Translation: you don’t want to fully own your position.
Okay. Can’t say I blame you.
To hear some talk, being rich is heavily, heavily penalized.
Too bad you aren’t multi-lingual. It loses something when you torture it so.
Wonderful! So, because the preamble of the Constitution begins with “We the people”, and the people create the federal government, there is no distinction between the people and the government?
Elvis—BABE!—this is groundbreaking! You’re going to be on TV…you’re going to be asked to speak at law colleges…you’re going to go down in history of one of the greatest legal minds of the last 300 years. All this messiness with rights reserved for the people and rights reserved for the federal government all goes away. The federal government can do whatever it wants however it wants because…as per the great legal mind, ElvisL1ves, advises us:
The “federal government” and “the people” referred to in the U.S. Constitution…they’re the “same thing”. The “government is a creation of the people, a mechanism by which the people act jointly”. Not some malevolent, oppressive foreign power imposed upon us. So whatever the federal government wants to do, it can rightfully do. Because the rights The Constitution reserves for the people really are reserved for the government, too. Because they are, as ElvisL1ves says: THE SAME THING!
Have a digested your legal brilliance accurately? If not please do clarify. It’s crucial we get it right as it will be changing so much existing law and be a new foundation for so much more.
Is it breaking the law to take your money out of your IRA before you should (the old “substantial penalty for early withdrawal”? To earn enough to move up to the next, likely higher, tax rate? To file as a married couple rather than single?
I guess some might be of that opinion, but we’re talking about legal constructs that involve one having to do something (or not doing something), and if they fail, the government slaps them with a penalty, fine, etc.
I think not. I think the penalty is simply something you agreed to when you opened the IRA. Even if not, I’m pretty sure it falls under tax law. years ago I cashed in 401K from an old employer and I had to pay the tax and the penalty to the IRS. (If I recall correctly.) The “infraction” was withdrawing my money prematurely. If I don’t do that, there would have been no penalty.
Don’t trouble yourself. I said I didn’t blame you. And don’t. In fact, I think it was wise of you.
I would really hesitate to describe every action that raises your taxes, whether it is taking your money out of an IRA early, filing jointly, or earning more income to be “infractions” or “breaking the law”. But, once again, I fear we have devolved into a semantic argument that isn’t really relevant.
You don’t know what that means to me.
I’d agree that not every action that raises your taxes are the result of “infractions”. But the increase resulting form filing your return late or making an an early withdrawal from a 401K are substantially different than having to pay more because you earned more. The first two are the result of you not doing what the government tells you you must do. Ditto for the penalty incurred from not buying health insurance as mandated by the ACA. I appreciate that we might have to just agree to disagree, but I really don’t think it’s simply a matter of semantics. The differences are legally and functionally different. ::shrug::
If I objected to every politician who intentionally misled citizens, or every politician who argued one way at one time and another way about the same issue at a different time, I’d never be able to vote. Being pragmatic about politicians changing their mind or describing things misleadingly is a fact of life in this country–and I’m sure you’re going to hold your nose and vote for the “We was for the individual mandate before we was against it” Republican party or Ron “I totally don’t vet content under my name in my newsletters” Paul.
Spin isn’t going away. Cope.
Perhaps you’d feel differently if you considered the issue in the context of a different scenario. For the purpose of the debate, assume that the individual mandate muffinhead/tax/penalty/thing-that-must-be-paid functions as a tax.
Suppose the Constitution did not allow Congress to regulate commerce. Congress, wanting to implement a particular commercial regulation, does so under its taxing power. Congresscritters refer to the legislation as a “tax” on the floor, the legislative finding portions of the House and Senate bills reference the taxing power, and the government defends the enactment in court as a tax.
However, the enactment is in fact in no way similar to a tax. Does it matter what Congress calls it when it gets challenged in court?
The more I read this thread, the more I wish that 5 of the Justices had the internal fortitude to overturn Wickard. Then we could focus on getting the Slaughterhouse Cases overturned.
I hadn’t heard of this one.
In these cases, the court decided that the 14th amendment doesn’t prevent states from making laws that take away civil rights. But to my knowledge, no one uses that decision as precedent anymore. (In fact, strangely enough, it appears the dissent from those cases is sometimes cited in legal cases!) Why work to have it overturned? Just for symbolic purposes?
It’s a bit more complex than that. It’s not that they said the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to states; it’s that they said the Privileges & Immunities Clause doesn’t apply the Bill of Rights to the states. Essentially, the holding made the P&I Clause meaningless.
Nobody cites the Slaughterhouse Cases because the courts worked around this astronomically stupid holding by applying bits of the Bill of Rights to the states through the Due Process Clause.
They’re still good law, though, until SCOTUS does the sensible thing; constitutional litigators pay lip service to the precedent by describing rights as enforceable against states through the Due Process Clause.