Today’s leftists stand for the “opposite” of what the Bible teaches on major issues.

Throughout the Bible “theft and stealing” are sins that are prohibited. Yet the left’s position today is for “exorbitant” taxation and for “unconstitutional” purposes, which is “legalized” theft.

The left’s focus on raising taxes to fund all manner of “illegitimate” programs is wrong any way you measure it. Jesus never taught to “steal from those who work to give to the poor.” He taught that “charity” is a private matter which individuals do – not the government.

RESPONSE TO ANDELINO’S REICH-WING CHRISTOTALIBAN BULLSHIT ON WHO THE REAL THIEVES ARE.

Ok Andelino, let’s see where your stupidity of pushing the Reich-Wing Rich vs Poor bullshit where the Rich are being fucked while the poor are stealing from the rich, is WRONG shall we?

TAX BREAK FOR THE RICH AND NOT FOR THE POOR WITH THAT TCJA.

A Tax Hike or Benefit for the ‘Middle Class’?
https://www.factcheck.org/2017/10/tax-hike-benefit-middle-class/

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi claimed that the Republican tax cut plan “raises taxes on [the] middle class,” while President Donald Trump claimed that “everybody’s gonna benefit” from a plan that “is for the middle class.

The president also said that the tax plan “ensures that the benefits of tax reform go to the middle class, not to the highest earners,” but the Tax Policy Center analysis found most of the benefits of the tax cut go to the top 1 percent.

The president reiterated that in a speech in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 11, saying: “By eliminating tax breaks and special interest loopholes that primarily benefit the wealthy, our framework ensures that the benefits of tax reform go to the middle class, not to the highest earners.”

Pelosi’s figures on business tax cuts and the benefits to the top 1 percent are correct, per TPC’s analysis. “The business income tax provisions — including those affecting corporations and pass-through businesses — would reduce revenues by $2.6 trillion over the first ten years,” the TPC report said. And it found that 80 percent of the benefit of tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent income-earners in 2027.

But what about the “middle class,” or as the president says, “middle income people”?

As the plan stands now, some would get a tax cut and some would see a tax increase in every income quintile or group.

Deputy Communications Director Henry Connelly explained to us that the staff calculated that figure using tables 2 and 3 of the TPC report, which give percentages for the taxpayers that would see a tax cut or a tax increase, broken down by income groups, and TPC figures for the number of taxpayers in each group. Pelosi’s staff considered all taxpayers at the 90th percentile and below “middle class.”

“In 2018, that comes out to be around $26 billion a year, and by 2027, it’s around $73 billion,” Connelly said. “If you project those numbers across the 10 years you get almost half a trillion dollars taken in higher taxes on the middle class.”

The Tax Policy Center is a nonpartisan think tank. Its tax policy experts rely on federal tax data and use the same tax modeling techniques practiced by the Treasury Department and nonpartisan congressional tax experts, such as those at the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation.

The TCJA Would Cut Taxes By An Average of $1,600 in 2018, With Most Benefits Going To Those Making $300,000-Plus

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/tcja-would-cut-taxes-average-1600-2018-most-benefits-going-those-making-300000-plus

The conference agreement on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would reduce taxes by about $1,600 on average in 2018, with the biggest benefit going to households making between $308,000 and $733,000, according to a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center.  Middle-income taxpayers would pay about $900 less than under current law, about 1.6 percent of after-tax income, while the lowest income households would get an even more modest tax cut compared to current law.

By contrast, the highest-income one percent of households , who will make about $733,000 and up, would get an average tax cut of roughly $50,000 or 3.4 percent of their after-tax income. Those in the top 0.1 percent, who will make $3.4 million or more next year, would get an average tax cut of about $190,000, or 2.7 percent of their after-tax income.

While the details of the TCJA have changed throughout the congressional debate, the basic story of the bill has remained the same since it was first introduced in early November. Most households would get a tax cut at first, with the biggest benefits going to those with the highest incomes. After 2025, when nearly all of the bill’s individual income tax provisions are due to expire, only high-income people would get a meaningful tax cut.

About 80 percent of households would get a tax cut while about 5 percent would pay more in 2018 (the rest would pay roughly the same as under current law). Among middle-income households, about 90 percent would pay less and 7 percent would pay more. Despite the many changes in the law that affect low- and moderate-income households, about 45 percent of low-income households would pay roughly the same amount of tax as they do today.

By 2027, after nearly all of the bill’s individual income tax provisions are due to expire, the average tax cut would fall to about $160. Except for those in the top one percent (who would be making $900,000 or more) households in each income group would be paying roughly the same amount of tax on average as under current law. And more than half would pay more in taxes than if the law had never changed.

The TCJA includes several major changes that would primarily affect low- and moderate-income households. It would reduce individual income tax rates, increase the standard deduction, and expand the child tax credit. However, it would also end the personal exemption, a trade-off that could raise taxes for low-income families with a large number of children. It would also change the way the tax code is adjusted for inflation, a revision that would slowly increase taxes on all households.

High-income households would benefit primarily from five tax changes—lower income tax rates on ordinary income, a more generous Alternative Minimum Tax, the bill’s 20 percent deduction for income from pass-through businesses such as partnerships, the corporate income tax rate cuts, and the roughly doubling of the estate tax exemption to $22 million for couples.

What would these average tax cuts mean for American households? For middle-income people, an extra $900 would pay for about seven months of gas. By contrast, those in the top one percent could pick up a nice Mercedes C Class Coupe with their $50,000+ average tax cut.

60 of America’s biggest companies paid no federal income tax in 2018
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2018-taxes-some-of-americas-biggest-companies-paid-little-to-no-federal-income-tax-last-year/

Big companies have long relied on strategies to reduce their tax bills. But the new tax law is making it even easier, with a new analysis finding that 60 profitable Fortune 500 companies paid no taxes on a total of $79 billion of profits earned in 2018.

The companies, which include tech giants such as Amazon and Netflix, should have paid a collective $16.4 billion in federal income taxes based on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s 21 percent corporate tax rate, according to the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Instead, these corporations received a net tax rebate of $4.3 billion. The analysis is based on the corporations’ annual financial reports, which were filed earlier this year to report their 2018 results.

“The new law cut the statutory tax rate to 21 percent, while leaving intact most of the tax breaks that allowed profitable companies to zero out their income taxes,” wrote ITEP senior fellow Matthew Gardner, director of federal Steve Wamhoff and co-authors Mary Martellotta and Lorena Roque, in the report. “The result, unsurprisingly, has been a continued decline in our already-low corporate tax revenues.”

Amazon won’t pay a cent in federal income tax this year, despite its profits soaring to $11.2 billion in 2018, nearly double the $5.6 billion it earned the previous year, ITEP said. In fact, Amazon claimed a federal income tax rebate of $129 million, the study found. It would be the second year in a row Amazon paid no federal tax, giving the retail giant an effective tax rate of -1 percent.

Video streaming service Netflix likely paid no U.S. income tax in 2018 either, despite posting a record $845 million U.S. profit, according to ITEP’s analysis. Its 10-K estimates its federal income tax liability at $-22.176 for 2018 — hence ITEP’s conclusion that it won’t pay the government any money for the year.

“When I say they paid zero, really what I mean is they reported a $22 million income tax rebate, so they have a negative income tax,” Gardner said.

These companies’ single-digit tax rates are startling — given how much lower they are than the already reduced 21 percent imposed by the new law.

So how are big companies legally reducing their exposure to federal income tax? By using a mixture of existing and new tax breaks:

Net operating loses

Even if a company was profitable in 2018, it can use so-called net operating losses from the prior year to offset profits. “Those negative amounts offset positive profits in future years, which happens all the time in cyclical businesses, not just during major depressions,” tax analyst Marty Sullivan said.

That means a company that loses money one year — but that has been profitable in the past — can get a tax refund on a prior year’s taxes.

Stock options

Technology and other companies commonly pay high-level executives partly in stock options rather than in cash to reduce their cash burn. 

“It’s not an expense for the companies in the same sense that it would be if they just wrote employees a paycheck every two weeks. But companies are still allowed, for tax purposes, to pretend it’s a cash expense,” Gardner said. 

That means companies can value the stock options as a “cost” of doing business even though it doesn’t cost them anything. “Tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple rely heavily on this,” Gardner said.

Tax credits

Unspecified tax credits, for expenses like research and development, also help lower profitable companies’ tax rates.

Amazon’s financial statements show that the company received $419 million in tax credits in 2018 — most of which were in the form of R&D credits.

“R & D tax credits are a pretty big thing for them. It’s a big chunk of the $419 million. It’s hard to say where the rest came from,” Gardner said, noting that the credit accounts for worldwide expenditures. “Their approach was to make a big bucket of tax credits, so it’s not super helpful for the purposes of understanding why they pay what they pay.”

Amazon also earned tax credits for building warehouses across the country. “If Amazon is building huge warehouse distribution centers, they can take enormous write-offs that are intended under the law. I would not jump to any negative conclusions based on the fact that they don’t have any taxes,” said tax analyst Marty Sullivan. 

Accelerated depreciation tax breaks

Companies’ ability to expense inventory before it depreciates is a new provision under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that accounts for part of their big tax breaks. The provision effectively allows businesses to write off the expense of buying a piece of equipment faster than it wears out.  

“Normally, you have to depreciate an asset to take a deduction for a purchase of an asset over several years, but under the new law, you can take it all in the first year,” Sullivan said.

Gardner likened it to “an IOU on steroids.” “You are postponing your tax bill on income,” he said.

While not every dollar in tax cuts can be attributed to the new tax law, it did ramp up accelerated depreciation. “It seems clear the new tax law made this problem worse,” Gardner said. 

Twice as many companies paying zero taxes under Trump tax plan

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. In its first year, the number of companies paying no taxes went from 30 to 60.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/taxes/twice-many-companies-paying-zero-taxes-under-trump-tax-plan-n993046

Taxpayers are scrambling to make last-minute payments due to the Internal Revenue Service in just four days, but many of the country’s largest publicly-held corporations are doing better: They’ve reported they owe absolutely nothing on the billions of dollars in profits they earned last year.

At least 60 companies reported that their 2018 federal tax rates amounted to effectively zero, or even less than zero, on income earned on U.S. operations, according to an analysis released today by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The number is more than twice as many as ITEP found roughly, per year, on average in an earlier, multi-year analysis before the new tax law went into effect.

Among them are household names like technology giant Amazon.com Inc. and entertainment streaming service Netflix Inc., in addition to global oil giant Chevron Corp., pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly and Co., and farming and commercial equipment manufacturer Deere & Co.

The identified companies were “able to zero out their federal income taxes on $79 billion in U.S. pretax income,” according to the ITEP report, which was released today. “Instead of paying $16.4 billion in taxes, as the new 21 percent corporate tax rate requires, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion, blowing a $20.7 billion hole in the federal budget last year.” To compile the list, ITEP analyzed the 2018 financial filings of the country’s largest 560 publicly-held companies.

The controversial Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed by President Donald Trump in December 2017, lowered the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, among other cuts. That’s partly to blame for giving corporations an easier way out of paying taxes, said Matthew Gardner, an ITEP senior fellow and lead author of the report. The new corporate tax rate “lowers the bar for the amount of tax avoidance it takes to get you down to zero,” he said.

“The specter of big corporations avoiding all income taxes on billions in profits sends a strong and corrosive signal to Americans: that the tax system is stacked against them, in favor of corporations and the wealthiest Americans,” Gardner wrote in the report.

The Moline, Illinois-based Deere, which was started in 1837 by blacksmith John Deere, who made farming plows, reported earning $2.15 billion in U.S. income before taxes. It owed no U.S. taxes in 2018 and reported that it was owed $268 million from the government, after taking into consideration various deductions and credits, according to its annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company reported global profits of $2.37 billion.

Asked about the rebate, Brian Moens, one longtime Deere employee, was contemplative. “Everyone should pay their fair share whether it is an individual or a corporation,” he said. “If just the small individuals are paying it without large corporations doing their part, I don’t see that being fair.”

Moens credits his wife with getting their taxes filed early in February. They anticipated a refund, like in past years, because they overpaid during the year. “It wasn’t quite what Trump had said it was going to be,” said Moens, who assembles farm planting tractors at the Moline factory. “It was less than what we had received in previous years,” although nothing had changed.

Trump’s tax cut bill slashed the corporate tax rate and eliminated and tightened certain deductions, while providing other new tax breaks to companies. The cut in the corporate tax rate alone will save corporations $1.35 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, which reports to the Senate and House finance and budget committees.

After taking office in January 2017, Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress quickly enacted one of the most sweeping tax bills in decades — an overhaul that is estimated to raise the federal deficit to $900 billion this year, and more than $1 trillion, starting in 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan legislative agency.

Studies show that many corporations rarely paid the 35 percent rate under the old tax code. Over the years, companies found many ways to cut their tax bills, from sheltering foreign earnings in low-tax countries and banking credits for money spent on research and development to deducting the expense of stock options for executives.

Gardner said the new tax law has left most of the old tax breaks intact while cutting the rate by almost half, resulting in a “continued decline in our already low corporate revenues.” Revenues from the corporate tax fell by 31 percent in 2018 to $204 billion from $297 billion. “This was a more precipitous decline than in any year of normal economic growth in U.S. history,” he wrote.

Today’s ITEP report is partly a follow-up to a multi-year analysis of profitable U.S. corporations that showed many paid zero taxes. The institute reviewed the financial filings of more than 600 corporations ranked on the Fortune 500 list between the years 2008 and 2015. On average, about 30 companies each year reported zero U.S. taxes or less. ITEP identified more than twice as many companies claiming they owed no U.S. taxes in 2018.

Pharmaceutical and technology companies have long been criticized for leaving profits overseas in countries with little or no corporate taxes, or tax havens like the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The 2017 tax law looked to address those issues by changing the way the profits from foreign subsidiaries are taxed in the United States. As part of the shift to a new tax regime, U.S. corporations were assessed a one-time tax on foreign profits; the tax can be paid over eight years.

Under the new law, a company’s income is only taxed in the country in which it is earned. The U.S. no longer taxes new foreign profits unless they reach a certain threshold, at which point the income is taxed at 10.5 percent, half that of the U.S. effective rate.

Take for example the giant technology hardware and services company IBM Corp., which consistently ranks among the biggest U.S. companies. The company had revenues of $79.6 billion, more than 60 percent of which came from outside the United States. To that end, IBM made a $2 billion tax payment on future foreign profits in 2018, according to its financial filings. Tax advisor Willens noted IBM elected to make the $2 billion tax payment on future overseas earnings in 2018 instead of down the road in the period it occurs as many companies will do.

Meantime, in the United States, IBM reported getting a federal refund of $342 million on its U.S. income before taxes of $500 million, according to ITEP and the company’s annual filing. That computes to an effective U.S. tax rate of negative 68 percent. Its worldwide profits were $8.7 billion – and its total tax provision was $2.6 billion including the foreign tax payment.

In a conference call with investors in December, Delta Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson acknowledged that the company may pay “cash taxes” as early as next year. Jacobson told investors the new tax law will save the company $800 million a year at its current earnings level. Will the 21 percent corporate rate help Delta? No — because the company doesn’t need it. Jacobson estimates the company’s cash tax rate will be much lower: between 10 to 13 percent.