...Tax Reform Racket First and foremost let us begin by clarifying that we are by no means economists. However, we are United States taxpayers, and we know us as well as our neighbors are being robbed. For a better understanding of this let us look at a few areas that led to this. These areas include Article I section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Civil War, and the 16th Amendment. Article I section 8 of the U.S. Constitution authorizes the power, The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States. ("Constitution of the United States - Official") This is all well and good, however things start to get a little heated in America come 1861. Unfortunately we split and Civil War began and come 1862 America needed a way to finance a war against itself. Thus came the federal income tax, also know as the Revenue Act. Though the Civil war contributed to one of the greatest social victories of mankind it has led to the beginning to America’s loss of liberty. (Edwards) In April 1865 Uncle Sam Removed the chains of slavery in the U.S. on African Americans then in 1913 applied them to all Americans the 16th Amendment. Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard...
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...Transparency Tax transparency can be interpreted in many ways depending on the type of business it is relating to. However generally it refers to ‘’how an organisation chooses to communicate its approach to tax and how much tax it pays. It is how it seeks to provide clarity on the complex area of tax.’’ BEPS The mission of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world. http://www.oecd.org/about/ In an increasingly interconnected world, national tax laws have not kept pace with global corporations, fluid capital, and the digital economy, leaving gaps that can be exploited by companies who avoid taxation in their home countries by pushing activities abroad to low or no tax jurisdictions. This undermines the fairness and integrity of tax systems. The project, quickly known as BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) looks at whether or not the current rules allow for the allocation of taxable profits to locations different from those where the actual business activity takes place, and what could be done to change this if they do. http://www.oecd.org/tax/beps-about.htm In July 2013, the OECD released its long awaited action plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifing (BEPS)1). The plan, which consists of 15 actions to be undertaken between September 2014 and December 2015, aims at fixing rather than changing international corporate tax law. Page 61 http://www...
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...financial management must address with this problem. In, the end we may not have a answer to this problem but we will have a better understanding of what the financial management must juggle in order to run a successful department or organization. The shortage of physicians is likely going to affect every aspect of healthcare. Profit and Nonprofit organization will both be affected some ways similar and in some ways different. Not-for-profit organizations, “are owned by the entire community rather than by investor-owners,” and profit organizations, “earn profits that are distributed t the investor-owners of the firms or reinvested in the firm for the long term benefit of these owners.” (Cleverly, 2011, pg. 8) The Affordable Health Care System has made a large impact on how organizations are reimbursed which is the major interest to both organizations. The shortage comes at a bad time while our nation is trying to improve access to care and improve quality. The lack of Physicians is causing an increase strain to business not just for profit but also nonprofit hospitals. “Investor-owned companies have powerful motives for expansion. The price of their stock—and, therefore, their continued access to equity capital, as well as the value of the assets of their...
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...distributive public policy. Distributive are policies which involve incremental dispersal, unit by unit, to different segments of the population, and to individuals and institutions. For education, the distributive values are in forms of favors, spoils, benefits and patronage to some people or groups of individuals and organizations. In this case the government stipulates the mode and method sharing the national or the common wealth. As the most common form of policy, it uses general tax revenue to provide benefits to individuals or groups. Federal, state or local government allocates specific grant for the purpose of solving public and such actions are distributive policies. Some benefits are distributed without taking them away from other people, for example, free education. Education can fit as a distributive policy because as the most common form of policy, it uses general tax revenue to provide benefits to students, districts, counties, and states. As the case with education, taxes are placed of federal tax payers. The percentage of the...
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...state and system level. 1. Individual level From the cartoon, a man in a black suit is seated. A lady peeps eagerly waiting to hear from the boss. The man instructs the lady to write a press release aimed at stopping Pope from touching issues to do with scientists. The above cartoon depicts an event which took place recently where republication leaders order Pope Francis to stop discussing issues to do with climate change. Practically, Jeb Bush, the Florida governor claimed that scientific experts are the online people who can give reliable information regarding global temperature changes (Iserbyt & Charlotte 2011). They have designed crooked ways of shutting down the utterances of Pope Francis one of which is to hire scientists to disapprove the Pope’s utterances. 2. State Level The Hart City Council has introduced Hartford commuter tax whereby business owners must book a ticket costing $5. In essence, the council looks forward to punish Hartford residents who supported dearly Luke Bronin’s Mayoral Campaigns. It remains symbolic as they claim that this is a fine for investors who established large businesses with more 70 employees in the State (Falcocchio, John and Levinson 2015). The council seems to be in financial problems and the surest way of fixing such problems is by introducing high taxes. Seemingly, residents indirectly pay for everything from paying for property repairs, sewer, lights, water and the building of state offices. 3. System Level ...
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...published the article with unpretentious name “Why we must raise taxes on the rich”, where he suggests raising the tax on income of top earners as a catalyst of economic growth. Obviously, he misinterprets certain economic models, openly juggles with nicely sound stereotypes, and fails to investigate the roots of the economic problem. At first glance, the fact that super rich pay dramatically lower income taxes now than they did in 1950, as mentioned in the article, strikes the reader with seeming unfairness. Yes, it sounds good and fair that the income should be taken from those to pay and redistributed among those who need it, as in Robin Hood scenario. And yet, it is still true that such changes in income rates did occur since World War 2. But it is not indicative of any severe and unforgivable mistake, which needs to be revised at soonest in order to reach the magical number “$ 350 billion” in tax revenues and solve nation’s issues, as proposed by Reich. In spite of the seeming benefits of imposing higher taxes on the rich, such as redistribution of income, ability to pay and fairness, higher marginal or effective tax rates discourage productive activity of the rich, creating disincentives to take risks and produce more. Such policies mean less potential profit, so individuals are less likely to invest and start new businesses, and more likely to cut current working places and reduce salaries. In short, productive performance is discouraged leading to a decrease in economic...
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...solution to the transportation policy. The Transportation Policy as we know it today started as the Interstate program according to Shirayanagi, H., & Kitamura, Y. (2011) “in 1956 also called the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act, appropriated $25 billion (about $197 billion in 2009 dollars) to build 41,000 miles of multi-lane, limited access highways.” (p.253) While it was done to connect states and make it easier for economic center to connect it helped develop travel within cities themselves. These highways were built with 90 percent federal funding the only problem was that the local government did not get any money to improve the transportation systems. Fast-forward to August 2005 according to Shirayanagi, H., & Kitamura, Y. (2011) “ the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: (SAFETEA-LU) which is our current transportation policy signed by President George W. Bush, authorized $286.5 billion dollars to fund our nation’s transportation network through September 2009…” (p.257) The bill expired on September 30, 2009 and has been extended multiple times since that date. The main reason Congress cannot come up with a new policy because first and for most the federal government does not want to fund state and local projects without any help from that state,...
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...discussing his stance on this issue and what he would do to change it like building a wall to prevent illegal immigrants or terrorist from crossing over to American soil. He also wants to triple the border patrol agents to secure the wall. He has also said that he would put an end to President Obama’s amnesty by rescinding all those that he gave out. He has always been trying to strengthen our immigration system. For an instance, when he filed an amendment that would block illegal immigrants that are living in the United States from ever getting their citizenship, strengthen border security, prohibit federal, state, and local benefits from giving assistants to undocumented immigrants. In an article from the U.S. News Cruz stated that: The amendments filed today to strengthen border security and reform our legal immigration system will not only bring meaningful, effective improvements to our immigration system, but also have a chance of becoming law. America is a nation of immigrants, built by immigrants and we need to honor that heritage by fixing our broken immigration system, while upholding the rule of law and championing legal immigration. (Metlzer) I believe he has the correct idea in penalizing those who have come into the United States without going through the proper channels. He realizes that we are a country that was found on immigrants and he doesn’t want to block people from coming he wants...
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...transactions that result in a capital gain include the sale of stocks, bonds, and vacation homes. A tax on capital gains would be a certain percentage of the money that is withheld by the state. One of the most significant components of a capital gains tax is its resilience and ability to generate wealth for washington. According to budgetandpolicy.org capital gains are an abundant and rapidly growing economic resource in washington. In addition capital gains grew from 7.4 billion dollars in 2001 to 23.7 billion dollars in 2007 showing how capital gains can grow quickly over time with an annual growth rate of 21 percent. The capital gains tax resilience can be seen even during the great recession as in 2009, nearly six billion dollars were made from the sale of capital assets in the state at the time. As a result more than enough money can be made to meet the Mccleary mandate made by the supreme court in 2012 onto the state which according to The Joint Task Force on Education Funding,established by the legislature, estimates that it will take $1.4 billion in the next two-year budget cycle and $4.5 billion by 2017-19 to meet their obligations. In fact a capital gains tax with a five percent rate and a 10,000 dollar exemption with a five thousand dollar exemption to singles would generate over 500 million...
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...893 cigarettes, and cut the number of adults who smoke by about a third. In India, central-excise duty has increased 1606% on the shortest non-filter cigarettes available and 198% on the shortest filter cigarettes since 1996. Taxes constitute about 60% of the price of a best-selling pack of 20 cigarettes, against about 43% in the US. But India was not able to reduce its capita annual consumption of cigarettes in the same proportion. Cigarette smokers in India increased from 25 million to 46.4 million over 14 years (1996 to 2010), and per capita annual consumption of cigarettes declined marginally, from 101 to 96 cigarettes over the same period. With some assumptions, it can be shown that the tax on bidis can be increased to Rs. 100 per 1000 sticks compared with the current Rs. 14 and the tax on an average cigarette can be increased to Rs. 3.5 per stick without any fear of losing revenue. The government though has been taking rigorous initiatives to try and reduce the consumption of tobacco products it has not been able to achieve the results which it wanted to have. There have been many reasons for this to happen and we will look into it in this report. Introduction:- In India, tobacco consumption is responsible for half of all the cancers in men and a quarter of all cancers in women,1 in addition to being a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases.2,3 India also has one of the highest rates of oral cancer in the world, partly attributed...
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...inflation, undulating business cycles, climate conditions, attitudes towards employers, employee values, and a person’s ability to look for employment. We have thoroughly researched these causes and issues, and we promise to provide answers to you, and solutions that will help solve the unemployment problem. One solution we would implement involves unemployment benefits, which are meant to help those citizens who have been laid off. Unfortunately, there are people who have been receiving unemployment benefits who are not complying with the requirements for receiving unemployment benefits. These benefits are meant to help citizens while they search for and hopefully obtain a new job, but some are abusing this and taking advantage of the system and ruining it for others. We...
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...income tax rate. Most Americans were not concerned since the Amendment was sold to them as something that would only affect corporations and the rich. With ever increasing fervor these corporations created lobbyists to convince Congress to exempt them from some or all of the income tax. The big breakthrough in this was taxing the worker directly with payroll taxes during World War II. This method of collecting income tax was sold to Americans as temporary, but Congress has extended it indefinitely and the public has become used to it. The next few decades saw the debate revolve around creating tax breaks for individuals in an attempt to modify behavior or spending. This has resulted in over 67,000 pages of tax code and an entire industry devoted to tax compliance and evasion, with the unintended behavioral change of corporations and the rich parking their money outside of the United States in small island nations to avoid taxation. These offshore accounts are estimated to hold $10 trillion dollars, a number approximate to the national debt. The FairTax Act should be enacted because it eliminates all federal income taxes for individuals and corporations, eliminates all federal payroll withholding taxes, abolishes estate and capital gains taxes and repeals the 16th Amendment; thus eliminating the need for offshore accounts. The FairTax Act will replace these costly, oppressively complex and economically inefficient taxes with a progressive national retail sales tax, which...
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...political parties that govern the people of the United States of America. The videos also express ways to fix and aid the corruption of the government and its ways, giving a sense of hope for the future of America and its people. In watching the videos, it became clear that the two major issues in America’s Government today are where is the money of American citizens and its tax payers going? Also questioning the stability of the two parties leading America’s government system. I’d first like to discuss America’s two political partied systems, as the videos uncover and reveal many facts and statistics. In the “Intelligence Square Debate”; a poll was taken previous, where 46 percent of American citizens believed the two party system was in fact the main cause in the thoughts leading towards an ungovernable America. Along with 30 percent of people not knowing or caring enough to vote at all. This poll and its facts lead me to believe that there is a lack of belief and interest within voting Americans. Many Americans seem to be uneducated and uninterested with making a movement towards fixing there political system. This was evident in the videos when stated; “Has America really lost its ability to...
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...Introduction Apple dedicates its social corporate responsibilities in regards to a plethora of policies and governance in regards to: labor practices that builds the dynamics of employment and labor relations, employee benefits and workplace safety; supply chain management, strategic management regarding customer, legal compliance Apple defines the employment governance structure in the Supplier Code of Conduct and Ethics covering labor and human rights, health and safety, the environment, and ethics and management systems. Apple obliges its suppliers to respect the human rights of its workers, to inform the workers of their rights, and to treat them with dignity and respect. Apple requires from its suppliers that they prevent discrimination, involuntary and underage labor, excessive working hours and that they pay workers with wages and benefits in accordance with the applicable laws and regulations. Apple implemented and enforced a strict Suppliers Code of Conduct to regulates and aligns suppliers internal operations; Apple have created a uniformed standard aimed at ensuring that suppliers maintains the same level of principles and value that its holds dear and true across it 18 final assembly facilities, over 764 suppliers, components manufacturers and those that represents at least 97% of its raw material sourcing and procurement worldwide. Apple states that the company “conducts business ethically, honestly, and in full compliance with all laws and regulations....
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...The purpose of this paper is to briefly describe the economic problem of tax reform in the United States of America. First, I will give a description of tax reform in the United States of America. Second, I will assess the impact the problem poses to society. Third, I will design an economic policy solution to the problem. Fourth, I will analyze the economic theory used to complete the policy solution and determine the impact on the appropriate stakeholders. Last, I will analyze how the economic policy proposed would solve the economic problem. Tax reform is the process of changing the way taxes are collected or managed by the government. Tax reformers have many different goals. Some seek to make the tax system more progressive or less progressive. Others want to simplify the tax system and make it more understandable or more accountable. In the United States, it is required for working citizens to pay taxes. Taxes are generated from an individual’s income or from sales. These taxes go towards the local, state, and federal government. The purpose of taxes is to fund the government, the military, and services to low-income families. Programs such as food stamps, housing, Social Security, public school, and healthcare are available due to taxes. The tax system is based on the “ability to pay.” As an individual’s income increases, so does their taxable income rate. The current economic situation of the United States can be blamed on a multitude of variables and is the fault of...
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