Tag Archives: taxes

National Sovereignty

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There’s sovereignty, and there’s sovereignty. Michael Graetz, in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, talked about the European Union’s extra-legal tax crime creation and its retroactive application of its newly minted crime to a number of multinational corporations. Interestingly, the “felonious” multinationals are American, so far.

These companies’ offenses? Tax agreements they entered into with the governments of Luxembourg and the Netherlands (and with Ireland…).

Graetz went into considerable detail about the nature of the so-called crimes in his piece. What’s interesting to me, though, is that these agreements were entered into in good faith on both sides: the multinationals on the one side and supposedly sovereign nations’ governments on the other side. However, the European Commission says it’s sovereign over these nations, and their solemn agreements cannot be allowed to stand.

This is the price of doing business—or trying to do business in good faith—with a fundamentally socialist polity—even if that polity has not the sovereign superiority it purports to arrogate to itself. On the other hand, this is the damage done by erstwhile sovereign nations surrendering even a part of their sovereignty to a supra-national construct.

Hillary Clinton’s Tax Proposals

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And she has lots of them. I’ll list her tax credit proposals here.

  • $1,200 to offset the costs incurred by a family member caring for an aging parent
  • $5,000, refundable (it’s paid even to those who aren’t paying any income tax), for out of pocket health costs
  • $1,500 “apprenticeship” for businesses who hire entry-level workers, per such hire
  • 15% of the value of bonuses paid out if businesses create employee cost-sharing programs, paid to those businesses
  • Unspecified amounts for low-income homeowners who install solar panels

She also wants to expand these extant wealth redistributing credits:

  • Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit
  • Work Opportunity Tax Credit
  • New Markets Tax Credit
  • American Opportunity Tax Credit
  • Wind, solar, ethanol tax credits

We don’t have enough pages to our tax code rules, you see, and we don’t have enough special exceptions to our tax rules and who pays—and who gets.

Never mind that none of this tax gerrymandering, none of this redistribution of OPM according to Progressive rules rather than the needs and wishes of those doing the earning, would be necessary with a low, flat rate tax code that admitted of no exceptions, no deductions, no credits, no loopholes, no gerrymandering; a tax code that would be used to fund government and not be abused for social engineering in accordance with Progressive demands.

Trust is a Two-Way Street

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Of necessity, trust must flow both ways. If one does not trust another, the other cannot rely on the one even to behave in a predictable manner toward that other, much less be trustworthy in turn.

The IRS has begun pushing 501(c)(3) nonprofits—the sort of nonprofits that the IRS has been caught targeting punitively conservative versions of—to give up the social security numbers of their donors.

Under the proposed rule, the IRS would create an optional filing for 501(c)(3) nonprofits. Those participating would, as part of their yearly report, turn over the Social Security numbers of any donors who give $250 or more to a charity in a given year.

The IRS’ claimed rationale for this is to simplify the ability of donors to claim the deductions on their tax returns by allowing the IRS to “verify” donors’ claims on their returns.

No. Since the IRS cannot be trusted by American taxpayers, it’s in no position to worry about the trustworthiness of an American taxpayer. There is no legitimate rationale for this “voluntary” reporting.

Further, for those who think this “optional” form of reporting will remain voluntary, I may know of some beachfront property north of Santa Fe in which you might also be interested.

Inversions

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Corporate inversions occur when a business in a high tax country gets bought out by a company in a low tax country and the bought-out company moves its own headquarters to the buyer’s country. This is occurring increasingly with American companies laboring under US’ usurious corporate tax code.

The Treasury Department—the Obama administration—demurs from these, and it has written, and it is writing more, rules to interfere with such moves. For instance,

The government still is working on tighter rules for a corporate tax-avoidance technique known as earnings-stripping and could release them in the coming months.

And this one:

One aspect of the rules, which limit companies’ ability to transfer foreign operations to a new foreign parent company, will apply to future transactions by all companies that completed inversions since Sept 22, 2014….

Such moves are things that a Progressive, Democratic Party-dominated government would love, but they’re anathema to liberty—interfering with the private decisions of American business owners as they do—and to a free market, which at the core of liberty.

The correct move, although it would restrict the personal power of government officials and their cronies and lobbyists, is to lower the corporate tax rates to globally competitive levels so that inversions of American companies become unattractive and so that other countries’ businessmen want to come here. With the job opportunities for Americans such additional businesses would represent.

There’s Sovereignty

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…and there’s sovereignty.

The European Union said it will require Starbucks Corp and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to pay tens of millions of euros in back taxes after ruling that tax deals they negotiated with two European governments were illegal….

Notice that. Supposedly sovereign governments negotiated contracts with businesses, and the European Union has said that those governments don’t have the authority—the national capacity—to make their own arrangements. In the particular case, tax contracts solemnly negotiated by Luxembourg and those two corporations are illegal because they don’t comport with the supra-national EU’s desire.

This is the Europe that the Progressive Democratic Party, the party of President Barack Obama; of Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton; of Democratic Party, and self-identified Democrat Socialist, Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders want us to be like.