Hillary Clinton's Estate Tax
You might have seen that Hillary Clinton has proposed a hike in the estate tax to 65% (it's currently at 40%). The estate tax is unlike other taxes because you are passing down something for your kids' benefit, not your own.
On one hand, you should be able to do what you want with your money, right? Why should the government, which has already taxed you on the income you earned, say that a certain use of your money is bad, and tax you on it again?
On the other hand, we already limit donations/money that could have harmful effects. For example, you're not allowed to give an unlimited amount to a political candidate. By giving your kids a large sum of money, you're disadvantaging everyone else who weren't lucky enough to have such wealthy parents. You're not going to make the world completely fair, but every step is helpful, right?
What do you guys think?
Source: WSJ
Off the top of my head, its the most egregiously immoral tax ever implemented.
Who're the ones who pay the estate tax? I can assure you, its not wealthy individuals who can afford to take advantage of tax law, such as the Clintons. Its everyone else who will be paying the estate tax.
If she was the one who'd be affected by the estate tax, she would have never proposed to increase it. I'm sure she'll make some asinine argument about the Trump kids getting a big inheritance, but I have no doubt that they won't be paying a cent in estate tax.
dead on as usual. currently 5.45 million is exempt, if she got her way it'd be 'only' 3.5 million that's exempt. how many people do you know that this will effect?
"I can assure you, its not wealthy individuals who can afford to take advantage of tax law, such as the Clintons. Its everyone else who will be paying the estate tax."
^ Above: moral grandstanding while trying to play the: "let's get real here people".
Uh, first of all it's 50% after the first $10mm, 55% after $50mm, and 65% after $500mm. F*ck anyone who's inheriting that much money, I truly do not care what happens to them.
It's actually everyone else who suffers when 3/4/5th generation wealth crowd out opportunities for talented members of the lower/middle class.
And we don't care what happens to you either, coreytrevor.
Even if I somehow made $100mm+, I'm not going to be weeping for my children if each additional dollar past $5mm is taxed in half. I would have hopefully given away most of it. How can that much wealth possibly be helpful to my child's development as a person?
most kids who inherit that much money aren't taking opportunities away from lower/middle class, they're living off of dividends & interest.
unless you're making a trickle down wealth argument, in which case we'll just agree to disagree.
.
estate taxes are good for one thing and one thing only: taxing the lazy and/or illiquid. there are myriad techniques you can use to zero out your estate tax burden if you plan ahead. if someone has to pay estate taxes on $500mm, they're probably worth a few billion.
also, you forgot to mention it's 0% for most americans (even if she lowers the exemption from $5.45mm per person to 3.5mm), do your research monkeys.
Why stop at 65%? I mean if they reasoning is to stop spoiled kids why not take everything but $100k?
Reality is its bullshit to tax money two and three times. Stopping spoiled kids isn't a reason to allow the government to just take excess wealth.
As for crowding out the little guy, that's the government, not Paris Hilton. Spoiled rich kids just pass away money, thereby fueling the economy. Government enlarges, sucks money from the economy and is used to manipulate for political gains.
I actually think it's even more simple than that--it's a wedge issue for Democrats. The estate tax has virtually no impact on federal revenue and as thebrofessor points out, most wealthy can use strategies to substantially reduce their tax liability, so it's not even accomplishing its stated goal of reducing wealth inequality. All it is is a wedge issue. Just like the whole "transgendered rights" thing has become a wedge issue for Democrats (at most, the issue impacts 0.6% of the U.S. population but has got about 20% of all political coverage). Just like "equal pay for equal work" is statistically discredited but is a wedge issue with disproportionate political coverage.
Democrats are f*cking brilliant at creating wedge issues.
"Traditional Marriage", "Anti-Sharia Law", pro-life, pro-guns for everyone in every circumstance, "Build the Wall", etc ,etc.
GOP doesn't fall behind in this issue at all Bub.
Here's an example; say you earn $100,000 in salary, you will take home $91,000 of that (your company pays $18,000 in taxes, even though you are only impacted by $9,000 of that), then come April 15th, depending on your total income, that $91,000 will become - for round numbers - $70,000. Now let's say that you invest that money modestly (6% annual returns) for a period of 12 years and die. This $70,000 investment has grown to $140,000 (not accounting for fees) and is part of a $3.5 portfolio that is subject to estate tax. After those 12 years of active money management this investment is halved back to its original amount. Then when your heir takes that money out of its investment to spend, they will be assessed capital gains taxes, and depending on where they live, probably 7-10% sales tax on whatever they buy with it.
So, on your original $100,000 in earnings, the government has collected more than $110,000 in taxes, and your heir winds up with roughly $65,000 of it to spend, despite all of the time and effort spent in growing it for your heir(s). Had you not invested it, your heir ends up with only $35,000 or so.
Ehhh that's not how estate taxes work, but I see your point. In your example someone with 3.5mm wouldn't pay any federal estate taxes because they're under the lifetime exemption amount.
I agree though, taxing people's money multiple times is horse shit
"By giving your kids a large sum of money, you're disadvantaging everyone else who weren't lucky enough to have such wealthy parents. You're not going to make the world completely fair, but every step is helpful, right?
What do you guys think?"
Wow, this is the most bleeding heart liberal post I've seen on WSO so far. You have got to be kidding me. It's impossible to make the world completely fair. There is no such thing as equality. You liberals are so fixated on a perfect equilibrium holier than thou equal distribution nonsense, completely contrary to what the most basic economic principles that was taught in your six figure tuition expense.
Raise estate taxes cut income taxes
I believe the fundamental purpose of the estate tax is to solve the growing issue of wealth inequality.
According to Thomas Piketty in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, "private wealth dwarfs national income and is concentrated in the hands of rich families who sat atop a relatively rigid class structure."
The divide between private wealth and national income is exacerbated by the fact that returns on capital (or wealth) are always greater than economic growth, thus the divide will forever increase unless a wealth tax normalizes the separation. The natural benchmark of this relationship is the historical returns per the S&P 500 vs GDP growth.
The purpose of taxation is not social engineering, though this is into what western society has devolved. Creating or increasing a "wealth tax" to erase the divide between the wealthy and unwealthy discourages saving and growing wealth, which is the exact opposite of a healthy economy. The great recession should illustrate what happens when people's propensity to spend outstrips their propensity to save. Government intervention in the economy has become exceptionally heavy handed lately, and the 72,000 page U.S. Tax code an instrument to drive the decision making of private citizens toward what the government considers proper. Sometimes those goals don't necessarily align with what most of the population would consider "proper".
+1.
Tax policy should be limited to funding government operations and not to encourage/discourage any particular behaviors.
You speak as though these are some type of scientific facts like 1 + 1 = 2. These ideas are merely your opinion not a devolution of society, and certainly not fact.
The people on this site have some of the most embarrassingly misinformed views on anything even tangentially related to economics.
Shortly,
All this wealth inequality is BS and is promoted by lazy people who want stuff for doing nothing.
Getting something for doing nothing promotes stupidity.
Earning money and creating wealth requires skills, even keeping wealth passed on by parents requires skills.
I have met many many wealthy people who were helping the poor and they would have helped them even more if they wouldn't be taxed like crazy. "Yes, sure, the solution is to tax more"... and this will only take us to an economical collapse.
"Wealth inequality" is not the issue, the issue is people think they have to get something for doing nothing.
You want a slice of the cake? Learn how to bake.
The laziness perspective applies itself to employment income, which I agree should not be taxed. The problem with not taxing estates is the simple fact that returns on capital out pace economic growth. Because of this relationship, someone earning employment income - no matter how hard they work - will never earn enough to equalize the return on capital of large estates. As a result, wealth distribution will increase regardless of work ethic.
You wrote that "The problem with not taxing estates is the simple fact that..." ... but they are already taxed 40%, which i already believe is a crazy number.
Do you have children? How many families worked hard all their lives to have something, a house a home to pass on to their children, to give them a safety net?
Would you take that away from your children?
Lets say, for example in the "Smith" family, parents have worked all their life and bought this beautiful homely house in a good and safe neighborhood which worth was 1 million dollars at the moment they died. The government comes in and says: Dear kids, could you please give us 650k(65%) before you get your house? And by the way you have 60 days to do it, if not, we take it. This is stupid. What if they don't have the money and now they lose their family home. The numbers are just an example, think of the logic of it.
And returns on capital are high because the market is inflated ARTIFICIALLY. The market, if left alone, is regulating itself.
Is all about supply and demand.
"I would as soon leave to my son a curse as the almighty dollar" Andrew Carnegie
I have no problem taxing the ultra wealthy. Yes, they earned their fortunes their hard work but in almost every situation it was due to the societal construct we have created. From a capital perspective its highly inefficient to have so much wealth be tied up in inheritance.
What I find funny, almost troubling, is taxes such as these impact 0.0001% of the population yet, often times in upwards of 50%+ are against them. The marketing machine that is the GOP is simply marvelous.
Has nothing to do with "GOP marketing" and has everything to do with a general sense of morality in that exists in the population as a whole. People look at this and see that the government is taxing peoples money 2, 3, 4 or more times and think that isn't how things should be.
I'd disagree. There are probably a minority of people in the camp you speak to but I'd argue the vast majority simply don't understand a lot of these to true ramifications of various tax polices. Case and point - we are on a fiance forum with people that should have an above average understanding of these topics...yet the original poster didn't even realize that the are major thresholds for inheritance taxes. Aside from this current example of tax raises, most times of you hear the GOP or Fox News for that matter taking on inheritance tax they don't speak to levels, just call it the "death" tax. People assume this effects them - it doesn't. People are sold on dream they too may be wealthy and this would effect them - statistically they won't. Its great marketing.
If you want to unpack the morality comment that is a major discussion that goes well beyond the scope of this one tax.
Well, we should elect people to figure out the most :efficient" use of capital and just confiscate it.
It only affects 0.0001% so that makes it okay ... got it.
To demonstrate the myth of wealth concentration caused by wealth transfer, take an example from the company I work for (broad numbers for demonstration purposes; not all facts are accurate).
89-year-old founder is worth something like $800 million today. He has 3 kids who will inherit his estate any day now (he's pretty sick).
Assuming just a little tax (based on tax strategies) his 3 kids get about $250 million each.
1 of the kids had no children (so that money will be disbursed to dozens of different family members down the line, totally depleting the wealth) but the other two had 5 children combined. Let's look at one estate and say in the next 20 years that $250 million estate increases to $700 million.
Now 3 kids in the one estate 20 years from now (in their early 60s) inherit about $215 million each after some taxes (which is about $145 million in 2016 dollars, adjusting for inflation).
Well, each of those 3 grandchildren has 3 kids. So let's say that $215 million per estate increases to $550 million per estate in 20 years. Now those 3 great-grandchildren in the single estate line will inherit about $170 million each after some tax 40 years from now, which adjusted for inflation is about $77 million in 2016 dollars.
So you can see how this is going. The patriarch is worth about $800 million today. In 40 years, adjusted for inflation, his great-grandkids will inherit about $77 million each in 2016 dollars. Repeat this process over the course of about 100 years and you'll see why the wealthiest Americans today are largely not from inherited wealth. You simply cannot grow your wealth enough to split it in 2s, 3s, and 4s and maintain the same level of wealth.
Aren't you forgetting the massive return on capital the estates will have? First of all, the estate is still staying within the family and therefore should be looked at in aggregate (similar to how financial statements within a corporate structure are consolidated).
If we instead say the estate is taxed 33% to $250 mm, the estate could be worth $663 mm earning a crappy annual return of 5% over 20 years. If there was no tax, a $750 mm estate split between 3 children would be worth ALMOST $2 BILLION! You are arguing that wealth inequality is solved through having kids? If anything all estates should grow (with no tax) given that the average number of kids per family is 1.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm arguing. The average number of children per household isn't 1--among married couples it's about 1.8. Among the super wealthy, it's probably more (given their resources to care for the kids), from my observations (although I can't find the stats).
And there is a lot of stuff we're both leaving out. Divorce destroys family wealth. And many wealthy people choose to give away substantial sums of their estates to charitable causes.
Reality simply bears this out. The richest families in America in 1916 are not the richest families in America in 2016. Look at Forbes' list of the wealthiest Americans. The vast, vast majority are first generation super wealthy.
It's basic math with a few simple assumptions.
exactly, lol
“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires" Adam Smith - The Theory of Moral Sentiments
An estate tax is good. The laws which are being tossed around aren't hurting the billionaires or centimillionaires that much.
If you have $100MM and only get to pass down $50MM, I'm sorry, but that's generational wealth which (if not being stupid) will last forever.
Did you pass a basic math class? Or did you major in logical fallacies? What you just said is complete horseshit.
I wonder if feudal lords had their serfs defending them this vigorously when they were chatting about politics in the fields/stables/mills.
Likely yes, what modern society seems to conveniently forget about that period of history is that serfs traded a lower position in life for physical protection. I am not saying it was a voluntary or a good trade. But there was a trade of goods and services.
Sure, like slaves traded a lower position in life for having someone else worry about their food and shelter
tax non-profits is my platform. if you think when trump passes his estate will be taxed to the full extent of the law, you're a fucktard. did no one here look at the panama papers, offshore tax havens, etc.??
The estate tax is a penalty for being financially imprudent.
Certain tax loopholes (that I'm sure Hillary Clinton is well aware of) would need to be closed before anyone actually pays 65% or anything.
As far as the estate tax in itself goes, it really is the most fair way to raise tax revenue. 1) It sucks a lot less than busting your balls 80 hours a week and being taxed at a higher rate as a result. Hopefully higher estate taxes = less income tax. 2) Not to go all "bleeding heart" but it really would be good for the economy and society as a whole to stop generations of excessive wealth hoarding. 3) If you have enough inheritance money that your estate is being taxed at 65% then you have to absolutely suck as a person to not maintain wealth for the rest of your life.
Amen. What these dumb supply-siders always neglect is that the wealth that sits at the top echelons of society is what you said, hoarded. Poor people don't save their money (as much), so it gets injected back into our consumer economy at a much faster rate. Also it seems pretty likely that crime is correlated to inequality, look no further than Brazil or South Africa, mansions next to tin shacks. It's easier to have a functioning society when there is an increased chance for social mobility and less jealousy overall.
alright guys, everyone here is missing the point. if you're in favor of more redistribution, you should be in favor of legal reform, not tax reform. here's why:
let's say I'm worth $100mm, roughly even split between liquid investments and brofessor, LLC, of which I'm the sole shareholder.
I've decided that I don't give a shit as long as I pass down around 70mm. I buy a life insurance policy in an irrevocable life insurance trust and basically forgo my salary to pay the premiums. when I die, the IRS taxes my shares of my business at 50%, but my life insurance pays to my trust (remember another trust also holds the other $25mm interest in the business), so my $50mm doesn't dwindle at all on that side.
on the liquid side, I give roughly $5.5mm to my wife via trust tax free, leaving me with a $44.5mm taxable estate. now assuming I'm smart and moved to a state with no estate taxes, my bill is 50%, so if that leaves me with roughly 27-28mm between my wife's trust and the after tax value of my liquid estate, add the $50mm business interest, and I've achieved my wealth distribution goal.
the IRS gets a little under $50mm in taxes, but my estate only went down a touch, and that's not even with advanced planning. with some GRATs, charitable trusts/foundations, and lifetime gifting, I could effectively reduce my taxable estate to $0.
very few people worth this much money want to pass on 100% of their estate, but what this group seems concerned about is locking up money for multiple generations. in my example, I would've taken 1 of 3 approaches:
1 is a surefire way to have the money get spent, so your wealth redistribution gets accomplished unless the kids are financially savvy, in which case I'd argue they're probably contributing to the economy
2 is much more common, and all this does is delay the inevitable. a kid who finds out he has a trust (and usually these things pay out income + scheduled distributions at various ages) will either decide to sit on his ass and try to live off dividends & one off distributions (in which case they money is spent and goes back into the economy) or the kid decides that it's not worth depending on, and he should seek gainful employment and become self sufficient (in which case they're contributing by paying income taxes or starting a business & creating jobs). anecdotally, this is the most common technique I've seen unless there's a history of drug abuse or some unique family issues
3 is what this board is likely upset about. basically the decedents never actually give the money to the heirs, but make them lifetime income beneficiaries of a trust, from which they can take income & occasional distributions. it's much less likely for this money to be squandered simply because it's so restrictive. once the original heirs die, the trust will have provisions for subsequent generations. if it goes to blood line relatives, eventually the family will get so big that the distributions will cripple the trust and it will likely get broken up due to small trust provisions. if the family is smart, they'll turn it into a foundation like the duPont family (started in 1935, grown from 40mm to roughly 5bn) and it will carry on forever.
don't go after estate taxes, because they're avoidable if you're willing to do some work, but most families (as I've illustrated here) can still pass on meaningful sums of money while still paying estate taxes. if you really want wealth distribution, go after the legal system. by allowing people to control money beyond the grave, you impede redistribution of wealth.
FWIW, I'm vehemently opposed to this. I'm a firm believer that most money eventually gets passed down anyway because very little family money makes it past the 2nd (even the 1st) generation of heirs because of overspending/poor financial decisions.
This is an irrelevant issue as, like the brofessor said, most people simply do not pay the estate tax (not being rich enough, generation skipping trusts, various other loopholes). She is pandering to her populist/ socialist base (thanks Bernie).
Good point, Hillary Clinton is not at all as liberal as she pretends to be. She's a pretty ardent capitalist at heart. I think closing tax loopholes is a much more effective and smoother idea in the long run than jacking up tax rates to incredible heights just so the people who they are meant for dodge them anyway.
People are not being taxed twice.
Example: Billy gets taxed throughout his life by a Capital Gains tax.
Billy's son gets taxed (theoretically) by an estate tax. Billy won't get taxed again. Billy is dead.
Billy's son pays tax because he won the rich parent lottery, pretty much like winning a real lottery. Even if the estate tecnically pays the tax (true in many countries) the effect is on Billy.
Complaining that the money is being taxed twice is akin to complaining that you got taxed for your income and then, after you buy a house, the realtor also got taxed when he or she got the commission.
Seems like everyone arguing against the estate tax just automatically assumes we live in a perfect world and the capital owned by the wealthy is allocated efficiently and spurs economic growth.
In reality, we live in a world of low interest rates awash with central bank liquidity, and this additional capital is unnecessary and doesn't fund any additional corporate investments that lead to economic growth, but just serves to pump up asset prices. I'd much rather have a high estate tax to prevent dynasties of wealth from forming, and for the government to pump this money into the economy as fiscal stimulus to boost consumption through the money multiplier and reduce wealth inequality. less income inequality leads to an increase in Consumption as lower classes spend a much higher proportion of their income than the wealthy do. This seems like a much better outcome for society than letting already wealthy capital owners control an even larger portion of the countries wealth
Smithers: What are you gonna do with your million dollars?
Mr. Burns: Throw it in the pile, I suppose.
Clinton Tax Plan (Originally Posted: 10/23/2016)
I thought I would write about the Clinton tax plan!
Seeing as how she is probably going to be president, we should start thinking about it.
So here are all the planks in the plan, which I cribbed from the Tax Foundation. My responses in italics are below each.
Could be worse. Could have been Bernie! But still, this will take the top marginal rate into the stratosphere among developed countries.
This one is a killer. Some people will actually welcome this, noting that the merely affluent pay high taxes on W- 2 income while the truly wealthy pay a lower rate on cap gains and dividends. This will certainly equalize things. But it calls into question the whole point of preferential rates on investment income to begin with. We want to encourage capital formation. This does the opposite.
Nickel-and-diming people. I would day that this is a good thing, as it gets us closer to a world without deductions, but not really.
Probably the worst part of the whole tax plan. Who holds a stock for 6 years? Exactly. For a long time, taxes on investment activity were taboo. No more. I wonder if we’ll go back to the days of 70% dividend taxes in the Carter years
The Romney Rule.
Sorry guys.
Makes the system, yet again, more progressive.
More progressive. And day care costs just went up 20%.
As far as other tax changes go, I’ll give you some of the highlights:
LOL
Another killer, though I doubt anyone will ever pay that 65% rate.
Wow, I cannot think of a worse idea. Even Bernie couldn’t dream this up. This is going to take a bad situation (family member dies) and make it much, much worse.
So ZeroHedge readers are now Hillary voters?
This tax analysis has been brought to you by the letter T and the number 63, which is going to be your marginal rate if you live in New York City. But like I said at the beginning...coulda been worse. But the trend is your friend. Or not your friend. They will go up again in 2020. That much I am certain of. Actually it’s brought to you by the letter M, for More complexity.
Mod Note (Andy): This post is a reprint from the October 17th edition of Jared's Daily Dirtnap Newsletter. If you'd like to read more, WSO readers qualify for a $100 discount to his Daily Dirtnap daily market newsletter...just email [email protected] and mention "WSO Monkey Discount". You can follow Jared on twitter at @dailydirtnap..
I lol'd
do you really somehow believe all the polls are lying?
I always have to laugh at these things, because the president doesn't pass tax law, congress does. while I'm sure they can influence their party to do what they want, you'd be high to think that this goes through exactly as is.
the cap gains one is the one that irks me the most, followed closely by taxing unrealized gains at death. that's retarded
The cap gains tax shows that people clearly don't know a balance sheet from a balance beam. Not Hillary though; her whole political career has swayed like a balance beam.
I agree with you on the cap gains proposal. I also am rather annoyed by the proposal to limit tax-advantaged account balances. That's very irritating. On the capital gains proposal though I believe the scale that is referenced from the Tax Foundation only applies to the top tax bracket. The LT cap gains rates for the other tax brackets look pretty similar to today's.
Good read, thanks for breaking this down.
Agree with you entirely on the deductibles rule. Tax codes in general are far too complex and have too many intricacies. I get that the reason for all the different rules and deductions is that they were simply tacked on to the existing code when a new situation came up but it's getting ridiculous. Both in the US and the UK, some politician needs to just go ahead, tear the whole thing up and rewrite it. If you can't fit a personal and corporate tax code on 2 sides of A4 (each), then it's too complicated.
Also on those marginal rates, be grateful yours are still fairly low! My marginal rate is 51% currently and I'm not even a high earner.... 60% marginal rate is not uncommon in the UK once you take into account various reliefs being removed.
Limits on tax deferred / tax free accounts are similar to what we have here, and frankly they are stupid. Sure, you don't want people socking away 50%+ of their income into a tax-refundable account, but who trusts the government not to tax you on the way out on money you've already saved post tax in 30+ years time...?
Our economy--the economies of most of Western civilization--is starting to run into the law of diminishing marginal returns but for whatever strange reason there is a segment of voters (and of well educated and otherwise intelligent political leaders, a la Hillary Clinton) who want to ensure that the United States never enjoys 3-4% GDP growth again. I especially don't understand the left's particular animosity for capital investment--that, to me, is the real head scratcher of the last century. Why would you want to discourage capital investment?
Just using an everyday example, the organization I work for has had all kinds of offers to purchase one of our rundown apartment buildings in a bid to renovate and reposition the property. Instead of taking these healthy offers and redeploying that capital back into the economy, the egregious capital gains taxes are preventing this redeployment of capital. Why would society want to discourage this type of capital investment? To even the score or something?
Does no one realize that this shit takes far more than just the president to pass? It doesn't even matter if the Senate goes to the Democrats. All things relating to taxation, revenues, and budgeting are required by law to originate in the house of representatives and no one expects that to be turned over the the Democrats.
just six years ago dems had senate, house and presidency ... it could definitely happen again in the next eight if we have Hillary for that long
although, I am sure it would be an anomaly for a the sitting presidents party to take congress
Honestly not much of this matters, she'll never get more than maybe 1-2 of these passed. More than anything these proposals just act as lip service. They don't get to the heart of any problem people think taxes will fix. Banks will act the same way. Wealthy people will invest less. The deficit would still exist.
If any of these proposals were for a specific reason other than making people "feel good", like "this is what is needed to stop the deficit" or "this tax will directly, fully fund starving children", I may have less of an issue with them. But any extra revenue gained from these changes would just get lost in the bureaucracy, and we'd never get it back.
I tend to disagree that this doesn't matter because she won't get this passed. As the leader of the Democratic party, Hillary Clinton can shift the party's ideology for a generation as Barack Obama has done (Obama has brought the party hard left). Establishing this tax policy as core Democratic party policies means that they will become priorities should the Democrats take all 3 branches of government in the next 20 years or so.
I don't think there is any stupid commentariat than that of Zerohedge. Bunch of in-bred retards.
Imagine the people who bought gold in 2009 thinking there would be hyperinflation because they read that on ZH. Lol.
5 is really perplexing. There is already a limit on how much you can contribute. I don't see what the problem is and how they could change that given that it's rewriting the rules of the game.
Well as he said "Romney rule" i.e. Just trying to close that loophole for optical reasons not that anyone besides mitt Romney used it
Anyone watching the debate?
"We will have what economists call 'middle out growth'"
How long would it take both candidates to jerk off the entire room? Tip to tip.
Trump: Listen, however long it takes, I would absolutely be faster and better than slow-job Hillary - if she did it right, Bill wouldn't have gone off looking elsewhere. I give the best, I mean it, THE best hand jobs. I will give everyone in the room the most unbelievable hand jobs - I will satisfy everyone like you wouldn't believe. And I will do it with these big hands that little Rubio is totally jealous of. That guy can't stroke for shit.
Hillary: Trust me, working Together we will get you to reach climax if I can get my Parkinson's hands to calm down after listening to my opponent's dangerous rhetoric
Is this 63% marginal rate referring to those with income of $5MM+?
doubtful, probably his estimate of fed + state + NYC city taxes
saw this on twitter today, thought I would share.
Goldman should create a new ETF with a basket of all the companies that paid Hillary for speeches....
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-03/every-hillary-and-bill-clinton…
;-)
In all seriousness, if I were an investor I'd be livid over the fact that the people I have charged with managing my money are spending 6 figures of MY MONEY on a speech from ANYONE unless, of course, I understood that the expectation was that my company was legally purchasing influence with influential present, former, and/or future government officials. There is no other rational business reason that a for-profit company would drop that kind of cash on a 45-minute speech, especially on Hillary Clinton, who is neither charismatic nor interesting (I could at least kind of partially understand paying Bill Clinton given that he is widely considered charismatic and entertaining).
Thank God here in Switzerland we have no capital gains tax! The US tax system is a joke.
The US tax system is a goddamn joke. The tax code should be one page. You should never need an army of lawyers for tax preparation. Make the taxes reasonable. Then get out of the goddamn way and let American ingenuity, drive, and creativity flourish. Yet the tax code gets increasingly more complex. And this is all while new business formation in the US is slowing down dramatically.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/2015/02/12/the… http://www.wsj.com/articles/sputtering-startups-weigh-on-u-s-economic-g…
I personally know friends in NE who are reluctant to expand their small businesses because of the complexity and unfriendliness of the tax code.
It's mind-boggling when people think that if they increase and/or complicate taxes, people will not be discouraged. That's not the case at all. The complexity of the tax code alone (not even talking about the levels) can easily discourage people from opening new businesses, making investments, growing, etc. How this is not obvious is unreal.
No matter which clown gets in, it will be a further demonstration there is zero fundamental ideological difference between the two main parties. Neither Trump or Clinton will touch entitlements or the military, which combined are roughly 77% of federal expenditures. Even Trump cannot list a single federal agency/department/program he'd like to be eradicated, so there goes the hopes of the remaining 23% of waste being cut. Tax cuts would be great, but without a corresponding spending cut they are merely deferred tax increases with interest. Want my prediction? No matter who gets in, no matter who controls Congress: 1) debt will increase 2) unfunded liabilities will increase 3) taxes will increase 4) regulations will increase. Despite changes in control of the WH/Congress the past 30 years, this has been the trend - it makes no sense to expect this to alter its course in any material way now. The US will continue to punish success, reward idiocy, and makes itself far less competitive in the world.
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