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Tax Freedom Day - An Oxymoron - RF Cafe Forums
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Kirt Blattenberger
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Post subject: Tax Freedom Day - An Oxymoron
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 12:03 am
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Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2003 2:02 pm Posts: 878
Location: Erie, PA |
Greetings:
This thread has been created to collect comments on my "Kirt's Cogitation"
regarding taxes. Since April 15th, the last day for filing your personal income taxes
in the U.S., is creeping right up on us, I thought it would be an opportune time to
let anyone else besides me vent about the inhumanity of it.
[url]http://www.rfcafe.com/miscellany/factoids
/cogitations20.htm#Tax_Freedom_Day_–_An_Oxymoron[/url]
Please read through the
article and give us your experiences and/or opinions!
_________________ - Kirt Blattenberger RF Cafe Progenitor & Webmaster
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muse95
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Post subject:
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 11:37 am
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Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2007 11:31 am Posts: 1
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A tax freedom day of April??? Canadians should be so lucky. Generally the tax freedom
day I've heard in Canada (varies from province to province) is in the
June timeframe.
Count your lucky stars
for only April. There is a little something to be said for having a lot more people
in your country - you can spread the infrastructure costs around a little more. We have
more land area but only a tenth of the population to pay for developing it.
However, I like not having to fight for breathing space, as well.
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LateBlt
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Post subject: Definitely an oxymoron, but it could be worse
Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2007 11:20 am
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Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2006 4:01 pm Posts: 3
Location: Santa Cruz, CA |
Like the previous poster, I grew up in Canada and spent the start of my working life
there, although I now live in the U.S. (Don't hate me for being a foreigner; it's not
my fault I wasn't born in the best country in the world.) One fine year while still
living and working in Canada, I filed my taxes like any good citizen, using QuickTax
(the Canadian equivalent to TurboTax), and found that I owed a certain amount of money.
I filled out a check for the amount I owed and mailed it along to CCRA (the Canadian
equivalent of the IRS). Not too much muss or fuss. Or so I thought. Then CCRA sent me
a letter saying that they had decided I owed another $4,000 in taxes. There was no explanation
given; as far as I could tell, this was an arbitrary decision. Nice, isn't it? The strange
thing is, I sent them a check for the additional amount, but they never seemed to cash
it. Maybe they realized they had made an error and just shredded the check. Even if
that was the case, it doesn't place a great deal of faith in the people who handle Canadians'
tax returns. :/
Federal tax in the U.S. is quite ridiculous right now. I live
in California, and the state tax here is not too bad considering how expensive this
state is, but my federal taxes this year are about 6 times my CA state taxes. If you
look at the recent history of our federal taxes, the federal tax rate increased *every*
year of Clinton's administration; it then dropped sharply when our current Bush took
over, but after a couple of years, it then went back up to Clinton's later levels. Most
of the money is probably going to fund our insanely expensive wars. I don't want to
get too political with this, but I do seem to recall the days when the Republicans were
supposed to be the more fiscally responsible of the elephant and the donkey...
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zippy
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Post subject:
Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 11:11 pm
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Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2007 7:37 am Posts: 1
Location: Toledo, OH |
Man, you hit a nerve of mine here, too
Neither
will I go into details, but will say that I paid more than $50,000 in personal income
taxes in 2005. My workweeks were at least 80 hours with NO vacation. Since then I look
with utter contempt upon those with their hands out while never working a day in their
miserable lives. Whoa, I'd better stop here or someone will accuse me of being a hate
monger.
_________________ Craig Ziperman - RF Consultant
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VTEE94
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Post subject: Riddled with issues
Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 11:50 am
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Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2007 11:14 am Posts: 2
Location: Greensboro, NC |
Kirt, First let me say how much we'll miss you over at RFMD. I'm glad you're
taking the plunge and continuing this site because it really has a lot of great stuff
to offer.... but it won't be the same place without you. As far as the tax system
goes. I agree that the regular tax system is pretty bad, but it gets even worse. How
could it get worse you ask? ':shock:' There are a few cases in which a taxpayer can
get completely screwed by the government. Specifically I'm talking about the AMT system.
In the pre-2000 tech bubble, many people were caught in the same trap but it doesn't
make it any easier to take. Basically, if you exercise options and hold them for more
than 1 year, you run the risk of having to pay Alternative Minimum Tax.... which is
basically a tax on an unrealized capital gain in the case of Incentive stock options.
Unfortunately, I was a victim of this snare. Long story short: the federal government
has an interest free loan of my money... way more than I'd care to admit. For me it
was mostly inexperience with stock options and some really bad advice from an accountant
who was the "supposed" expert, but I think more and more Americans are getting pulled
into this heinous trap. The good news is that in December of 2006, Congress passed
a bill to phase out the AMT on ISO shares, but in my opinion the damage has already
been done. Hundreds of families had to take out loans to pay their taxes back in 2000
as a result of this mess. It just goes to show how convoluted and unfair the tax code
can really be. -Ryan (VTEE94)
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Posted 11/12/2012
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