My figure includes all the people that either work for themselves or get paid under the table and avoid paying taxes all together. When the top 10% of income earners in this country are footing 70% of the tax bill and over 40% pay no taxes at all, there is something seriously wrong. I don't care if you make minimum wage or $1,000 an hour, you should be paying your fair share of taxes. There also needs to be much harsher punishment for the people who avoid paying taxes.

Tens of millions of working people pay no taxes. In fact, many get "refunds." Google "EITC."

I find it funny how the successful people who are able to strike it rich in this country are forced to pay more money in taxes than the people who are incapable of making as much money as them.

The funnier part of that is that it seems to me that the only people who want taxes to be imposed more steeply on the rich than the not so rich are the people who are... not so rich!

So, in essence, because the entrepreneurs of our country are able to make money in the free market, the people who are unable to make money in the same free market want the more successful people to essentially "bail out" (to use a phrase that our current president used) the not so successful people at their own expense.

So, basically what these people are really saying is, "Since I suck, I have a moral right to take earnings from the non-sucky people."

Now, since income tax evasion is illegal, the government (ie the people) are literally TAKING/STEALING/ROBBING/LOOTING the profits made by the few successful in our country and placing it in the hands of those who apparently are "morally entitled" to it but have no ability to make that money for themselves.

Funny, my mom always said to me not to take things that didn't belong to me

See, this is why I like airplanes. No matter who you are or how entitled you think you are to the enjoyment of aviation, airplane's will always always always punish a pilot's lack of ability (dearly in most cases).

People are usually poor because they are stupid or lazy. The stupid show off their stupidity for all the world to see when they make statements like "the corporations need to pay more taxes".

Businesses don't pay taxes, they collect them from the consumer. For example, do you think if taxes were raised tomorrow on the oil industry that you wouldn't see an immediate rise in the cost of gas? Smart businessman pass on the cost of doing business (taxes) to the consumer. Raise taxes on a business and all you do is increase the cost of the product. The owners or shareholders still go home rich.

Stupid people will never figure the system out. This is why they stay poor and ignorant. It is the politicians job to exploit these ignorant people for their own political and financial gain. Everyone makes out nicely but the morons. Work harder or smarter my friends, preferably the later.

Now that that is out of the way...

To the OP, the cost of doing business half *** if drastically higher than doing business the right way I suppose, even though you may not recognize the cost of bad business until something like this happens.

The only reason I can think of for the seat being a more severe fine than the landing gear is...

Landing Gear - less likely to break but if it does, it could injure quite a few but most likely, a gear up ldg wouldn't injure anyone that bad bring bad flack to the airline mostly. In this case, the FAA could point the finger at them and dodge the flack.

Seat - More likely to break and even though it would probably only injure a few people, they would more than likely be injured and of course file suit against the airline saying that they were injured and bring more bad flack against the airline and the FAA too (being the governing body that is supposed to regulate them).

Classy

Taxes imposed at the state level to companies vary from state to state. Yet I can go to a walmart in one state and then to one clear across the U.S. and the prices wont be very different. So not always true. Also those who automatically raise their prices because of a small tax hike wont be in business long. There's always someone who can keep their prices low, competition.

Raise the taxes on the working class and all you do is reduce spending, less money going into the economy. Is my statement always true? No. Just like yours is not either. Point being tax codes typically need to be adapted to a certain climate. Neither extremes will work all the time.

I find it funny how the unsuccessful people who aren't able to strike it rich in this country are forced to pay more money in taxes than the people who are capable of making more money than them.


The funnier part of that is that it seems to me that the only people who want taxes imposed more steeply on the working class than the rich are the people who are...rich!

By the way with the crazy money some people have the majority of you are not rich, no matter how much you may think you are. The list of filthy rich living humans beings is rather short, you can probably google it. The rich in this case is the corporations, since they are considered a legal entity, a legal person.


Ahh, and now we have arrived at distribution of wealth. Taxing is wealth distribution. So whether you tax the rich and give it to the poor, or tax the poor and give it to the rich, or however you'd like to put it, it is a distribution of wealth. I dont see how one can suggest its anymore right to tax the upper-middle/middle class and poor than to tax the top 2%.


Insider trading,corporate tax evasion, union busting, disappearing pensions, job out sourcing. Long list of bad business practices, and pure white collar crime. This isn't justification for the everyday people who bleed the system abusing it. Loopholes need to be closed, auditing, transparency and oversight need to be at an all time high. At all levels.

I'll just tell you what I told globe. Tax codes need to be adapted to the current climate. Neither extreme works all the time.
Even better would be a fair tax, one tax rate across the board.

Sorry to hijack again, but back to taxes. You are a total idiot. Do you not understand how taxes work? You're right, tens of millions of people get refunds, but that doesn't mean they don't pay taxes. Every paycheck, the government (state and federal) withhold some of your pay. How much is determined by how many deductions you claim. 0 withholds the most. When you are filing your tax return, you are calculating your tax liability. If your tax liability is higher than what you had withheld, you owe more money. If your liability is lower than what was withheld, you get a refund for the amount in excess of the liability. In both cases, you are still paying taxes. The poor aren't avoiding taxes. They just have access to tax credits to help them lower their liability and get a bigger return than they might otherwise. What's wrong with that? What you want to kick some poor guy making 10k even more while he's already down? But moral of the story is, a refund does NOT = not paying taxes. I got a refund last year and I can tell you I paid thousands of dollars in taxes. I only claimed 1 deduction on my W4.

As to the issue of "paying your fair share," I can tell you right now that if you ask 10 different people what fair means, you will probably get 10 different answers. My personal school of thought is that the current system is fine. The reason I think so is that the absolute amount of money left over after paying taxes has to figure into the equation somehow. For example, let's use today's tax bracket system. Under this system if person A made $10,000 he/she would owe $1081.25 and have $8918.75 left. If person B made $100,000, they would owe $21,709.25 and have $78,290.75 left. Now instead of a bracket system, let's have EVERYONE pay a flat tax of let's say 20%. Well under this system, if person A makes $10,000 they are paying $2000 and person B making $100,000 pays $20,000. You just DOUBLED the tax the person making jack $hit has to pay, and barely affected (positively I might add) the person who has tons of money left for themselves. Now that person making nothing to begin with has even less money to try to climb out of poverty and the person making @$$ loads of money is happier even though it barely affected them at all anyways. The cost of necessities is basically fixed so the flat taxes severely punishes those in poverty and even the low to mid middle class.

There is one thing I think everyone can agree on though. Everyone needs to pay what they owe. Tax evasion is illegal, selfish and in my mind, almost as bad as treason. I also think we need to close tax loopholes that the wealthy politicians write into our legal code at the will of other wealthy individuals and corporations. Pay what you owe and if you think you owe too much, contact your senator and let them know or go run to be one yourself, but pay your damn taxes!

Watchyouralt, I agree with you whole heartedly except on the flat tax. Do the math and you will see the flat tax is devastating to those who make the least amount of money.

People don't understand how the bracket system works and people don't like what they don't understand. If I'm in the 28% bracket, I'm not paying 28% on all the money. I pay 10% on the first bit, 15% on the second, 25% on the third and 28% on the last bit. In reality depending on what end of the 28% bracket I was in, I would be paying CONSIDERABLY less than 28% on my income. Maybe as low as 20%.

Also, the part people don't seem to understand is that if I make $20,000 and you make $100,000, you are paying the exact same amount in taxes up to $20,000 as I am paying. Yeah you'll pay higher rates on the upper brackets, but it's being offset somewhat by the lower brackets.

The rich need to quit their whining. They have plenty of accountants to find loopholes and write-offs to knock them into the lower brackets anyways.

No I agree that a flat tax probably wouldn't work. There are just to many variables. Its just a funny simple way of making everyone happy haha. It looks good on paper though, but simple truth is its not that simple.