If We're Headed Toward Greece, GOP Is Driving Us There
Tax-dodgers like Romney are the problem
"As long as it was legal, I'm OK with it," said the South Carolina Republican. "I don't blame anybody for using the tax code to their advantage. ... It's a game we play. Every American tries to find the way to get the most deductions they can. I see nothing wrong with playing the game because we set it up to be a game."
Graham assumes—no doubt correctly—that Romney sent his money offshore to avoid taxes. But the Republican candidate and his flacks have repeatedly insisted that the Romneys' admittedly minimal tax bill was not reduced at all by their remarkable maze of holdings in Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. It is "the very same" as if he had kept those millions of dollars in the United States, or so they claim.
But Graham clearly doesn't buy that alibi. In fact, nobody does. And eventually Romney may be forced to realize complete information about his investments that may yet indicate the extent to which he and his family have escaped taxation.
Greeks Should Collect More Taxes
Meanwhile, what Graham unwittingly evoked with his clumsy endorsement of tax avoidance is the specter of Greece—a nation whose fiscal drama incites endless Republican prattle about the need for austerity. Warnings that as a nation we are on "the road to Greece" have become a favorite Republican cliche, regurgitated by every politician who wants to be considered for vice president as well as by the presidential candidate himself.
"You call that forward?" Romney said mockingly of an Obama campaign slogan last month. "That's forward over a cliff, that's forward on the way to Greece."
What Graham, Romney and all the other Republican politicians and pundits consistently fail to mention—or perhaps don't know—is that the central Greek problem isn't overspending per se. The central problem is the Greek government's failure to collect what taxpayers (especially wealthy taxpayers) actually owe under the law.
That's because over the years so many Greeks have adopted an attitude toward taxes resembling that of Romney and Graham. Indeed, Greece has developed a culture of tax evasion, with wealthy citizens sending their money out of the country and poorer citizens bribing officials or conducting their business off the books. The amount of tax owed but not paid in Greece is estimated at roughly a third of total receipts—or enough to cover the nation's deficits and begin to restore its credit.
Sociologists who have studied the Greek tax situation say that rampant evasion by the rich has trickled down to infect the rest of society, ruining the "tax morale" of wage-earners and small-business owners. As James Surowiecki explained in The New Yorker, people here and elsewhere don't pay taxes simply because they fear prosecution; they pay because they are "social taxpayers" who "feel a responsibility to contribute to the common good." But that sense of shared obligation gradually dissipates when taxpayers suspect that many others, especially the rich, are not participating fairly and fully.
Despite growing debt and deficits, we are not on the road to Greece. With investors around the world rushing to purchase U.S. Treasury bonds and driving rates to historic lows, this country is far from the plight of the homeland of democracy. For now, it is safe to ignore right-wing rhetoric that shrieks the fiscal sky is falling.
But if such troubles lie ahead, the real cause will not be spending on income security, health care, infrastructure, education or any of the other programs that have made America a great nation. If we are driven toward national bankruptcy someday, the likeliest cause will be our failure to raise and enforce taxes on those who can afford to pay—because we, too, have encouraged a culture of evasion rather than responsibility.
Joe Conason is the editor in chief of NationalMemo.com.
Bottom line is we are all running our own scams to make money and to keep as much of it as we can. Come up with a new tax plan and my accountant will come up with a way to beat it.
Next question -- who is to be chosen as the designated winners, and should the designated losers have the right to vote? There is your politics!
I heard an interesting tidbit in a Hovde campaign ad... "We pay $160B a year in tax preparation", do you think he is a "FairTax" proponent, wants to abolish the IRS? Who among us wants to stop paying $160B in tax preparation? How about the accountants and IT staff your business must hire to keep in compliance with the IRS and SOX? That's above and beyond this $160B, more waste! But what if that is YOUR job? Consider this... for every dollar "wasted" on tax-prep and tax compliance, that is some other American office worker's income... money that pays his mortgage, buys his cars, pays for utilities, food, vacations, etc. had it not been for this money spent, many of you would be out of a job, "real" jobs that make products and services for those middle class office workers in addition to supplying the "real" workers. Still sounds like "make-work" gov't jobs to you?
Do you honestly think that money spent in America is "Waste"? Money invested overseas on the other hand does not do America any good. What you really want is to tax the upper class who has enough money left over to invest after paying for the cost of a decent life. Must tax ALL that investment-ready excess, return it back to America before it can be invested overseas. -- Let hardest workers have a better life than the mediocre workers, but not so highly paid that they can take that money out of America.
Like Joe says, if Greece's real problem is the lack of enforcement of their own tax code, the same can be said here in the US... but the wealthy people's lobbyists have made this "legal", so it is not lack of enforcement, it is our voting majority's lack of political will.
Escaping taxes and avoiding taxes is perfectly legal and a prudent business practice. Evading taxes is illegal. But its the right thing to do not to give the government more that they legally deserve. Giving the government more money only gives the government more ways to mess up. Government spending is for the most part evil and wasteful. I'm all for helping the poor but they should be required to work their asses off before getting one dime of charity. Taking government charity should be the worst and last option. It should be a living hell. That way poor people will chose to stay in the private sector work force.