[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> The big difference between income tax and regular expense is regular >> expenses we pay someone else benefits them, but the money we pay in >> taxes is money we pay to ourself for our own benefit. This make income >> taxes, even if viewed as an expense, a special kind of outlay. >> > > Leland, now here you may have put your finger on the difference between us. > For the most part, because of the excessive regulation and interference in > our lives, many of us view much of our tax bill as money flushed down the > toilet... hence a definite expense not payment for a benefit. Beyond that, I > get benefit from the phone company, but my phone bill is still an expense.
After giving this more thought, I've changed my mind, and agree that the expense of government is a real expense to the taxpayer. Without going into to much complicated details, the relationship between the taxpayer and government is much like the relationship between a corporation an its affiliate. For example a company that makes a variety of tractors ranging from home units used to mow lawns to big commercial tractors used in framing, creates an affiliated company to market its wares. The manufacturing company owns almost all the stock of its affiliate marketing corporation that have stores around the country to sell its tractors. The manufacturing corporation marks up the price of its tractors and sell them to its affiliate at wholesale. The affiliate marketing corporation then sell the tractor at a retail markup to the final customer. The financial statement of the two corporations are reported on a consolidated basis, whereby all inter-company transactions are eliminated to reflect the actual revenue from retail sales and actual cost of goods sold to arrive and gross profit form operations of the two corporations combined. The American people have an affiliation with the government which they own. Although taxes are paid by the taxpayer, which is recognized as revenue by the government, this transaction could be eliminated to show consolidated results of a national economy that included the actual expenses paid by the American people to provide governmental services. > > > I would agree that deficit spending is the culprit, but many see this as the > result in excessive spending and government operation rather than > insufficient taxation. > If you read some of the link I provided, you will see that cutting government spending is no simple matter, as some really big expenses are already lock into the budget for many years to come, like servicing the interest expense on the national debt, paying Social Security and Medicare, (eg although SS and Medicare are funded through payroll tax deductions, which are paid into a trust fund, the government has raided the trust fund to pay operating expense; because, tax revenues have fallen short of covering all budgeted services. This is yet another way to fund a deficit, and it creates a government debt due back to the trust fund). America, as one nation, cannot continue to borrow to fund deficits due to deficiencies in tax revenue indefinitely, and an inflation tax or real income tax increase at some point in the future may be the only solution, regardless of how unpopular that would be. Regards, LelandJ > Larry Miller > > --- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- > multipart/alternative > text/plain (text body -- kept) > text/html > --- > [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
