Tax the Corporations Directly and the People Indirectly

[Keith Broaders]

INDIVIDUAL INCOME TAX RATES

CORPORATE INCOME TAX RATES

Taxing income is and always has been unconstitutional. Individuals have God given rights that include the right to life, liberty and property. When a person trades his labor for another man's money is not income. Income is the profit that one earns from corporate activity.

Corporations do not have rights because they are legal fictions created by governments. The do not have rights, they have privileges. I think that Congress should stop taxing the people and should increase the tax rates on corporations to over 50%. This would motivate many of the owners of corporations to become sole proprietorships.

Sole proprietorships would have a substantial advantage over corporations and would make it very difficult for the corporations to compete. One of the main functions of the Federal government is to protect the individual's lives, liberty and property from the abuse of power by corporations.

Giving a corporation a tax deduction for bribing Congressmen is a stupid idea. Corporation can't vote and they should not be allowed to donate money to elect candidates. Only individuals have rights and corporation have their power diminished.

A Corporate CEO should be taxed at the same rate as the corporations that employ them. Employees of corporations would also be subject to income tax because the money they receive is derived from corporate activity. Individuals that are not employees of corporations would not pay income tax while corporate employees would be subject to the income tax.

[Keith Broaders]

Terry,

You are correct. The FAIR TAX would be a much better system of taxation. I think that we need to explore ways to control the abuse of power by corporations. We need to give sole proprietors advantages over corporations. By Frankly I think that we should consider abolishing all corporations.except those that are non-profit corporations.

[Christopher A. Brown]

Absolutely:

----" I think that we need to explore ways to control the abuse of power by corporations. "----

Through Article V corporate personhood can be removed. Through Article V the fraudulent 1871 contract can be abolished. Through Article V the onerous and abusive treaties of GATT and NAFTA can be rescinded.

Corporations that do anything which compromises the law or the people's perceptions of lawful, will gain no privileges, and disappear in a cloud of bad business.

Non profits are largely fraud and lend to a complacent, ignorant population that is made to feel an annual donation to a non profit will protect important status of things vital. They are led to believe they don't have to know or do anything. Some are okay, but the overall status of all of them should be subject to annual review by voters. Perhaps this is a good application of direct democracy.

Through preparatory amendment, free speech can be un abridged, then the people will learn.

[John Gaver]

As I pointed out earlier, the USA desperately NEEDS the large corporations.

Without big corporations, based in the USA, we would be buying our fighter aircraft, missiles, tanks and other military hardware from foreign sources. Suddenly, when we need it most, a fighter pilot would command a missile to fire at a Chinese plane and instead of firing, it would detect that the target was Chinese and blow up without leaving the plane.

Without big corporations, our bridges and large buildings would be built to Chinese or Russian standards. In China, it's a national pass-time for construction companies to find ways around standards. In both China and Russia, political payoffs are far worse than anything that most Americans could even dream of.

Already, half of the U.S. companies that I knew as I was growing up, have either moved offshore or been bought by an offshore company and much or all of the production of those companies has moved offshore.

About 15 years or so ago, Stanley tools, in an effort to stay competitive, WITHOUT moving jobs offshore, voted to move their domicile to Bermuda (their home office would effectively become a lawyer, and a secretary in Bermuda). They needed some way to remain competitive with their foreign competition. They chose saving on taxes, instead of moving jobs offshore. But the union leadership, fearing a loss of power, went ballistic, and lied to workers, telling them that Stanley was moving their jobs offshore. Such statements were the exact opposite of what Stanley was trying to achieve. In the end, Stanley held another vote that rescinded the original vote and kept their domicile in the USA. Today, they have more than 40,000 offshore employees. So the union leadership kept their U.S. power and Americans lost jobs. But getting back to the point, Stanley's attempt to move their domicile offshore showed that they preferred to keep jobs in the USA. So if we stopped taxing corporations and went to the FairTax, companies like Stanley would likely move many or all of those jobs back to the USA.

Also consider that the vast majority of what you call "abuse of power by corporations," is related to their lobbying for and getting huge INCOME TAX breaks. When you enact the FairTax, you eliminate the income tax and consequently, eliminate 80% of all lobbying activity in DC. That leaves very little opportunity for corporations or unions to use their position of power against individuals. There will still be lobbying for military contracts and environmental issues. But under the FairTax, tax lobbying, that makes up 80% of all lobbying activity in DC will vanish, along with the IRS.

[Keith Broaders]

According to Walter Burien the government earned in excess of 5 trillion dollars last year on investments. When you add the revenue generated from taxes we had 7.5 trillion dollars in total revenue from all sources.The United States spent 3.8 trillion and had a surplus of 1.2 trillion dollars. Why do we need the central government to tax us at all when they are all ready generating a profit.

[John Gaver]

Keith, please cite the source that Burien used. His numbers are way off from what the CBO (or any other reputable source) calculated.

The CBO shows a $642 Billion deficit, not a $1.2 Trillion surplus. In fact, I have researched this subject for my books for some years and find the idea that the U.S. government has a surplus to totally be preposterous.

This would be great news, if it were true. But even using the trickiest math and excluding things like interest on the debt, Social Security Trust Fund repayment and other real debt, it's just not possible to get the deficit anywhere close to zero, let alone, turn it into a surplus.

[Morton Thomson Jr.]

Keith,

Corporations are tax code creations. Sole Proprietors, Non-Profits, these are all tax code words. Let's just refuse to cooperate in any way with these bastards especially in reference to the income tax and their code words. It all starts when you fill out your S-5, Application for an SSN. I was told that it was "Required". I was seventeen and legally unable to sign anything in reality. But let's not let THAT get in our way. Forget the fact that we were all told that it was required or that I was too young or too stupid to know better. It is supposedly voluntary. That means OPTIONAL as in NOT required. Why were we all told it was? Is that not fraud against a minor? Constructive Fraud? Face it Keith, there is no way to work within the system to make this better. The system itself is too broken and corrupt and evil. Remember, Jesus was not just a carpenter, he was a tax protester. He would not have approved of any "Fair Tax" on incomes. As to the supposed surplus you mention, I'm sure they'll find ways to waste it without a single beneficial outcome. That's what they do with all the money. Waste it. and p.s. its (already) not (all ready).

[John Gaver]

Morton, the FairTax is NOT a tax on income. It is a sales.

An income tax is a tax on productivity, whereas a sales tax is a tax on consumption.

An income tax discourages investment and encourages spending now, whereas a sales tax encourages investment and discourages spending till a later time.

With an income tax, the taxpayer doesn't get to choose when he pays tax, since his money is taxes when he earns it. On the other hand, with the FairTax, the taxpayer gets to choose when he pays his taxes. Necessities are not taxed, due to the prebate. If he buys a new car this year, he pays tax on that car this year. If he waits a few years to buy his new car, he doesn't pay tax till he finally buys that car. That means that his savings that would have been paid to the government in income tax, has been earning interest all that time, so he can buy a nicer car or choose to keep more of that money in savings. It's now HIS choice of when to pay tax, not the government's mandatory "Give it to us now" obligation.

[John Gaver]

Oops! the first line of my last post should have ended "sales tax" not just "sales".

[Terry Trussell]

To clarify our conversation, I would like to offer a thought: All POWER comes only from God and resides (temporarily) only in man. Corporations cannot abuse power, because they have none. Government has no power, either. Government acts under our Authority as our agent and that authority is limited in time and scope depending on the duties they are entrusted to perform.

I have owned businesses all my life. Some were corporations, some were sole proprietorships, some were LLCs. Regardless the legal classification, my success or failure had nothing to do with my legal classification.

Perhaps to clarify the relationship between business and government, what people erroneously term 'Government Power' is misleading. What we frequently call power is just 'control'. I define 'Control' as 'influencing behavior through violence (or inappropriate reward) or the threat of violence (or promise of benefit'. (Control is appropriate with things and animals--never with people, unless they give their consent (as in military, or employment. or society).) Control, (limited in time and scope) is necessary for government to carry out it's assigned duties. (The same is true of businesses.)

In closing, abolishing all corporations (other than non-profits) will not solve anything. what we have to do is eliminate the unholy alliance between government and business through the use of income taxes. Fair Tax does that.

[Morton Thomson Jr.]

Yes Terry,

But that's the only thing does right and there are WAY better ways do the same thing and even do it better. We can talk if you wish. That's all. NO Fair Tax.

[John Gaver]

Morton, when you do a comparative point-by-point, goals-based analysis of all of the tax proposals, either in existence or proposed, you'll find that the FairTax far out-scores every other tax system. Nothing else comes close.

Check out "A ‘Goals-Based’ analysis of tax reform proposals" at:
http://TheRichDontPayTax.com/blog/?p=284

For a more detailed look at the damage that our current tax system is doing and how the various tax systems either hurt or help solve those issues, read, "The Rich Don't Pay Tax! …Or Do They?" at:
http://TheRichDontPayTax.com/

The FairTax benefits us in many ways, other than those that people generally think about. For example, it gives low income workers a 23% benefit in taxes over the illegal aliens with whom they currently compete for jobs. Also, since tax fraud is a function of how many real individual humans are willing to commit tax fraud, tax fraud would be reduced 14 fold, since the number of tax collection points (where a legally responsible human pays the government) would be reduced 14 fold. Under the FairTax, everyone pays tax. But since only retail businesses would remit tax to the government, under the FairTax, the number of responsible people willing to commit tax fraud would be reduced 14 fold. But since that significant reduction in taxpayers would make investigating tax fraud easier, even fewer people would be willing to even think about committing tax fraud. The list of advantages of the FairTax goes on and on. Check out the above links for more detail.

[Simon Leland]

Keith,

First of all MOST corporations are “essentially” sole proprietorships (SP).  However due to our out of control legal system we are forced to work as a Corporation.  Over 95% of Corporations in the US have less than 5 employees.  (Yea, let’s tax them!?!?! ref http://www.census.gov/econ/smallbus.html

Secondly, the IRS taxes SP twice…. The IRS has all the bases covered. 

With an indirect tax no one will protest the IRS, they will protest the Corporations (as we see now).  What we need is more of a flat tax and get all the non taxpayers paying tax, that we’ll have critical mass for a protest.  47% of American is not at all concerned with the tax system, and about 10% very concerned.

Most of all, how can some of you be so opinionated when you clearly don't have any of the facts?

I don’t even know why I’m writing in on this… the system is so far past fixing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbp6umQT58A

Simon