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Intuit Will Sell Off Quicken

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Re: Intuit Will Sell Off Quicken

#61

Post by ZoeZoeBee »

glesica wrote: post #59
protomyth wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the modern GOP actually wants a regressive system where the rich pay almost nothing and there is no deductible because the poor need to pay their "fair share" None of the information I've seen posted for alternate tax systems by conservatives / GOP have ever had anything like that. That is something I hear a lot from papers that lean left, but is not the reality of any of the plans. Even the sales tax-based plans t…

But have any Republican elected officials actually put these policies into action? I mean, let's take Scott Walker. What has he done in Wisconsin? Seems like a lot of giveaways to the wealthy and not much else. This despite having a pretty solid mandate as mandates go these days (given that he survived a recall). There are lots of reasonable-sounding proposals on various topics on both sides of the aisle (mostly from…

To your point, what has the Obama administration done when it comes to these issues while it has had power, especially considering the pretty strong mandate he had with control of both houses and a super majority in the Senate. The important thing is what happens when a party actually gets into government....

Re: Intuit Will Sell Off Quicken

#62

Post by gherkin0 »

sdenton4 wrote: post #58
jerrac wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...the poor need to pay their "fair share" The basic idea is that the Government should treat everyone equally. Treating someone differently because they have a lower income than others is discriminatory. Just as treating someone with a higher income differently is discriminatory. Plus, as soon as you open the law up to treating people differently based on some arbitrary criteria, you open it up to corruption. A fe…

Treating someone differently because they have a lower income than others is discriminatory. Wealth is not a protected class; unlike gender, race, and religion, we don't have a legal mandate to avoid making decisions based on a person's wealth. It's about everyone paying their fair share. What does 'fair' mean, though? Another 'fair' scheme might be that everyone pays the same raw amount (rather than a fixed proporti…

>> Treating someone differently because they have a lower income than others is discriminatory.

> Wealth is not a protected class; unlike gender, race, and religion, we don't have a legal mandate to avoid making decisions based on a person's wealth.

Discrimination and protected classes are two different concepts. It seems like you're arguing here that something shouldn't be thought of as discrimination because the discrimination isn't occurring against a legal "protected class." That's wrong. For one, we had unfair discrimination before we ever had "protected classes."

Re: Intuit Will Sell Off Quicken

#63

Post by protomyth »

glesica wrote: post #59
protomyth wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the modern GOP actually wants a regressive system where the rich pay almost nothing and there is no deductible because the poor need to pay their "fair share" None of the information I've seen posted for alternate tax systems by conservatives / GOP have ever had anything like that. That is something I hear a lot from papers that lean left, but is not the reality of any of the plans. Even the sales tax-based plans t…

But have any Republican elected officials actually put these policies into action? I mean, let's take Scott Walker. What has he done in Wisconsin? Seems like a lot of giveaways to the wealthy and not much else. This despite having a pretty solid mandate as mandates go these days (given that he survived a recall). There are lots of reasonable-sounding proposals on various topics on both sides of the aisle (mostly from…

Can you detail Gov. Walker's "What has he done in Wisconsin? Seems like a lot of giveaways to the wealthy and not much else."? I am not familiar with those parts of his policies?

As to the rest, I pointed out in another comment that the tax system is too nice a tool for politicians to alter.

Re: Intuit Will Sell Off Quicken

#64

Post by bradleyjg »

jerrac wrote: post #54
bradleyjg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "flat tax" only means go to a single income bracket and percentage, it would not simplify the tax code much at all. The progressive part of tax code involves a single lookup at the end. The complexity exists almost entirely in tax expenditures -- deductions, exclusions, credits, etc., etc., etc. I don't know what "real Conservatives" think, but in polling many tax expenditures do very well. For example, 68% of Rep…

> The complexity exists almost entirely in tax expenditures -- deductions, exclusions, credits, etc., etc., etc. I'm not sure what everyone else thinks, but any flat tax I'd support would have to do away with all of those things. And I'm pretty sure most of my conservative friends would agree. In that poll you linked to, see the "Which Type of Plan Do You Prefer?" question 42. Republicans favored eliminating more ded…

>>In that poll you linked to, see the "Which Type of Plan Do You Prefer?" question 42. Republicans favored eliminating more deductions.

It's really easy to support eliminating generic tax expenditures.

The rubber meets the road when you start listing out the highest cost ones: exclusion of fringe benefits from income; tax advantaged retirement accounts, contributions, and limited social security taxability; mortgage interest deduction and home sale capital gains exclusion, charitable deduction, deduction for state and local taxes, preferential rates for capital gain and dividend income, capital gain basis step up at death, child tax credit and child tax exemption.

>> "Reducing some government programs and services that benefit people like you?" vs "Cutting spending on some government programs and services that benefit people like you?"

What's the difference? Are you really going to tell me that these spending cuts are going to be pain free because it'll just come out of waste, fraud and abuse?

Edit in lieu of further nesting: fair enough.

Re: Intuit Will Sell Off Quicken

#65

Post by protomyth »

tptacek wrote: post #51
glesica wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even showing no understanding of basic math when deduction + flat rate taxes are suggested. As a left-winger, my views and yours probably aren't that far off. I would be fine with a flat tax (that was actually collected from everyone) and a large deductible. Even more so if it was coupled with a meaningful basic income guarantee. The problem is that I don't actually believe politicians when they say that is what th…

I don't see how you can get a fair flat tax, once you take into account transfer payments and entitlements that benefit lower-income people. I think you can make government's intake look fair with a flat tax, but that the inevitable outcome of that will be a system that lowers the burden on the wealthy by doing fewer things for the poor. I don't think the complexity of the tax system is really that much of a problem.…

"I don't think the complexity of the tax system is really that much of a problem."

The fact that TurboTax exists means the complexity of the system is a problem. For the average citizen to need a program to attempt to follow the law and still not get all the deductions owed points to a problem. The fact that the programmers at TurboTax have screwed up in recent years and cost people money and made them not comply with the law says the system is too complex.

Re: Intuit Will Sell Off Quicken

#66

Post by jerrac »

sdenton4 wrote: post #58
jerrac wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...the poor need to pay their "fair share" The basic idea is that the Government should treat everyone equally. Treating someone differently because they have a lower income than others is discriminatory. Just as treating someone with a higher income differently is discriminatory. Plus, as soon as you open the law up to treating people differently based on some arbitrary criteria, you open it up to corruption. A fe…

Treating someone differently because they have a lower income than others is discriminatory. Wealth is not a protected class; unlike gender, race, and religion, we don't have a legal mandate to avoid making decisions based on a person's wealth. It's about everyone paying their fair share. What does 'fair' mean, though? Another 'fair' scheme might be that everyone pays the same raw amount (rather than a fixed proporti…

> What does 'fair' mean, though?

Just remove 'fair' from the sentence.

> a) The marginal utility of money is greatly increased when you don't have much of it. A 15% tax on $20k a year will lead to eviction, hunger and health problems, creating social ills that we'll need government programs to deal with. Or they'll just not pay the tax, so again with the prisons. And again, the overall tax needs to be increased to deal with a stupid choice in the tax code. This is inefficient and arguably unfair.

I disagree. If you know exactly how much money you have to pay each month, you can budget for it. A well planned budget can make $20K a livable income. I grew up in a family of 4 at that level. We tithed 10% of our income on top of the taxes we paid. We never were on Government welfare. And I never went hungry or didn't have a home. It wasn't easy, lots of people helped us, but I never realy realized we were "poor" until I went to college.

Sure it's just my family, but I'm pretty sure a lot of other families I knew as a kid were in similar situations.

> b) Furthermore, if we don't want to punish the poor for being poor, we have to reduce the ratio, meaning we greatly reduce investment in infrastructure, education, etc, mainly as a result of undertaxing the wealthy to avoid punishing the poor. This also seems hella backwards.

The goal is to help make it so that the poor are no longer poor. Government overspending, discriminatory taxation, loophole filled regulation, etc, helps mess things up so that it's really hard for the poor to stop being poor.

Fixing the tax code would be one step in solving the overall problem.

Re: Intuit Will Sell Off Quicken

#67

Post by jerrac »

bradleyjg wrote: post #64
jerrac wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The complexity exists almost entirely in tax expenditures -- deductions, exclusions, credits, etc., etc., etc. I'm not sure what everyone else thinks, but any flat tax I'd support would have to do away with all of those things. And I'm pretty sure most of my conservative friends would agree. In that poll you linked to, see the "Which Type of Plan Do You Prefer?" question 42. Republicans favored eliminating more ded…

>>In that poll you linked to, see the "Which Type of Plan Do You Prefer?" question 42. Republicans favored eliminating more deductions. It's really easy to support eliminating generic tax expenditures. The rubber meets the road when you start listing out the highest cost ones: exclusion of fringe benefits from income; tax advantaged retirement accounts, contributions, and limited social security taxability; mortgage…

The difference is how you word the question.

Re: Intuit Will Sell Off Quicken

#68

Post by infinite8s »

ZoeZoeBee wrote: post #61
glesica wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But have any Republican elected officials actually put these policies into action? I mean, let's take Scott Walker. What has he done in Wisconsin? Seems like a lot of giveaways to the wealthy and not much else. This despite having a pretty solid mandate as mandates go these days (given that he survived a recall). There are lots of reasonable-sounding proposals on various topics on both sides of the aisle (mostly from…

To your point, what has the Obama administration done when it comes to these issues while it has had power, especially considering the pretty strong mandate he had with control of both houses and a super majority in the Senate. The important thing is what happens when a party actually gets into government....

He used up most of his mandate pushing through health care reform.

Re: Intuit Will Sell Off Quicken

#69

Post by scholia »

steverb wrote: post #22
euroclydon wrote: post #6

I still love Microsoft Money for personal finances. A large DB can get slow, but an SSD fixes that. Plus, it's free: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/search/Results.aspx?q=microso...

Money doesn't work on Windows 10. Or at least, I couldn't get it to work for me.

Apparently it needs a small registry change:

https://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/479281b2-90f9-42ca...

Note: I don't use Money and I have not done it.

Re: Intuit Will Sell Off Quicken

#70

Post by rayiner »

glesica wrote: post #59
protomyth wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the modern GOP actually wants a regressive system where the rich pay almost nothing and there is no deductible because the poor need to pay their "fair share" None of the information I've seen posted for alternate tax systems by conservatives / GOP have ever had anything like that. That is something I hear a lot from papers that lean left, but is not the reality of any of the plans. Even the sales tax-based plans t…

But have any Republican elected officials actually put these policies into action? I mean, let's take Scott Walker. What has he done in Wisconsin? Seems like a lot of giveaways to the wealthy and not much else. This despite having a pretty solid mandate as mandates go these days (given that he survived a recall). There are lots of reasonable-sounding proposals on various topics on both sides of the aisle (mostly from…

Unemployment ticking under the national average, real budget reforms, and dismantling public unions. There are a lot of blue states that could use a Scott Walker.
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