This is how the Obama administration is going to raise your taxes without actually increasing the tax rates — they’re going to kill you with a thousand little tax bills.
The latest? If you use your company cell phone to make personal calls, the IRS will consider it a taxable fringe benefit.
The Internal Revenue Service proposed employers assign 25% of an employee’s annual phone expenses as a taxable benefit. Under that scenario, a worker in the 28% tax bracket, whose wireless device costs the company $1,500 a year, could see $105 in additional federal income tax.
The IRS, in a notice issued this week, said employees could avoid tax liability if they showed proof they used personal cellphones for nonbusiness calls during work hours. The agency also could decide on a set number of phone minutes as “minimal personal use” that would be untaxed.
The burden is on you to show the IRS that you use a personal cell phone to make your personal phone calls. The law has actually been on the books since 1989 — put there by Democrats — but the IRS has never actually enforced it until now.
This is exactly what Obama is going to do — find rarely or never enforced provisions under the existing nebulous tax code and stick it to people who have jobs, while then turning around and funneling workers’ money to non-workers.
Would just one pop band do a re-make of The Beatles' "Taxman" - nt
Mike gamecock DeVine Friday, June 12th at 7:02PM EDT (link)Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com, Charlotte Observer and The Minority Report columns
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson
Great song
molybdanthan Friday, June 12th at 8:32PM EDT (link)In case you didn’t know, Stevie Ray Vaughan covered it, as well a band called Nickel Creek (vastly superior to Nickelback).
And my advice to
Those who die.
Declare the pennies
On your eyes.
‘Cause I’m the taxman.
Yeah, I’m the taxman,
And you’re working for no one but me.
yes, thx and I was aware. I just want a new version for Barry - nt
Mike gamecock DeVine Saturday, June 13th at 7:05AM EDT (link)Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com, Charlotte Observer and The Minority Report columns
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson
I'll turn mine in
DerKrieger Friday, June 12th at 7:06PM EDT (link)…and refuse to take work calls on my personal cell phone. The big cell phone companies will be hurt most by this as tens of thousands of work lines are dropped.
“In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” - Thomas Jefferson
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence (OBAMACARE – mine), the money of their constituents.” – James Madison
I will do the same thing...
cannedjam Friday, June 12th at 11:28PM EDT (link)although i’m not sure if the almost 20% in taxes here in NYC that I pay on my personal cell phone is much worse
http://cannedjam.com
But wouldn't a work call on a personal cell phone...
ddstrain Saturday, June 13th at 8:41AM EDT (link)be an unreimbursed employee business expense, and thus deductible. Not a tax lawyer, so I’m not 100% sure.
But their next step would be to do the same thing to Blackberry’s and other data-centric devices. That will be a direct, negative impact of productivity,
Legally Avoiding Obama Taxes: Priceless!
Ron Robinson Friday, June 12th at 7:36PM EDT (link)Getting a cell phone SIM with unlimited international roaming: $ 200
Moving my web site to a Bahamian server offshore: $ 75
Setting up my Belize corporation owned by a Bahamian Trust: $ 1500
Setting up offshore credit card processing and bank account: $ 650
Slipping a credit/debit/ATM card drawing from offshore account into my pocket: $ 0
Sending an email to president@whitehouse.gov sneering at Obama for trying to tax my brain: priceless
Yes, in my world, this is genuine fun!
Obama is simply helping every global business segment except US business when he tried this stuff.
________________________________________
Ron Robinson
e-Commerce Exec at 800Cart.com eCommerce who blogs at watchcenter.blogspot.com For over 15 years, his firm has assisted over 10,000 small merchants to quickly and easily ’self serve’ their businesses to e-commerce prosperity.
I have paid this tax since its inception
George Neitz Friday, June 12th at 7:53PM EDT (link)When the law went into effect the employees of all the bell sytem companies got a little present in the next years w2 showing an imputed income for our home phones which were subsidized by the corporation.
For some it was an awakening to the insidiousness of the democrat tax code, for the conservatives it was just another told you so.
And even now on retirement I still pay this tax on my phone bill not really a big deal cause they pay for the phone.
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. - Edward R. Murrow
Fine, I want a credit
red4ever Friday, June 12th at 8:14PM EDT (link)If I use my personal phone for business, I get a tax credit for that. Trust me, it will more than offset.
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
Dante
Obama misspoke...nah, he's a liar
Common_Cents Friday, June 12th at 8:16PM EDT (link)about not raising taxes. Of course he’ll tell us its one crisis after another that he inherited from Bush that will force us to raise taxes. Just like not “wanting to run the banks, mortgage, auto companies” but he was ‘forced’ to do so.
BTW, I posted this same cell phone thread earlier today about 10am here:
http://www.redstate.com/common_cents/2009/06/12/new-meaning-of-taxation-without-representation/
“Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.” Napoleon - Well, unless he is ruining your country! Common Cents
A cult of personality arises when a country’s leader uses mass media to create a heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise.[1] Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships.
Just as in the primaries
ss396 Friday, June 12th at 8:53PM EDT (link)During the primaries, Obama and his minions went over the laws and rules surrounding the conduct of the various primaries. They did this in great detail, with an eye on how to work them to his best advantage. Everyone can do this, of course, but the rest of us respect the spirit, the purpose, and the intent of these laws and rules. Obama et al went solely after their strict wording. That is largely how he gamed the primaries to an advantage that no one else had really done before. Where most folks have a fairly good general knowledge of the rules, his people had exact detailed knowledge of what and how they could be exploited. They were overwhelming, even to the primaries’ captains.
Now he is doing the same thing at the national level.
If you pay people to sit on their duffs, you cannot be surprised when they do.
Could an internet tax be next?
louisiana Friday, June 12th at 9:05PM EDT (link)In Louisiana, REPULICAN rep. White introduced a bill for a 15cent surcharge
on internet access. It gets better…the most outspoken critics of the bill
are 2 democrats! Jindal has been a subject of some interest here. Seems
LA Sen. Landrieu gave him a tongue lashing yesterday on C-span, more
or less saying ,stay in LA , forget about national politics.
Hey, someone's got to pay down the interest on our debt
molybdanthan Friday, June 12th at 9:13PM EDT (link)Might as well expect this within the next 2 years. As well as new taxes on mileage, food production/distribution, bullets, reproduction, breathing, and anything else that we’d need to mount an adequate defense.
Thinks he has a reason
fidsyd Saturday, June 13th at 12:31PM EDT (link)I guess Obama thinks he has a reason because apparently we have a very large debt we need to pay off in this country. Probably because of all of that spending Obama did when he entered office in January 2001.