Why are we still paying baggage fees

https://youtu.be/sWLhbcEMWrY

Romney’s tax return comedy - Salon.com

• Just claim the over payment on next year's tax returns!  Very craven, not smart at all.
• Also, giving more money to charities (the LDS church or Ann's charities in Boston) doesn't make you benevolent  it means you manipulated the code for political advantage.  

Those who don't know the tax schedule will say 'look at how much he donates' those who know the tax schedule will see it as a cold use of the deduction to misguide those same people.    
Romney’s tax return comedy - Salon.com:

First, Mitt and Ann Romney donated a whole heck of a lot of money to charity in 2011 — $4,020,772, to be exact, or about 30 percent of their total income. But they chose only to claim $2.25 million of that total as charitable deductions, because, well, otherwise their overall tax burden would have been a little, shall we say, light.

From the campaign:

The Romneys’ generous charitable donations in 2011 would have significantly reduced their tax obligation for the year. The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the Governor’s statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years.

Without claiming the total legally possible deduction, Romney ended up paying an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent. If he’d claimed everything he had a right to, he would only have paid around 12.1 percent.

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Author Says We’re All Moochers | Here & Now

Author Says We’re All Moochers | Here & Now: "I wake up in subsidized housing. I throw on a T-shirt made of subsidized cotton, brush my teeth with subsidized water and eat cereal made of subsidized grain. Soon the chaos begins, two hours of pillow forts, dance parties and other craziness with two hyper kids and two hyper Boston terriers, until our subsidized nanny arrives to watch our 2-year-old. My wife Cristina then drives to her subsidized job while listening to the subsidized news on public radio. I bike our 4-year-old to school on public roads, play tennis on a public court."

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The Romney tax plan, in one chart

A while back, Ezra posted a chart detailing the differences between the Romney and Obama tax plans, while emphasizing how small the sliver of the population that got big cuts from Romney (and big hikes from Obama) is. But there are new estimates, detailed earlier Wednesday, from William Gale and Adam Looney of the Tax Policy Center of the Romney plan’s impact if it’s paid for with cuts to tax breaks, and if it’s not. So I thought I’d apply the same charting approach to the new figures:

The blue bars indicate how the plan would affect after-tax income if the rate cuts are paid for with tax break cuts, and the red bars show its effects without making up the lost revenue. The top 0.1 percent see incomes that are 8.6 percent higher without paying for the rate cuts, and 4.4 percent higher if they’re fully financed. Meanwhile, the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers see incomes fall by 1.1 percent if the rate cuts are paid for by cutting tax breaks.

Ann Romney: We've 'given all you people need' - POLITICO.com

Leona Helmsley!!

Ann Romney: We've 'given all you people need' - POLITICO.com: "Ann Romney dismissed concerns about her husband’s tax returns Thursday, contending that the two of them have “given all you people need to know.” “You know, you should really look at where Mitt has led his life, and where he’s been financially,” the potential first lady said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “He’s a very generous person. We give 10 percent of our income to our church every year. Do you think that is the kind of person who is trying to hide things, or do things? No. He is so good about it. Then, when he was governor of Massachusetts, didn’t take a salary for four years.”" 'via Blog this'

Sen. McConnell Gets Sen. Barrasso to High-Five Him

Finally, A Rich American Destroys The Fiction That Rich People Create The Jobs

Finally, A Rich American Destroys The Fiction That Rich People Create The Jobs: "In the war of rhetoric that has developed in Washington as both sides blame each other for our economic mess, one argument has been repeated so often that many people now regard it as fact:
Rich people create the jobs.
Specifically, entrepreneurs and investors, when incented by low taxes, build companies and create millions of jobs."

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THE TRUTH ABOUT TAXES: The Poor Pay The Highest Marginal Rates In The Country

THE TRUTH ABOUT TAXES: The Poor Pay The Highest Marginal Rates In The Country: "A couple of days ago, I referred to the fact that poor people face some of the highest marginal tax rates in America.
I received several emails from economics professors, gently correcting me: they face all the highest marginal tax rates in America."

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Mark Cuban Just Demolished A Major GOP Talking Point

Mark Cuban Just Demolished A Major GOP Talking Point: "Taxes are at the center of political debates on the economy, but Mark Cuban suggested on CNBC this morning that this hype is a lot of hot air.
While tax considerations may affect earnings per share in some respect, Cuban alleged that tax consequences are "so far down the list" when CEOs make business decisions. That is, he suggests that taxes are not what's really stopping companies from hiring right now. Therefore, cutting them won't do very much."

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Republican Corporate Chairman On Whether Tax Cuts For The Rich Create Jobs: ‘That’s So Baloney’ | ThinkProgress

 

Republican Corporate Chairman On Whether Tax Cuts For The Rich Create Jobs: ‘That’s So Baloney’ | ThinkProgress: Several Republicans have scoffed at Buffet’s proposal, including the multimillionaire Mitt Romney. However, in an interview with Fox 4 News, multimillionaire Henry Bloch — co-founder and chairman emeritus of the tax preparation company H&R Block and a registered Republican — said that “the wealthy have a debt to this country. They can afford to pay it and they should.” He added that the Republican push to protect tax breaks for millionaires in order to promote job creation is “baloney“:

There's One Huge State Budget Crisis That Everyone Is Refusing To Talk About

There's One Huge State Budget Crisis That Everyone Is Refusing To Talk About: "The state is Texas.
This month the state's part-time legislature goes back into session, and the state is starting at potentially a $25 billion deficit on a two-year budget of around $95 billion. That's enormous. And there's not much fat to cut. The whole budget is basically education and healthcare spending. Cutting everything else wouldn't do the trick. And though raising this kind of money would be easy on an economy of $1.2 trillion, the new GOP mega-majority in Congress is firmly against raising any revenue."

Happy Birthday "The Bush Tax Cuts: Ten Years Later"

The Bush Tax Cuts: Ten Years Later | Mother Jones: "You probably didn't realize it, but June 7, 2011, is a momentous day in US history. It marks the 10-year anniversary of the signing into law of the Bush tax cuts, a day when President George W. Bush helped replace an unprecedented federal budget surplus with a mountain of debt in order to slash taxes for rich people (including dead ones). The anniversary of the cuts comes at a particularly fortuitous moment, with the political classes deep in debate over the increase in the federal deficit. Now is a good time to take a look back to see just how well those tax cuts have worked out for the country. Some highlights, with data from the Economic Policy Institute:"

12 Massive Companies Paying Little To Nothing In Taxes

12 Massive Companies Paying Little To Nothing In Taxes

London protest: London marchers protest massive spending cuts in Britain - latimes.com

 

London protest: London marchers protest massive spending cuts in Britain - latimes.com: "Tens of thousands of demonstrators throng the streets of London to protest $130 billion in spending cuts the Conservative-led government says are needed to tame a runaway deficit. It is one of the biggest demonstrations since rallies in 2003 against the Iraq war."

For Many Companies, Low Taxes Are Key To Profits : Audio

Great info!




For Many Companies, Low Taxes Are Key To Profits : NPR

Obama Tax - Obama signs tax cut deal–with video

Obama signs tax cut deal

Saying he wouldn’t have signed the deal if it didn’t include important components for average citizens, from preventing a tax hike for middle class families to keeping college tuition bills from going up for millions of young Americans, President Obama on Friday signed a sweeping $871 billion bill extending Bush-era tax cuts and adding some $600 billion in stimulus, including a 2 percent payroll tax cut for all working Americans and a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits. Both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid skipped the bill signing, making it clear that as far as Hill Dems are concerned, the president owns this bill, unlike healthcare. Guess who did show up …

Check's in the Mail - analysis of George W. Bush tax cut | Reason | Find Articles at BNET

Check's in the Mail - analysis of George W. Bush tax cut | Reason | Find Articles at BNET: "How the tax cut went from impossible to inevitable

Shortly after this double-issue lands in your mailbox, so too will a check from the federal government, ranging from $300 for singles to $600 for married folks. It's not a gift from the feds-it's your money, the result of a new 10 percent tax bracket. It's an income tax cut, effective this year."

NewsHour Extra: Bush's Tax Cut Plan - August 1, 2001

NewsHour Extra: Bush's Tax Cut Plan - August 1, 2001: "The checks are part of the 2001 tax law President Bush signed in early June that is supposed to help the economy by making people spend more. That law directed the Treasury Department to send out certain amounts of money called tax rebates to taxpayers across the country."

McConnell: Dems will cave on tax cuts

He’s right about that!! 

This issue creates hate toward the Pres with Dems.  No problem however.  In the election he’ll explain that he wouldn’t let the unemployed go without, and that it was worth the deal to ‘cave in’ to the Millionaire’s tax cut to prevent further hardship.

 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) predicted that Democrats would give in to Republican demands on extending the Bush-era tax cuts, just one day after Republicans killed a Democratic plan to extend cuts for low- and middle-income Americans. "It's pretty clear now that taxes are not going up on anybody in the middle of this recession," McConnell said.

Tax Cut Extension: The GOP’s Fiscal Time Bomb - The Daily Beast

Tax Cut Extension: The GOP’s Fiscal Time Bomb - The Daily Beast: "“We knew that, politically, once you get it into law, it becomes almost impossible to remove it,” says Dan Bartlett, Bush’s former communications director. “That’s not a bad legacy. The fact that we were able to lay the trap does feel pretty good, to tell you the truth.”
As the vote approached in the summer of 2001, the Senate had just flipped to Democratic control when Jim Jeffords defected from the GOP. Had the tax breaks been made permanent—or even extended beyond Sept. 30, 2011—the fledgling Bush administration would have had to muster a 60-vote Senate majority under the so-called Byrd Rule, named for master parliamentarian Robert Byrd. (The final version, cutting taxes by $1.35 trillion, garnered 58 votes.) And by moving up the expiration date by nine months, the Bush team saved $100 billion and made the bill’s deficit-busting impact appear smaller."