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How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

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Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#211

Post by thfuran »

brigadier132 wrote: post #138
thfuran wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The whole thing that set this entire discussion off was the parent poster that stated everyone that implied the government was wasteful was a paid shill by billionaires. No, it wasn't.

Someone made that claim and the original poster seems to believe that "government waste" is a myth.

Someone did make a claim approximately to that effect, but not a parent of this comment. It didn't start this discussion. And the you're mischaracterizing the comment about government waste as well.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#212

Post by wskinner »

mihaic wrote: post #199

Honestly, why isn't there a general indignation against the concept of tax breaks for any charitable contribution? I'm generally not aligned with the libertarians, but let's just lower taxes and simply let people give wherever they want. The only real benefits that non-profit structures like a 501(c) should be that their donations aren't taxed as income, and that's it.

In America, there is broad implicit approval for the idea that the tax code should be used to encourage (discourage) desirable (undesirable) behavior. We may quibble about the definition of desirability, but most Americans do seem to support this.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#213

Post by xp84 »

tommiegannert wrote: post #65
dools wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger problem is a fear of public spending because of perceived incompetence. The stigma comes from a time when only governments had run big bureaucratic systems. Now we can see there is little difference between public and private bureaucracies except for a lack of oversight on the latter. Still the stigma remains and all public spending is filtered through a profit making entity.

The big difference is that I can choose not to pay a company I don't like, and that's fine. Governments will happily make my life crap if I don't pay taxes. I dislike greed as much as the next person, but the monopolized incarceration powers of governments are not to be forgotten. For some services, collective funding makes sense, like having hospitals that can stop the spread of diseases, or forcing pooling of money…

But thanks to the libertarian narrative you’re furthering, government is obliged to contract so many things to private companies, so now you get all the worst of both worlds (contractors charge high rates to government and waste lots of money, and government now compels us to pay the bill for companies we don’t like).

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#214

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #206
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is that all human organizations - government, for-profit, not-for-profit - suffer from incompetence, corruption and inefficiency. My observation is that size matters. Generally speaking: The larger an entity is, the more difficult it becomes to be a benefit to the public. The ability to cause harm doesn't diminish the same way (if at all). Governments and NGOs at least have a realized duty to be a publi…

Well, to a point, you may be right. However, there many very large organizations that generally do better than the majority, so I don't think it's a linear or even necessarily causal relationship. Size certainly makes incompetence, inefficiency and corruption easier, and harder to eliminate. There's also the problem of balance: several UN organizations, for example, do immense good with remarkably limited resources b…

> I do think that the right has a small point in their perspective.

They very well might. It's what follows that needs scrutiny.

Having been RW, there was some pride in adhering to a dumb fallacy: It's that if A is beneficial, then B thru Z must be beneficial. Together, A-Z become an ethics-defining principle.

But it's an unthinking, lazy assumption. Only beneficial things are beneficial. B thru Z are only what each is eventually shown to be.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#215

Post by LapsangGuzzler »

AlbertCory wrote: post #205
LapsangGuzzler wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The military is considered one of the competent parts of the US government and the amount of waste is staggering. This is not universally agreed upon. Military spending has been a deeply controversial topic along political lines given its overall amount and lack of transparency. As far as examples of competent spending goes, there are plenty but they tend not to get as much attention as the failures do. A big examp…

> tarred in the press as an example of wasteful spending umm... they WERE wasteful spending, in that they went bankrupt. You can drive past that building on the 880 freeway.

Right, but you only ever hear about the stories of waste, not the stories of success, because talking about the success of government business loans is one of the driest and most dull topics out there. Press doesn’t like to cover it because it’s so boring. I mean, a marginal percentage of people participate in local government meetings because of this reason. It’s so boring to listen to meetings about housing and infrastructure policy, even though they’re vital to the community.

If you want to read about government success stories, you have to seek them out.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#216

Post by tommiegannert »

makeitdouble wrote: post #87
tommiegannert wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big difference is that I can choose not to pay a company I don't like, and that's fine. Governments will happily make my life crap if I don't pay taxes. I dislike greed as much as the next person, but the monopolized incarceration powers of governments are not to be forgotten. For some services, collective funding makes sense, like having hospitals that can stop the spread of diseases, or forcing pooling of money…

> The big difference is that I can choose not to pay a company I don't like, and that's fine. Which phone company do you positively like ? Which internet operator are you paying because you want them to thrive ? How do you feel about Qualcomm and feeding them money ?

> Which phone company do you positively like ?

Digitech Mobile is great so far. I think that particular question is very regional. In Switzerland (and Sweden,) the competition between them works well, IMHO.

> Which internet operator are you paying because you want them to thrive ?

I don't have a choice where I live. I.e. it's as bad as a monopoly. It used to be good, but then UPC was bought by Sunrise, and they seem intent on making me leave ASAP.

> How do you feel about Qualcomm and feeding them money ?

Blissfully ignorant.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#217

Post by tommiegannert »

rcme wrote: post #192
tommiegannert wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big difference is that I can choose not to pay a company I don't like, and that's fine. Governments will happily make my life crap if I don't pay taxes. I dislike greed as much as the next person, but the monopolized incarceration powers of governments are not to be forgotten. For some services, collective funding makes sense, like having hospitals that can stop the spread of diseases, or forcing pooling of money…

It’s ironic that you’re complaining that you can’t avoid paying the government when the only reason you can pay for anything at all is because the government uses its monopoly on violence to protect your property rights. Paying the government is the price of participating in commerce at all.

I don't see the irony. I said that for some services, collective funding (i.e. taxes) makes sense, but not for all.

OP didn't see the difference between governments and the enterprises they provide the framework for. I explained one big difference, and why I don't think collectivizing everything is a good idea.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#218

Post by AlbertCory »

LapsangGuzzler wrote: post #215
AlbertCory wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tarred in the press as an example of wasteful spending umm... they WERE wasteful spending, in that they went bankrupt. You can drive past that building on the 880 freeway.

Right, but you only ever hear about the stories of waste, not the stories of success, because talking about the success of government business loans is one of the driest and most dull topics out there. Press doesn’t like to cover it because it’s so boring. I mean, a marginal percentage of people participate in local government meetings because of this reason. It’s so boring to listen to meetings about housing and inf…

So you've changed your topic now. First you said they were "tarred" as if that was false.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#219

Post by pixelatedindex »

rz2k wrote: post #108
brigadier132 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you actually give examples of competent public spending? The military is considered one of the competent parts of the US government and the amount of waste is staggering. On any given night 4000 people are sleeping on San Francisco's streets and the government can't solve that with a $636 million a year budget? The US spends more per student than any other nation and somehow we have worse educational outcomes?

The Post Office and the DMV are always given as examples of how terrible the government is at providing services. Have these people not visited either one in the last 15 years? Maybe they used to be terrible, but I’m always in and out with whatever I needed done, and the people working there and friendly and competent. Parks and libraries are pretty well managed, too.

The post office has never not been amazing, I don’t understand the people who rally against that. I hate FedEx and UPS far far more.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#220

Post by mycologos »

the-rc wrote: post #180
mycologos wrote: post #29

I know, I know, "bounties" are a fraught concept. Some people find "snitching" odious. But this is a tantalizing use case. All the author of this piece got out of their legwork was another article, but it also yielded some money for the federal government: > Two days after I emailed Finwall in April inquiring about the Xie Foundation’s purchase of the house, the foundation filed records with the California attorney g…

Isn't that what Form 211 does? You can get up to 30% of what the IRS collects. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/form-211.asp "In 2021, it was reported that 645 claims were submitted, resulting in 179 awards for a total of $36 million on an additional $245 million collected. In 2020, there were 593 claims and 169 awards for a total of $86.6 million paid out on $472 million in additional collections."

Nice, I was not aware of this. It looks like there are some additional stipulations:

* If the subject of the claim is an individual, they must have $200k+ income in at least one of the relevant years, and the amount recovered must exceed $2mil.

* You can't have obtained the relevant information through your (or your friend/partner/relative's) activities as a federal employee.

* It will probably take about 10 years for the affected party's appeals process to complete itself (see the flow chart on p9 of the linked document, and the chart on p21).

* It also appears that the IRS requires more than the publicly available information described in TFA, as p12 of that document implies that "claims based entirely on publicly available information" are also "non-meritorious". So, the exercise conducted by the journalist appears to not qualify for a reward, even though in at least one of the cases it produced a collection. This bit is unclear to me -- I can't tell if it's just ruling out people who spam submissions saying "public figure X is definitely a tax evader!!!" or if you really need to provide additional non-public documents to get anything. There is a random Forbes article about this [2] that claims "the IRS is happiest when you have first-hand (insider information even better) knowledge of the taxpayer and the tax issues".

But if you jump through all those hoops, you can get 15-30% of the additional money collected. Form 211 itself is pretty short [3].

[1] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p5241.pdf

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/deanzerbe/2021/06/10/tax-whistl...

[3] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f211.pdf

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