Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: RE: taxes

[Sue Pniewski (SPniewski]

TR-
I'd have to agree with you about eliminating taxes for the most part.  I
suspect the government that "represents our interests" uses our $ in ways we
would likely not approve.

FYI-
Last night at 8:30pm I bought a Kia Minivan.
Truly.
It's 2 years old and has 52,000 miles.
It's all I can afford.
Yes, I'm an attorney.
I work for a non profit organization.
I make very little.
I can't even afford to go out to eat once a week.
I don't have any BMWs.  I have no jewlery.
I do have a 1996 Jeep Cherokee SE with 126,000 miles on it.
Last sunday on the way to watch football on TV with my kids, I blew a
radiator hose.
I hiked a mile to the Pep Boys, got a new hose, jogged back, 
and fixed it with the screwdriver I keep in the back for just such issues.
I'm not what you think.
Lawyers are not all money sucking bottom feeders.  : )
I scratched and scraped through school, and law school,
with 2 kids and no child support.
I'll be paying the loans for 50 years.
My parents were children of immigrants.
My grandparents came through ellis island with nothing but the 
clothes on their backs.
They worked HARD.
They knew the value of an honest days work.
They paid their taxes and were proud of it.
They taught my parents the same values, hard work, honesty, your word is
your bond.
My parents taught this to me.
They worked, and still work, very hard.
They are proud to pay taxes.
They are proud of their hard work, and the fruits thereof.
I work HARD.
I give most of my income potential to the poor.
I get paid very little, so that others may have a home.
I DON'T OWN A HOME- I can't afford it. 
Many of our homeowners are just like the people I have described previously.
Milking the EIC for all they can get.
You have to take the good with the bad, and look at the bright side.

I know what you are saying about flat taxes.
The beauty is- If you don't want to pay gas tax, ride the bus.
The rich pay huge property taxes.
I don't.
The poor don't.
It's never going to seem fair to everybody.
It's certainly not perfect now.
My argument was merely that income taxes, the IRS,
is not skewed so unfairly towards the rich.
ANd FYI- the vast majority of the rich-
at least what many woud deem to be rich- don't invest
-society has taught them to SPEND SPEND SPEND.
ANd those that did- well, a LOT of them lost everything a couple of years
ago.
Everything they worked for for all those years.
It's not perfect for anybody.
So lets try to make the best of waht we have-
don't bemoan the problems- be a part of the solutions!


-------------------------------------
Susan Pniewski, Esq.


-----Original Message-----
From: TR Ruddick [mailto:truddick [at] earthlink.net]
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 1:00 AM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: [C-L]_RE: taxes



> Message: 6
> From: Sue Pniewski <SPniewski [at] Habijax.com>
> 
> Liz-
> I understand your passion about the tax laws.  To some extent you are
> correct.  But as I have mentioned, I was a tax lawyer for a long time, I
> still am in fact, but I try to stay away now because the abuse sickens
me.  
> I know the common perception out there is that the rich get tax breaks and
> the poor do not.  Hate to break it to you, but if you make less than 20K
and
> have a couple of kids, you DON'T PAY TAXES under the current laws.

We may be ranging afield from cohousing here, but it is a topic of common
concern.  Especially if we're struggling with questions about the effects
and ethics of differential wealth.

Sue, I believe you have it wrong.  You seem to have made the same error as
so many people today; you are only counting income taxes.  In reality,
income taxes are only a slice out of the big tax payment pie.

If you make less than 20K and have a couple of kids, you pay about the same
percentage of your income in taxes as the wealthiest.  In fact, since the
Bush tax cuts, you probably pay a HIGHER percentage.

Poor people don't pay federal income taxes--they even get earned income
credits.  But regressive taxes (like that "flat tax" that you support) are
enormous.  Those with lower incomes spend everything they earn, while the
wealthy invest most of what they earn.  Investments get significant tax
breaks; whereas the cost of consumer goods contains dozens of hidden "flat
taxes" like sales tax, gasoline tax (which increases the base cost of
goods), business license taxes, etc. etc.  Some are paid directly, some
indirectly as noted through increased costs of goods.

Look; if you earn 10 times as much as I do (probably; you're an attorney,
I'm a professor) and we each buy a new car within our budget, I can afford
a nice Kia minivan for $20,000 and you can afford anything you
please--let's treat you to a $50K BMW.  You pay two-and-a-half times more
sales tax than I (your other taxes, like vehicle registration fees, are
equal to mine in this purchase).  So you make 10 times what I do, but your
sales taxes are a much lower percentage of your income than mine.  See how
that works?

I believe it was the institute of tax fairness which, a couple of years
ago, analyzed the percentage of income that went into taxes by economic
level.  The wealthiest paid, on average, 18% of their income in taxes; the
middle, 25%; the poor, 17%.  That data was collected, as I noted, before
the major tax restructuring of the Bush administration and the resultant
changes in tax structures in the states (which rely more on regressive
"flat" taxes, like sales and property and usage, to make up for lost
federal funds).


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