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Friday 26th of April 2024

1%ers say Happy days are here again The skies above are clear again So let's sing a song of cheer again Happy days are here again “Happy Days Are Here Again,” music by Milton Ager, lyrics by Jack Yellin © 2016 Kwiple.com
American plutocrats The Democratic party has been put on notice. If it picks a pro-tax candidate to take on Donald Trump next year, a billionaire will probably enter the US presidential race as a spoiler. Whether that is Howard Schultz, the former chief executive of Starbucks, or someone else, is secondary. Any third-party plutocrat would have the means to split the vote and enable Mr Trump's re-election. The inference is clear: a large chunk of America's plutocracy would risk a second Trump term to keep their taxes low. Edward Luce, Financial Times, Jan. 31, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say “Deductions” and “exemptions” aren't “subsidies” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say A “giant, beautiful, massive tax cut” for corporations will lead to higher wages for workers  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say I come from the poor people, and I have been here working my whole stinking career for people who dont have a chance, and I really resent anybody who says I'm just doing this for the rich – give me a break.  Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, fulminating at suggestions that  the 2017 tax bill, which he spearheaded through the Senate, favors corporations and the rich, including the late changes he introduced to greatly benefit Bob Corker, Donald Trump and other real estate developers, resulting in #CorkerKickback  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say I never saw the actual text.  Republican Senator Bob Corker, who said he'd never support a tax bill that raised the national debt by even $1, responding to critics after reversing himself and announcing he'd vote for the 2017 tax bill increasing the debt by $1,500,000,000,000 after a provision was added to reduce taxes on real estate developers like himself and the Trumps © 2017 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say Tax reform will protect low-income and middle-income households, not the wealthy and well-connected. They can call me all they want; it's not going to help. I'm doing the right thing, and it's not good for me. Believe me. Donald Trump September 27, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say We remain committed to supporting the communities in which we do business, and this includes paying a fair share of property taxes. From a press release issued by Target, which could just as well have been issued by Best Buy, Kohl's, Lowes, Walmart or other big-box retailers suing local governments to have their property taxes greatly reduced – especially small towns that can't afford to defend themselves against mulltinationals – on the basis of the “dark store argument,” which asserts that open stores should be taxed at the same rate as shuttered stores however far away or disastrous the effect on local police, firemen, schools, healtcare, etc. Quoted in Bloomberg Businessweek, December 12-18, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers At the beginning of 2014, according to the national balance sheets published by organizations such as the Federal Reserve … global household financial wealth amounted to about $95.5 trillion. Out of this total, I estimate that 8%, or $7.6 trillion, is held in accounts in tax havens. This is a large sum. Gabriel Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations  [$7.6 trillion doesn't include nonfinancial assets such as art, gold, jewelry or yachts. Other estimates are as high as $21 trllion.] © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Consider, first, the remarkable profitability of the global corporate sector. On the basis of data from 28,000 companies, a recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute shows corporate earnings before taxes and interest more than tripled from $2tn in 1980 to $7.2tn in 2013, rising from 7.6 per cent of world gross domestic product to almost 10 percent. Importantly, corporate net earnings after taxes and interest rose even more sharply. John Plender, Financial Times, Jan. 5, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Large-scale informality [untaxed jobs] has malign effects. … if every country in the world reduced its informal economy by 10% of GDP, back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that they would garner $1 trillion or so extra in tax each year. For comparison, economists reckon that roughly $200 billion of tax is lost each year because of crafty use of tax havens. Economist, October 15, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Percentage increase in the last year in the number of U.S. taxpayers who fear an IRS audit: 64 Number of successive years that the IRS has audited fewer people than it did the year before: 7  Harper's Index, June 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Percentage of income and wealth taxes in Norwary, Sweden and Denmark that are evaded each year: 3 That are evaded among the nations' top 0.01 percent of earners: 30  Harper's Index, October 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers The revised Trump plan would reduce the top individual income tax rate to 33 per cent and the corporate tax rate to 15 per cent. It would also eliminate the estate tax. The highest-income taxpayers – 0.1 per cent of the population, those with incomes over $3.7 million in 2016 dollars – would receive an average tax cut of more than 14 per cent of after-tax income. The poorest fifth's taxes would fall by an average of 0.8 per cent of taxed income. To those who hath, it shall be given. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, November 16, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Two decades ago, when Bill Clinton was elected president, the 400 highest-earning taxpayers in America paid nearly 27 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to I.R.S. data. By 2012, when President Obama was re-elected, that figure had fallen to less than 17 percent, which is just slightly more than the typical family making $100,000 annually, when payroll taxes are included for both groups. New York Times, December 30, 2015 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Cocks of the walk say Nobody knows more about taxes than me, maybe in the history of the world. Donald Trump © 2016 Kwiple.com
Cocks of the walk say That makes me smart. Donald Trump, responding to the allegation that he has paid no federal taxes for years © 2016 Kwiple.com
Corporate governance As Mr [Charles] Dumas argues in his book [Populism and Economics] this Victorian invention [limited liability] ensures that a company and its owners have only limited exposure to damaging consequences of their actions. Yet the implicit contract behind limited liability – companies pay tax in exchange for limited exposure – has broken down because globalisation has turned corporate taxes into an increasingly voluntary levy. Limited liability also contributed to excessive risk-taking in banking before the 2007-8 crisis. John Plender, Financial Times, July 26, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Corporate welfare Amazon's three data centers in Ohio received $82 million in tax incentives and created 120 jobs. Iowa recently awarded $200 million in tax breaks to Apple Inc. for two data centers outside Des Moines with 157 jobs promised between them. Bloomberg Businessweek, October 2, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Corporate welfare As the data centers' labor needs have shifted [from low- to high-skilled jobs], tech companies have begun breaking ground in less rural areas. New Albany, the wealthy suburb of Columbus, Ohio, where Facebook is putting a $750 million facility, has a poverty rate below 3 per- cent, an unemployment rate of around 4 percent, and a median household income of $196,000. Even so, Ohio is offering $371,000 in tax credits for each of the 100 full-time positions Facebook has promised there–none of which is likely to provide a lifeline to a laid-off factory worker. Bloomberg Businessweek, October 2, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Corporate welfare Congress grills flak clatchers from Facebook, Google and Twitter about subverting American democracy by enabling trolling by Russians in the 2016 presidential election and, shortly afterwards, plans to cut corporate tax rates nearly in half © 2017 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week … she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for a year. Paul Ryan, 11:51 AM - Feb 2018, extolling the munificent benefits bestowed on ordinary workers by the tax reform bill he championed  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Democrats Even the party’s most progressive field for a generation or two does not contemplate taxes that are European in breadth and depth. Pressed on this point, Democrats invoke the sage that was Willie Sutton. The criminal of yore targeted banks because, he said, with unanswerable logic, “That’s where the money is.” In a country with America’s titanic inequalities, the top 1 per cent is where the money is. It is the obvious percentile to press for revenue. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, February 26, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Democrats In targeting just the richest [1% for tax increases], Democrats rather imply that a welfare state is only worthwhile insofar as someone else pays for it. It is not an inherent good. It is not a nation's binding agent. In this sense, the Sanders and especially the Warren platform is a tacit concession to the Republican view of the world, with tax as a burden, not what the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes defined as “what we pay for civilised society.” The Democratic appeal is less to Nordic universalism and solidarity than to the noblesse oblige of a remote overclass who will not miss the money. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, Feb. 26, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Democrats What the US left appears to want is social democracy as understood by Robin Hood. It would tax astronomical wealth to fund popular programmes. It would not ask much more of the middle or even the upper middle classes. … This does, however, put them at some odds with the social democrats of Europe, who tax more citizens more heavily. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, February 26, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Free press I strongly hope that Donald Trump sues The New York Times for publishing his tax returns, just as I strongly hope that in the two debates to come, Donald Trump once again attacks Rosie O'Donnell and utters more gibberish. Any such lawsuit – which in all likeli- hood would be shot down by the courts on First Amendment grounds – is likely to further unravel the candidacy of man who is, among other disqualifying flaws, an enemy of a free press. Gabriel Schoenfeld, a lawyer who sued the New York Times for publishing news about warrantless wiretapping © 2016 Kwiple.com
Government Why will the state tend to grow faster than the economy? First, the economy needs a well-educated and healthy labour force. Second, the services supplied by the state are ones in which it is hard to raise productivity, which tends to make them increasingly expensive. Third, spending on transfers and health will rise with the proportion of the population that is old and infirm. Finally, higher spending on transfers and essential services is also what voters demand. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, November 13, 2022, © 2022 Kwiple.com
Hypocrites say If you were against President Obama's deficits, and now you are for the Republican deficits, isn't that the very definition of hypocrisy? Rand Paul, who voted for Trump's tax cuts © 2017 Kwiple.com
Income inequality A far simpler and much bolder approach [to reducing income inequality] … would be to set a new income maximum as a multiple of the existing minimum wage Any income above that multiple would face a tax of 100 percent. … A “maximum wage” set in this fashion would immediately intertwine the economic fates of society's poorest and society's most privileged. Sam Pizzigati, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Income inequality The total income reported on the top 400 individual tax returns rose 20% in 2014, according to Internal Revenue Service data released Thursday. The figures reveal the concentration of earnings at the pinnacle of the income distribution, in a club that required $126.8 million of adjusted gross income to enter. That group, out of nearly 150 million tax returns in 2014, received 1.3% of income … Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2016 — 400/150,000,000 = 0.000002667 of returns 0.000002667 × 100 = 0.0002267% of returns 1.3%/0.0002267% = 4,874, therefore, avg. 400 income = 4,874 × avg. taxpayer income © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary dynamic scoring (dī nam'ik scôr' ring), n. The process used to find the assumptions needed to “prove” that lowering taxes on the rich, lowering spending on the non- rich, and increasing spending on the military will benefit more people more than any other possible set of policies. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary e-commerce (ē'kom'ərs), n. Killer of jobs, killer of sales tax revenues, killer of local services, killer of local communities, incubator of inequality. © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary tax avoidance (taks ə void'ance), n. The most common and lucrative endeavor avidly pursued by the morally handicapped at the expense of the honest and honorable. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Abolish all subsidies and tax breaks for discovering, extracting, refining, distributing and exporting fossil fuels © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Amend the Constitution to prohibit using tax dollars to support private or religious schools © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Celebrate April 15 by anonymously filing an IRS Form 3949A, Information Referral, to report suspected tax law violations by 1a. Donald J. Trump 1c. June 14, 1947 1d. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue 1g. 37188 1h. President 1i. president@whitehouse.gov 1j. Married 1k. Melania Trump for failing to report personal income from □ Public/Political Corruption □ Kickbacks © 2017 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Collect FICA taxes on investment income as well as earned income © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Eliminate the taxable maximum for Social Security taxes © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Getting firms to bring money home by lowering taxes on profits earned abroad will richly reward shareholders and do little for anyone else © 2017 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say  If God exists,  Grover Norquist will be drowned in a bathtub © 2017 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Never forget #CorkerKickback © 2017 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Prohibit direct flights between the U.S. and tax havens © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Prohibit vessels registered in a tax haven from docking in the U.S. © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Raise both taxes and spending by the same amount © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Reform income taxes by 1- eliminating all deductions except for state and local taxes, 2- eliminating joint filing, 3- basing taxes on last year's median household income (MHI), 4- taxing income from all sources (IFAS), cash and noncash, at the same rate 5- expressing IFAS and after tax income (ATI) in MHIs, as follows: IFAS up to 1 MHI up to 5 MHIs up to 25 MHIs up to 50 MHIs up to 200 MHIs > 200 MHIs  Tax rate 10% 30% 40% 55% 75% variable  ATI 0.90 MHI 7.00 MHI 15.00 MHI 22.50 MHI 50.00 MHI 50.00 MHI  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Rename the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act the 2017 Package for Plutocrats  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Require American companies that relocate their legal domicile abroad, regardless of the reason for doing so or the method used, to reimburse the federal, state and local governments the total current value of all the tax breaks, abatements and subsidies they received in the 25 years prior to their inversion © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Require inverted American companies to include the phrase “US tax deserter” in all communications with the public, including advertising and packaging  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Tax carried interest income at the same rate as regular income © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Tax corporate income at the jurisdiction where the sales occur  © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Tax evaders are morally handicapped © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Tax multinational corporations by apportioning their consolidated worldwide profits to countries  based on the percentage of revenue from sales to customers in the country © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Trump officially declares class war decades after it started — — — His proposed tax plan overwhelmingly benefits him, his kids, his ilk © 2017 Kwiple.com
Liars say This is going to cost me a fortune, this thing, believe me, believe me. This is not good for me. I have some very wealthy friends. Not so happy with me, but that's OK. You know, I keep hearing [New York Democratic Senator Chuck] Schumer, “This is for the wealthy.“ Well, if it is, my friends don't know about it. Donald Trump, on the 2017 Republican tax bill © 2017 Kwiple.com
Libertarians American libertarians should rarely be taken at face value. They generally share two characteristics. The first is that they are rich. It is as rare to find an impoverished libertarian as it is to find a wealthy socialist. The second reason is that their libertarianism rarely stretches beyond their personal freedoms, especially the liberty not to be taxed. Other people's freedom is their own lookout. Edward Luce, Financial Times, May 26, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Losers In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than any other individual American taxpayer, the Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 – more than $250 million each year – were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years. Over all, Mr. Trump lost so much money that he was able to avoid paying income taxes for eight of the 10 years. New York Times, May 8, 2019, on his IRS transcripts from 1985 to 1994 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Losers More than 500,000 individual taxpayers took advantage of the same tax rule as Mr. Trump in 1995, according to the Internal Revenue Service. The average loss they claimed, however, was just $97,600. Mr. Trump's $916 million loss accounted for almost 2 percent of the national total. New York Times, October 4, 2016 — Trump's $915,729,293 loss divided by $97,600 average loss equals 9,382 times the average loss © 2016 Kwiple.com
Lotteries Today, according to the National Conference of  State Legislatures, lotteries bring in, on average, about one per cent of state revenue per year. Like all money, it matters, but whatever difference it makes is offset by two problems. The first is that lotteries have made it harder than ever to pass much-needed tax increases, because, thanks to years of noisy campaigning followed by decades of heavy promotion, the public wrongly believes that schools and other vital services are lavishly supported by gambling funds.  The second is that the money raised by lotteries comes largely from the people who can least afford to part with it. Every state lottery is regressive, meaning that it takes a dispro- portionate toll on low-income citizens. Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker, Oct. 17, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Undervaluing assets to lower taxes — Overvaluing charitable contributions to raise tax deductions © 2016 Kwiple.com
Money Money, it seems, was made to flow uphill. David Cay Johnston, Perfectly Legal © 2016 Kwiple.com
Money in politics Just as Republicans repay their donors with tax cuts, Democrats repay their base with debt forgiveness. Edward Luce, Financial Times, December 7, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Money in politics Pfizer, whose donations to the GOP in 2016 totaled $16 million, would reap $39 billion [in savings from the tax cuts passed by Congress in 2017]. [2,437:1] GE contributed $20 million and will get back $16 billion in tax savings. [800:1] Chevron donated $13 million and received $9 billion. [692:1] Not even a sizzling economy can deliver anything close to the returns on political investments. Robert B. Reich, The System © 2021 Kwiple.com
Money in politics Somebody should look into who paid for the small organized rallies yesterday. The election is over! Donald Trump, 9:13 AM – 16 Apr 2017, questioning the motivation of the 125,000+ people who took part in April 15 Tax Day rallies in 200 communities to demand that he release his tax returns © 2017 Kwiple.com
Nationalism  … proposals for an advanced welfare state and a redistribution of wealth must rest on national boundaries. They must recognize that in order for a citizen to accept, for instance, “Medicare for All,” they must be willing to pay high taxes to achieve coverage not only for themselves but for people they don't know and my never meet. If that latter group is not clearly defined, and limited to a nation's citizens … then  many people won't support such proposals.  Why should they pay their taxes to support people who don't share a common social and economic obligation to the nation? John B. Judis, The Socialist Awakening © 2020 Kwiple.com
Offshoring You can tell them to go fuck themselves. Donald Trump, on businesses that went offshore because, “we're the highest-taxed nation in the entire world,” which is false even for the top marginal corporate income tax rate © 2016 Kwiple.com
Participation in politics The shortage of people from the working class in our legislatures and the overrepresentation of white-collar Americans means that tax policies are more regressive, business regulations are more probusiness, and social safety net programs are thinner. Who wins and who loses in this country depends in large part on who governs. Nicholas Carnes, White-collar Government © 2019 Kwiple.com
Reich wingers say It's a war. It's like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. Stephen Schwarzman, billionaire, reacting to the Obama administration's plan to raise the carried interest tax © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republican Party God put the Republican Party on earth to cut taxes. If they don't do that, they have no useful function. Robert Novak © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Give tax cheats tax breaks: underfund, understaff the IRS © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Gutting support for the disabled to make up for tax cuts for the rich is change we believe in © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say It's bigly easy to fuck over people economically if you convince them they're winning the culture war  a.k.a. Trump's Law  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Preaching economic nationalism with no economic plan other than to make big corporations and the rich even richer relative to the rest is change we believe in  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Representation without taxation © 2016 Kwiple.com
Republicans say The rich need bigger tax cuts © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Sacrifice public education, health care and infrastructure on the altars of military spending and tax cuts for corporations and the rich  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Sacrificing your healthcare to give tax cuts to rich people is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say So what if Donald Trump pays no federal taxes | thinks those who do are stupid | evaded the draft |  belittles POWs & go ld star parents | denies having supported the Ir aq war | calls Mexicans rapists | wants to build a wall, exclude Muslims | insults & lies incessan tly | interrupts critics to divert attention | perso nifies narcissism |  is an adulterer | stalks, grop es women  | can't tell banter from bragging abo ut sexual assault | delegitimizes government, li beral democracy, a free press | wants nuclear w eapons to spread, a trade war with China | prais es dictators | asked Russians to hack Americans | never apologized for birtherism | defrauded in vestors & students | called it “Two Corinthians” | increases disrespect for America abroad | brag s about making money by running for president? — — — — — — — He's for cutting taxes on the rich and packing the Court with right wingers  W H I C H   I S   A L L  T H A T  M A T T E R S © 2016 Kwiple.com
Republicans say So what if Donald Trump stiffs contractors who work for him |  uses only offshore manufacturers  |  hires undocumented immigrants  |  is a “business genius” who's had six bankruptcies and was bailed out by banks  | bans some news networks from his events | en courages libel suits against journalists | is only suddenly pro-life  | claims to read the Bible but can't name his favorite verse  |  is not an active member of any church | is among the least cha ritable billionaires ever  |  uses his foundation's money to buy things for himself and make polit ical contributions  |  is a fear mongerer | thinks saying things again and again makes them true | humiliates prominent Republicans  | is loweri ng support for us among groups our survival de pends upon | is killing our downballot chances? — — — — — — — He's for cutting taxes on the rich and packing the Court with right wingers  W H I C H   I S   A L L  T H A T  M A T T E R S © 2016 Kwiple.com
Resisters say 70% want to see your taxes – that's bigly!  Placard, Washington, DC, Tax March, April 15, 2017  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say He needs to show us his tax returns so that we can tell who's influencing his decisions, who he owes money to, who he's doing business with – really so we can figure out whether he needs to be impeached. Protester at West Palm Beach, FL, Tax March on April 15, 2017 New York Times, April 16, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say Hedge fund greed Pay taxes like everyone else  Placard, “Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless” protest at billionaire fund manager Steven Cohen's Greenwich, CT, mansion, March 25, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say Hey hey, ho ho, Tax loopholes Have got to go Chant, “Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless” protest, March 25, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say How can we determine his conflicts of interest or stop him from receiving payments from foreign governments if he won't show us the names of the people and corporations that he is in active partnership with all over the world? Protester at Washington, DC, Tax March on April 15, 2017 New York Times, April 16, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say I can see Russia from his taxes  Placard, NYC Tax March, April 15, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say My other sign is being audited by the KGB Placard, NYC Tax March, April 15, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say  My taxes pay for your golf  Placard, Washington, DC, Tax March, April 15, 2017  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say No more secrets No more lies Show your taxes Show your ties Chant, NYC Tax March, April 15, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say No tax reform without tax returns Placard, Washington, DC, Tax March, April 15, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say Real presidents pay their taxes  Placard, New York City Women's March, January 21, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say A tax on the rich Not attacks on the poor Placard, Paris, France, Women's March, January 21, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say We Care! Show Us Your Taxes!   Placard, West Palm Beach, FL, Tax March, April 15, 2017  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say What do we want? Tax returns. When do we want them? Now. Chant, West Palm Beach, FL, Tax March, April 15, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say What tax returns? Putin paid cash Trust your oligarchs Placard, Los Angeles Tax March, April 15, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say Where are you Putin' your taxes? Placard, Chicago Tax March, April 15, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say You got the birth certificate Show us your tax returns Placard, NYC Tax March, April 15, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Schools The heavy reliance on state and local funding means that our country's nonwhite school districts get about $23 billion less every year than white school districts, even though they serve the same number of children. Elizabeth Warren, Persist © 2021 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Collecting sales taxes for more than one state is too difficult to implement © 2016 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Getting firms to bring money home by lowering taxes on profits earned abroad will create more jobs for humans here than for robots © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Low taxes create shared prosperity © 2015 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Money held in tax havens earns little interest © 2016 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Raising taxes on the rich reduces economic growth  © 2015 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Tax cuts pay for themselves © 2015 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Tax cuts spur economic growth © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Why is it fair that I should be paying a higher percentage of taxes than anyone else? billionaire Sheldon Adelson © 2015 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Greedy, greedy, greedy — — — — — Piggy, piggy, piggy Donald Trump portrayed by Ed Koch, after Trump asked for tax breaks for building in Manhattan during boom times © 2016 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Since most of Washington's spending on economic mobility comes through tax expenditures – subsidies that individual filers claim via their IRS returns – there is clearly foreknowledge of the outcome. The poor do not file tax returns. The rich have accountants. Edward Luce, Time to Start Thinking  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Saying budgets will be balanced by cracking down on tax avoiders and eliminating waste © 2015 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest The “life size replica” of Noah's Ark floating atop 102 concrete pillars and $18 million in tax breaks © 2016 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Saying, “Let them eat munitions,” Trump administration officials defend increasing military spending by $50+bn by eliminating or severely reducing anti-poverty programs, including programs providing after-school food aid to low-income kids and Meals on Wheels for seniors An alternative fact [White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said, “We can't spend money on programs just because they sound good” and reducing anti-poverty programs is “one of the most compassionate things we can do” because they are an onerous burden on taxpayers] © 2017 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Saying, “Nobody lives forever anyway,” Republicans, led by Paul Ryan, propose eliminating healthcare for the elderly, the poor and the sick An alternative fact [they proposed making it unaffordable  by anyone except the healthy wealthy, who'll get a big tax break to stay such]  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Tax audits What county in the United States has the highest rate of tax audits? The answer is Humphreys County in rural Mississippi, where three-quarters of the population is Black and more than one third lives below the poverty line, according to ProPublica and Tax Notes. Tax collectors go after Humphreys County, where the median annual household income is $28,500, because the government targets audits on poor families using the earned- income tax credit, an antipvoerty program, rather than on real estate tycoons who pay their daughters (that's you, Ivanka!) questionable consulting fees. Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, Oct. 10, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Tax avoidance The asymmetry between tech profits and the public interest needs to be corrected. In 2019, only the US, China and Japan had economies larger than the combined market capitalisation of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google and Microsoft. Lost revenues from the lack of tax on Silicon Valley’s largest companies are at $100bn over the past ten years, according to Fair Tax Mark. The OECD puts the total cost of corporate tax avoidance to governments worldwide at up to $240bn. Marietje Schaake, Financial Times, May 20, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Tax evasion By my estimate, the artificial shifting of profits to low-tax locales enables US companies to reduce their tax liabilities, in total, by about $130 billion a year. Gabriel Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Tax evasion In the United States, according to my estimate, offshore evasion costs about $35 billion annually. Gabriel Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Tax evasion When tax evasion is possible for the wealthy, there can be no consent for taxes. And without taxes, there are no resources to finance schools, hospitals, and roads; nor to redistribute wealth, even slightly, to ensure the equality of opportunities. Gabriel Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Tax revolts The tax revolts that thundered across America starting in the late 1970s were not so much ideological revolts against government – Americans still wanted all the government services they had before, and then some – as revolts against paying more taxes on incomes that had stagnated. Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage © 2020 Kwiple.com
Taxes Apple will see up to $47bn potential benefit from tax reform headline, Financial Times, December 6, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Taxes As often as Trump overstates his properties' worth … he also understates or even hides debts and other liabilities and encumbrances, like mortgages. … Trump's ninety-two page [financial] disclosure report [that Congress requires of presidential candidates] valued one of his best-known properties at $50 million. But he told tax authorities the same property was worth $1 million. David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes Because he's got a 12,000-page tax return that would create … financial auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that would detract from his main message. Donald Trump, Jr., explaining why his father won't release his tax returns and implying that something in them may be politically damaging © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes But policymaking through the tax code is comparatively ineffective and exceedingly complicated It means people have to know to take advantage of the credit at tax time, they actually have to take the credit, and in the process, it makes filing taxes more complicated and frustrating (which, in turn, doesn't inspire a fondness for government). But with simple and direct public programs out of favor, policymaking through the tax code became the new normal. Ganesh Sitaraman, The Great Democracy © 2020 Kwiple.com
Taxes Capital gain, by definition, is money you make for the simple fact of having money. That's it. No work, no nothing. Just have some money, wait for it to grow, and then you have more money. Which you clearly should not have to pay taxes on, because that would be unfair. Somehow. Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes The company's army of lawyers and tax advisers had used every loophole to ensure GE paid a grand total of zero federal taxes on its $5.1 billion of U.S. profits in 2010. The company even claimed a rebate from the Internal Revenue Service. That's what a thousand-strong tax department can do for its employer. Edward Luce, Time to Start Thinking  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Taxes Contrary to Mr. Trump's claim that the United States is one of the most heavily taxed nations, only South Korea, Chile and Mexico, among [the 35] O.E.C.D. countries, collect less in tax revenue  as a share of the economy. That means the American budget for things like prenatal care, low-income housing and worker training is simply not up to the task. Eduardo Porter, New York Times, October 11. 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes Don't tax you, Don't tax me, Tax that fellow behind the tree Russell B. Long © 2015 Kwiple.com
Taxes He'll release his taxes once the audit is finished. (You remember that audit. Its friends call it Godot.) Gail Collins, New York Times, January 11, 2017, on what Trump promised during his press conference that day © 2017 Kwiple.com
Taxes I hear people talk in the language of participation and justice and equality and transparency, but then almost no one raises the real issue: tax avoidance, right? And of the rich just not paying their fair share. It feels like I'm at a firefighters' conference and no one's allowed to speak about water. Rutger Bregman, 2019 World Ecnomic Forum, Davos, Switzerland © 2020 Kwiple.com
Taxes If my tax bill was 0.05 percent falling to 0.005 per cent, I would think I need to take a second look at my tax bill. Margrethe Vestager, European Union competition commissioner, ordering the Irish government to recover €13 billion ($14.5 billion), plus interest, from Apple, Inc., for allowing it to pay virtually no tax on profits from sales in Europe and other markets for 25 years by allocating them to a “stateless”-for-tax-purposes “head office” located in Ireland that had no employees, no premises and existed only on paper © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes  In the early 1990s … Congress reinstated a tax rule allowing real estate professionals who manage their property to take unlimited deductions against their other income. … The reinstated tax provision … meant that legally Trump would not pay income taxes, provided he had enough depreciation to offset his other income. Trump would likely have that much depreciation every year, assuming that the value of his buildings is indeed as high as listed on the financial disclosure form he filed as a candidate for president. David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes In sum, all the data at our disposal today  suggest that virtually confiscatory tax rates have been an immense historical success.  They have made it possible to greatly reduce the divergences of fortunes and incomes, while at the same time improving the situation of the middle and lower classes, developing the welfare state, and stimulating better economic and social performance overall. Historically, it is the battle for equality and education that has made economic development and human progress possible, and not the veneration of property, stability, and inequality. Thomas Piketty, A Brief History of Equality © 2022 Kwiple.com
Taxes In 2019, Carnival [Cruise Line] paid income tax expenses of $71 million on $20.83 billion in revenue [0.34%]. Royal Caribbean paid $36.2 million in taxes on $10.95 billion in revenue. [0.33%] And Norwegian actually showed a tax benefit, money it is owed, of $18.86 million on $6.46 billion in revenue. New York Times, April 8, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Taxes “It is striking that for a rich person, her tax return is very boring,” said Len Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank that specializes in tax issues … “She certainly could afford to pay people to help her figure out ways to avoid paying more in taxes.” Wall Street Journal, August 13-14, 2016, reporting that Bill and Hillary Clinton's tax returns for 2015 showed they paid an effective federal income tax rate of 34%, 8% higher than average for people with adjusted gross incomes of $10 million, plus a state and local tax rate of 9%, for a combined rate of 43.2% © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes It's none of your business. You'll see it when I release. But I fight very hard to pay as little tax as possible. Donald Trump, whose refusal to release his tax returns has fueled speculation that they would reveal he is not as rich as he claims, gives $0 to charity, pays $0 in taxes and stores money offshore © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes A lot of them: they are paper-pushers They make a fortune. They pay no tax. It's ridiculous. Donald Trump on hedge fund managers © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes Moving to address income inequality on a local level, the City Council in Portland, Ore., voted on Wednesday to impose a surtax on companies whose chief executives earn more than 100 times the median pay of their rank-and-file workers. Under the new rule, companies must pay an additional 10 percent in taxes if their chief executives receive compensation greater than 100 times the median pay … Companies with pay ratios greater than 250 times the median will face a 25 percent surcharge. New York Times, December 8, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes Multinationals pay less tax despite curb on avoidance  — — — — — — — — — — — • Effective rate drops 9% in a decade • State cuts make up only half of fall headline, Financial Times, March 12, 2018 [print edition] © 2018 Kwiple.com
Taxes Mr. Trump's accounting “genius” adds up, for the nation, to an existential threat. Eduardo Porter, New York Times, October 11. 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes Mr. Trump's proud dodge should draw attention to one of America's most damaging weaknesses: The nation does not manage to provide its people with a minimum standard of well-being, something commonplace across the rest of the industrial world. Eduardo Porter, New York Times, October 11. 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes The new corporate tax cuts are unlikely to stimulate the level of job creation and wage growth that the Trump administration has promised, a trio of prominent economists has concluded, because high tax rates were not pushing much investment out of the United States in the first place. Instead, the researchers conclude, multi- national corporations based in the United States and other advanced economies have sheltered nearly 40 percent of their profits in tax havens like Bermuda, depriving their domestic governments of tax revenues and enriching wealthy shareholders. New York Times, December 8, 2016 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Taxes Operating largely out of public view – in tax court, through arcane legislative provisions and in private negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service – the wealthy have used their influence to steadily whittle away at the government's ability to tax them. The effect has been to create a kind of private tax system, catering to only several thousand Americans. New York Times, December 30, 2015 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Taxes The Senate's three richest members – Democrats Mark Warner (VA), Richard Blumenthal (CT) and Diane Feinstein (CA) – voted against the 2017 tax bill. The Senate's three richest Republicans – Jim Risch (ID), Bob Corker (TN) and John Hoeven (ND) – voted for it. The House's three richest Democrats – John Delaney (MD), Jared Polis (CO) and Scott Peters (CA) – voted against the 2017 tax bill. 2 of the 3 richest House Republicans – Greg Gianforte (MT, richest)  and Michael McCaul (TX, 3rd richest) – voted for it. © 2017 Kwiple.com
Taxes Tax havens on some tropical island aren't some sideshow to Western capitalism; they are a central reality. Thomas Frank, The Guardian, November 9, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Taxes There is nothing built into the economy that says you can't tax unrealised capital gains. It's not an immutable law of economics, it's a deliberate policy choice, a choice that, based on the explosion of inequality in the US in recent decades, appears to be a pretty bad one. Wealthy investors like me, a former Wall Street executive, simply should not be allowed to pick and choose when we want to pay taxes on our investments. Morris Pearl, Financial Times, June 14, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Taxes There's nothing to learn from them. Donald Trump, on his tax returns, which he refuses to release knowing that voters would learn why he's being audited, how much he earned, how much he gave to charity, which loopholes he took advantage of, how close he came to skirting the law, how much he paid in taxes (if anything), how much he'd benefit from the changes he's proposed to tax law, etc. © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes To capture the financial reality of the richest Americans, ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same period. We're going to call this their true tax rate. The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That's a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%. ProPublica, June 8, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Taxes Today, the top one-tenth of one percent in America pay total taxes of about 3.2 percent of their net worth every year. Meanwhile, the 99.9 percent pay about 7.2 percent. Think about that: Collectively, all those teachers and waitresses and factory workers and computer programmers and small businesss owners are paying total taxes at more than double the rate of the thinnest slice at the top. For the four hundred richest households in America, the numbers are even more obscene. They pay taxes at a lower rate than any other group — including the poorest 10 percent of all Americans. Elizabeth Warren, Persist  [2021] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Taxes Trump Could Save More Than $1 Billion Under His New Tax Plan headline, New York Times, September 28, 2107, based on information from his 2005 federal tax return and an estimated net worth of $2.86 billion © 2017 Kwiple.com
Taxes  Trump tax cut heralds $1tn bonanza for US investors — — — — — — — — — — — • Buybacks and dividends to set record • Returns to exceed R&D and wages headline, Financial Times, March 5, 2018 [print edition] © 2018 Kwiple.com
Taxes Trump's 1995 Tax Records Claim a $916 Million Loss — — — — — — — — — — — — — Deduction Means He Could Have Avoided Federal Income Taxes for 18 Years headline, New York Times, October 2, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes The ultimate goal of income taxes should be to make money as meaningful to a millionaire as it is to you and me. Salvatore Babones, Sixteen for '16 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes Under the new law, income made by American companies' overseas subsidiaries will face United States taxes that are half the rate applied to their domestic income, 10.5 percent compared with the new top corporate rate of 21 percent. … Under the new rules, beyond the lower rate, companies will not have to pay United States taxes on the money they earn from plants or equipment located abroad, if those earnings amount to 10 percent or less of the total investment. New York Times, January 8, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Taxes What is commonly referred to as the tax code might be better described as two codes: one that forces most Americans to account for every nickel of income they earn, and another that allows the wealthy to reveal or conceal [it] at their discretion. David Cay Johnston © 2017 Kwiple.com
Taxes When they evaluate their taxes, people bring a version of consumer fairness with them. Americans do not only want a free lunch. As the saying goes, there no such thing. As consumers, they're willing to pay more when the costs of producing a good are made salient, or when a price increase appears commensurate to perceived costs to the firm. Similarly, when people are led to believe that government costs approximte the value of benefits that government provides, they respond by viewing their taxes more favorably than they would otherwise. … Counterintuitive though it may sound, present- ing costs and benefits together can have just as powerful effects on attitudes toward taxes as presenting the value of the benefits alone. Ethan Porter, Democracy Journal, Winter 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say As we are dealing with changes in our economy, tax cuts are always a good idea. Nikki Haley © 2021 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I understand it's a risk, but I think it's an appropriate risk to be able to say let's allow Americans to keep more of their own money to invest in this economy. James Lankford, defending adding more than $2 trillion to the nation's debt by giving huge tax cuts to corporations and the rich © 2018 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say This is the fucking American Dream she is shitting on. Leon Cooperman, billionaire convicted of insider trading, responding to Elizabeth Warren's proposed two/three cent wealth tax on every dollar over $50 million/$1 billion in wealth © 2021 Kwiple.com
Veterans [F]or every $2 of the cuts Trump wants to make for services and benefits for veterans, which will total more than $154 billion over the next decade, Trump plans to give $3 to the adult children of millionaires and billionaires. Center for American Progress briefing, September 26, 2017 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, economists from the University of California at Berkeley, earlier this year estimated that US billionaires had collective wealth of $4.25tn, of which $2.7tn represented untaxed gains. Financial Times, July 24, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality By Molding Tax System, Wealthiest Save Billions ————— Hiring an Army of Lobbyists and Lawyers to Exploit Loopholes and Steer Laws frontpage headline, print edition, New York Times, December 30, 2015 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality The central issue is we're developing into a plutocracy. We've got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they're rich because they're smart and constructive. And they don't like government, and they don't like to pay taxes.  Paul Volcker © 2018 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Forty years ago, wealthy Americans helped finance the U.S. government far more than now through their tax payments. Today wealthy Americans help finance the government mainly by lending it money. Robert B.Reich, Beyond Outrage  [2012] © 2020 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality I think not having the estate tax  recognizes the people that are investing as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it's on booze, or women or movies. Chuck Grassley, Republican Senator from Iowas, explaining why estates worth more than  $5.5/$11 million left by individuals/couples shouldn't be taxed but smaller ones should © 2017 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Just 62 people own as much wealth as the 3.5 billion people in the bottom half of world's income scale, the charity Oxfam reported on Moday in it's annual study of inequality, which found that the gap between rich and poor has continued to widen at an alarming rate. As recently as five years ago, the fortunes of 388 billionaires were needed to reach that halfway mark. The study … noted that a global network of tax havens contributed to the divide by allowing the rich to hide trillions of dollars in assets from their countries' governments. New York Times, January 18, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit. Rutger Bregman, at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 2019, on the one measure guaranteed to mitigate wealth inequality © 2019 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality We have an institutional setup where you accumulate wealth by using public infrastructure, public education, the health system, and then once you have  accumulated the wealth, you push a button and you transfer it somewhere else. Remember the ProPublica study before the summer of 2021 where they looked at billionaires in the U.S.? They pay almost zero federal income tax, as compared with their wealth.  If you pay no tax, it's easier to accumulate more wealth, and that's what continues. Thomas Piketty, New York Times, April 1, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
 
Wealth inequality Wealth management loans at JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley have grown 50 per cent in the past four years, compared with only 9 per cent for their overall loan book. … JPMorgan and Citi are now lending more to a small number of ultra-high net worth clients than to their millions of credit card customers. A decade ago, JPMorgan was lending five times as much to credit card customers as it did to private clients. … Controversially, the borrowings can also serve to lower taxes. Instead of selling assets to raise cash — and facing a capital gains tax — high net-worth clients obtain funding by borrowing against the value of their investments. Financial Times, May 27, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com