United States Federal Income Taxes

The tax system that the United States federal government is just wrong. Over the years especially in the past 8 years I have heard arrogant members of the Congress claim that tax cuts that were put in place early in the Bush administration only helped the rich and those making more than $25K per year.

These members of Congress whether they be Republican or Democrat are just wrong in continuing to support the current tax structure. It is a very punitive system and one that treats the earnings and money generated by hard working members of this country as monetary property of the government that we are being allowed to use.

I have been working with some retired folks over the past week in assisting them with filing their 2007 taxes. These are people who worked for 35 and 40 plus years in their chosen professions. Most recently I was working with a widow who worked for Security Pacific Bank for 35 years and then later Bank of America when they took over Security Pacific Bank. This woman survives mostly on the $16,000 she receives from Social Security. She receives about $250 per year from a life insurance policy her husband took out many years ago. Over the years she and her husband had invested money into various life insurance and mutual fund companies in preparation for their retirement years.

The house that she lives in and something that she and her husband purchased back in the 50's was in need of a new roof as well as a new air conditioner and heater system. The cost for replacing these items cost about $17K and some change. She had been taking out the minimum withdrawals that she could each year which really isn't all that much. That amount is generally about $10K, with a little bit of wiggle room either way (roughly a 1K). Well she withdrew $22.5K. She decided that she would also re-carpet her 1500 square foot home. Keep in mind the money in these mutual funds are money that she and her husband contributed over thirty plus years after taxes. Well because of how much money she withdrew this year, this poor woman received a tax assessment of almost $1,300. In addition because she didn't know ahead of time that the fed enjoys having a steady stream of money from each of us and when they do not they choose to penalize us she was also assessed an estimated penalty of about $100 dollars by the IRS. Basically the interest they have chosen to charge her because she didn't realize she shouldn't wait until tax time to pay such a tax. Couple that with the fact that she contacted IRS ahead of time and they told her not to worry about any taxes that she would be okay withdrawing the money.

What in the hell is our nations problem? You have a retired person that some in Congress choose to classify as rich being penalized for accessing her money. It is not the government's money. We as voters need to remind each of our respective members in Congress of this fact.

Something else for people to remember, the IRS is not your friend, they are not here to help us. They are hired hands for the United States federal government empowered to and directed to take money from the citizens for the "common good".

Re: United States Federal Taxes

When my Dad was wrangling with the IRS a few years ago, one of the IRS agents told my Dad more or less verbatim, "I hate my job. I honestly hate it, and I'm probably going to quit. The IRS makes no bones about telling us that our job is to try and find every penny, nickel, or dime that we can legally steal from every single person we can." I was so struck by what that guy said that I basically memorized it.

Ted would have loved this thread.

Re: United States Federal Taxes

You know what we do to thieves in these parts...

Re: United States Federal Taxes

It is a shitty system and we have only ourselves as a nation to blame for its existence and continued operation. As a nation we need to fire every last member of Congress that continues to support the current tax system in my opinion.

Re: United States Federal Taxes

Fixed it for you.

Guys, let me ask you. What would you consider an equitable method for raising the revenues to buy all the pretty tanks and planes and ships y'all love so much and defend your nation from all them evil terraists?

20% sales tax on everything but bread, water, and cheese. No income tax. Cut all the excess pork and support only what we need, and in my book that means some military cutbacks along with everything else because I've seen military waste first hand and it makes me sick.

There is plenty of waste to go around in virtually every area of government, whether it be federal, state, county, or other local levels.

Sales tax, legalize fucking everything and tax it, and throw up some tarriffs.

Got a couple thousand rounds of ammunition and don't want to go through the hassle of returning it to the quartermaster? Leave it in the woods.

Wrapped a Hummer around a tree because Private Snuffy was too fucking stupid to drive slowly on a muddy trail? Fuck it, it's a field loss and there's more where that came from.

Colonel wants to fly from battalion to battalion in his chopper because it would take too long to drive there with rush hour traffic on the base this morning? We can always buy more fuel.

Dropped a set of NVG in the swamp? Fuck it, they can be pencil whipped.

Going to the desert? Here is 50 pounds of winter gear... I still have mine, it's great stuff for when I go skiing but was totally unnecessary for my Iraq deployment. Weekend drill is probably the single biggest waste of tax money in the history of America. Personally I think the money would be better spent on Bridges to Nowhere, Alaska. I believe Marso had a story about a LTC telling him to go flying to burn fuel just so they would get more money in next year's budget.

Yep, and then there's the fringe benefit: you starve the beast that is government, and it shrinks. And maybe if there isn't so much money for all those ships, tanks, planes, etc, then as a nation we'd be more inclined to mind our own fucking business in the world.

Just a thought.

Christ, the sheer amount of money spent on painting rocks at Stewart could fund an entire brigade in the field for a year.

Painting Rocks.

Someone I once heard about many years ago, that I never directly met, if you get my meaning, had a friend that was a Firearm's Instructor for the FBI at their big training facility in Georgia.

At the end of the fiscal year, the contract they had with their ammunition supplier dictated that they could have 0 rounds left on hand so the Gub'mint would have to buy the full annual allotment.

Tens of thousands of rounds had to be destroyed. Tens. of. thousands.

I heard that it was only destroyed on paper and that it wound up being given to various policemen that these Instructors knew.

Then there's the Federal Prison that a friend had a connection with. The BoP issued the Prison all new M16's. They were ordered to destroy their 100, like new, in the crate, never fired M14's.

They were destroyed, again, on paper, and given to a police department.

Organized crime agrees!

Well, in all fairness, do you really think they're reporting the income from their various rings and scams?

I tend to agree with this, but the old lady in the OP would still experience a major increase in tax this year if she suddenly has to buy goods for $17K more than in other years, and mainly covers things like bread and water in those other years.

I also haven't yet understood why the story in the OP shows that tax cuts don't favor the rich. Or is there a $250 cap on tax cuts?

Did someone get raped?

Next time a politician tries to sell you a law that will only affect the rich, remember that's how we got our present income tax system.

I'm all for paying my fair share, but once everyone from the Federal, state, county and township governments all take their cut.....I don't have a hell of a lot left for myself. And the waste from all levels of government are simply disgusting.

I can't tell you the stupid development plan my township just enacted that completely wasted millions of taxpayer money. They built a new "Main Street" off the beaten path in town....only to find out they built on "wetlands" and now they can't complete it. Then they tried widening the main road into town, but fucked everything up by installing a cement divider to prevent people from making left turns onto the road....but it's a small two-lane country road. People are all sorts of pissed with how their money is wasted, and to fix it it will take even more of our money. God forbid the township whores would fix their stupid mistakes out of their own pockets!

The people that got the least of the benifit from the tax cuts was the middle class. Both the rich and the working poor got more percentage of a cut.

Just remember when you complain about the IRS and support a sales tax that the only major candidate to support the Fair Tax was Mike Huckabee. In fact, he was endorsed by Linder/Boortz on that issue alone.

For one simple reason, the money that she withdrew from her mutual/life insurance fund that is set up specifically as a retirement fund is taxed at a higher rate. Because she is not yet 70 she is taxed at a higher rate. There is supposed to be an upfront 20% tax placed on the money she pulled out. She also then needs to pay income tax for her money that she already paid income tax on when she and her dead husband deposited the money into the retirement plan. Finally because some Democratic members of Congress characterize anyone who makes more than $25K per year as being rich.

That is exactly right.

The "poor" do not pay taxes. They also receive returns each year. If they are not paying taxes, and are receiving returns, where is that money coming from? Who is paying for it? Simple, the money is coming from hard working people who attempted to do the right thing by planning for their retirements as the woman who I worked with did.

Yet, the arrogant bastards in the United States government that have been elected to represent us seem to believe that it is in fact their money rather than ours and they have set us up on allowances to allow us to use their money.

Unfortunately you are correct. That is one of the reasons I feel the Republican party isn't that much different then the Democrats. With McCain being the candidate it will be even closer to the Democratic Party given his propensity for bending over backwards to please the Democrats while ignoring and even attempting to abandon the Republican party over the years. But, I'm sure he will continue to lie to us by stating he is a Reagan Conservative.

I'm one of the few people around here who was actually for Huckabee in spite of the other things against him. The Fair Tax issue was a big enough deal to me that I could let some of them slide. McCain, though, has too much history in D.C. What we've seen is what we're going to get - for good or bad. He's better than anything the Dems have but he wasn't the best Republican and certainly isn't the most conservative.

The poor got no tax cut because the poor pay no (or little) income taxes (and, in fact, tend to collect a disproportionate amount of the benefits). And the rich pay a disproportionate share of the taxes so they should get a bigger percentage cut.

I'm becoming more convinced that, if we have to keep an income tax in order to fund the government, it should be a flat tax: one rate that everybody above some defined poverty level pays. Then there'd be no more charges of unfairness whenever tax rates changed and no one would be able to vote a tax increase on someone else without voting on themselves, too.

The current system exists to keep all those IRS workers employed making sure you didn't subtract wrong on Form XYZ666, line 47b. A flat tax would send them to the soup kitchens. Not that there's anything wrong with that...