The era of big tax cuts may be over – Our GOP rulers have very clearly shown their utter disregard for limits on government spending.  Are they going to next wimp out on reducing tax rates?  There is still one political party that strongly believes in low taxes and low government spending.

So, You Want to Be A Landlord… – You too could end up with a psycho tenant who uses the movie Pacific Heights as his game plan to steal your property from you, as we had back in the Bay Area.

Q:

Subject: query regarding blogads on the taxguru site

Hello,

 

I manage an internet store that sells t-shirts and mugs for tax attorneys and accountants (www.taxshirts.com).  I was wondering whether your site accepted blogads, and if so, what the weekly rate is.

 

Thanks so much,

Lisa Binder

www.taxshirts.com

A:

Lisa:

Currently, the only ads I have on my sites are the standard vendor affiliate programs.  I am not set up with BlogAds.  However, you are the second person to inquire about that; so I will look into setting that up if there appears to be sufficient demand.

Good luck with your product sales.  Thank you for your interest in advertising on my sites.

Kerry Kerstetter

Today’s Braingle Brain teaser covered how so-called stock market gurus pull in gullible victims.  Again, this isn’t new, but is crucial to remember.

Ok, so here is the deal. One day, you get a call from some random guy who says “Next week, ABC stock is going to move up. I’m not asking you to buy any stock from me, but just take a look.” You do so (why not, it can’t hurt…) and he was correct. Sure enough, next week you get another call from the “Lucky Guesser”. His pick? “DEF is going to go down.” And guess what! He was right again!

For five weeks, this guy predicts the behavior of stocks. The sixth time he calls he says, “I’ve been right the past five times. This time I have a stock for you and I do want you to buy some shares through me. What do you say?”

Well, what do you say. Do you buy shares from this guy?

 

Answer:

Heck no! He’s playing you like a puppet. First week he calls 100 people, says to half ABC will go up and to the other fifty, he claims it will go down. When ABC goes up, he called the fifty he’d correctly predicted to and told half DEF would go up, and half it would go down. By the time he’s at week five, he has a few people (2-4) thinking he’s a stock market god.

 

 

While Federal individual income tax rates and brackets, as adjusted for inflation, are made public relatively early (9/23/04 for the 2005 rates), the California Franchise Tax Board takes its sweet time announcing theirs.  According to this article from CCH, the 2005 inflation adjusted rates have just been released.  I wasn’t able to find this on the FTB’s website, or even on Spidell’s.

Update: Spidell has produced a pdf document with the newly announced 2005 figures.

Many of us may have seen the following over the years; but it’s always nice to have it handy to balance out the left’s anti-taxcut propaganda.  Thanks to Virginia tax practitioner Len Boush for finding this on the Yahoo stock bulletin for H&R Block and passing it along.  

A LESSON IN TAXATION

Sometimes Politicians can exclaim; “It’s just a tax cut for the rich!!”, and it is just accepted to be fact. But what does that really mean?

Just in case you are not completely clear on this issue, we hope the following will help:

Tax Cuts – A Simple Lesson in Economics.

This is how the cookie crumbles. Please read it carefully.

Let’s put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100.00. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.00
The sixth would pay $3.00
The seventh $7.00
The eighth $12.00
The ninth $18.00
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.00

So, that’s what they decided to do

The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day, and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20.00”

So, now dinner for the ten only cost $80.00. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So, the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six, the paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20.00 windfall so that everyone would get his “fair share”?

The six men realized that $20.00 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being “PAID” to eat their meal.

So, the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings)
The sixth now paid $2.00 instead of $3.00 (33% savings)
The seventh now paid $5.00 instead of $7.00(28% savings)
The eight now paid $9.00 instead of $12.00 (25% savings)
The ninth now paid $14.00 instead of $18.00 (22% savings)
The tenth now paid $49.00 instead of $59.00 (16% savings)

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. “I only got a dollar out of the $20.00”, declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man “but he got $10.00!”

“Yeah, that’s right”, exclaimed the firth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than me!”

That’s true”! shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10.00 back when I got only $2.00?? The wealthy get all the breaks”!!

“Wait a minute”, yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all.  The system exploits the poor”!!

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes are perceived to get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore. There are lots of good restaurants in Europe and the Caribbean.

 

For obvious reasons, George Harrison’s song has been a big favorite of mine.  We’ve used excerpts of it in several of my audio and video recordings, usually as performed by George or the Beatles.  A few years back, I happened to see the bluegrass group Nickel Creek perform the song on PBS’s Austin City Limits show.  Since them, I have been looking for a copy of their version.  None ever show up via the file sharing services.  I even wrote to Nickel Creek, offering to pay for a copy of the song.  I never heard back from them.

Last week, PBS replayed that particular episode of Austin City Limits.  This time, I was ready with our new hard drive digital video recorder.  I recorded the show, and then made an MP3 file with just the TaxMan song.  It’s not necessarily better than the classic version of the song we all know so well.  It’s just an interesting interpretation. I have it on my website for non-commercial amusement purposes only.