not dumb enough, but it’ll have to do; the concept of the something-greater-than-self is a bit abstract for someone of your demonstrated level.
Yes, I know. You’re only worried about rich Republicans, not rich Democrats.
I’m not sure that this is quite a fair characterization.
Little Nemo did say that he’d be “more concerned if [Romney] paid no taxes and was able to do it legally,” but it seems clear to me that his subsequent paragraph explained the big-picture political and economic context clearly enough to suggest that he’s not simply saying that he would “rather Romney illegally evade taxes.”
It might seem like i’m nitpicking here, but i think there are important distinctions to be made in cases like this.
Take the following hypothetical scenarios. I’m clearly just pulling numbers out of the air here to make the point:
Scenario 1: Romney paid $500,000 in taxes last year. Romney was, according to the tax code, supposed to pay $5 million in taxes last year. He avoided paying the other $4.5 million through illegal evasions and failure to disclose income.
Scenario 2: Romney paid $500,000 in taxes last year. This is what he was supposed to pay, according to the tax code. He filled out his tax returns correctly, and the large number of legal deductions brought his taxes down to $500,000.
In discussing big-picture questions of tax policy and macroeconomics, i’m far more worried by Scenario 2 than i am by Scenario 1. This doesn’t mean that i think Romney should have refused to take his deductions in Scenario 2. I agree with you that basically everyone takes all of their allowed deductions when working out their taxes. Nor does it mean that i condone illegal tax evasion.
The reason that i’m more concerned about Scenario 2 is precisely that it is structural and institutional and systemic, rather than an aberration. A person who uses illegal tax evasion tactics can be caught, and brought to justice. A rich person who uses legal tax minimization is part of a system that needs adjusting, at least in my bleeding-heart, liberal-progressive viewpoint. And it seems to me that this is the context in which Little Nemo was making his point.
Of course, Romney is running for President, and if i were considering voting for him, finding out that he had illegally evaded taxes would be a big issue. In that sense, given that this thread is not about all rich people but is specifically about Mitt Romney, i agree that illegal tax evasion would be a big deal. But even if all he did was legally minimize his taxes, he has made clear that he supports tax minimization procedures that benefit those who are already very wealthy, and in that context it’s an important issue for many voters.
Here’s the distinction, for me, using another rich guy as an example: I’ll bet that Warren Buffet, when he submits his taxes each year, practices tax minimization. But Buffet is also campaigning for a tax system that would raise the amount of taxes he is required to pay. I’m not down on Romney for using legal minimization on his own taxes; i’m down on him for wanting to maintain and even strengthen a regressive system.
Sure. You seem to think that if Romney used the tax code to his advantage, that that someone shows that he has no interest for society, only himself. I’m trying to see if that philosophy of yours applies to yourself.
So, how much income tax above what you were required to by law did you pay last year?
Here, I’ll go first. I paid $0.00 more than I was obligated to pay. You?
Well I didn’t pay an accountant to go through everyone of my personal hobbies and look for things I might not have considered so I’m sure I probably missed something.
As near as I can tell, modern Republican dogma does not make a distinction between the two. He seems to believe that every dollar in his bank accounts, and any action which increases that number, really is in the best interests of the nation.
His record of self sacrifice and public service can be measure in the millions.
Then the answer is “I’m not running for President, and have no power to affect tax laws other than via who I vote for. I do vote for people whose planned approach is likely to be better for all of us than for myself personally”. I can see why that is incomprehensible to you.
Are you an autistic twelve year old? :rolleyes:
You really don’t understand, nor can you, how someone of wealth can still feel part of something larger, and feel a responsibility to it, do you? You really don’t understand, nor can you, how someone like John Kerry or Ted Kennedy or Franklin Roosevelt could devote so much of their lives to helping those less fortunate, instead of making themselves more fortunate, do you? Or why they’d actually support tax law changes that would cost themselves money? Either they’re all simply fools, or none of that actually happened, right?
I did support Kerry because he did have a platform, and record to support it, of progressive, communitarian responsibility, certainly with some slips, of course. His wealth, or lack of it, had nothing to do with it. I do oppose Romney because his platform (which, granted, may be market-research-based bullshit) calls for the opposite. He’s adopted the Ryan plan wholesale, which would badly damage most of us while enriching himself and his fellows. He calls for lower taxes on them and him, aggravating the deficit, while paying for it by cutting back actual needs for most of us. He does have Romney care to his great credit, yes, but even that can be justified by its reduction in government costs and therefore its need for revenue. But if all you can see is on the level you have shown us here, there’s no point going into that responsibility stuff with you any further, is there? You simply cannot ever grasp it.
If your concern is that Romney shouldn’t have to release his tax returns because they’re not our business, well, isn’t it our business to know if someone applying to us, the country’s board of directors, for the CEO job is a crook or not? We already know, based on what he has released, that his IRA balance is legally impossible. What else don’t we know that we need to?
Idiotic logic (I’m too tired too look up the specific fallacy involved).
That’s the point of the meme.
How dare you call me autistic!
As usual, you are staking out a position that no one is arguing about, except you. No one, except maybe you, expects other people, whether they are running for president or not, to ignore parts of the tax code that can be used to reduce their taxes. Most people would consider such a person stupid.
No. As usual, you have no fucking idea what the discussion is actually about. You are not able to.
Romney’s taxes weren’t paid properly for 10 years in the 1980s. Disprove it!
Bain smuggled nerve gas to Iran. Disprove it!
Rinse and repeat.
I know that throwing mud at an opponent and seeing where it sticks is an old political tactic.
But to charge a man as a felon, with no more than hear-say, is beneath contempt.
If all grand-jurys adjudicated this way, it would be a very very bad thing. Coming from a Senate Majority Leader, at the peak of the nation’s government, makes it all the more regrettable.
My final question to all, easy enough to disprove, is familiar I hope, and is based on the type of challenge:
Are you a Communist, and have you ever been one?
Reid never said it was illegal. There are many legal strategies available to those with the means to apply them.
And, in Romney’s case, he can disprove it, easily, by the simple measure of doing what every other major candidate has done for quite a long time now.
This is the only thing I’ve been discussing:
You’re the one launching some tangent about how someone should pay more taxes than they actually owe. That someone running for president shouldn’t take the same tax deductions that you and I take. You don’t really believe that, I know, but for some reason you have to make up these crazy arguments for the sole purpose of disagreeing with people. But hell, knock yourself out! It’s funny watching you paint yourself into a corner.
I have no idea what you are trying to say. There is no logic presented there. Or a meme.
Wait, where does “felony” come into this? Not a chance in hell that Mitt did anything his lawyers cannot defend in court, that’s why he has them, and a team of accountants and tax consultants to interpret the laws to Mayonnaise Mitt’s maximum advantage. No way a slave to his own ambitions, as he his, takes any chances.
He’s not hiding something like “he didn’t pay any taxes”, he’s hiding what little he did pay, and the mechanisms that made it possible. Rich people don’t like having their privileges publicly examined, except admiringly.
I’m sure he paid some taxes. I’m pretty sure he paid close to the legal minimum, on the advice of highly paid experts, and could bring to bear an armored division of legal talent if need be. That’s what he’s hiding.
The rich are different from us. They like it that way. And they’d much prefer we never find out just how different.
Well if they limited themselves to deductions that you or I take we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
One of the main reasons people like Romney don’t want the rest of us to see their taxes is then we can see how wealth unfairly manipulates the system and buys deductions that the rest of us could never hope to see.
If you can find a quote of mine anywhere that any non-autistic person could reasonable interpret that way, then of course you can provide it.
But you can’t, because, again, you have no fucking idea what the discussion is about. :rolleyes:
It’s called The First Rule of Holes, kid.
Absolutely.
It’s not like Mitt just decided to run for president last week, and is now trying to cover up some previous indiscretions that he committed before he thought about a political career. He’s known for at least a decade that he was aiming for the presidency, and would have made very sure not to do anything that would disqualify him, at least in terms of legality.
Romney pays taxes mostly on dividends and long term capital gains. I doubt that there is a single person in Congress or anyone who has run for president in the last 20 years who has not done the same thing, even if to a lesser extent. And it’s not uncommon for regular ol’ Americans to take advantage of those tax laws. You would be stupid not to, if you could.