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This week on CounterSpin: Taxes, particularly income taxes, have a special role in US media parlance: Vitally important but endlessly, and instrumentally, fungible. “Taxpayer dollars” are sacrosanct; we need to think very hard, every time it comes up, about how best to dedicate them: Do food stamps or public education make the cut? But then, who contributes to this oh-so-important resource? Because at the same time, corporate media suggest the “Tax Man” is a villain, who pretty much steals your “hard-earned dollars”—so, wink wink, smart people avoid paying taxes as much as possible.
The between-the-lines upshot seems to be: The country runs on taxation, but if you have a lot to give, well then, you’ve earned the right to opt out. This weird, incoherent presentation is reaching some sort of flameout with the New York Times‘ much-anticipated and fought-for reporting on Donald Trump’s tax returns—and the political and pundit scramble to define or interpret them—in ways that (it’s seeming like) might indict Trump, without calling into deep question the enabling system around him that media’s corporate owners and sponsors, protestations aside, endorse. It makes things a bit harder to parse for regular folks. But not impossible. We’ll talk about takeaways from Trump’s taxes with Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
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Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at the first presidential debate.
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Transcript: ‘There Is a Different Set of Rules for Someone Like Donald Trump’
Featured image: President Donald Trump in 2017 as photographed by political photographer Michael Vadon.
Number of people who purposely didn’t take every possible tax deduction: 0. This includes the author, everyone at FEAR, and all leftists. Thank God, for allowing capitalists to deduct losses. Their risk taking, propels our economy.
$70,000 for fucking hair-styling, dude. Your emperor has no clothes.
Jealous?
No. I’m pissed. I’m sick of the bottomless well of excuses you enablers make for a guy who wouldn’t piss on any single one of his supporters if they were on fire. You’ve bought his con game hook, line, and sinker and you’ve helped put the future of the country in jeopardy all because “he appoints judges we like!” or “he triggers the liberals!” or whatever other lame-ass justification you trot out. It’s moronic, hypocritical, and/or childish and I can only hope the non-Trumpists out there see the GOP suffer multiple horrific election defeats so that they can turn the party around and stop catering to their lunatic fringe.
I am never voting for a Republican again as long as I live and I’ve written every Republican elected official in my district in PA and told them exactly why.
And you can take your childish question-asking (“Jealous?”– yeah, that’s real fucking clever, ya dipshit) and shove it up your ass.
I’m with you John. How anyone, no matter what political affiliation, can call the last 4 years good, I will never understand. Guess all the shit storms in the world is worth it to cram in those judges and piss off some people.
The difference between Trumpers and Republicans/Democrats is that we will hold the winner accountable to actually do what they promise, no matter which one wins. Trumpers checked their criticism at the door when he got in office. Half his cabinet is fired or in jail but Biden is more corrupt? Give me a break.
I would kill to have some semblance of a classic Republican again but we are stuck with Trump. Trump ruined Republicans for me, I will never vote Republican again until they do everything possible to distance them selves from the alt right and far right fanatics. Republican or Democrat, I don’t give a shit. I just want some discourse again and a leader who commands respect, not demands it.
No, the fundamental lie that is used to justify corporate (as opposed to entrepreneurial) capitalism is that the government must tax (usurp the hard-earned profits of) the wealth-creators in order to operate. The reality (as delineated in Modern Monetary Theory) is just the other way around: The government is what enables the market economy to exist, and to the extent that it is a democracy, We the People are the true sovereigns behind it who should control the corporations and have the power to issue whatever money is needed to do what they choose to do! Taxes are needed only to control inflation and (via Pignovian principles) those socially destructive individualistic behaviors which would be too onerous or expensive to control by regulation. Starting, first and foremost, with the hoarding of wealth by greedy small-minded little %#@ like Trump!
Are there any deductions that you purposely haven’t taken?
That’s the problem Tim, the super wealthy play by completely different rules than the rest of us. Yeah a lot of these things are legal deductions and loopholes, that aren’t even super old laws, created to give them financial breaks. Are deductions and tax breaks inherently bad? Obviously not. But the fact that so many of these super wealthy individuals and corporations contribute so little in taxes compared to the vast majority of the country is insane. Especially when the tiny minority (less than 1%) controls a increasing majority of the economy. When the wealthy take advantage of breaks/deductions/handouts they are smart, but when someone who needs it does it they are moochers. This is what I am sick of more than anything else, the hypocrisy of it. The solution isn’t raise taxes on the rich, it’s making the pay their damn taxes to begin with. You don’t get to own the majority of the economy and get to choose your country’s elected officials through lobbyist. It’s just not right now matter what you call yourself.