Do you agree that everyone and every company has the right to reduce their taxes as much as possible

[hill2016]

legally?

Taking all available deductions, creating legal tax structures as blockers, etc?

Just wondering...

[delrem]

1. Of course. That's why honest politicians are necessary.

No politician is perfect. But electing a politician that made a couple hundred million $ in direct graft alone is stupid. IMO.

[840high]

2. +1

[delrem]

10. "Let's start with an honest, clear-eyed assessment of what went so terribly wrong."

This is verbatim from a Hillary Clinton speech
I will follow it with a short and rather abstract comment - afterclearly underlining her words so as to differentiate my commentary
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=77081

"Over the past seven years, as incomes fell and wages stagnated, many families were lured into risky mortgages with rates that later jumped beyond what they could afford. Now, we can debate what was technically illegal; we can debate what should be defined as predatory. But there is no debate that what happened did not reflect the best of our financial system.
...
...
"Now, who's exactly to blame for the housing crisis? Well, that's always a question that the press and people ask and I think there's plenty of blame to go around.

Responsibility belongs to mortgage lenders and brokers, who irresponsibly lowered underwriting standards, pushed risky mortgages, and hid the details in the fine print.

Responsibility belongs to the Administration and to regulators, who failed to provide adequate oversight, and who failed to respond to the chorus of reports that millions of families were being taken advantage of.

Responsibility belongs to the rating agencies, who woefully underestimated the risks involved in mortgage securities.

And certainly borrowers share responsibility as well. Homebuyers who paid extra fees to avoid documenting their income should have known they were getting in over their heads. Speculators who were busy buying two, three, four houses to sell for a quick buck don't deserve our sympathy.

But finally, responsibility also belongs to Wall Street, which not only enabled but often encouraged reckless mortgage lending. Mortgage lenders didn't have balance sheets big enough to write millions of loans on their own. So Wall Street originated and packaged the loans that common sense warned might very well have ended in collapse and foreclosure. Some people might say Wall Street only helped to distribute risk. I believe Wall Street shifted risk away from people who knew what was going on onto the people who did not.

Wall Street may not have created the foreclosure crisis, but Wall Street certainly had a hand in making it worse.
...
...

I urge Wall Street and the mortgage industry to voluntarily agree to the following three steps:

First, we need a moratorium of at least 90 days on foreclosures of subprime, owner-occupied homes.
...
..."

_____________________________

OK, Hillary Clinton is a POLITICIAN. Neither she nor her husband have anything else to sell except for political influence. That isn't a bad thing. It's her career, is all, and all full time professional politicians freely choose it, and done right it's an honorable career. But then, with that fact in mind, where does she address gov't responsibility, except to hand-wave it away? She doesn't speak forcefully about the need to fix the now obviously devastating problem through regulation.
She sidesteps that.
Instead, she again handwaves the solution away as being something that "Wall Street" should voluntarily agree to do, just because her high priced speech needed that line.

So I would say "yes", that everyone can do whatever is legally allowed to enrich themselves. But I also say that a sane community regulates what is legal so the end product enriches all, not just those who are already rich and who might want to -- do nasty things.

[revbones]

3. Oooh. Something jucy must be coming up in Hillary's tax returns...

Is the campaign worried about the optics of her shell companies? Or is the next release of Panama Papers stuff? Do tell.

[hill2016]

4. do you agree as a principle or not?

[chknltl]

5. No.

It is legal to lobby (bribe) lawmakers to create laws and loopholes that once enacted allow one to legally pay less than what would have been paid prior to the laws enactment.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

6. no. I assume those tax laws were written by businesses, just like financial regulations

[Live and Learn]

7. Legally yes, morally no! nt

[msongs]

8. having read bernies return he took plenty of deductions, lots of them. what's good for him

is good for everyone, taking legal deductions.

[pat_k]

9. There is a reason it's called "tax evasion."

Last edited Sat Apr 16, 2016, 04:25 AM - Edit history (1)

Employing legal technicalities to avoid taxes in ways the tax code did not intend is known as "tax evasion" for a reason.

Tax evasion may be technically legal (at least until some court case makes the illegality clear), but it is morally indefensible. And it is not something that a person running for public office should engage in.

[Marr]

11. Did someone get an email tonight?

lol.

[reddread]

12. transcript talking points?

how interesting.
must be imminent

[Lars39]

13. When people understand that austerity and sequestration

were imposed while these rich fucks hoarded money, legality won't matter much.

[RadiationTherapy]

14. But wouldn't that mean they were minimizing their participation in the American community?

Doesn't that indicate a mentality of "I built this" and not "I was fortunate in America and want to contribute to this society that I have gained so much from"?? I find that mentality disgusting. For me, part of any American success story means: Pay your taxes and smile. We gotta keep this train a-rollin.


Read my lips: More New Taxes.

[mythology]

15. No

I don't believe in off-shore banking or incorporating in Ireland to shift your taxes there is okay.

Also corporations have an outsized ability to lobby for tax breaks that people don't. So while it might be "legal" for a company to make billions in profits but have no tax bill, I don't think they have the right to do so.

I don't fault individuals for taking things like the mortgage deduction and so forth, but I do hold them culpable for off-shore banking and such.