Corporations and their stockholders are two different entities or people. You would have to tax avcorporation twice and the stockholder twice to claim double taxations.

Anonymous wrote:Romney has stock. stockholders own the company. the company makes profit. the profit belongs to the stockholders. THE FEDERAL GOVERMENT TAKES 30% of the profit (stockholders income) before any of it is given to the stockholders. THEN THEY TAX IT AGAIN at 15%. an effective 40% tax rate. people are so stupid.

I make a dollar, and pay my income tax on it. Then I pay my phone bill AND IT'S TAXED AGAIN. Then the phone company has it, AND IT'S TAXED AGAIN. Then the phone company gives its stockholder a dividend, AND IT'S TAXED AGAIN!!!111!!!

It's total insanity! Where's the double jeopardy protection for our currency?! The only reasonable solution is to record the serial number of every bill as it is taxed the first time, to ensure that it is never taxed again. Are ya with me?!

Anonymous wrote:Romney has stock. stockholders own the company. the company makes profit. the profit belongs to the stockholders. THE FEDERAL GOVERMENT TAKES 30% of the profit (stockholders income) before any of it is given to the stockholders. THEN THEY TAX IT AGAIN at 15%. an effective 40% tax rate. people are so stupid.

As you amply demonstrate. In the US, there is a nominal corporate tax rate topping out at 35%. However, corporations are provided a slew of tax deductions which result in that rate almost never being paid. See this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/business/economy/03rates.html

"A Government Accountability Office study released in 2008 found that 55 percent of United States companies paid no federal income taxes during at least one year in a seven-year period it studied."

So, the "double taxation" you describe mostly exists only in theory.

Moreover, and this is really the most important aspect of Romney's taxes, his income is not primarily from dividends. Rather, it is from "carried interest". What this means is that Romney took someone else's money and earned a profit by using it to buy and sell companies. That profit was never a part of any corporations's profit line and, hence, was never taxed. So, there is not even a theoretical argument that the income was double taxed.

I think our country heading back to the bad old days of the 1800's. Pretty soon you will either be the home owner upstairs or the servant downstairs.

Anonymous wrote:People on the internet scare me. Really, they do. From the people who post comments on cnn.com to some of the posts here, I really wonder what has become of our country. DCUM is actually a much more intelligent forum than many, but right now there is a post in the political forum which says that Romney shouldn't have run for president if he didn't pay his taxes. He did pay his taxes. The point is that, because his income is all from investment, he pays much lower taxes because of the tax rate on capital gains. It's sort of like people who post on here saying that someone can't do x, y or z because it is against the law. 90% of the time that is said, it actually isn't against the law.

When did we all become so dumb and uninformed?

Is anyone else depressed by what now passes for civil discourse in our society, and how many people who insist loudly that their opinions are correct even though they have no idea what they are talking about?

Romney has stock. stockholders own the company. the company makes profit. the profit belongs to the stockholders. THE FEDERAL GOVERMENT TAKES 30% of the profit (stockholders income) before any of it is given to the stockholders. THEN THEY TAX IT AGAIN at 15%. an effective 40% tax rate. people are so stupid.

+1 that it's mostly that you hear them now, but I do think media changes are also a factor.

A plurality of people get their "information" from Faux. Faux is not a news outlet in the way that almost all outlets were for several decades.

The other media change comes from the discovery of how easily the traditional outlets could be manipulated. By exploiting their laziness and their mindless devotion to "neutrality," spin doctors create perception through the media.

Another factor may be that you've just matured. It wasn't until I was well into the work world that I realized that neurosis and mood swing were dictating action at least as much as reason. That applies at high levels.

I was just saying to someone yesterday that we shouldn't wonder when crazy things happen; we should wonder that anything functions in the world at all. It's amazing that we've built skyscrapers and gone to the moon, given how many people are unable or unwilling to correctly decipher a simple sentence.

Anonymous wrote:Well that explains how he got down to a 15% tax bill. How he got below that might raise some eyebrows. He shaved 1.1 percentage points, which is 7% less taxes than 15%. Where did that 7% of magic come from? And given that he closed some of those offshore accounts during that tax year, it is very likely that he paid much less than that in prior years. But clearly he is drawing the line at 2010.

I would not trust a president who used possibly illegal tax shelters, without a good and honest explanation. And I don't think that is stupid. People are going to jail over some of those UBS accounts, and he very well may have had one of those.

I believe he gives 10% of his income to his church, which would basically account for that missing 1.1%.

I agree that the internet has given everyone a forum. I actively avoid reading comments on articles, videos, etc. on the web because it is so disturbing. I agree with PP that now, with the internet, we are seeing/hearing from a lot more of the crazies (sorry; for lack of a better word).

Do you take public transportation? That will expose you to different types of people. And just out and about. There are so many different kinds of people. With anonymity on the internet you are finding out about what's going on in their coconut. Coconuts haven't changed all that much over the years. Obviously, most people are average. So 50% are not as smart as the other 50%. Now you are hearing more of their voices in the great public space of the internet. Don't worry though. The 80/20 rule might apply here. Watch out for the 20%ers who might act out violently but the other 80%, many of whom have deep issues, will not do that.

22:20 - Exactly. I am the OP, and I am not pro-Romney. I'm actually a democrat.

You just gotta give me more than "he paid no taxes" or "BO is a Muslim" (or whatever that crap is) for me to think you might not be sniffing glue. My comment about illegality was directed at all the posts about things like how a mom can't fire a nanny for hitting on her husband because that would sexual harrasment (or fill in many of the other "I HAVE RIGHTS! THAT'S ILLEGAL" rants in DCUM).

Anonymous wrote:Kind of like how people insist that our president is a Muslim and/or not an American citizen?

+1. the blame is on all sides.

Anonymous wrote:People on the internet scare me. Really, they do. From the people who post comments on cnn.com to some of the posts here, I really wonder what has become of our country. DCUM is actually a much more intelligent forum than many, but right now there is a post in the political forum which says that Romney shouldn't have run for president if he didn't pay his taxes. He did pay his taxes. The point is that, because his income is all from investment, he pays much lower taxes because of the tax rate on capital gains. It's sort of like people who post on here saying that someone can't do x, y or z because it is against the law. 90% of the time that is said, it actually isn't against the law.

When did we all become so dumb and uninformed?

Is anyone else depressed by what now passes for civil discourse in our society, and how many people who insist loudly that their opinions are correct even though they have no idea what they are talking about?

Well that explains how he got down to a 15% tax bill. How he got below that might raise some eyebrows. He shaved 1.1 percentage points, which is 7% less taxes than 15%. Where did that 7% of magic come from? And given that he closed some of those offshore accounts during that tax year, it is very likely that he paid much less than that in prior years. But clearly he is drawing the line at 2010.

I would not trust a president who used possibly illegal tax shelters, without a good and honest explanation. And I don't think that is stupid. People are going to jail over some of those UBS accounts, and he very well may have had one of those.

Totally agree.

Kind of like how people insist that our president is a Muslim and/or not an American citizen?

People on the internet scare me. Really, they do. From the people who post comments on cnn.com to some of the posts here, I really wonder what has become of our country. DCUM is actually a much more intelligent forum than many, but right now there is a post in the political forum which says that Romney shouldn't have run for president if he didn't pay his taxes. He did pay his taxes. The point is that, because his income is all from investment, he pays much lower taxes because of the tax rate on capital gains. It's sort of like people who post on here saying that someone can't do x, y or z because it is against the law. 90% of the time that is said, it actually isn't against the law.

When did we all become so dumb and uninformed?

Is anyone else depressed by what now passes for civil discourse in our society, and how many people who insist loudly that their opinions are correct even though they have no idea what they are talking about?