She IS on welfare, a rich person's form of welfare. And most rich people pay a lot less than 15% tax of their total income, like Romney. Name me one person who paid 50% of his income last year.
You can justify any waste of money that way. Even interest on national debt goes to banks, which loan it to businesses. So we don't have enough national debt. Having a lot of litigation is good, because all that money going to lawyers to sue each other is spent on secretaries and pilots flying the lawyers on Hawaii vacations. So this country doesn't have enough lawsuits.
Me thinks that's a tad bit arrogant of you to criticize someone else as to how they should use their hardly-earned money.
My mother. She pay's 45%. I am at 42%. And there is no hiding a 45% max; unless you have some outlet to hide your taxes. That's against the law though. So there is a risk there. Myself; I get pissed paying the tax; but would rather do it than go to prison of get a hefty tax penalty.
Your mother paid 45% of all her income to taxes last year? Or she paid 45% of some small portion of her income? I don't believe it until I hear the exact details.
She paid 45% of her total income. Are you talking about deductions? Well yeah everyone has deductions like mortgage interest, church tithe, or others like that. But after it was all said and done, she paid 45%. She doesn't invest in stocks so those aren't the 15% you are thinking about. Also all that money she deducted wasn't hers. She didn't get anything in return. As for me, I can't even get credit for my children because I make too much money. All I can do is write off my mortgage, property tax, alimony, and church tithe.
There are almost always ways to avoid paying that rate. The high rate exists to give you an incentive to invest the money in certain ways--to avoid the high rate. It's like jail. The system has jail not because they want you to be there--it's because they want you to do what it takes to avoid it.
Yeah the investments thing is a bit scary for me. I lost over 80k when the stocks took a shit. Yeah it was a write off; but it still stung like a mother. My mother doesn't trust any of that stuff. She just pays it and moves on. But even still, she can only make more money with a smaller capital gain. She still has to pay the taxes on the other amount that she made already in her businesses.
I posted one of our companies on another thread. We own two companies. One is an environmental company that remediates wastes into fertilizers. The other company manufactures minerals and vitamin supplements. Deutrel industries Nu science corp
So your family inherited money, invested in these two companies, and made you the CEO? Or did you ascend from a low level in the companies with no ownership advantage and you know the technologies?
No actually, they bought the company borrowing money from family and friends back in 1988. They bought "Deutrel Industries" for $500k because they used to sell to the Japanese. When the Japanese found out we found the originator of the formulation; they ordered a ton of product; but refused to pay. They gave an offer to the old formulator for 3 times our amount offered. And since my father had a contract; they had to force my father to go out of business or not have enough money to pay the entire amount. Fortunately; my father had family that was able to loan him enough money to pay off the rest of the purchase; and we got the company. Of course my father 86'd that Japanese company being the distributor; and started from scratch. The vitamin and mineral company didn't start until 1997; after they started making money from Deutrel. I used to be a graphic artist. That was my occupation from 1989-2002. My father asked me to come in to both companies to be their "graphic artist"; developing sales collateral for both companies. When my brother died in 2004; my father asked me to take over as the VP of operations; because he worried about his health. My father passed 6 months later in 2005. The executives in both companies tried to force my mom to sell; and tried to say their were verbal agreements of "shares given to the executives". We had a 3 year legal battle with the executives; and I was in the middle of it. Eventually; I learned enough about the legal system, product information and corporate finances; that I was able to expose them. They all got fired; our family finally took over the company; and the rest is history. I don't know if you knew that our family actually was pretty poor at the time we purchased "Deutrel". We just got blessed with success; only until around 2002. We used to be rich before, when we lived in Oregon; but a very bad business decision; forced my parents to declare bankruptcy around 1983. So I was rich, then poor, then mid class, to rich again. I think that's why I try to be humble. I've lived almost every economic class in my short life.
Sorry but most rich people pay a lot more in taxes. And the capital gains tax is not low compared to the rest of the world.
Taxes can be used to make our lives easier, or they can be used on useless wars exterminating hundreds of thousands of people. http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/30/10274212-iconic-skiers-death-points-out-us-health-gap
