taxes Archives - McGillespie

Abortion

Man Who Refuses to Pay Taxes Until Abortion Is Defunded Wins Court Victory

By Guest Post March 7, 2019

by Sean Adl-Tabatabai

A Christian man who refuses to pay his taxes until the government stops funding abortion has won a historic lawsuit against the IRS.

Michael Bowman has refused to file a tax return or pay taxes since 1999. “I’m not a tax protester. I love my country,” he told reporters. “I have a duty to my country. I have a duty to my conscience.”

Lifesitenews.com reports: The IRS has sent him numerous warnings over unpaid taxes from 2002 to 2014, and in 2012 the Oregon Department of Revenue began garnishing money from Bowman’s bank account. In response, he started cashing out his paychecks and leaving only a minimum balance in his account.

This, federal prosecutors say, constituted “remov[ing] his income from the reach of taxing authorities.” They indicted him for felony tax evasion in the amount of $356,857, as well as four misdemeanor counts of willful failure to file tax returns.

Bowman’s attorney, Matthew Schindler, argued that his client was fully transparent every step of the way, from disclosing all of his paychecks to cashing them at his own bank, under his own name.

“Like a player collapsing as they lose Twister, the government has reached too far forward and stretched way too far back,” his motion to dismiss read.

Last week, US District Judge Michael Mosman sided with Bowman on the felony charge, ruling that the feds failed to show he attempted to conceal income or deceive the government. Prosecutors remain free to re-introduce the charge in the future and are currently weighing whether to do so.

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Accounting

Netflix paid NO federal or state taxes in 2018 despite record profits

By Guest Post February 8, 2019

by Lauren Fruen

Netflix paid NOTHING in federal or state taxes in 2018 despite posting record profits of $845million – and even got a $22million rebate

Netflix didn’t pay a cent in state or federal income taxes last year, despite posting its largest-ever U.S. profit in 2018 of $845million, according to a new report.

In addition, the streaming giant reported a $22 million federal tax rebate, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).

Senior fellow at ITEP Matthew Gardner said corporations like Netflix, which has its headquarters in Los Gatos, California, are still ‘exploiting loopholes’ and called the figures ‘troubling’.

Netflix says they paid $131 million in taxes in 2018 and this is declared in financial documents. But Gardner says this figure relates to taxes paid abroad, according to a separate part of their statements.

He told DailyMail.com: ‘It is pretty clearly true that Netflix’s cash payment of worldwide income taxes in 2018 was $131 million. But that is a worldwide number—the amount Netflix actually paid to national, state and local governments worldwide in 2018. This tells us precisely nothing about the amount Netflix paid to any specific government, including the U.S.’

Gardner added: ‘Fortunately, however, there is another, more complete geographic disclosure of income tax payments.

‘The notes to the financial statements have a detailed section on income taxes. And what this tells us is that all of the income taxes Netflix paid in 2018 were foreign taxes. Zero federal income taxes, zero state income taxes in the US.’

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Business

Taxes Are Getting Weaponized for Partisan Purposes

By Guest Post February 5, 2019

by J.D. Tuccille

How willing are you to pay taxes when you know they’re intended to do you harm?

Government agencies and laws have devolved into weapons to be wielded against political opponents in this country. Why wouldn’t taxes follow?

Too many Americans promote taxes as a means of hurting people they dislike, putting the raising of revenue as a secondary consideration—or dropping it entirely.

Given the destructive nature of taxation, it’s a potentially effective strategy, at least for a while. But it may also totally delegitimize the tax system in the eyes of the people who are supposed to pay the bills.

Social Engineering Takes to the Tax Code

With simmering partisan animosity in the U.S. has come a growing willingness to use government to extirpate anything perceived as bad or politically different. Financial regulators, law enforcement, and legislation have already been conscripted to the cause of hurting political enemies. Taxation is the just the latest weapon in the war.

Insisting that “a system that allows billionaires to exist … is wrong,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a self-identified socialist, wants to slap punitive taxes on the prosperous. Yes, Ocasio-Cortez thinks a 70 percent marginal rate will raise some money for her pet projects, but that seems to take a back seat to using taxes to remake the economic system and eliminate a class of people she believes shouldn’t exist.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) warned that “a small group of families has raked in a massive amount of the wealth American workers have produced.” Warren wants to confiscate part of their accumulated assets. “My proposal will help address runaway wealth concentration,” said the likely 2020 presidential candidate.

“I can’t wait to tax Howard Schultz back into the middle class,” tweeted progressive columnist Ian Millhiser, after the former Starbucks CEO had the temerity to float a possible independent presidential run. For Millhiser, revenue isn’t even a consideration—it’s all about harming a partisan foe.

Not that Team Blue has a monopoly on valuing taxation for its power to destroy. The current resident of the White House likes that characteristic, too.

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Banking

Two Paragraph Expat Guide to Chile

By Terence Gillespie January 8, 2015

Rent and K.I.S.S.

All the land development talk in my Galt’s Gulch Chile series seems pretentious. Then again, merely telling the average person you’re flying to Chile has a good chance of causing eyes to glaze over as if one is doing something exotic. Flying to Chile is not exotic; it’s merely something that’s possible the instant one decides it is.

If there’s a storm headed your way it’s time to cut the crap-talk about some castle you own and get to a motel room anywhere the storm isn’t. Why be grandiose about the simple and elegant act of leaving to let the storm pass? In fact, why say anything at all except to make a few calls to shutoff utilities and keep any promises you’ve made to others before leaving town? With mouth firmly closed, just hop a flight and get a room.

Engaged Withdrawal is Not Passive

The point of all this ex-pat business is to contribute to the solution through engaged withdrawal. Having gone through much of the advanced work of ex-patting my family I can vouch for the truth that engaged withdrawal is not a passive undertaking (Hat tip to Wendy McElroy for this link).

Two Paragraph Expat Guide to Chile

Forget about all this talk of land development and ownership. Motels, Hotels, Apartments, houses and cabana’s dot the entire country, have already been developed, and are yours for the renting. Your best second home is a rental anywhere you want to be. Keep it that simple and you won’t even be limited to Chile.

Nine out of ten Chilean ex-pats end up in NE Santiago (Las Condes) so just rent there for a few months and make scouting trips on the weekends. When the 90 days is up on your visa fly to Argentina for the weekend and reset it. That’ll get you out of the US for six months with your “measly” first passport. You have one, right?

It’s Your World, Boss

The world is yours the instant you recognize it is. The nagging urge to “own” things, perhaps stronger in the American psyche, is best kept at bay when conducting one’s life across multiple nation-states.

I recall streaming the movie “Inglourious Basterds” [sic, indeed] from netflix to the ipad and realizing the adjoining cabana could be rented for my kids, along with the one we were in, for less than our US mortgage. With that thought, the fear of being trapped in proximity to the endless artificial problems of the state’s creation started to melt away. My second thought was that all this was achieved for the price of a plane ticket, rental car and a hotel room.

As Billy Joel Sang in “NY State of Mind”. . .

“Hop a flight to Miami Beach, or to Hollywood”

to which I add:

. . . or to Panama, New Zealand or to Chile.