Posted on April 25th, 2011%
The following has been circulated around for a long time. It just resurfaced to me, and I wanted to share it! I wish I knew who to credit it to.
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this…
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing
The fifth would pay $1
The sixth would pay $3
The seventh would pay $7
The eighth would pay $12
The ninth would pay $18
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59
So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20″. Drinks for the ten . . .
→ Read More: Beer and Taxes
Posted on May 4th, 2009%
Posted today on CNN.com. Emphasis added:
The White House will unveil reforms to the nation’s international tax code on Monday intended to close loopholes for overseas tax havens and end incentives for creating jobs overseas.
…
The administration expects these initiatives to raise at least $210 billion over the next 10 years “to cut taxes for American families, increase incentives for businesses to create jobs in America and reduce the deficit.”
What does $210 billion in new taxes mean to Americans? Let’s review.
The median U.S. household income is about $50,000 per year.
Let’s assume that the typical cost (insurance, office space, pens, etc.) of an employee to an employer is double an employee’s salary. (It varies quite a bit by industry, but this is a fair back-of-the-envelope number.)
The “cost” of one $50,000 per year job over ten years is therefore roughly $1 million.
$210 billion in new taxes over . . .
→ Read More: How a cup of coffee per week equals 210,000 jobs over ten years
Posted on May 29th, 2008%
I just received the following in an e-mail from NewEgg:
As a result of recent changes in the State of New York Tax Law requiring certain out-of-state retailers to collect and remit sales taxes to the State of New York, we regrettably inform you that Newegg.com must begin collecting applicable state and local sales tax for all orders shipped to New York addresses on or after June 1, 2008.
There’s a good reason why businesses don’t charge sales tax to purchasers who are out-of-state, and the reason can be found on Wikipedia‘s Sales taxes in the United States page (bold text added):
Note: Taxes change, are added or eliminated frequently, so this article is prone to being out of date. If so, please change the page accordingly and cite a source if possible. There are private entities that distribute updates weekly regarding the rules in 11,000 different tax jurisdictions in the U.S.
New York State itself has 81 different sales tax jurisdictions . . .
→ Read More: Is it time for a national sales tax?
