How far of a disconnect is there between the media, the government, and everyone else in the country?
A new poll is out saying that 52% of Americans favor tax increases as part of a plan to balance the budget.
How much news or political speech have you seen lately that would have given you anything resembling that idea of where the nation stood on taxes? (Granted, the poll didn't ask whether these same people would want their own taxes raised; that number is bound to be lower. Odds are, the number consists largely of people wanting to tax the rich. But this is still something of a shockingly high number that I'd like to see expanded on in future polling.)
Showing posts with label taxes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taxes. Show all posts
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
It's Tax Day
It's three days late this year due to the weekend, but it's today.
So this is your friendly reminder to please not be stupid and claim that the 16th Amendment is illegal or that it was never ratified or that Ohio wasn't actually a state until 1953 and so their ratification doesn't count or whatever other fit of idiot libertarianism you come up with that equals "hey, I don't have to pay taxes!" Someone tries it every year, and every year it just ends in that someone's arrest and a cheap laugh for the rest of us. It is regarded as so utterly ridiculous that legally, it is classified as a frivolous argument, which means not only 'you're an idiot; get out of my courtroom', but, due to Rule 11 of the Federal Rules for Civil Procedure, it also means 'the law firm that took your so-called "case" is an idiot too for making me put up with you, and I'm going to punish them for making me have to listen to your crazy'.
Also, you should note that, under section 7482 of the tax code, "The United States Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court shall have the power to require the taxpayer to pay to the United States a penalty in any case where the decision of the Tax Court is affirmed and it appears that the appeal was instituted or maintained primarily for delay or that the taxpayer’s position in the appeal is frivolous or groundless," and frivolous arguments in United States Tax Court, under 26 U.S.C. § 6673(a)(1), could result in up to a $25,000 penalty.
How counter-productive of you.
So this is your friendly reminder to please not be stupid and claim that the 16th Amendment is illegal or that it was never ratified or that Ohio wasn't actually a state until 1953 and so their ratification doesn't count or whatever other fit of idiot libertarianism you come up with that equals "hey, I don't have to pay taxes!" Someone tries it every year, and every year it just ends in that someone's arrest and a cheap laugh for the rest of us. It is regarded as so utterly ridiculous that legally, it is classified as a frivolous argument, which means not only 'you're an idiot; get out of my courtroom', but, due to Rule 11 of the Federal Rules for Civil Procedure, it also means 'the law firm that took your so-called "case" is an idiot too for making me put up with you, and I'm going to punish them for making me have to listen to your crazy'.
Also, you should note that, under section 7482 of the tax code, "The United States Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court shall have the power to require the taxpayer to pay to the United States a penalty in any case where the decision of the Tax Court is affirmed and it appears that the appeal was instituted or maintained primarily for delay or that the taxpayer’s position in the appeal is frivolous or groundless," and frivolous arguments in United States Tax Court, under 26 U.S.C. § 6673(a)(1), could result in up to a $25,000 penalty.
How counter-productive of you.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Random News Generator- Indonesia
The Oscars are coming up, and you know what that means: the annual speculation on who will win the Montage of Dead People. (Come on. You know you do it.) Also there will apparently be some awards handed out for whatever people thought was halfway decent this year.
One thing you might hear about is people who use the nomination list for Best Picture as a kind of homework assignment: they feel obligated to watch everything nominated that they have not yet watched. In Indonesia, they would love to have this problem. Right now, however, they are fighting for the ability to be able to watch any of them, as the MPAA is ordering Hollywood films removed from Indonesian cinemas.
There are two reasons for the MPAA taking this step. First, the taxes on importing the film to Indonesia has more than doubled, from 20 cents per meter of film to 43 cents, plus an import duty tax and a cut of the profits. This is too expensive for Hollywood. Second, it's not like they see much of the profits anyway, as piracy is rampant. European and Asian distributors have thought along those lines as well.
So okay, maybe Indonesia is watching the movies. Just not the way they're supposed to.
'Why not just watch the locally-produced films', you might ask. Because, by their own admission, the locally-produced films suck, nobody actually watches them, and there aren't enough of them to meet demand anyway, that's why. In response to immense pressure from all corners, distributors, theaters and filmgoers alike, the tax has come under review; it will take about two weeks to render a final verdict.
Indonesia's Finance Ministry, for their part, has called it a misunderstanding, claiming that the taxes were simply being moved from the back end to the front end of the import process. It doesn't appear to be convincing anyone.
One thing you might hear about is people who use the nomination list for Best Picture as a kind of homework assignment: they feel obligated to watch everything nominated that they have not yet watched. In Indonesia, they would love to have this problem. Right now, however, they are fighting for the ability to be able to watch any of them, as the MPAA is ordering Hollywood films removed from Indonesian cinemas.
There are two reasons for the MPAA taking this step. First, the taxes on importing the film to Indonesia has more than doubled, from 20 cents per meter of film to 43 cents, plus an import duty tax and a cut of the profits. This is too expensive for Hollywood. Second, it's not like they see much of the profits anyway, as piracy is rampant. European and Asian distributors have thought along those lines as well.
So okay, maybe Indonesia is watching the movies. Just not the way they're supposed to.
'Why not just watch the locally-produced films', you might ask. Because, by their own admission, the locally-produced films suck, nobody actually watches them, and there aren't enough of them to meet demand anyway, that's why. In response to immense pressure from all corners, distributors, theaters and filmgoers alike, the tax has come under review; it will take about two weeks to render a final verdict.
Indonesia's Finance Ministry, for their part, has called it a misunderstanding, claiming that the taxes were simply being moved from the back end to the front end of the import process. It doesn't appear to be convincing anyone.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Random News Generator- Belize
First RNG of the new year. We are taken to Belize today, where they, after having made TIEA's (Tax Information Sharing Agreements) with Australia, Belgium, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom, they have been removed from the blacklists of the OCED and G20.
This is important to Belize because they offer themselves as a tax haven, and being on the blacklist would ruin that economic approach by preventing investors from the first world from putting their money into the country. Coming off the blacklist comes at a price, however; with the TIEA's in place, investors cannot remain anonymous, which for some is part of the appeal of doing business in Belize in the first place.
Which, to bring us full circle, is why the OCED and G20 want Belize to have the TIEA's: to limit the options for those kind of investors as much as possible. Anonymous investors in tax havens normally aren't doing nice things.
Here's the problem, though: TIEA's aren't what you would call 'effective'. The Guardian's Richard Murphy goes into more detail, but suffice to say that you can't ask for anything from prior to when the agreement was made, and come to think of it, you have to ask for information, and asking has more hurdles attached to it than a Freedom of Information Act request about Jimmy Hoffa. As Murphy puts it, "To ask a successful question under the terms of a TIEA means you already have to know the answer." The result: barely anybody asks anybody about anything.
All hat, but very little cattle, so to speak.
This is important to Belize because they offer themselves as a tax haven, and being on the blacklist would ruin that economic approach by preventing investors from the first world from putting their money into the country. Coming off the blacklist comes at a price, however; with the TIEA's in place, investors cannot remain anonymous, which for some is part of the appeal of doing business in Belize in the first place.
Which, to bring us full circle, is why the OCED and G20 want Belize to have the TIEA's: to limit the options for those kind of investors as much as possible. Anonymous investors in tax havens normally aren't doing nice things.
Here's the problem, though: TIEA's aren't what you would call 'effective'. The Guardian's Richard Murphy goes into more detail, but suffice to say that you can't ask for anything from prior to when the agreement was made, and come to think of it, you have to ask for information, and asking has more hurdles attached to it than a Freedom of Information Act request about Jimmy Hoffa. As Murphy puts it, "To ask a successful question under the terms of a TIEA means you already have to know the answer." The result: barely anybody asks anybody about anything.
All hat, but very little cattle, so to speak.
Monday, June 28, 2010
TAXES BAD-- Well, Hang On A Sec; Let's Figure This Out
This one's always bugged me a bit, and it's high time to put this to bed once and for all. If you've spent long enough in Internet political flamewars, inevitably you will eventually get into a row about taxes. Invariably, it will be driven by someone seeking lower taxes, for a variety of reasons personal and societal.
For a long time, they didn't have any real competition. After all, who wants to pay more taxes? In recent years, though, there has been an increase, however small, in people defending higher taxes, on the basis that without a certain amount of taxes, a country can't properly function. Invariably, this side will bring up Somalia as the low-taxes proxy and somewhere in Scandinavia, most likely Sweden, as the high-taxes proxy. And obviously you'd rather be living in Sweden than Somalia, right?
It's just that teeny, tiny sample size, though. And that's what's been bugging me. Without any further information, for all one knows Somalia and Sweden are strawmen.
So while I personally fall on the pro-taxes side of things- make of that what you will- it'd be nice to get some confirmation, disconfirmation, or even inconclusiveness.
So here's what we'll do. We'll tease out the sample size more. We'll take a larger set of global high and low tax rates; we'll use a top 20 on each side. That should be plenty enough. We will then compare the countries shown on a standard-of-living comparison, averaging the scores to provide a mean standard-of-living rating for the high-tax group and for the low-tax group.
Then, it's a simple matter of seeing who did better. Sound good? Good.
The first thing we must do, of course, is identify a pair of suitable data sets to use; we need something that compares a wide variety of countries based on the same set of data.
For tax rate, we will use the Heritage Foundation's 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, showing, among other things, tax revenue as a percentage of GDP. (They also have government spending as a percentage of GDP, but we'll shelve that for perhaps another day.) Somalia was not examined in this dataset, which is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it's bad, as we can't truly get the Somalia/Sweden faceoff this premise demands. On the other hand, even if Somalia assessed taxes, how would they expect to collect?
The Heritage Foundation would not, by the way, be my first choice of source, but the less-taxes crowd is more likely to be Republican and Libertarian, and they would be more willing to use the Heritage Foundation straightaway. So as far as representing a viewpoint, it's not as bad an option as you might think. (Besides, they have the widest variety of countries by several orders of magnitude; everyone else I saw only compared developed nations.)
For standard-of-living, we will use the United Nations 2009 Human Development Index (which was produced with 2007 numbers). They weren't able to get Somalia either, by the way.
We will set the rule that in order to be placed on the high-tax or low-tax list, you must first qualify by being listed on the 2009 Human Development Index list. That's because it would screw things up to try and figure out how or if to score a 'n/a' or if to use data from previous years or anything of the sort. I'll just disqualify the country. This is less about who specifically is on each list and more about how the ones that are on each list compare to each other.
Got all that? Great. Time to select our groups. With the disqualified countries noted, and there were two of them:
LOW-TAX GROUP
DISQUALIFIED: Iraq- "negligible", surely under that of the UAE but really it's academic
1. United Arab Emirates- tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is 1.0%
2. Equatorial Guinea- 1.7%
3. Qatar- 2.6%
4. Bahrain- 2.7%
5. Libya- 2.9%
6. Myanmar- 3.0%
7. Kuwait- 3.1%
8. Oman- 3.3%
9. Chad- 4.2%
10. Afghanistan- 5.2%
11. Congo-Brazzaville- 5.4%
12. Nigeria- 5.6%
13. Saudi Arabia- 5.6%
14. Iran- 6.1%
15. Angola- 6.2%
16. Haiti- 6.9%
17. Sudan- 7.0%
18. Central African Republic- 7.3%
19. Yemen- 7.3%
20. Algeria- 7.9%
HIGH-TAX GROUP
1. United Kingdom- 37.9%
2. Netherlands- 38.0%
3. Slovenia- 38.4%
4. Bosnia/Herzegovina- 38.5%
5. Hungary- 39.9%
6. Germany- 40.8%
7. Swaziland- 41.2%
8. Iceland- 41.4%
9. Cyprus- 41.6%
10. Austria- 41.9%
11. Finland- 43.1%
12. Italy- 43.3%
13. Norway- 43.4%
14. Cuba- 44.8%
15. France- 45.0%
16. Belgium- 46.1%
17. Sweden- 48.9%
18. Denmark- 49.5%
19. Lesotho- 54.3%
DISQUALIFIED- Kiribati- 69.7%
20. Timor-Leste- 133.9% (Because you are assuredly wondering where THAT number came from, the Heritage Foundation shows it "reflecting large tax revenues from petroleum projects in the Timor Sea.")
So we've got our field and we've got our teams. Now we carry that to the 2009 Human Development Index, and look at the scores our 40 countries got, along with their rankings (out of 182).
LOW-TAX GROUP
1. United Arab Emirates- HDI score is .903 (ranked 35th)
2. Equatorial Guinea- .719 (118th)
3. Qatar- .910 (33rd)
4. Bahrain- .895 (39th)
5. Libya- .847 (55th)
6. Myanmar- .586 (138th)
7. Kuwait- .916 (31st)
8. Oman- .846 (56th)
9. Chad- .392 (175th)
10. Afghanistan- .352 (181st)
11. Congo-Brazzaville- .601 (136th)
12. Nigeria- .511 (158th)
13. Saudi Arabia- .843 (59th)
14. Iran- .782 (88th)
15. Angola- .564 (143rd)
16. Haiti- .532 (149th)
17. Sudan- .531 (150th)
18. Central African Republic- .369 (179th)
19. Yemen- .575 (140th)
20. Algeria- .754 (104th)
HIGH-TAX GROUP
1. United Kingdom- .947 (21st)
2. Netherlands- .964 (6th)
3. Slovenia- .929 (29th)
4. Bosnia/Herzegovina- .812 (76th)
5. Hungary- .879 (43rd)
6. Germany- .947 (22nd)
7. Swaziland- .572 (142nd)
8. Iceland- .969 (3rd)
9. Cyprus- .914 (32nd)
10. Austria- .955 (14th)
11. Finland- .959 (12th)
12. Italy- .951 (18th)
13. Norway- .971 (1st)
14. Cuba- .863 (51st)
15. France- .961 (8th)
16. Belgium- .953 (17th)
17. Sweden- .963 (7th)
18. Denmark- .955 (16th)
19. Lesotho- .514 (156th)
20. Timor-Leste- .489 (162nd)
And now for the average scores.
The low-tax group, with an average of 4.75% tax revenue as a percentage of GDP, has a mean HDI score of .6714 (if placed in the HDI, they would collectively be somewhere between South Africa and Morocco), and a mean ranking of 108.35.
The high-tax group, with an average of 51.08% tax revenue as a percentage of GDP (albeit skewed high a bit by Timor-Leste), has a mean HDI score of .87335 (which if placed in the HDI table would get them between Chile and Croatia), and a mean ranking of 41.8.
The numbers pretty much speak for themselves, decisively in favor of the high-tax group.
For a long time, they didn't have any real competition. After all, who wants to pay more taxes? In recent years, though, there has been an increase, however small, in people defending higher taxes, on the basis that without a certain amount of taxes, a country can't properly function. Invariably, this side will bring up Somalia as the low-taxes proxy and somewhere in Scandinavia, most likely Sweden, as the high-taxes proxy. And obviously you'd rather be living in Sweden than Somalia, right?
It's just that teeny, tiny sample size, though. And that's what's been bugging me. Without any further information, for all one knows Somalia and Sweden are strawmen.
So while I personally fall on the pro-taxes side of things- make of that what you will- it'd be nice to get some confirmation, disconfirmation, or even inconclusiveness.
So here's what we'll do. We'll tease out the sample size more. We'll take a larger set of global high and low tax rates; we'll use a top 20 on each side. That should be plenty enough. We will then compare the countries shown on a standard-of-living comparison, averaging the scores to provide a mean standard-of-living rating for the high-tax group and for the low-tax group.
Then, it's a simple matter of seeing who did better. Sound good? Good.
The first thing we must do, of course, is identify a pair of suitable data sets to use; we need something that compares a wide variety of countries based on the same set of data.
For tax rate, we will use the Heritage Foundation's 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, showing, among other things, tax revenue as a percentage of GDP. (They also have government spending as a percentage of GDP, but we'll shelve that for perhaps another day.) Somalia was not examined in this dataset, which is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it's bad, as we can't truly get the Somalia/Sweden faceoff this premise demands. On the other hand, even if Somalia assessed taxes, how would they expect to collect?
The Heritage Foundation would not, by the way, be my first choice of source, but the less-taxes crowd is more likely to be Republican and Libertarian, and they would be more willing to use the Heritage Foundation straightaway. So as far as representing a viewpoint, it's not as bad an option as you might think. (Besides, they have the widest variety of countries by several orders of magnitude; everyone else I saw only compared developed nations.)
For standard-of-living, we will use the United Nations 2009 Human Development Index (which was produced with 2007 numbers). They weren't able to get Somalia either, by the way.
We will set the rule that in order to be placed on the high-tax or low-tax list, you must first qualify by being listed on the 2009 Human Development Index list. That's because it would screw things up to try and figure out how or if to score a 'n/a' or if to use data from previous years or anything of the sort. I'll just disqualify the country. This is less about who specifically is on each list and more about how the ones that are on each list compare to each other.
Got all that? Great. Time to select our groups. With the disqualified countries noted, and there were two of them:
LOW-TAX GROUP
DISQUALIFIED: Iraq- "negligible", surely under that of the UAE but really it's academic
1. United Arab Emirates- tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is 1.0%
2. Equatorial Guinea- 1.7%
3. Qatar- 2.6%
4. Bahrain- 2.7%
5. Libya- 2.9%
6. Myanmar- 3.0%
7. Kuwait- 3.1%
8. Oman- 3.3%
9. Chad- 4.2%
10. Afghanistan- 5.2%
11. Congo-Brazzaville- 5.4%
12. Nigeria- 5.6%
13. Saudi Arabia- 5.6%
14. Iran- 6.1%
15. Angola- 6.2%
16. Haiti- 6.9%
17. Sudan- 7.0%
18. Central African Republic- 7.3%
19. Yemen- 7.3%
20. Algeria- 7.9%
HIGH-TAX GROUP
1. United Kingdom- 37.9%
2. Netherlands- 38.0%
3. Slovenia- 38.4%
4. Bosnia/Herzegovina- 38.5%
5. Hungary- 39.9%
6. Germany- 40.8%
7. Swaziland- 41.2%
8. Iceland- 41.4%
9. Cyprus- 41.6%
10. Austria- 41.9%
11. Finland- 43.1%
12. Italy- 43.3%
13. Norway- 43.4%
14. Cuba- 44.8%
15. France- 45.0%
16. Belgium- 46.1%
17. Sweden- 48.9%
18. Denmark- 49.5%
19. Lesotho- 54.3%
DISQUALIFIED- Kiribati- 69.7%
20. Timor-Leste- 133.9% (Because you are assuredly wondering where THAT number came from, the Heritage Foundation shows it "reflecting large tax revenues from petroleum projects in the Timor Sea.")
So we've got our field and we've got our teams. Now we carry that to the 2009 Human Development Index, and look at the scores our 40 countries got, along with their rankings (out of 182).
LOW-TAX GROUP
1. United Arab Emirates- HDI score is .903 (ranked 35th)
2. Equatorial Guinea- .719 (118th)
3. Qatar- .910 (33rd)
4. Bahrain- .895 (39th)
5. Libya- .847 (55th)
6. Myanmar- .586 (138th)
7. Kuwait- .916 (31st)
8. Oman- .846 (56th)
9. Chad- .392 (175th)
10. Afghanistan- .352 (181st)
11. Congo-Brazzaville- .601 (136th)
12. Nigeria- .511 (158th)
13. Saudi Arabia- .843 (59th)
14. Iran- .782 (88th)
15. Angola- .564 (143rd)
16. Haiti- .532 (149th)
17. Sudan- .531 (150th)
18. Central African Republic- .369 (179th)
19. Yemen- .575 (140th)
20. Algeria- .754 (104th)
HIGH-TAX GROUP
1. United Kingdom- .947 (21st)
2. Netherlands- .964 (6th)
3. Slovenia- .929 (29th)
4. Bosnia/Herzegovina- .812 (76th)
5. Hungary- .879 (43rd)
6. Germany- .947 (22nd)
7. Swaziland- .572 (142nd)
8. Iceland- .969 (3rd)
9. Cyprus- .914 (32nd)
10. Austria- .955 (14th)
11. Finland- .959 (12th)
12. Italy- .951 (18th)
13. Norway- .971 (1st)
14. Cuba- .863 (51st)
15. France- .961 (8th)
16. Belgium- .953 (17th)
17. Sweden- .963 (7th)
18. Denmark- .955 (16th)
19. Lesotho- .514 (156th)
20. Timor-Leste- .489 (162nd)
And now for the average scores.
The low-tax group, with an average of 4.75% tax revenue as a percentage of GDP, has a mean HDI score of .6714 (if placed in the HDI, they would collectively be somewhere between South Africa and Morocco), and a mean ranking of 108.35.
The high-tax group, with an average of 51.08% tax revenue as a percentage of GDP (albeit skewed high a bit by Timor-Leste), has a mean HDI score of .87335 (which if placed in the HDI table would get them between Chile and Croatia), and a mean ranking of 41.8.
The numbers pretty much speak for themselves, decisively in favor of the high-tax group.
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