SpawnPoint - Where Game Begins

For most people paying tax is not a matter of choice, you pay them or you end up in jail. Yet for some it appears to be a voluntary system where you can opt out, those that can do this are of course the richest people and corporations. There have been a few prominent examples of this in the UK that have highlighted the issue:

Vodafone, according to some calculations should have had a £6 billion tax bill yet they claim this is not the case because they have a PO box registered in Luxembourg. Our last government insisted they pay the full bill but now they are just paying £1.2 billion, after taking out the head of our tax agency to a nice dinner to discuss the bill. According to the head of our tax system we are being "too black and white" when it comes to corporate tax, rather an odd statement as surely you either owe tax or you don't.

Another one is Sir Philip Green, who was recently appointed as a "waste tsar" by the government to find savings that could be made. He runs a string of high street stores in the UK and recently awarded himself a £1billion bonus payment. Only it turns out that he doesn't own any of his businesses, it's all registered in his wife's name, who rather conveniently lives in the tax haven of Monaco and so paid no tax on that bonus payment. If he had the UK would have been £300 million better off.

All this is of course entirely legal, avoiding paying tax using tax havens now seems to be standard practice. So how widespread is it? One recent estimate was that one third of all the money in the world is held in offshore tax havens and another that 83 of the biggest 100 companies in the US hide money in tax havens. Those companies include Apple, Bank of America, Best Buy, ExxonMobil, FedEx, Kraft Foods, McDonald’s, Safeway and Target . So quite widespread then.

So it looks like the burden of paying back those debts our governments incurred bailing out banks from their own stupidity and greed is going to fall on regular people, the middle class and the poorer people because they don't have enough money to be able choose whether to pay tax or not.

There are those that defend this, saying that they generate wealth through all the staff they employ and the taxes they pay. Who was it who educated those staff, who treats them when they get sick, who maintains the roads they get to work on and who pays for the police to come and arrest people trying to rob their stores? Others defend it saying that if you stop it then these rich people and companies will just move somewhere that does, that sounds rather like blackmail to me.

In the UK a movement has started called UKUncut which protests against government spending cuts and against those dodging their taxes. They organise on Twitter and their main method of protest is to shut down some stores of those companies that have been dodging taxes. They get a lot of positive coverage in the media, except for anything owned by Rupert Murdoch, perhaps because News International pays almost no tax in the UK or the US. But I'm sure that's just coincidence.

So if you find out a company doesn't pay their taxes would you stop buying their products? Would you join a protest outside one of their stores?

Unfortunately, the American tax system is based off the "Golden Rule"....those with the gold make the "rules". Until countries like the UK and US make it illegal to have a company inside the country and then to "convienently" have the home office outside the country, this will continue. I fully believe that anything produced, manufactured, or run inside a country, should have to pay the going tax rate in that country. This is a bipartisan "screwing" we are getting as well. The libs and the cons are both guilty for letting this happen and sometimes even participating in it. Whatever percentage of their company or holdings that are "in country" should be taxable by that country.

What kills me is that these schmucks have to common people at each other's throats by trying to make this a "class warfare" or "right vs. left" ideology problem. They are probably sitting back laughing up their sleeves all the way to the bank as people continually blame the wrong group for this "screwing" we are taking.

I am not going to fall into that trap of the "class warfare" thinking with "WTF? They can afford it" kind of shortsightedness....It would bother me as much if it was $2000 as it does being $2 million....tax evasion is tax evasion and it just shows how corrupt our governments still are. They could change this problem in a heartbeat if they wanted...but they won't or their pockets won't get filled anymore and the 5 star dinner "shmoozing" would stop.

over here you can do more time for not filing/paying your taxes than you get for murder....unless you are like OJ Simpson and have enough money to hire attorneys that are FAR smarter than the prosecutors are.

It seems General Electric have turned tax dodging into something that actually means the government pays you. Here's a question for you, how much tax do you pay if you make a profit of $14.2 billion?

http://money.msn.com/top-stocks/post.aspx?post=d715c70d-f0d0-4474-8223-2949588e90f6&GT1=33002

While that looks good on the surface, sales taxes are one of the most regressive tax structures out there. Even with a "rebate", those taxes hurt the middle and lower class far worse because they pay a higher percentage of taxes at that point. Something more fair would be a flat rate tax of like 10% with no exemptions, loop holes or deductions....only line items for actual expenses. Set a "poor cap" on it by saying "no taxes on your first...say $50K" and if you don't make more than $50K, you don't pay income tax at all. A lot of people in the US don't pay income tax as it is if they make less than $50K and have a couple of kides so it wouldn't change things for them much. This would be far easier than the government juggernaut that would have to be created to do the rebates, and cost far less as well since there doesn't need to be an unnecessary back and forth shuffling of funds between the government and the "rebatees". Even at a "measly" 10%, I bet tax revenues would go up by 25% at least for the fiscal year. It also would make those "slick willies" that make bukku bucks and hardly pay any taxes at all pay their share.

On a personal preference, I would love to see this implemented along with an extra 10% surcharge tax if you company does more than 30% of its business outside the US and a 2% discount if your company does 100% of its business inside the US. The only way to get back into it globally is to make it too expensive (or at least as expensive) to make stuff outside the US and sell it here as it is to manufacture it inside the US to be sold in the US.

The "illegal" problem won't be fixed with the tax structure. The only way to truly fix it and plug up the hemorrhaging at our borders is to reform immigration, give it a year to implement, and then deny all those benefits you describe to anyone without a visa, greencard or citizenship. Medical could have separate situations where the first one is fine but no ongoing medical that you wouldn't have if you were "just visiting" the US. I understand the "bleeding heart" stance on illegals, but I think the economy trumps them as without a vibrant economy, there is no money for illegals anyway. I do think legitimate citizens should always be helped first....especially in the ER where illegals seem to use it for their primary health care. I say "drivers licence, state ID card, green card, or visa or go to the end of the line". That would be fair to those of us who AREN'T breaking the law. I recently experience some of this while having to go to the ER myself for a serious situation myself and was pissed off that others without serious problems were helped first and didn't even speak English. While I know that doesn't necessarily mean they weren't legal, the odds are some of them weren't.

we will always be screwed on taxes because of the golden rule.....those with the gold make the rules. Even the unionized middle class and below does not have the funds to throw money at the lawmakers.

Don't get me started on the financial bailout. Instead of funding those corrupt company's asshattery, they should have just let them collapse and used the bailout money to help the public investors migrate to the other financial companies that didn't cheat their customers. They also should have forced any of the companies that needed the bail out to NOT pay out those ridiculously huge bonuses....How in the hell does someone deserve a bonus that had run the company into the ground, defrauded customers with obviously shady practices and caused the worst finacial meltdown in history? They were clamoring that "the bonuses were in their contract".....0_o if your company basically folds and goes bankrupt and has to be bailed out by the government, how in the hell are such contracts even valid anymore? That money should have gone to investors, not the chumps who perpatrated that disaster. It was ridiculous just like when the auto makers were petitioning the government for bailouts and showing up in private jets.....they were unwilling to change their lifestyle, but expected the public to bail them out anyway. I have new respect for Ford since they didn't take any bailout money. They are now my first choice for American made vehicles as a result.

The argument is that those types of companies need those obscene levels of bonuses and salaries to attract the best.....from what I see, they only attract the shady and the greedy.