The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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From the New York Times: BIDEN’S PROPOSAL TO EMPOWER IRS RATTLES BANKS AND THEIR CUSTOMERS

This is the sort of story I love. Sleepy Joe wants to find folks who hide their assets, work under the table or just plain scam the tax folks. Billions of dollars are lost, meaning, you and me pick up an even larger share of the defense budget. The rich, the corporations, the Pandora folks, well, we’re happy to spare them the burden of helping with health care or cancer cures or infrastructure rebuilding or education or … well, almost everything. Spare the rich! The American motto these days. Amazon pay taxes? Gee, why, they’re the job creators.

So here’s the New York Times story that the Big Banks (oh, and their customers, at least the Big Boys) are rattled that the IRS might be peeking at their finances. It’s okay that they look at mine, I guess, but whoa, that’s an invasion of privacy when they check into folks with a helluva lot of money and lawyers who can hide it for them. The Republicans, those good fellas who keep harping about the deficits and the debt ceiling, asking how are we going to pay for these programs for the poor, for climate change mitigation, for new infrastructure, for safety needs, for all that stuff that looks like socialism to them, they’re unwilling to hire more IRS auditors to make sure the tax cheaters pay their fair share, oh no, not that! Better to forget about those programs than find an honest way to fund them.

I’m a customer of my bank and I can tell you with some certainty, I’m not rattled by empowering the IRS to collect taxes that aren’t being paid right now. It’s a little like telling the cops don’t arrest the folks in the mansions, better to go after the petty crooks. Wait, we basically do that now. The rich made the tax laws and even then there are plenty of them who want to keep all their money, to hell with the needs of the larger society. They’re privileged and they want to keep it that way. The debt ceiling the GOP doesn’t want to raise is, in good part, the debt incurred by reducing even further the taxes on the wealthy and the corporations. God forbid we audit them to see if they’re playing by the rules. So no, I’m not rattled, but … I wouldn’t mind rattling their cages.

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Just about when I finished our federal taxes … for the third time … I come across an article listing 60 large corporations that pay no tax whatsoever. Maybe you remember the whining and moaning awhile back that American corporations pay too much compared to other countries’ taxes. Maybe you even believed it. If so, all I can say is that your taxes are simple: put down what you earned, take your standard deduction, sign the form and send a check or wait for a refund. You probably figure corporations do the same thing. Put down their earnings, deduct their cost of doing bizness, that’s the profit, divide by 40% or whatever it used to be and lick their wounds and their stamp.

Tax laws are complicated. There are more loopholes in there than I have mice in my shack. If you ever wondered what lobbyists do to earn their salaries, spend a few hours looking through the IRS list of forms. There are quite a few. If you have a few days, scroll through a couple of them, maybe try to follow the worktables, see how they work. I guarantee you need to be a pretty good accountant. And if you’re a corporate accountant, I guarantee you’ll take every deduction you’re allowed plus plenty that are, well, arguable. Since audits are pretty much a thing of the past, you won’t have to make an argument, just breathe easy. And if in the end you don’t have to pay taxes, well, as a taxpayer who does, I’m just glad we aren’t sending these overtaxed corporations refund checks for all their bother.

Oh, wait, maybe we are. Allowances for next year’s taxes, carry-overs, tax exemptions for simply moving to our town, the list is long and depressing. Sure wouldn’t want them to feel disadvantaged, I know, but there is something inherently wrong with a company like Amazon paying zero taxes, then wrangling concessions from their new headquarter’s location, all the while using predatory tactics on their competition. The average of all corporations in 2018 for tax on their profits was, get ready, 7%. No wonder the corporations are crying bloody murder. 7%. Yeow, owww. Little doubt there why wages aren’t going up when these overtaxed companies can barely stay afloat under such fiscal onslaught. Over regulated, over taxed, overseas and over the rainbow. Why should I complain if I pay more than them? Just helping out the economy. So what if Amazon, Delta, Chevron, Netflix, Duke Energy, Honeywell, Occidental Petroleum, John Deere, General Motors and about 50 more large firms couldn’t chip in a dime? Little bizzy making profits for their shareholders, hey. Me, on the other hand, not too many shareholders in my company.

So once again, another fiscal year, another check to the IRS that pays my fair share of schools, fire and police, roads, welfare, the military, infrastructure, border walls, national forests and parks, all those things government does that make my life easier and richer. Corporations? Not so much. Good citizens? I don’t think so. The right to give money to political action committees just like the rest of us humans? You tell me….

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These are hard times for the 1% … even though they have control of most of the state legislatures, the U.S. Congress, the Supreme Court and the office of the President. Oh sure, they pass tax reform bills that mostly go to themselves, but, and here’s the Rub, some of it went to the undeserving poor and middle class. They classified corporations as people so all that money that used to be given to the lobbying efforts can now go to elections. With a little luck and a lot of loot, they should soon be able to save billions on lobbyists that are no longer needed. You might think these are the Golden Years for the rich.

But you’d be wrong. The rich are never really happy apparently. Like John Paul Getty once answered when asked how much money he could possibly need: More. Succinct and honest. He wants more. He and many of the richest folks in America want it all. How much is enough? More. And trust me, that includes yours.

So when Father Patrick Conroy, the congressional chaplain, inserted a line in his prayer for the legislators to consider the poor in their deliberations, to be fair and inclusive, well … he definitely crossed a Line. Imagine the nerve of this guy!! Speaker Paul Ryan said, just before firing his chaplain, he had brought politics into his prayers. Sorta like that guy Jesus who told folks to sell their riches and give it to the needy. Politics! I guess if you think you ought to have the whole enchilada, giving crumbs to the poor is extremely political.

The thing is, though, they can take umbrage over someone like Padre Conroy inserting charity and hope into his mini-sermon, but they shouldn’t show it publicly. Looks bad. Greed and insensitivity, even in this Trumpian Era, don’t actually play well. They need to feign concern for the poor and downtrodden while they’re picking their pockets. Otherwise they look like, well, avaricious legal thieves. They should offer them a paltry cut in their taxes that they can always recoup with user fees, gas taxes, etc. while taking the lion’s share and claiming they cut taxes for everyone. Let the preacher have his sappy exhortation for charity. They’ll be slicing Medicaid back a few notches and cutting back on welfare programs before he can say Amen.

Sure, they walked it back on the chaplain’s dismissal. But not before they’d drawn back the curtain on their smoke-filled room where the Wizard was discovered to be all those back-slapping, cigar smoking, brandy sniffing yahoos and their lobbyist cronies. Just like you always suspected….

Say a prayer for them. They need saving.

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