Tax Reform Under Trump 2017

It’s all objectionable. All of it! None of it is good.

I am fanatically pro the removal of the second amendment.

Again, I think teaching gun safety is good. Why not?

And so is encouraging people to vote. Unless you think people should only be encouraged to vote when it’s to your political advantage, which I find fairly abhorrent.

It wasn’t sure down right away, though. It existed.

Fuck that shit. You don’t understand. Guns to me is abortions to the Catholic Church.

Basically, all charities are one step from being the Trump Foundation because it saves richer fuckers money.

Yes, and bad cops existed. Until they were fired. Does that mean we should eliminate all police?

I get it, you hate charities and rich people. You’re willing to sacrifice poor people if it will make rich people worse off. I’m not.

If they weren’t necessary, we would. But the Trump Foundation only existed because of the tax breaks.

So, get rid of the tax break, and no need to worry.

And why should you get a tax break for giving money to a charity to Israeli?

You have an odd view. People don’t stop giving if you get rid of the exemption. You can see that because poor people regular give more than their deduction.

The only groups that don’t are the rich. And if they did pay their taxes, we might not need so many charities.

Roughly half of all money going to charity comes from the top income quintile. One quarter comes from the dreaded top 1%.

You seem to think that those numbers wouldn’t change if the charitable deduction went away, but I see no evidence for that. People do things more when they are incentivized to do them.

I do think those numbers would change. And that’s fine, because it means more revenue from taxes.

It means more money in state and local coffee as well.

Basically, you are in favor of robbing the US government is in order to finance wealthy people’s ego trip.

After 30 years.

Call me crazy but successfully running a scam for 3 decades isn’t a success story for showing that the system works.

And rich people gave to charities before they got tax breaks. Mostly because the nation was about ready to start killing them, but still, the exemption didn’t start until 1917. Carnegie started in 1883 with no tax breaks at all. I’d say for the most part he gave a lot more than most rich fucks do these days.

I am in favor of helping people who need help. If giving someone $400 of federal funds means that $1000 gets sent to a homeless shelter, than I am in favor. Because that $1000 will likely do more good than whatever that $400 was going towards.

If billions get sent to help homeless people, but some rich jerk also makes money by running a scam, then I am still in favor. Because helping people is more important to me than seeing jerks suffer.

I think tax breaks are an incentive, and people do more of what they are incentivized to do.

But if you disagree, then there is no reason to limit ourselves to charity. We have tax rebates for education, day care, energy efficiency, etc. If we eliminate the charity deduction on the theory that the money would have been spent anyway, then we should also eliminate deductions for college savings, day care, solar panels etc.

We end up with a government that doesn’t care where you spend your money, which I think is a step backwards for progressives.

As I said, there is a difference, a lot of them, and the biggest is The Trump Foundation and others like it.

The second is being able to make deductions for charitable giving outside of the United States.

The third is that the other deductions were directly created by Congress to address a specific problem or issue, while Charities is just a broad tax give away to the weathy. Those other incentives can be changed or altered to fit the needs of the American People.

But hey, I guess you could be worried about big Solar, or Big Child Care.

That’s a fairly crappy argument. The existence of one bad tax incentive doesn’t invalidate the reasons for the good ones.

Charity is a crap tax incentive. It’s a band-aid for our consciences and also a handy way to divert money from the state to religious organization. The existence of charitable giving, at least in the sense of aid to the poor or underprivileged, should be something we are deeply ashamed of. It’s very visible evidence that we can’t be bothered to engineer a just society that cares for all its members.

So you admit this is just another tax break for the wealthy?

And energy efficiency benefits all. Subsidized day care as well. Somebody giving money to their church, or donating to a college or political organization I could care less about.

It lets religious people get a write off for believing in their religion. Shouldn’t that be illegal?

I mean it’s entirely possible, but it’s mostly a way to let rich people play with money to avoid taxes, often with the upside of being able to access the money they “donated” to the “charity” on top of it.

For every Gates Foundation there are 20+ Trump Foundations. As we’ve learned you can get away with illegal shit as long as no one ever bothers to pay attention. Burn it down imo, the people that want to do good will do it anyway.

That’s illegal. And when people break the law, we should prosecute them. It’s ridiculous to conclude that a law is broken solely because some people abuse it.

I’ve seen no evidence that tax breaks for charity are less effective as incentives than any other tax break. And in the absence of evidence, if we argue that tax breaks don’t increase charitable giving, then there is no reason to suppose it will increase education spending.

The only way to get a big deduction is to make a big donation, and the only way to make a big donation is to have a lot money. So I guess you’re right that if you “make a killing” then you must have been wealthy.

Nevertheless, even if you take into account the tax break, you will never be financially better off after making a donation. No matter how much money you started out with, no matter how much you donate. Which is why all this talk about “making a killing” is nonsense. Tax break or not, every time you donate you will lose. It’s just a matter of how much you lose.

And please spare me the righteousness about conscience and ego. If I could snap my fingers to get just $100 for charity but it also resulted in every single rich person feeling really, really good about themselves, then of course I would do it. What kind of sociopath would like to see less money for the needy because it would make other people feel bad? That’s the kind of gross reasoning I usually associate with the Right.

Because it takes money out of the local, state and federal government to do the things that need to be done.

Deductions to charity are just theft, plain and simple.

And you get to put your name on a building that also works as advertisement for your company.