Posts Tagged ‘IRS’
Are you sure that paying taxes is an American civic duty?
Surveys would show that over 90% of US citizens claim that paying taxes is a civic duty, and that they do pay taxes out of civic duty…Is that claim true in reality?
Beside the salaried and wage workers who have no choice in paying taxes according to Congress tax laws, since their taxes are automatically withheld from every pay check, almost all “non-farm proprietor income”, meaning the self-employed in liberal jobs, small owners of enterprises, owner of restaurants… under report their real income by 60%, an amount estimated to generate over $70 billion in unpaid taxes.
The tax gap (difference between tax owed and tax actually paid) is about $350 billion, or one-fifth of all taxes collected by the IRS, or $1,000 for every man, woman, and child…
The IRS job is executing Congress tax laws, requiring tax payers to comply. The IRS role is to “help the large majority of compliant taxpayers with tax law, while ensuring that the minority who are not unwilling to comply, pay their fair share…”
The IRS barely audit 20 out of 1,000 taxpayers per year: Congress is not about to fund this institution in order to investigate and target the big fishes. Consequently, chances is that you may not be audited in decades if the tax gap is not outrageously obvious or your business is not classified as Red for potentially prone to tax cheating and evasion.
The IRS should be investing most of its efforts on the big fishes that can afford to hire teams of tax lawyers and “tax experts” in locating loopholes as large as Oregon. However, the IRS claim not to have the means to confront legal and protracted tax battle with the big fishes, who are generally backed by powerful politicians….
Actually, the big fishes are the ones sustaining the budgets allocated to State and Federal institutions, meant to be squandered for self-interest and self-serving objectives… For example, in 1986, Congress passed the tax law, which was instigated and suggested by tax employee John Szilagyi six years earlier, that required to list children’s Social Security numbers. In that year, 7 million children vanished from the tax rolls, saving $3 billion a year in tax revenue.
The gist of the matter is that any government, if it will to be serious in considering citizens at equal footing in rights and responsibility, can collect every dime it owes and block any loopholes for cheating opportunities. For example, forcing the employed people to automatically pay every month…Tax laws are political in nature, and if you think that not every one is paying his fair share in taxes, how national civic duty stand?
Conversely, educated and engaged citizens who reclaim fair and equitable election laws and tax laws, can defeat any powerful governmental institution.
Note: Inspired from Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner
Hardworking Mina on a war path
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 12, 2010
Hardworking Mina on a war path; (Apr. 12, 2010)
Eleven years ago, Mina found a job weaving carpet in Morocco. Her more “experienced” co-worker incited Mina to check with syndicate for membership and was chased out beaten. Mina then paid a visit to the work inspector who let the owner of the factory on Mina visit. The boss convoked Mina and treated her worthless whore with no sense of loyalty: Mina was supposed to appreciate the boss as a “father figure” and then she was dismissed. For 6 months Mina could not find work in the same city: all the bosses were informed of Mina’s “disloyal” behavior.
Mina worked for 10 years weaving carpets and then had hone of her wrists broken. Mina was dismissed with no compensation or even for covering medical expenses. Mina worked and was paid daily and had no papers or documents as a working citizen. Her highly educated friend, Fatima Mernissi, paid Mina a visit to the hospital and then mindlessly suggested to Mina to have recourse to the work inspector. Mina got in a state of anger and frustration and threw her veil to the ground and replied: “Fatima, you are very educated but I am no stupid” and she told her friend the story of her work conditions. Mina resumed: “Allah is my defender, my work inspector, and my syndicate. God said “if any of my servants asks for my intervention then I will be by his side”. May Allah hear my demands; I want the factory burned down and the boss broken to pieces”
A few nurses barged in to cool down the shouting and Mina chased them out saying: “If you don’t leave immediately then I will add your names to the list of the work inspector and the syndicate.” In Mina’s mind, the incidences that she experienced 11 years ago with the work inspector and the syndicate are still valid: nothing has changed since then in the relationship of workers and bosses and control institutions. Mina’s assumptions might be correct but lack of stable and equitable institutions drove Mina from a rational thinking person to an extremist “khawarej” attitude: she wouldn’t mind taking the most extreme of measures if supported in her frustration.
Extreme codification of life behaviors, even in developed States with strong central institutions, to controlling and managing people generate extreme reactions in periods of civil unrest. For example, the USA is witnessing terrorist acts (kamikaze) by its citizens against targeted institutions such as the Pentagon and the IRS (tax revenue) offices. It appears that the life of little people is extremely codified in developed States but the barons of industries and elite classes get off with a slap on the wrist: huge loopholes in laws for the barons and a justice system based on financial means is dooming little people for lack of serious justice.
At least, in Islamic world, people have this exit alternative to lamenting to Allah and have the right to ask Allah to chastise unjust people. Just figure a citizen in the developed States asking his God to burn and maim the boss: the boss might probably have a claim to drag to justice the disgruntled worker for incitement to physical hurt intentions.
Democracy in most of the developing States is a mystery with no corresponding physical application; democratic institutions are shells devoid of any democratic rights to individual responsibilities and serious participation. The UN Charter is a super law relative to human and civil rights and freedom of expressions but this charter is still the best kept secret to most students and adult people in developing States. In kindergarten, kids learn their religious laws but the UN super laws are not available or taught or even required to be exhibited.
Colonial powers didn’t practice their brand of democracies operating at home: as soon as a semblance of democratic institutions (such as parliament) were established that the colonial power flaunted it and disbanded it at the first free expressions of freedom, liberty, and equality. Even today, the former colonial powers have no interest of witnessing democratic institutions in the developing States as long as oil is available at low prices and the market for arms is booming. Bush Junior claimed that democracy had priority on his list of changes in the Greater Middle East! Bush Junior never was specific on what kinds of democracies he had in mind; anyway, the method he applied to invading Iraq in 2003 had nothing democratic about it! Saudi Arabia is still disseminating and financing terrorist tendencies and all the Arab despots kept their martial laws that were instituted 40 years ago.
Something on my life since I returned to Lebanon in 2000
The “suicidal” decision
My diary covers the period since 2004 but it includes basically many events in most of my life and my impressions and should be used to fill the gaps in my shortened autobiography.
At Re/Max I was doing fine with my associate Marlon, from the Philippine, and then I sold a property and the owners of Re/Max wanted the percentage on the bonus that the seller offered me and I got pissed off and asked a Real Estate lawyer I deal with to negotiate that bonus problem but I got no responses. I decided to pay Re/Max $7,000 for past dues instead of settling for the 30/70 cut on a commission; that was a huge mistake on my part and I paid dearly for it. I joined another Realtor in Gaithersburg as independent with a modicum monthly due but I had to change all my signs and posters and my business went downhill for the same hours of work and toil and misery.
And then surprise; finally after 7 years, the immigration got on my file as a political refuge applicant. My former lawyer had told me that if my file is not opened in that a six years lapse of time then I could apply for residency status; her information was not correct, I think. I had to visit the immigration office in Virginia for an interview; the case officer told me that I was entitled for residency after 20 years in the USA but as a political refuge case he has obliged to defer me to a judge and would not give me residency.
I was tired of fighting my case as a political refugee and I had not the financial means or the necessary support to linger any longer in the USA; I was practically sick and tired of my lonely life; I had lost or lacked any purpose there since my work in Real Estates was not saving me any money after the frequent expenses for promoting my line of business.
On a whim, I ordered my lawyer to ask for voluntary deportation. Consciously, I knew that this is the moment in my live that I decided “suicide” in the long term. There were no major opportunities in Lebanon and I was never fit to live and transact in the social fabric of Lebanon. I have always been introverted and could not be voluble as society would expect from me. I had no friends and I didn’t expect to have learned much on how to make friendship.
I sold my car for cheap $1,000 to my landlord and left him everything that I could not carry in two traveling suitcases, including the Japanese “futon” that I cherished, my expensive hair cutter and my cellular phone and everything in my lousy room. I made the mistake of leaving over $1,500 in the bank, an amount that the bank would not return to me on the tacit understanding that the government has taken the money to cover taxes due.
Adonis Diaries 