I talk policy and tax code loop holes, and keep in mind it is tax LOOP HOLES used to avoid paying taxes, not benefits from taxes paid I am talking about. I reject any argument that says the tax avoidance loop holes help lower income people thru some magical, indirect, eventual, "I hope!" "trickle down" effect. That is all BS, like the Bible saying the meek shall inherit the earth (The Bible way of keeping the poor happy until they die.)!
"Policy Basics: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)"
SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, is the nation’s most important anti-hunger program. In a typical month in 2018, SNAP helped 40 million low-income Americans afford a nutritionally adequate diet.[1]
UPDATED June 25, 2019
"Under federal rules, to qualify for SNAP benefits, a household must meet three criteria (although states have flexibility to adjust these limits):
- Its gross monthly income generally must be at or below 130 percent of the poverty line, or $2,252 a month (about $27,020 a year) for a three-person family in fiscal year 2019. Households with an elderly or disabled member need not meet this limit.
- Its net monthly income, or income after deductions are applied for items such as high housing costs and child care, must be less than or equal to the poverty line ($1,732 a month or about $20,780 a year for a three-person family in fiscal year 2019).
- Its assets must fall below certain limits: in fiscal year 2019 the limits are $2,250 for households without an elderly or disabled member and $3,500 for those with an elderly or disabled member."
What if the people live in Los Angeles, California or Seattle, Washington where housing costs breaks the bank? Should they move to a desert town where they can't get a job?
"Tax payers shouldn't be expected to support fellow citizens who can work but won't" is a WSJ editorial statement. Really?
Riddle me this WSJ "editorial." What are tax loop holes and why do we have them? Why should anyone get special treatment under the tax code? If you have made a lot of money shouldn't you pay a lot of taxes, by that I mean, PAY ENOUGH TAX SO THE EFFECT IS AS STRON G ON THE RICH AS THE EFFECT IS ON THE POOR.
My point is, and will always be, as stated in an earlier blog, that if a poor person pays a tax of $100 on an income of $1,200 a month, it is far, far more impactful than if a rich person pays $100,000 in taxes on an income of $5,000,000 a month. You see my point?
I am going to purposely avoid the Bloomberg answer because the guy uses the tax loopholes, so he is not going to be objective.
"$1 Trillion In Tax Loopholes"
NPR April 3, 2012 Jacob Goldstein
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/04/03/149849837/-1-trillion-in-tax-loopholes
" . . . the most striking loopholes are the ones that are so big they don't even seem like loopholes. Like the tax breaks for putting money into a 401(k). Or the mortgage-interest tax deduction.Wonks call these loopholes "tax expenditures," or "spending through the tax code." That's because they have the same effect on government revenues as a spending program of the equivalent size."
"Why are there so many legal loopholes for the rich to avoid taxes?"
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-so-many-legal-loopholes-for-the-rich-to-avoid-taxes
I started reading the first comment and the guy talks about loop holes for all, then refers to stockholdings. He doesn't get it that poor people do not have stocks! People with money, perhaps not super rich, but well enough off to buy stocks at some risk, are kinda' "rich."
"11 Ways the Wealthy and Corporations Will Game the New Tax Law"
By Alexandra Thornton Posted on July 25, 2018,
When will people realize the tax code is written for the rich kinda', and the rich play the tax code like the game of Monopoly? If we need a tax accountant to do our taxes, the code is definitely written for the rich since they can afford to hire a tax accountant to do their taxes!
I cannot even fathom how blind supposed "experts" are when asked who does the tax code benefit. Look at this one. What blows my mind is that these expert are actually blind to the obvious: whether we work or not, the tax code benefits the top 1%, top 10%, even top 20% income makers more than anyone else! IT IS OBVIOUS, BUT THEY CANNOT SEE IT - THE CAN'T SEE THE TREES FOR THE FOREST THING!
"Who Does The Current Tax Code Benefit?"
By Mark P. Cussen Updated Nov 30, 2012
https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1112/who-does-the-current-tax-code-benefit.aspx
"The Bottom Line
The argument about whether the tax code favors those who don't work is not going to be resolved any time soon. Taxpayers can only look at their own situations in order to find out what they can do to minimize their own taxes and act accordingly. For more information on the taxation of various types of income, visit the IRS website, or consult your tax or financial advisor.
What did he just write? " . . . whether the tax code favors those who don't work is not . . . ? Amazing! If I am not working the tax code does not come into play!
Every defense of the tax code, every "explanation," is from a perspective of select people benefitting, which is never the poor or unemployed (except they receive some money).
I'm asking how the tax code benefits North Dakotans, people who live in Flint, Michigan, and you are going to tell me the Gov provides tax dollars to the poor and saves the people in Flint? I am talking about working people who live pay check to pay check and cannot raise $400 for an emergency in 2020!
You'll argue the argument of who benefits from the tax code is very complex, and I am missing points on how to benefit the "regular" people. If the tax code were not so complex the argument would not be so complex!
Don't you get the fact the tax code is opaque to "regular" people, and its complexity obfuscates the FACT that the rich get richer from using the lop holes?!
The tax code has slivers of benefits for the poor and for catastrophe, but boat loads of money are available to the rich using the same tax code!
The editorial shows no evidence of knowledge of people refusing jobs. The editorial shows no awareness of the difficulty of finding work to match one's abilities. The editorial reflects ignorance of the reality of being out of work. The editorial has no analysis of why people are not working, or insight as to when, or if they did work, when they last worked, and how they may struggle to maintain their self-respect while being unemployed in a system that is demeaning at best of people who are not working.
I WSJ editorial is trashy as it suggests people expect to be supported! Very few people LIKE handouts!
It is dumb to demand so much of poor people needing food stamps. As Catherine Rampell wrote in "The Washington Post, as it appered in The Week, page 17, Dec 20, 2019, 'Unfortunately, thie administration [By way of Stephen Miller I am guessing, and his White Nationalist ideas.} has decided, "that is doesn't suck enough to be poor."
The logic is twisted, the rationale is contorted, the perversion of facts and statistics is truly ugly as conservatives choose to say an entire population of poor, perhaps as may as 3,000,000 people, do not deserve help if they cannot meet a couple of arbitrary criteria for work and assets.
There is NO proof people choose to NOT work at this level, i.e., ~3,000,000, and the asset number is ridiculously LOW. The asset number is close to what it takes to feed one person for a month!
"For one person to eat on a "moderate" budget, it costs $3,000 per year, or almost $250 per month. It costs a family of four between $712 and $1,106 per month for groceries.
as of Dec 1, 2017
https://www.creditdonkey.com/average-cost-food-per-month.html
So the new policy says you should save your money, and if you DO NOT buy a car to get to work, you ought to be able to eat for 9 months . . . Seriously? Who writes these policies?
Let's just build a Wall for ~$9 billion and screw the poor. Let's budget ~$1 trillion for defense every year in spite of the fact WE are the country bombing everyone!
Can't conservative clear their minds of their prejudice. STEREOTYPS, lies, distrust, selfishness, and fears to realize the value of taking care of Americans?
Politicians are famous for f**king up good social welfare, caring and effective programs for the poor, programs that could help people help themselves when properly designed, and implemented, AND CARP ON THEM.
One, ten, twenty, 500,000 poor people caught not working at the right time ( . . .they could be between jobs or in a low paying job . . .), or NOT having LESS THAN ~$2,250 in "assets" because they own a used junk heap car to drive to work (. . . if they have over $2,250 they lose food stamps . . .), lose access to food stamps!
What a great incentive to work! I'd rather rob a bank and go to jail where I can get a place to sleep and three meals a day!
"Dr. King: Socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor"
By Joe Cortright 21.1.2019
"It’s a long road to redressing inequality
A half-century ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed the stilted rhetoric used use to talk about public spending to promote the social good:
Whenever the government provides opportunities in privileges for white people and rich people they call it “subsidized” when they do it for Negro and poor people they call it “welfare.” The fact that is the everybody in this country lives on welfare. Suburbia was built with federally subsidized credit. And highways that take our white brothers out to the suburbs were built with federally subsidized money to the tune of 90 percent. Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all to often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That’s the problem.
Today, the federal government spends nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars on housing subsidies each year, in the form of tax breaks for mortgage interest, property taxes, capital gains, and the exclusion of imputed rental income. Nearly all of the value of this goes to the nation’s highest income households. Meanwhile, only about 20 percent of low income households eligible for rent subsidies get anything from a chronically under-funded voucher program.
Over the past decade, Congress has repeatedly bailed out the Highway Trust Fund with general fund monies, to the tune of $140 billion. We continue to build new highways, chiefly for the benefit of those who own cars and live in suburbs, while transit systems that provide critical access to the poor are falling apart.
The problems that Dr. King spoke to then are still with us today. His words are an inspiration to our continued efforts to redress these inequities and build a fairer, more just world."
No mention of other unbalanced, misplaced priorities, but there are many. The poor pay more and the rich get richer. THAT is the American way.
The tax loop holes underscore how the American economy is rigged for the rich to get richer.
"Six people who prove capitalism is broken in America"
Over the last few years, the Guardian talked to many people for whom [America's rigged] capitalism isn’t working – here are a few of their stories
Lauren Aratani Thu 2 May 2019 08.21 EDT
USA "democratic capitalism," or "liberal capitalism," whatever you wish to title it, is a rigged capitalism favoring the rich.
"Martin Wolf: why rigged capitalism is damaging liberal democracy"
Economies are not delivering for most citizens because of weak competition, feeble productivity growth and tax loopholes
By Martin Wolf September 18, 2019
https://amp.ft.com/content/5a8ab27e-d470-11e9-8367-807ebd53ab77
"“While each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose, we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders.”
With this sentence, the US Business Roundtable, which represents the chief executives of 181 of the world’s largest companies, abandoned their longstanding view that “corporations exist principally to serve their shareholders”."
OK, now what? A more fair capitalism would be a good start; get rid of tax breaks that favor rich companies and richer people.
"We need a dynamic capitalist economy that gives everybody a justified belief that they can share in the benefits. What we increasingly seem to have instead is an unstable rentier capitalism, weakened competition, feeble productivity growth, high inequality and, not coincidentally, an increasingly degraded democracy. Fixing this is a challenge for us all, but especially for those who run the world’s most important businesses. The way our economic and political systems work must change, or they will perish."
Sadly, I do not believe this will be a tipping point for change to a culture who cares for the less fortunate. Our country is al about "I earned my money and do not want to share it!" Americans like their stuff more than they like each other.
