OT Are taxes killing us financially?

Perhaps but this doesn't look especially onerous to me. You can't get a business license in most California cities at the rates Oregon charges.

Revised Minimum Tax - Prior to the law change, Oregon imposed a $10 minimum tax on all C

corporations subject to the corporate excise tax as well as all S corporations, but partnerships were

not subject to a minimum tax. For C corporations or affiliated groups filing a return under Or. Rev.

Stat. § 317.710, the new law revises the minimum tax by applying a sliding scale based on Oregon

sales as determined under Oregon's sales factor rules (Or. Rev. Stat. §

minimum tax amounts, based on Oregon sales, are as follows:

. Less than $500,000 $150

. $500,000 or more, but less than $1 million $500

. $1 million or more, but less than $2 million $1,000

. $2 million or more, but less than $3 million $1,500

. $3 million or more, but less than $5 million $2,000

. $5 million or more, but less than $7 million $4,000

. $7 million or more, but less than $10 million $7,500

. $10 million or more, but less than $25 million $15,000

. $25 million or more, but less than $50 million $30,000

. $50 million or more, but less than $75 million $50,000

. $75 million or more, but less than $100 million $75,000

. $100 million or more: $100,0004

The revised law also imposes a minimum tax of $150 on S corporations and on partnerships

transacting business in Oregon.5 These law changes are effective for tax years beginning on or

after January 1, 2009.

Why do people so steadfastly refuse that there's no such thing as a corporate tax, at least not the way the politics of envy sees it. To a corporation, no matter how much you tax them, from their point of view, it's just part of the cost of doing business, and the only place they get the money to pay it is from their customers. When you raise corporate taxes, all you're doing is raising the price you pay for products.

Thanks, Rich

No, its not like that. The real problem was that once I had the records together, and that was the largest effort, filling out the forms, even manually, was quite straightforward. With a computer program, it is almost trivial, and also checks a bunch of things for inconsistency.

For a long time I kept my ledger on paper, and now I have been using a spreadsheet that makes it easier to total everything up. I tried out a cheapie ledger program but didn't like it.

Jon

Well, you may still be doing something wrong, in the tax PLANNING area. Of course, if you can't take advantage of the mortgage benefit, child benefit, business deductions, home office benefit, etc. then you may not be able to do much better. But, if you can set things up to use some of those benefits, they can be ENORMOUSLY helpful in lowering your taxes. After entering all the stuff and fixing some quibbles the tax program found, again, this year, even though the business made money, and my investments made money, I ended up with a very small tax burden! I don't understand it, but I LOVE it! Thanks, uncle Sam! I still have to see what the state will do to me, they often don't give the same benefits, so I get a HUGE refund on the federal and then have to pay a thousand $ or more to the state.

Jon

Oregon. This is the second year in force because the legislature back dated the law! "S" corps and others pay a minimum of $150. I have had to borrow that amount because my company lost money.

out of business. Many large wheat ranches, etc. have been sold to out of state corporations. They would have NO in state sales.

================ see

------------ The general rule must be "if you're gonna' play then you gotta' pay."

Particularly at the municipal and state levels, corporations expect/demand governmental services such as law enforcement, civil/criminal courts, emergency services such as fire and medical, and obtain the benefits of universal education in their work force. It seems only reasonable that part of their normal business expenses include reasonable taxes to help pay for these benefits.

-- Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

This is interesting, but not surprising.

Average household net worth is the total value of all assets (lhomes, stocks, bash and bonds), divided by the number of families.

My own household wealth, increased about 50% since 2007, partly due to old fashioned saving money, and partly due to trying to not do anything stupid (such as would be staying out of stocks at P/E of 7).

========= If you are following this thread the following article should be of interest.

From the Lockheed Martin 2009 annual report.

$4,284,000,000 earnings before taxes

Doing the math I get 29.58 % as the percentage of Federal Taxes. Did you pay as high a percentage of your income in taxes? Or are you much better than Lockheed Martin at not paying your way?

Dan

From the Lockheed Martin 2009 annual report.

$4,284,000,000 earnings before taxes

Doing the math I get 29.58 % as the percentage of Federal Taxes. Did you pay as high a percentage of your income in taxes? Or are you much better than Lockheed Martin at not paying your way?

Dan

=====================================================

Lockheed Martin's business is 74% defense contracts. We pay them for what they make, and they build their taxes into their bids -- so we pay them on top of what they make for the taxes they pay back to us.

Nice work if you can get it.

This is the real story down at the bottom of the article:

Utterly terrified by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, their faith in a better future significantly shaken, vast numbers of Americans finally began taking matters into their own hands by saving for that future.

The U.S. personal savings rate, around 2 percent when the recession began and barely 1 percent in 2005, rose to more than 5 percent at the end of last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. That's a good thing, on the personal level, but it could complicate the current, nascent economic recovery.

The reason: Money sacked away in savings accounts, certificates of deposit and so on cannot be used -- putting it crassly -- to buy stuff. Stuff that people can be hired to make and sell.

The report noted "the perceived desire for additional savings" but also noted this: "The data show signs that families' behavior may act in some ways as a brake on reviving the economy in the short run."

Outside economists agreed.

"As with all economic activity, we need to strike a balance," deRitis said. "Too much consumption can lead to an unsustainable economic bubble. Too much saving can lead to the 'Paradox of Threat,' wherein virtuous individuals create a lack of aggregate demand."

One of many lingering questions: If we stipulate that many Americans learned their lesson and are now saving more, how long will the lesson be remembered?

"Did people learn something from the meltdown that will change their behavior over the medium- or long-haul?" Zinman asked. "If not learning, per se, maybe people are now more attentive to their finances? These are all open questions and areas of very active and exciting research."

Think about it - that's actually kinda funny.

The Fed pours Billion$ into one end of the economy and it leaks out the other end into people's savings accounts. If savings are up 3% of personal income, that is $800 billion saved (by my calculation) in the last 30 mos that would have been spent before. How much has the Fed let loose in the last 30 mos?

This is the Fed's worst nightmare - people are saving.

As far as I know, every company gets paid for what they make. And every company build taxes into their bids. So every time you buy something you are paying for the taxes on top of what the item costs.

So I do not understand what you are trying to say.

Dan

Most of Lockheed Martin's defense work is sole-sourced, no-bid, fixed-price-incentive, cost-plus-incentive-fee, and/or cost-plus-fixed-fee.

You remarked about the high percentage -- 29.58% -- of profits they pay in taxes. The reason they pay high taxes is that they don't care. They just tack it on to their fees.

As I said, nice work if you can get it.

Most of Lockheed Martin's defense work is on contracts which were competitively bid. Boeing, Northrup, etc are some of the companies that Lockheed Martin competes with.

As I said all companies add taxes on to the bids, so Lockheed Martin is no different than any other companies. Corporate taxes are always tacked on. That is why it is often said the corporations do not pay taxes. They just pass the taxes on to the consumer. You really do not expect them to bid ignoring taxes, do you?

So I still do not understand your comment.

Dan

Perhaps the Fed's can figure out a way to punish the saver and solve that problem.

Best Regards Tom.

The Fed's low interest rates are punishing savers but it still aint working

"More than 70 percent of Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin's $90 billion in prime contracts during the past six years were awarded without a full or open competition..." (2004)

When I was researching US arms trade, seven or eight years ago, one of the first things I learned was that most defense contracting, in terms of total dollars, that is awarded first on a competitive bid is then followed-up with orders are placed with no bid. The companies involved generally claim that they bid on the whole project but they rarely did.

Overall, even including the little companies, roughly 40% of US defense contracts are awarded no-bid. And, without getting into this one, many of the cases where there ARE bids, they are highly rigged.

Not if you're not really competing.

Only if they're bidding on government contracts. That's not a place to try to play games with taxes. It's so much easier just to tack them onto the bills.

Try harder.

That when you tax a corporation, YOU pay the tax anyway.

Hope this is a bit clearer.

Cheers! Rich

Its called inflation.

-- Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

What you said above is not factually correct. most of their work is NOT sole sourced, Lockheed, Northrup, Boeing compete for most of the large prime contracts in an overlapping area. Whether you like the defense industry or not, you really should try to be factually correct.