That's to be expected as more and more people consume more and more healthcare. So as we pull people off the farm or wherever and put them to work in the healthcare sector to meet the growing demand for healthcare services, the remaining workers need to pick up the slack to maintain total output. Pick up the slack in the sense of producing more without getting paid more. Well that or healthcare workers would need to produce more without getting paid more.

Presently most of the debate is centered around improving the efficiency of our healthcare system but sooner or later we'll need to start thinking about how much of our personal or national income we want to allocate towards healthcare and away from the other things that make staying healthy/alive for as long as possible more than just staying healthy/alive for as long as possible. Tough choices, which ultimately comes down to who (government or private sector) says "no" even though treatment is available.

So Biden's 3 trillion dollar Infrastructure bill has lots of things that are not infrastructure

Is it that hard to pass a bill that is ONLY infrastructure?
1 Trillion Roads and bridges and airports.

If you ignore the fact that it isn't Biden's bill (WH press secretary: "Those conversations are ongoing, so any speculation about future economic proposals is premature and not a reflection of the White House’s thinking") and is actually being called an "infrastructure and jobs bill" and therefore obviously will have non-infrastructure aspects then this post might have been worth making.

Even if you were actually correct about any aspect of the rumoured bill beyond the potential value it's the most milquetoast criticism imaginable.

Do they ever pass a bill that doesn't include extra crap?

No, they don't.

Presidential "Line Item Veto" might help here.

If lining bills was used to help the districts of elected representatives, it wouldn't be that bad, it could even have alleviated some party partisanship.

But it doesn't a genius to see that 5000+ page bills, a media attention span of 5 seconds and a political environment dominated by money is a pretty bad combination.

Some Dems are asking for really dumb **** when it comes to corporate, especially international, tax reform.

For example, they are asserting GILTI is a loophole because it encourages companies to shift income overseas to get taxed at half of US rate... like, that's still better than shifting income overseas to get taxed at 0% of US rate right?

It's also somewhat ironic, because the US is a tax haven. It has an opaque financial industry, specific records have very low transparency, it's easy to setup shell-companies and many states have extreme degrees of deregulation.

The infamous 1209 North Orange Street is a good example.

US is not a tax haven.

It is relatively business-friendly because of Delaware and a very strong base of legal and financial talents accounts (particularly in NY) and big domestic market, but it is not a tax haven in any meaningful sense of the term.

The issue is that the US very good at making sure other places can't be tax havens, while delivering no transparency of its own and really having no international player that can force it to do so. This makes it very much an ideal tax haven. It's a little weird, but your comment just reminded me of these stories I read a few years back.

The Tax Justice Network ranks the US 2nd on the financial secrecy index, only behind the Cayman Islands, and is attracting people seeking a tax haven from all over the world.

I think at the edges, straight up hiding of income does happen but it's really not a big deal compared to everything else. A lot of it is just the race to the bottom on tax rates have made it much less useful to do criminal tax evasion/money laundering.

The IRS needs to rescind that bullshit agreement they did with the tax preparation companies and run them all out of business.

Turbo Tax charges $50 or whatever for asking people a bunch of "if -> then" questions and populates your simple answers (name, address, income amounts, etc.) onto existing IRS forms. These companies are a leech on society. IRS could make their own software for $3.50 that does the exact same thing.

Or even better, they could make it so you don't have to file at all. They already have all your info on file. It's like a math teacher who already knows the answer to a math problem asking you do redo the problem and show your work to make sure it matches the correct answer. (Of course some people have complex tax situations that would require filing themselves but most people have simple income like W2 income and 1099 income that gets reported to the government and wouldn't need to file on their own)

[rant over]

IRS is considering a new slogan:

We got what it takes to take what you got.

(I read that joke somewhere a year or three ago.)

Still no return or stimulus for my wife and I. Our return was accepted by the IRS on Feb 22nd and it’s still processing. And either we aren’t eligible or they don’t have enough info to give us a stimulus. Wtf

Bloomberg News:
Getting rid of SALT refund cap is terrible policy.

It’s not a refund cap, it’s a deduction cap. Why wouldn’t Democrats get rid of this? It affects NY and CA more than anywhere else.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Right, you're correct that it is a deduction cap. Of course, Democrats might get rid of it because doing so helps some of their constituents, but that doesn't mean getting rid of it is a good idea. It is a tax loophole that almost exclusively benefits the wealthy.

Loophole definitely doesn't mean what you think it means.

Yes it does.

Oh, okay. My mistake I guess.

From Dictionary.com:

noun
a means of escape or evasion; a means or opportunity of evading a rule, law, etc.:

There are a number of loopholes in the tax laws whereby corporations can save money.

a small or narrow opening, as in a wall, for looking through, for admitting light and air, or, particularly in a fortification, for the discharge of missiles against an enemy outside.

an opening or aperture.

verb (used with object), loop·holed, loop·hol·ing.
to furnish with loopholes.

Hey, if the man says that paying high taxes to local government entities is a loophole, it's a loophole. His name is green. Checkmate. gg no re

You are criticizing me for not expanding on my answer? You gave no argument - just an assertion that you know the thoughts in my head and that they are false.

The SALT deduction doesn't lower the taxes you pay to state and local governments. What it does is allow high earners to lower their taxable income on their federal taxes by the amount they pay their state and local government in taxes. Why should that particular expense be tax-advantaged? I don't see a good reason why. I do see why people in Congress from high-tax states would advocate for this deduction - spread the cost of high taxes in their states to the rest of the country. Seems like a loophole to me.

"I'm going to move to a high local tax state so I can pay a little less federal income tax." - Nobody, ever

Pay $20k in state and local taxes to save $6500 in federal taxes.

Worst loophole ever.

In fact, people do move away from states because of high taxes. Lowering that tax burden presumably lowers the incentive for them to do so. Making the federal government pay for lowering it in lost revenue rather than the state and local governments themselves is classic rent-seeking.

Do you have anything more substantive than a bad semantic argument to offer here about why we should remove the SALT deduction cap?