With the pay and treatment of its employs a little looting and sabotage seems fair.

Advertising and marketing are legitimate business expenses and should be deductible.

Taking advantage of the system by writing off meals and entertainment that really have nothing to with the business is not legitimate and shouldn't be deductible. I'd be willing to bet most people know exactly what I'm talking about here.

** I realize business aren't always taking advantage and it's hard (if not impossible) to distinguish between "taking advantage" and a legitimate M&E expense.

In theory, I like it if they are at least trying to remove the fraudulent deductions -- but I'm still skeptical.

I don't really care about this deduction either way, but the fact they are removing deductions is going to hear S-corp owners.

The same S corp owners who just got a blanket 20% deduction on all their income? qqqqq

I agree with this 100%.

Notice how the tax rate is not mentioned anywhere in your answer?

This isnt actually true


There are limits based on lots of things. Most people aren't going to get 20% off the top


To be clear, the tax plan will help most S corps, but there are certain subsets that will lose more deductions than they gain from the pass through law.

Explain to me why they are legitimate.

They are expenses incurred for the purpose of making more profit.

Similar to hiring employees or buying new equipment.

Generally speaking, it's a true costs of doing business.

Revenue - Cost = Profit

Government should only tax a business' profit.

Remember when this clown was spiking the football because wage increases were the only possible outcome from the tax cuts?

Oh, but also massive layoffs and store closures? Pay no attention to the capitaist behind the curtain!!

lol inso, always and forever.

It always comes back to the only unchanging factor: being a complete piece of **** with no empathy

That's exactly right. Describes people like Inso and Wil to a T.

Empathy or a lack thereof has little to do with running a successful multi-national public corporation. Everyone has a job to do.

If a store isn't making any money, it won't continue to operate. Stop acting like this is some nefarious plot by evil capitalists who just thought it would be fun to **** with the lives of some retail workers. I guarantee you that the person who signed the pink slips took no joy in it.

You all have this cartoonish visions in your head of people like me or executives of large corporations. Bad **** happens to conservatives, too.

Yes, we have cartoonish visions.

Some more problems with the do your taxes on a postcard idea.

State definitions are usually tied to the federal definitions so when they reconfigured the income tax with adding and subtracting deductions, they didn't have any hearings on how that would affect state budgets. Turns out it's messing with a lot with some states projected to lose a lot of revenue and others to start taking in a lot more.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.1179c146d9d0

Yep. Here in Michigan we take the federal AGI and start there

You get to deduct exemptions (WHOOPS). Those are gone


So that double standard deduction doesn’t do **** for state taxes.

Clearly.

You've got dth123451up there calling me a piece of **** because I have the gall to defend the closing of a failing business, which results in people being put out of work temporarily.

I don't always agree with people ITF, but I'm at least civil about it. There are maybe half a dozen posters who I would decline a dinner invitation from. I assume the rest of you are just somewhat normal dudes living somewhat normal lives, and just have a wildly different worldview.

The whole thing came about because bonuses were supposed to be the start of a glorious rise for the American worker. If bonuses count as the positive, why doesn't people getting laid off count for the negative?

The answer is of course they both count. The bonuses came suspiciously around Christmas time, when bonuses normally come out, wage increases could be happening because the market is nearing full employment, and layoffs happen because all enterprises usually have some amount of churn. All of which have little to do with taxes

The truth is no one really knows the exact effects of the tax bill. Employees may get the 20% tax burden relief in higher wages, they may get none of it, they may get all of it. No one knows.

I suspect that employees will get scraps if anything at all and it'll all go to shareholders and management because employees have little to no leverage, and a larger percentage of corporate profits are coming from rents, but that's just my opinion.

Hi Inso0,

?

Bonuses were so they could get more value in PR from the news than $ they gave out; they dgaf about employees they wish they could fire them all.

Not many business owners/managers ITT.

Idk, there's at least one person who spent a good amount of time on welfare itt, so you'd think they could empathize with those laid off.

I don't know if my managment on a Venezuelan food collective counts

Well, what would you do if a handful of families in your collective can't afford to continue paying in, but still show up for their "share" when the truck arrives?

If you do anything but tell them to go away, then I think you'd be a pretty terrible manager of said food collective. Those other families are counting on you to make the best possible use of their limited resources to ensure the paying families get the biggest bang for their food bolívar. The collective exists to lower costs for participating families, but not as an outright charity.

It's not a fair direct comparison to an unprofitable retail location for a large corporation, but the same basic concepts apply. The business exists to take care of people, but there's no real obligation to provide charity to those who aren't benefiting organization as a whole.

Am I wrong? If so, why?

If you were to continue to pay the workers in the unprofitable store out of the earnings of the profitable ones, then why wouldn't you also justify giving a paycheck to literally anyone who shows up to wear a blue vest for 4-8 hours at a time? Are they any less deserving of pay for their "work" than the people who were officially hired by management when the store was still profitable?


Unless all we're talking about here is whether or not it's "bad" that a store closed. In which case, I fail to see what the argument is. Of course it's unfortunate that stores close and people lose their jobs. But that's life. That doesn't mean you can't be happy for the people who are still employed at a higher wage with a bonus check in their pocket. Do you think if those tens of thousands of employees with the $1k bonus and pay raise were given the choice of giving that back to pay for another year of operating those unprofitable stores, they would do it? I'd say most of them would decline and keep the cash/raise. You might even have a large number take the 2+2 approach and suggest that they not only keep the bonus/raise, but "management" should instead pass around the collection plate at corporate in order to keep those stores open. After all, they have more than enough, right? Unfortunately that math doesn't always work out.

It certainly is easy to spend other people's money. What happens when there's no more left? Napkin math says if you redistribute all of the reported income for the top 1% of households (not individuals) in the US, you'd be handing out ~$10-12k to the other 99% of households. But that's just an average, and considering the top 1% includes a ton of small business owners, you've just crippled the economic engine of your entire economy. Congratulations.

Dude, Ins0, that's all fine. But none of it explains how you think that these $1k bonuses are somehow an economic consequence of the tax reform.