What's Taxes Got To Do With It?

We're the government. Discuss.

 

Classic straw man argument on the salt trucks, police, fire, et al.

Those are all services of local government, which usually does nothing *but* provide the basic services that a community pools its money for (police, fire, schools, local roads, snow removal). Each community essentially has the flexibility to choose what it wants (volunteer vs. paid FD, for example, schools are run by elected boards).

If that's the necessary and proper function of government, why does 20-30% of my income go to the federal government once all taxes are added in, and only about 5% to the state and local governments combined, when they're the ones providing those services that government is actually contracted to provide? Outside of its constitutional role to run the military (and we can debate the necessity of a large standing army), much of what the federal government spends our money on is duplicitous (already a function of the states), or is just a pass through to give it back to the states with multiple strings attached. As a result, we have a very archaic and Byzantine tax code full of loopholes. As people try to exploit those loopholes, the feds close them. Folks like Tina Turner get caught in the process, having to pay *both* Swiss and U.S. income tax on her goods.

(my solution is to *eliminate* the federal income tax, replace it with a consumption tax or a VAT, shrink the fed's role down to its constitutional duty, download the rest back onto the states, and then see the investment capital that's been stashed away in offshore accounts *flock* back to the United States ... as well as the return of businesses that don't have to worry about our 35% corporate income tax rate, the highest in the Western world. We already see it domestically in the migration of high-income individuals from high-tax states to low-tax states).

 

Top US corporate tax rates are as low as they've been since 1940. Discuss.*

(Including rebuttals citing 'loopholes' and globalization, etc.)

 

What federal spending is duplicitous? A small minority of politicians really want states to take over duties the national government carries out. Most who decry the national government's involvement in certain programs do not want the programs in be first place.

 

How many companies pay 35 percent?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/29/corporate-tax-rate-us-2012_n_1839693.html

 

Back away?

http://world.time.com/2012/10/31/switzerland-are-its-days-as-a-tax-haven-for-foreigners-numbered/

Care to rethink those "really high taxes" for the Swiss?

 

So tell her to give up French Citizenship and apply for US Citizenship if this all so silly.

 

The French Empire's security is guaranteed by the American Empire, and it isn't cheap to maintain.

 

I'm guessing you miss the point that, like it or not, maintaining the American Empire isn't cheap. But, most expats can get foreign income exempted from being taxed.

http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Foreign-Earned-Income-Exclusion

In addition, is the University of Michigan wrong in stating the U.S. isn't the only country to tax foreign income?

http://www.bus.umich.edu/otpr/WP2007-4.pdf