Huckabee's Flat Tax Plan

[Darth Wong]

That's the risk you take when playing the stock market. If a casino gives a guy $5,000 in chips, taxes are still assessed on that gift. It doesn't matter if the guy turns around and blows it at the roulette table. Nothing's stopping you from selling the chips the moment you get them, and the shares the moment they're granted at that value.

Even in situations where someone who recieves the stock can't always sell them immediately? I was under the impression that people who recieve stock options upon leaving a company couldn't just sell off their stock right away all the time.

Speaking of stock options, CEO compensation packages should be regulated. They've gotten absolutely ridiculous. When you have guys literally pulling down more than a hundred million dollars a year while simultaneously laying people off to cut costs, that's just perverse.

[Durandal]

That doesn't make any sense. If you can tax on positive income, you should be able to recover taxes from negative income. Countless businesses actually have negative income in their first year or two of operation, which are often considered a startup period. Many successful businesses lost money in the first 1-2 years. Without tax incentives to keep them afloat during that startup period, they would simply fold.

If casino winnings are taxed, then casino losses should be deductible. Here in Canada, for example, we don't allow tax deductions for lottery tickets. But we don't tax lottery winnings either. Anything else would be quite inconsistent.

I had just started typing up a response saying that you could classify gambling winnings and personal investments differently, but then I realized that that brings us back the current, god damn system we have now. As I said in my first post about this subject, I'm no accountant, so I the little problems in implementation aren't exactly known to me. I'm just in favor of a simpler tax code where the rich have to pay their share, just like the rest of us slobs. So classifying everything as income isn't really that simple.

Maybe you could have a system with significantly reduced potential deductions. But I can't imagine the loopholes not getting through. *sigh*

This doesn't keep me from entirely disagreeing with you though. There isn't enough being done to cut into that widening gap between upper and lower classes.

I'm confused. Are you agreeing with me or disagreeing with me?

[Darth Fanboy]

Agreeing, I just had to ask that question because a relative of mine retired from his job and wasn't allowed by the SEC (think it was the SEC) to sell of his stock values and in the time before he was allowed to do so, the stock lost almost half of its value.

[Darth Fanboy]

Speaking of stock options, CEO compensation packages should be regulated. They've gotten absolutely ridiculous. When you have guys literally pulling down more than a hundred million dollars a year while simultaneously laying people off to cut costs, that's just perverse.

Well, yeah.

The CEO of a Standard & Poor's 500 company made on average $15.06 million in total compensation in 2006, according to a report by The Corporate Library. Problems with executive compensation came to a head in 2006 with large severance packages given to departing CEOs who performed poorly. Other CEOs left in connection with stock options backdating scandals at their companies. The stock options backdating scandal reveals a flawed compensation system in which CEOs can take what they want from their companies and their shareholders with impunity. This highlights the need for further reform to protect companies and their investors.

Name one other job that gives you millions of dollars for performing that poorly. Not even spoiled overrated professional athletes can claim figures like this.

[alexholker]

Those guys already claim the government is ripping them off. People like that honestly don't understand why you can't simultaneously demand lower taxes and massively increased program spending on stuff you happen to use. You can't tailor social policy to these idiots; one might as well ask what the dogs and cats think.

You are quite right. I wasn't actually thinking we should tailor to those people, it was just something I thought might be an interesting side-effect.

[CmdrWilkens]

The problem always, and eternally, is how do you define "income." Oh sure for us average person who has a job, maybe some investments on the side its easy. The problem is when you start talking about upper-mid level executives or hell even someone at my position. Seriously lets think about it. I have my salary and benifits package (the later of which is not taxed but still construes an income of some kind as, if the company didn't pay for it, I would have to). In addition to that I get some additional bits like access to the company car including limited personal use, should that personal use be calculated as income and how does the company figure out how much of a benifit they have given me?

Now apply this to truly high end positions. Executive officers tend to get all sorts of perks. Which ones are income and which ones are actually buisness expenses that the company covers directly. Sure they have a company helo at their disposal but how much of te yearly cost is purely buisness and how much is personal benifit? The big one is probably stockbenifits. How do you calculate the real worth of the offering? Do you take the price differential when purchased, when offered, when redeemed? Based on when you count the offering how do you deal with dividends, splits, contractions, etc?

Anyway without making this any more complex the point is that defining incomeis not an easy thing to do. Moreover this is just defining income for an individual which is not even scratching the surface of corporate income. This is the eternal stumbling block of any plan to simplify taxes