cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
sales tax here has already topped ten percent. We’re more than halfway to VAT.
Another Republican President, Another Recession.
- Thread starter hanimmal
- Start date
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
Imagine having to pay fed taxes on everything you buy on top of that.
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
and the answer is so simple. Restore taxation of the individual and corporate rich.
Shame the GOP has written the opposite into its book of common prayer.
Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
our's has been 10% for a long time, or 9.65% rounded up....we don't have a state income tax, but we do have sales tax on groceries...so any benefit to those that could most use it is lost...
Fogdog
Well-Known Member
Oregon is the other way around. No sales tax but a higher income tax. I prefer this except we need a rainy day fund for times of high unemployment, which makes for unstable funding for education and other programs that can't just stop. During a regrettable time when Republicans were in control of the legislature, they managed to pass a bill that required the state to refund a surplus during good times so there is nothing in reserve for intervals when state income tax drop during a recession. Just dumbass short term thinking by that group.
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
(emphatic adjective) populists.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
https://apnews.com/article/economy-inflation-prices-jobs-income-recession-unemployment-e9e96643d8a1eb3ab2f57810219b8324
They forgot to mentionWASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation has reached its lowest point in 2 1/2 years. The unemployment rate has stayed below 4% for the longest stretch since the 1960s. And the U.S. economy has repeatedly defied predictions of a coming recession. Yet according to a raft of polls and surveys, most Americans hold a glum view of the economy.
The disparity has led to befuddlement, exasperation and curiosity on social media and in opinion columns.
Last week, the government reported that consumer prices didn’t rise at allfrom September to October, the latest sign that inflation is steadily cooling from the heights of last year. A separate report showed that while Americans slowed their retail purchases in October from the previous month’s brisk pace, they’re still spending enough to drive economic growth.
Even so, according to a poll last month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, about three-quarters of respondents described the economy as poor. Two-thirds said their expenses have risen. Only one-quarter said their income has.
The disconnect poses a political challenge for President Joe Biden as he gears up for his re-election campaign. Polls consistently show that most Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy.
Many factors lie behind the disconnect, but economists increasingly point to one in particular: The lingering financial and psychological effects of the worst bout of inflation in four decades. Despite the steady cooling of inflation over the past year, many goods and services are still far pricier than they were just three years ago. Inflation — the rate at which costs are increasing — is slowing. But most prices are high and still rising.
Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, captured this dynamic in recent remarks at Duke University.
“Most Americans,” Cook said, “are not just looking for disinflation” — a slowdown in price increases. “They’re looking for deflation. They want these prices to be back where they were before the pandemic. ... I hear that from my family.”
That’s particularly true for some of the goods and services that Americans pay for most frequently: Bread, beef and other groceries, apartment rents and utilities. Every week or month, consumers are reminded of how far those prices have risen.
Deflation — a widespread drop in prices — typically makes people and companies reluctant to spend and therefore isn’t desirable. Instead, economists say, the goal is for wages to rise faster than prices so that consumers still come out ahead.
How inflation-adjusted incomes have fared since the pandemic is a complicated question, because it’s difficult for just one metric to capture the experiences of roughly 160 million Americans.
Adjusted for inflation, median weekly earnings — those in the middle of the income distribution — have risen at just a 0.2% annual rate from the final three months of 2019 through the second quarter of this year, according to calculations by Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. That meager gain has left many Americans feeling that they have made little financial progress.
For Katherine Charles, a 40-year old single mother in Tampa, Florida, inflation’s slowdown hasn’t made it easier to make ends meet. Her rent jumped 15% in May. Over the summer, to keep her electricity bill down, Charles kept the air conditioning off during the day despite Tampa’s blistering hot weather .
She has felt the need to cut back on groceries, even though, she said, her 16-year old son and 10-year old daughter “are at the age they are eating everything in front of them.”
“My son loves red meat,” Charles said. “We cannot any longer afford it the way we used to. The economy’s not getting better for nobody, especially not for me.”
Charles, a call center representative with a company that handles customer service for the Medicare and Affordable Care Act health plans, received a raise to $18.21 an hour two years ago. But it wasn’t much of an increase. She doesn’t even remember how large it was.
This month, Charles took part in a one-day strike against her employer, Maximus. She and her co-workers are seeking higher wages and more affordable health insurance. Charles’ two children are on Medicaid, she said, because Maximus’ health insurance is too expensive.
Eileen Cassidy Rivera, a spokeswoman for Maximus, said that a recent survey of its 40,000 employees found that three-quarters of those who responded said “they would recommend Maximus as a great place to work.”
“During the past five years, we have increased compensation, reduced out-of-pocket health care expenses and improved the work environment,” Rivera added.
Rising prices have been a key driver of a wave of strikes and other forms of labor activism this year, with unions representing autoworkers, Teamsters and airline pilots winning sizable pay increases.
Other factors also play a role in why many people are still unhappy with the economy. Political partisanship is one of them. With Biden occupying the White House, Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to characterize the economy as poor, according to the University of Michigan’s monthly survey of consumer sentiment.
Karen Dynan, a Harvard economist who served in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, noted that distinct swings in economic sentiment occur after a new president is inaugurated, with voters from the party opposed to the president quickly switching to a more negative view.
“The partisan divide is stronger than it was before,” she said. “Partly because the country is more polarized.”
Even so, many Americans, like Charles, are still feeling the pain of inflation. The national average price of a gallon of milk reached $3.93 in October, up 23% since February 2020, just before the pandemic struck. A pound of ground beef, at $5.35, is 33% higher than it was then. Average gas prices, despite a steep decline from a year ago, are still 53% higher at $3.78 a gallon, on average.
All those increases have far outpaced the rise in overall prices, which are up nearly 19% over the same period.
Edelberg said the jump in prices for items that people typically buy most often helps explain why many people are disgruntled about the economy — even as Americans have remained confident enough to keep spending at a healthy pace.
“Their purchasing power overall,” Edelberg said, “is doing pretty well.”
Yet broad national data doesn’t capture the experiences of everyday Americans, many of whom haven’t seen their wages keep up with prices.
“In real terms, most people are probably pretty close to where they were pre-pandemic,” said Brad Hershbein, a senior economist at the Upjohn Institute. “But there are a lot of exceptions.”
Lower-income Americans, for example, have generally received the largest percentage wage gains since the pandemic. Fierce competition for front-line workers at restaurants, hotels, retailers and entertainment venues forced companies to provide significant pay hikes.
But poorer people typically face a higher inflation rate, according to economic research, because they spend a greater proportion of their income on such volatile expenses as food, gas and rent — items that have absorbed some of the biggest price spikes.
“At the lower end of the income distribution, people got somewhat higher pay raises,” said Anthony Murphy, a senior economic policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “But I don’t think it compensates them for the fact that inflation was so much higher. They’re consuming a different bundle of goods than the average.”
Census Bureau surveys that Murphy and his colleague Aparna Jayashankar have studied show that nearly half of Americans say they’re “very stressed” by inflation, little changed from a year earlier, even though inflation has tumbled since last year.
Even for people whose incomes have kept pace with prices, research has long found that people hate inflation more intently than its economic impact would suggest. Most people do not expect their pay to keep up with rising prices. Even if it does, the higher pay may come with a time lag.
“They’re obsessing over the fact that the prices they pay for the things that are very salient — gas, food, grocery store prices, rent — those things still seem elevated, even though they’re not increasing as rapidly as they were,” Hershbein said.
“If everyone had lost a job,” he said, “we’d be focused on that.”
Apple, Google, Amazon and Meta don't pay taxes in US. Why wouldn't IRS forst tax those mega corporations instead of citizens?
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
I can think of a few dozen reasons.
Oh yeah and....
Also they are getting a hand from the right wing stuff courts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/07/business/corporate-minimum-tax-impact.html
At his State of the Union address this year, President Biden celebrated the fact that his new climate and tax law would no longer allow some of America’s largest corporations to pay zero in federal taxes.
“Because of the law I signed, billion-dollar companies have to pay a minimum of 15 percent,” Mr. Biden said, referring to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. “God love them.”
The new corporate minimum tax was one of the most significant changes to the U.S. tax code in decades. Its logic rested on the idea that rich companies should not be able to find loopholes and other accounting maneuvers in order to pay lower tax rates than their workers.
But making the tax operational has become a mammoth challenge for the Biden administration, which has faced intense lobbying from industries that could be on the hook for billions of dollars in new taxes. Those groups have been flooding the Treasury Department with letters asking for lenient interpretations of the law and trying to create new loopholes before their tax bills come due next year. Republican lawmakers have been trying to repeal the law while Democrats such as Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have been urging Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen to enforce it strictly.
The legislation, which passed with no Republican support, called for the corporate minimum tax to take effect in the 2023 tax year, meaning it will apply to corporate profits earned this year. But the tax was only loosely defined, and Treasury is still writing the rules that will determine how it is carried out.
The corporate minimum tax is entirely separate from the 15 percent “global minimum tax” that the Biden administration brokered with more than 140 nations in 2021. That agreement was aimed at stopping large multinational companies from seeking out tax havens and forcing them to pay more of their income to governments. While the deal is moving ahead in other nations, it continues to face obstacles in the United States, where Congress has been unable to ratify the agreement and allow the United States to comply with the global rules.
But Democrats were able last year to pass a domestic corporate minimum tax, which is a revival of a policy that was last employed in the 1980s. It captures tax revenue from companies that report a profit to shareholders on their financial statements, known as book income, while bulking up on deductions to whittle down their tax bills.
While the corporate tax rate stands at 21 percent, many large companies pay far less than that to the federal government. For years, big companies such as FedEx, Duke Energy and Nike have been able to take advantage of various deductions and tax strategies so that they effectively owe nothing in federal taxes. A 2021 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that 55 of the nation’s largest companies had paid no federal income tax the previous year.
An analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation last year found that about 150 companies with tax rates below 15 percent would be subject to the new tax. Companies like Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway, which have had effective tax rates in the single digits in recent years, could face the biggest increases in their tax liabilities, according to a summary of research about the impact of the tax published by the Congressional Research Service.
At the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in May, Warren E. Buffett, the company’s chief executive, acknowledged that there was uncertainty over the new tax but said he did not oppose it.
“We can figure out ways, once we know the rules, where we will pay the 15 percent tax,” Mr. Buffett said.
While the tax is aimed at some of the largest companies, smaller businesses have also expressed concern that they could be swept into the new tax regime if the regulations are not sufficiently clarified.
In a comment letter to the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service this year, CenterPoint Energy, a public utility company based in Texas, said it could be unfairly targeted because it had sold part of its gas pipeline and storage operation. Even though CenterPoint paid taxes on the sale, the gains could raise the company’s revenue enough to require it to pay additional money under the corporate alternative minimum tax.
“CenterPoint is neither a large corporation nor a corporation that did not pay its fair share but is being subjected to the C.A.M.T. as a result of transactions that reduced its business operations,” the company wrote. “The incongruity of the result is striking.”
The Treasury Department is expected to release the final rules for the tax before the end of the year. It already made concessions to the insurance industry, which raised concerns that the tax could upend its business model, and told companies that they would not be responsible for making quarterly tax payments related to the new minimum until all the regulations were clarified.
“Treasury is working to ensure that the biggest and most profitable corporations pay their fair share and that the corporate alternative minimum tax is workable and administrable,” said Ashley Schapitl, a Treasury spokeswoman.
The 15 percent minimum tax applies to corporations that report annual income of more than $1 billion to shareholders but reduced their effective tax rate well below the statutory 21 percent. It was projected to raise over $200 billion over a decade.
Businesses that might face the new tax have been spending heavily to shape its scope and minimize their exposure.
According to Accountable.US, a nonpartisan watchdog group, large financial firms and industry groups representing international conglomerates spent more than $1 million during the first half of this year lobbying Congress over the corporate minimum tax and a 1 percent stock buyback excise tax that was also included in the Inflation Reduction Act. Accountable.US described that as a “significant” amount since Republicans already oppose the provision.
Many sectors are bracing for the tax’s potential impact, but energy companies, the film industry, financial firms and foreign companies that operate in the United States are particularly concerned, according to a review of comment letters submitted to the federal government and corporate filings.
“We’re trying to figure out how to add up apples and oranges, if you will, to make sense of it,” said Nancy McLernon, president and chief executive of the Global Business Alliance, which represents international companies that have U.S. subsidiaries.
Ms. McLernon, whose organization has a working group trying to ensure that the new tax rules can work alongside international accounting standards, lamented that the measure had only made things more complicated for businesses that invested in the United States.
I.R.S. tax forms, which allow for an array of deductions, and financial statements shown to shareholders present different pictures of a company’s performance. Investors use a firm’s book income to get a clearer view of the health of a business; however, some analysts have suggested that companies may soon start to take steps to obscure that measure.
Big businesses that will be hit by the tax are now trying to figure out what kind of income will put them over the $1 billion threshold and what deductions they may be able to keep.
Sativied
Well-Known Member
Socialist!
"The tax overhaul signed into law by former President Donald Trump in 2017 cut the federal corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent..."
Trump gave top US firms staggering tax cuts, with some paying $0 or less – report
Among lowest taxpayers were companies whose CEOs have become high-profile advocates for corporate social responsibility
www.theguardian.com
Trump wants to reduce it further to 15% if re-elected.
On the other hand:
"Biden proposes raising the corporate income tax to 28 percent, restoring America's title of highest corporate tax rate in the developed world."
"The President’s pledge to only raise taxes on people earning more than $400,000 a year means that most of the explicitly spelled‐out tax increases are targeted at high‐income Americans."
"Creates “billionaire” minimum tax. The budget proposes a new minimum tax of 25 percent on income and unrealized capital gains for “the wealthiest 0.01 percent.” In the 2023 budget, that meant the minimum tax applied to taxpayers with more than $100 million in total wealth."
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
I would take guidance from the
Hoppocrotoc Ooth: Forst, do no horm.
HenryTheEighth
Well-Known Member
You can't reduce something below zero.
There is, actually, one reason. Those companies are registered in offshore countries and operate in US. Until someone brings them back, they will pay no tax.
Sativied
Well-Known Member
I was obviously referring to the corporate tax rate. Let me spell it out for you: no, there’s not only one reason. Lowering the corporate tax rate further means even more corporations end up effectively paying zero in tax, too, because of tax deductions, credits, and exclusions and incentives. Offshoring profits is just one tool.