Your point about accountability is fair, Marged. I don’t know much about the actual operation of nonprofit orgs; my experience is all anecdotal stuff from friends and relatives who work for various joints around here.
My understanding of the govt-vs-nonprofit divide is that by not being associated directly with the government, private nonprofits have some leeway in how they operate (and don’t get fucked by civil servant unions) that can be put to good use. Whether that’s the case on a grand scale or just in the local case of the orgs I have personal secondhand experience with, I have no idea.
I don’t know much about the actual operation of nonprofit orgs; my experience is all anecdotal stuff from friends and relatives who work for various joints around here.
Well, not-for-profits really run the gamut. There are some that are extremely effective and efficient; others less so. It’s a very mixed bag. You’re right about there being more leeway. A great example of that would be the private organization that renovated Central park. They had an extremely charismatic and effective leader and fundraiser and were able to bypass the city’s unionized park service. But there are a lot of pretty crummy not-for-profits out there.
I hadn’t heard anything about it either way prior to Linoleum’s post. If it’s a reduction, meh, it’s still bad news for those NPs – but not the nuclear bad news you’d get for ditching the system entirely.
I mean, I fund raise for my college right now. Many of the people I talk to specifically mention deductions as one of their reasons for giving. I’ve even started bringing it up myself because, dang it, they like hearing about how dropping some dollars on the ol’ school is both “nice” and financially sound.
So, yeah, it would have some impact. How big? Noooo idea.
Here’s what I wanna know - how are people who are too stupid/ignorant to understand the concept of marginal tax rates making so much money? I figure I’m much smarter than them and I’m working for peanuts… literally! What do I do with all these peanuts? I’m not an elephant, people!
You know, I kind of suspect that this is intentional. The tax code is so hard to understand, I have to think it’s deliberate. When I think back to highschool, someone really should have spent three or four weeks teaching us all about it and how to actually file taxes and the like.
Instead of half of the useless garbage we actually covered.
The space cadet deductions and the like are hard to understand, but “x% up to this amount, y% up to this amount, z% above that” isn’t. The complex blizzard of deductions, capital gains shit, and depreciation schedules is all there deliberately because someone paid a congresscritter to put it there, more or less.
Probably the reason these rich people don’t know how it works is they pay someone to do their taxes for them, kind of like how they don’t know how gardening works other than “pay the gardener.”
But in this case, that’s exactly what people are concerned about. Part of the plan is to allow Bush’s tax cuts on long term capital gains and dividend income to expire for those whose income (meaning AGI?) is over 250,000. Because those rules are so complicated, it’s difficult to predict exactly what will happen to your tax bill if you cross the line from not-quite-rich to definitely-rich. Are there margins for capital gains tax rates analogous to regular income tax margins? Or does the rate increase for all your capital gains once your overall income level crosses some threshold? I think the answer is “none of the above”.
Just because they’re concerned and politically engaged doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about.
Also, yes, the capital gains thing is unpredictable, but 1) that’s not what people are complaining about in the press and 2) it’s not Obama’s fault capital gains tax law is such a mess.
Why are cap. gains treated differently from ordinary income anyway? I mean, I could see why back in the bad old days of a 90% top marginal rate, but when the top is, what, 30-something %, I guess I don’t see the need. Income is income. I suppose at this late stage it would kill stock valuations for a good while though.
The claim is they are being taxed twice since the company’s profits are being taxed. I think it’s kind of baloney, since we tax most transactions. A stock sale is a transaction.
