Man, y’all sound rich. Dh is a teacher. I assume we’re getting screwed.
not me, just a few stocks handed down from grandma – split among 10 grandkids, my wife being one. Haven’t the faintest idea when they were purchased, so just let 'em sit there.
Actually a flat tax with no deductions is that simple. Business income = current year revenues - current year expenses, essentially, being on a cash basis. Almost all of the complexity of business income has to do with accrual accounting and when to recognize income and expenses.
That would prevent all of the weird accelerated depreciation and R&D credits that the government is so fond of using. On the downside for a business, prepaid sales (subscriptions, gift cards,etc) would be recognized as income immediately and would be subject to tax. Overall, for most businesses, it would vastly improve cash management.
For personal taxes, income=income. This worked very well in Hong Kong, and you could complete your taxes (you did) on a postcard and send in a check if necessary. Back in the 70’s/80’s they charged a flat income tax of around 10% and with a standard deduction of HKD 10,000. That had the added benefit of being socially neutral: married and single people paid exactly the same percentage.
“ Or, how about that big flood that rolled thru town last year. Where are all my damage receipts? Yo, kiddo, can you tell me how much that foundation costs to repair?”
Well, you won’t have to worry about after this year since the deduction for natural disasters is gone.
“Business income = current year revenues - current year expenses, essentially…”
Lots of possibilities for creative accounting even in that simple scheme. 
Good point. I’ll get my neighbor’s third grader right on it Jan 2. 
They’re too busy spending their pennies on booze, women, and movies.
^Pretty funny. Yay, I don’t have to keep receipts next year! Being a third grader I take joy from things like that.
Charitable donations don’t benefit the poor that much relatively speaking. My guess would be the majority of charitable donation is not for the poor. We may have gotten priorities all wrong but in our donations, there’s none that goes directly to the poor. It looks like we have 9 educational institutions, 8 environmental organizations, about a dozen civic and arts organizations. It’s an insane way to help the poor letting 39.6%ers deduct the charitable donations. It’s almost one to one match by the government, they give $60 and the gov $40. How many millions lost in revenue to get a few crumbs to the poor? It sounds worse than trickle down theory to me.
Yeah… that may be because your priorities are wrong. After last year’s election, I took a hard look at where my donations were going and “rebalanced my portfolio” to focus most on the groups I thought would be hardest hit in the upcoming years. It didn’t require a lot of change, but some. And sorry to say, I haven’t been wrong. So… YOUR charitable deductions may not be going to organizations that help the poor. But I’ve made sure almost all of mine do.
To be fair, as a PhD student, I have desperately wanted to spend my meager savings on booze this year.
And I spend money keeping myself alive so I guess technically I spend it on a woman.
Good for you intparent. It’s not you and me. The big question is where the most charitable donations go. I bet it’s not to the poor. In other words, the deduction is not for the poor either on the giving side or on the receiving side.
“My guess would be the majority of charitable donation is not for the poor.”
39% of all charitable giving goes to religious causes.
“Religious causes are, and always have been, Americans’ favorite charitable targets. Of course, “Religion” is a very broad category. Some of those funds are used to support houses of worship and clergy, to maintain the faith, and to proselytize future generations. Much religious charity, however, ultimately goes into sub-causes like relief for the poor, medical care, education, or aid sent to low-income countries or victims of disaster.
Keep in mind too that religious charities tend to have less access to supplemental funds than other nonprofits. Hospitals and colleges charge users fees to supplement their donated income; other nonprofits sell goods; many museums charge admission; some charities receive government grants. Churches and religious charities, however, operate mostly on their donated funds depicted in this graph.”
The next highest is Education at 19%, followed by Human Services at 15%, Health at 11%, Overseas at 7%, Arts 6% and Nature at 4%.
Iglooo, you don’t know what int gives to and it’s completely irrelevant to this thread.
Dear wife notwithstanding, it seems like I should be having more fun if I was spending my missing 11M on booze and women.
One more thing I must not be doing right!
@emilybee Thanks for the info. the next info we need to make an educated guess would be how much of the 39% goes to serve the poor. It looks like that may be the biggest portion going to the poor of all charitable contributions. Unless that’s a huge portion, it’s not the poor who gets charitable contributions.
I expect a significant proportion of the money donated to religious cause goes to support services for the poor, as do educational donations and human services donations (plus overseas donations generally go to the poor in other countries.)
The least amount of money goes to the arts and environmental causes.
I think your conclusion is way off.
With all due respect, do you even know any accountants?
Well I was right. The people of Maine are NOT happy with Collins.
Bonus:
Hah.
39% of all charitable giving goes to religious causes.<<<
In Utah, that means real estate, churches everywhere, I mean, everywhere. And temple building like it is going out of fashion. It would have been really interesting if they took out the child tax credit and the tithing tax benefit.