New DSLR lenses from Nikon

Please understand that for over fifty years I have been conditioned to
understand that in a tax context: "Evasion" is criminal avoidance. What ritz
did was legal, hence it was avoidance.

Agreed. Unless it encourages evasion by the end user. then that
encouragement may, or may not rise to a criminal level.

The corporate structure allows Ritz to avoid responsibility. There is
nothing wrong with that. Indeed I consider that smart business practice.

Never said you didn't try.

When it comes to taxation issues, by nature and training I am usually
extremely precise. If I ever tried to explain to a revenue agent that my
client was legally evading taxes, he would look at me as if I had two heads.
In other areas, I sometimes err in my choice of words.

 

It seems to me that one of the biggest hurdles any modern-day
President has is to effectively work with Congress by retaining the
support of his/her own party members and securing at least some
support of the opposing party's members.

Obama has not been particularly effective in this, but Palin would not
be at all effective in this. IMO.

 

Yes, not only are states different, there are many cities and other
municipal jurisdictions that impose various types of taxes. In New York only
New York City and Yonkers are allowed to impose an income tax, but other
cities and towns are not. Moreover no ton is allowed to impose any kind of
tax without appropriate legislative authority.

 

I have seen very few no change audits. Here, a sales tax audit is considered
the worst. Understrand that the IRS auditors are generally more highly
trained and more highly paid than state auditors. Consequently, they are
more intelligent and seem to understand business, better.

Frequently, the IRS gets you on record keeping issues.

An accountant once bragged to me that none of his clients were ever audited.
I told him that was because he might not have been doing a good job for his
clients.

Seriously, you really don't want any audits, with any agency.

 

That doesn't make sense. If VAT is charged on incoming freight to a
manufacturer (and I don't know if it is or not), the product may
change hands several times before it gets to the retail level or the
product may be assembled from components manufactured by several
different firms. Surely, the retailer is not reclaiming VAT paid by
all the sources in the manufacturing process.

You'd have the camera retailer reclaiming VAT from the maker of the
camera body, the maker of the lens, the maker of the strap, the maker
of the lens caps, etc. All those sources are incurring freight
charges.

Are you saying above that VAT is charged along the line in the
production of a product? If it is reclaimed, then it must have been
charged. While the end cost may not reflect the VAT charged and
reclaimed, the cost will be increased by the extra requirements of
paying and retrieving the charges.

In the US, a company that distributes or manufactures a product is
exempt from sales/use tax when they purchase anything that goes into
the product. The tax only comes into being when the final distributor
sells to the end user.

In other words, if I manufacture widgets, I won't pay sales/use taxes
on anything that I purchase that will be incorporated into the widget
or the widget's packaging. I will pay sales tax on things like office
supplies to run the business, and anything else that is not part of
the product. If I sell my widgets to a retail store, they don't pay
tax. Only the end user pays tax.

In the US, whether or not there is a sales/use tax on freight charges
is up to the individual state. Some states exempt it, some don't.

 

The whole point of a value added tax is that it is a tax on value that has
been added. A bunch of raw materials come into a mill. Steel leaves the
mill--it is worth more than the raw materials, the difference is value
added, that value added gets taxed. Now the steel goes to a machine shop,
that produces parts that are worth more than the steel, so again there is
value added, which gets taxed. Then the parts go to a factory that turns
them into cars or toasters or cameras, which are worth more than the parts,
so again there is value added. The end result is that the same amount of
tax gets paid but everybody has to keep track of the tax now instead of just
the retailer.

 

True in theory, but the context of my comment was clearly audits by taxing
authorities.

 

Isn't your Wacom working? I have to do five images for a juried exhibit, but
haven't decided on my theme. So I wasting time here instead.

 

Of course it would be. Not in administering a VAT program, but in
*initiating* a VAT program. Each state that has a sales tax program
would have to discontinue that program. Within many states there are
additional sales/use tax programs that would have to be discontinued.

The nightmare would be extended to in-fighting within the states. The
legislature in each state currently decides what is a taxable item and
what is not taxable, but a federally-operated program would take that
away from the state.

The transition from state-collected funding to federal-collected
funding, and disbursing that money to the states, would be the
nightmare.

That's only a problem for non-Americans visiting the country.
Americans are used to it. It's no different for the tourists than
adapting to a different monetary system.

 

You also have the situation of tax-exempt products. Each state has a
list of items that are non-taxable in that state that may or may not
be taxable in another state.

 

Is that a good thing, or a bad thing, in your opinion? I've run a US
business. Keeping track of sales tax collected and paying the tax is
not a particularly difficult task Computers do most of it.

 

Bad news for anarchist rightards: The Constitution doesn't say
whatever you want it to say.

Obviously that rules you out.

 

Such obvious bigotry and lying really doesn't say much for you. Obama
speaks in public regularly and without teleprompters and speaks quite
well. AND he is capable of keeping three simple ideas in his head
without having to write them on his palm.

 

Another outright lie. The deficit exists almost entirely because of
Bush and the Republicans who gave away trillions of dollars to the
wealthy.

 

You really are astonishingly stupid.

 

Who writes the speeches? That thinking is left to a speech writer. It's no
red herring, the man is lost without it.

 

It's the policy differences that matter more to me. The differences between
Palin and Obama are like night and day.

 

There's something to be said about a natianal sales tax, in spite of the
idiot liberals. A national sales tax will eliminate the underground money.
Hiding income from the IRS will be moot. When you spend money, whether
ill-gotten or legitimately earned, the sales tax is applied to whatever you
buy.

The problem with a national sales tax is that it will not elimiate the
income tax. There is no way the federal income tax will ever be eliminated
because the federal government uses the tax code for political reason and
they won't be able to do so with a national sales tax. All they'll wind up
doing is adding a national sales tax in addition to the income tax.

A somewhat similar concept is bandied around from time-to-time on Long
Island. Here, we pay exhorbitant property taxes. To give you an example, I
bought my home for $ 300,000 and my property taxes have now topped $ 11,000
per year and they just go up every year. 2/3 of that amount is the school
tax. People can't afford it anymore. Property owners pay the taxes. In
some communities, particularly where illegal immigrants live, there are
single-family homes that are rented to multiple families. There may be ten
kids living in the home. Those kids have to be educated, illegal or not.
Juxtapose that with a single family living in a home with two kids. Both
homes in the same community pay the same property tax yet one home has ten
kids in it going to school. This puts a tremendous tax burden on the
homeowners. So, a solution bandies around is to impose an income tax to pay
for the school taxes. However, the income tax will not replace the property
tax, it will be in addition to the property tax. This will keep property
taxes from rising and it will also get people who don't own property yet
have kids in school to also pay as long as they earn an income. It will
also keep property taxes from rising and will help the retirees from being
forced to move because their property taxes are too high. The problem for
working people who are fairly successful is that the additional income tax
imposed will be more than their property taxes would increase. School's
have an insatiable appetite for our money just like our government does.

 

The President has one or more speech writers on his staff just as all
modern-day Presidents have. Well-known former Presidential speech
writers include Ted Sorenson and Arthur Schlesinger Jr (JFK), Pat
Buchanan, William Safire, and Ben Stein (Nixon), Tony Snow (GHW Bush),
and Jon Favreau (Obama). The speech may be outlined by the President
and finished by the speechwriter.

Possibly so in the case of President George W. Bush, but other
Presidents have been capable of coherent thinking. Bush relied on
Marc Thiessen to do the thinking.

He does well with extemporaneous speaking.

Bush, however, was lost with or without a teleprompter.

 

Palin has policies? I thought it was attitudes that Palin had?