Yes, rent-seeking is a problem, although I’d add garden variety incompetence to the mix. But, well, all the rhetoric is actually aimed at various rent-seeking things. (Whether the action will be, well, that’s another question, of course. I’m not quite as cynical as you, but the rent-seeking will of course continue). Cayman Islands tax shelters may be a bit of a stereotype, but they’re not a stereotype of something used by Joe Average or used in ignorance of what they’re doing.

I think that the history of what assorted States have tended to do with tax money refutes that notion. Paying taxes may be necessary – I am a 47 year old male with poor teeth and bad joints; I have few illusions of how I would fair in an Anarchy – but I maintain that it is not good in and of itself. I assert further that anyone pontificating about how much somebody ELSE should pay, if they are already obeying the Law, is a Brobdingnagian tool, and should be gagged with a rancid salami.

c) Insulting people who use the loopholes.

(c) is a bit tasteless, but I don’t see the huge problem with any of this.

As far as I can tell, it’s not about insulting them at all. It’s about stating that the people that use these loopholes are in the wrong, which you seem to buy into, with your earlier referent to legal but not moral.

But that’s exactly the wrong way to look at this. Those tax loopholes don’t appear by themselves. It’s not as though creating a loophole-free tax code is harder than an iron-clad one – in fact, it’s precisely the opposite. They could simply say “you owe us X% of all money earned in the USA”. Bam, all tax loopholes instantly closed in 11 words.

Each tax loophole was put in place intentionally, for the benefit of somebody. That somebody or somebodys almost assuredly had connections, and/or gave the right people some nice campaign donations (which, incidentally, is why the tax code will never, ever, become appreciably simpler. Selling tax loopholes for even a few percent of the savings is a lucrative side business.) We can be pretty damn sure that those connected somebodys aren’t who Obama is talking about here, nor who will be targeted by any changes in the tax code. He’s talking about the people that look at the tax code and realize “hey, if I do X, I can save a bunch of money on my taxes”. Obama would dearly love for you to believe those people are evil, or at least in the wrong. But they are not. They read the rules and played by the rules, and even if the rules are unjust, Obama, nor anybody else, has any room to complain about those people.

#17 strech

There’s plenty of examples of people using laws in ways other than the stated or intended purpose of said laws, but in ways those laws technically cover;

RICO and the Patriot Act come to mind…

And it’s very distasteful when government does it.

“This blanket notion that you can’t subpoena White House aides where there’s evidence of genuine wrongdoing I think is completely misguided,” Obama told reporters recently. “We’re a nation of laws and not men and women so, you know, and that’s a precedent I don’t mind living with as president of the United States.”

Of course people who use legal loopholes shouldn’t be legally punished – they followed the law, the law should be applied.

But, Obama’s speech wasn’t about legally punishing people for legal behavior, as far as I can read. It’s about:
a) Changing the law to better reflect the intent of the law;
b) Increasing oversight;
c) Insulting people who use the loopholes.

(c) is a bit tasteless, but I don’t see the huge problem with any of this. There’s plenty of examples of people using laws in ways other than the stated or intended purpose of said laws, but in ways those laws technically cover; they justly get a lot of criticism. I don’t see why this doesn’t also apply to the tax code.

(Also, there’s a reason I put “fair share” in scare quotes, and it’s hardly a concept that should be used in the execution of laws. But one would assume if we’ve accepted (say) income taxes as not inherently injust, a tax code that taxed a man making $100,000 $4,000 and one making $15,000 $5,000 would not be “fair”.)

Your options for computing this magic number are to

a) consult the big book of “Money You Thought You Owned But Actually Don’t”

b) consult Obama, or Tim Geithner, or Charlie Rangel, and they’ll dream up a number for you and call it a “fair share”.

Apparently the correct answer is to consult both, and take the higher value, because otherwise you’re cheating the government out of it’s hard earned dollars that it would have used to feed orphans and shoot dogs.

1) The tax code is complicated.
2) People can illegally pay less than they owe in an honest accident because of (1); Geithner and Rangel may or may not fall into this category.
3) People can use legally pay less than a “fair share” by manipulating (1).

You can have more sympathy for people in (2) than (3). “Legal” does not equal “Moral”.

Of course, the real answer here (beyond rambling about taxation being theft and so on), is a simplified enough tax code to prevent both (2) and (3). Hopefully people actually attempt this sooner or later, though I suspect a refactoring of the tax code rather than a rewrite may be the best idea, ala replacing old and crappy computer code.

The government always has the high ground in the battle. I suppose that it’s a good thing that it is staffed almost entirely by people who do not realize this, otherwise we’re all screwed.

Uh, what? The government is full of people who not only understand (at least subconsciously) that the government is always considered right until proven wrong and still usually right even then, they abuse that to it’s fullest potential.

Cops are the most visible example, with new stories coming in just about every day about how they do whatever they want and get away with it because they’re cops and cops can do no wrong.

You’ve got politicians who leverage this by making blatantly evil laws, and anybody who complains is told to shut up and work on getting the law changed (I wasn’t aware politicians gave a rat’s ass what I think).

You’ve got regulators, who can bring their huge fine print book of rules down on anybody they don’t like for one reason or another, who get a pass because they’re just enforcing the rules.

I’m sure there’s more examples, but that’s not really the point. The point is that such “do no wrong” status shouldn’t be granted to anybody, ever, whether that person knows about that status (and acts on it) or not.

Tax laws are, of course, one area where that happens a lot. Another case is when the government, having heavily loaded the dice in its own favor, prosecutes someone for a crime and then when the guy gets acquitted, blames the guy’s lawyer for getting him off on a “technicality”, as if the poor powerless government, crusading to fearlessly serve the citizens of the country, but saddled by the totally unreasonable and oppressive limits imposed by the Constitution, is the ultimate victim.

Were you hoping for pigs to fly, too?

Sometime after all the Bush fans do.

Wait…that’s like the opposite of fair.

Bronwyn, Obama is doing exactly what the Obamafans want him to do. And the rest are fed up and will now vote Republican, so we’re screwed. Political machine win.