Nonpartisan study shows Romney’s tax plan will raise tax burden on bottom 95%; decrease it on top 5%
The headline pretty much tells the whole story here. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center and Brookings Institution have released the results of a study that shows Mitt Romney’s tax plan would increased taxes on the bottom 95% and increase them on the top 5%.
I’ll never understand how a party that only supports wealthy people is a major player in our system. I guess pandering to religious types works.
Study: Romney tax plan would result in cuts for rich, higher burden for others – The Washington Post
Apple and taxes
Last year, Apple should have paid about $6 billion in taxes, but because of some clever accounting and careful use of tax shelters, they paid just over $3 billion in taxes. As The Atlantic points out, that’s a lower effective tax rate than ol’ Mitt Romney pays. They did this in a variety of ways that are all legal. In fact, the U.S. leads in terms of who can figure out how to pay the least in taxes through legal loopholes and careful manipulation. That’s no joke. Companies around the globe seek out American firms to help them with this. Regardless, it all comes down to this: our country can’t afford to give up any more revenue, and a tax system with this many legal ways to avoid paying taxes is hardly a system at all. We need a competitive corporate tax rate (most agree that means between 23 and 28%), international income should be taxed, and corporations should receive credit for taxes they paid in other countries.
It’s important to state that none of this is exclusive to Apple. Apple just gets extra attention because they’re a huge company, and everyone is familiar with their products. Still, they are a major company with enough pull to draw serious attention to any issue, and their silence on this topic is an endorsement of the status quo.
Are Apple’s Tax Games Bad for America? – Derek Thompson – Business – The Atlantic
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Los Angeles Times prints photos of soldiers posing with dead insurgents
The Los Angeles Times has posted two graphic photographs of American servicemen from the 82nd Airborne’s 4th Brigade Combat Team from Ft. Bragg, N.C. posing with dead insurgents. The insurgents in the photos were killed by Afghan security forces in one case, and in the other, the insurgents had killed themselves accidentally when a bomb they were working on went off. Eighteen photographs were given to the LA Times, but they have only chosen to print two of them. The photos were given to them by a soldier from the unit on the condition of anonymity. His goal in releasing the photographs to the media is to draw attention to what he believes is a breakdown in leadership, discipline and professionalism that, in his mind, poses a significant risk to the members of the unit. The reason why he just now chose to give the photos to the media after two years is the unit just went back to Afghanistan in February.
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