[OT] Recession Indicator: Gov Tax Receipts on Corporate Income

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FCTAX… Click "Edit Graph" "Format" Log scale check "Left". Recessions occur in almost every instance of decreased corporate tax receipts.

40 comments

  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    But, but, but the Heritage Foundation and Larry Kudlow told me that the corporate tax cuts would pay for itself?
  • MackTruck
    6 years ago
    This is some serious shit talk
  • Warrenboy75
    6 years ago
    The problem with all government attempts to "help or regulate business" is that they mean big business. For whatever the reason they can never distinguish between a Fortune 1000 company and the guy such as myself who runs a lean company and has reviews in the few millions as opposed to 500 million and up.

    I've owned a company since the late 90's--I've watched three presidents come and go and we have a 4th in office now. None of them could make the distinction.

    If you believe what JFK did ( and I use him as an example for all of our liberal friends on here that want to understand just how far off their party has drifted ) a rising tide lifts all boats then they will eventually do some good.

    However look at Section 179 for a detail of how big versus small business is impacted. By the time we hit 2025 the real rate of reduction for small business is 9-10%.....for big business closer to 35-38%.

    And here is the real kicker --allowing the IRS to make a determination: This is from Forbes

    “The committees will prevent the recharacterization of personal income into business income by wealthy individuals to avoid the top personal tax rate.” Here’s what I warned about: inexplicably, millions of small business owners, like attorneys, accountants, and consultants – won’t qualify for the 20% deduction. Consequently, small businesses have just been handed a tax-compliance nightmare as the IRS interprets who qualifies. As I warned, when politicians put “small business” and “wealthy individual” in a two-sentence paragraph, gird your loins and prepare for the worst.
  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    ^There is no government assistance for small businesses, the sooner you realize that the better off you will be, actually government agencies are adversaries, and oftentimes will do their best to give the advantages to big corporations, even though small businesses employ the majority of Americans.
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    @WarrenBoy- I admire small-business owners like you and @25 and others. In fact I'm planning to quit and start my own my consulting business. We should have a tax code that encourages the creation of small businesses.

    Republicans have held all three three branches of government and the tax cut is the only major piece of legislation that went through. Repeal of Obamacare failed. There's no wall. Just as predicted the tax cut went into stock buybacks and the tax cut is predicted to increase the deficit by 2 trillion over the next decade. Look at the @OP's chart as evidence.

    If the Democrats had not won the House in the midterms, the increased deficit (created by a horrible tax bill) would have been used as ammunition to cut entitlements (SS, Medicaire, Medicaid) for people who truly need that money (like @OSU, who changes bedpans for a living). McConnell was talking about doing just that, I'm not pulling this out of thin air. Starving the beast and then punishing the little people is just plain immoral. Paul Ryan deserves the honor of worst Speaker in history for being a phony deficit hawk and hypocrite; that's what happens when you spend your high-school years reading Ayn Rand.

    I know you're sick of my references to academia, but Larry Kudlow is a fake economist who dropped out of grad school. He's an idiot like Trump, and trickle-down economics is a conservative fantasy.

    We should go back to discussing SBs. Cleaning up the sheets from last night, and I have the most gorgeous blonde piece of 21-yr-old ass.
  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    @Random the Democrats are no better they devised a real burden when they created Obamacare, why don’t you understand that. It doesn’t speed the cost equally it places the cost and compliance onus on compliments mine, small with a small back office, causing more expenses related just to compliance than the cost actytaking care of employees.
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    @25-

    Tens of millions of people gained coverage under Obamacare, mostly through Medicaide expansion. Sorry that it created so many headaches for you, and the entire system needs to be improved. Coverage for pre-existing conditions helps *everyone*. As things stand, nothing is going to get through Congress with the GOP controlling the Senate.
  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    ^ you still aren’t getting my point, I’m glad that y’all are beneficiaries of my success, I had always provided my employees with basic health care, but now it’s a cost to me personally. I’ll contribute to charities of my own choosing, I don’t like being forced to pay into yours.
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago

    I think it's an exaggeration to say that the ACA is "my" charity. I'm double-covered though my wife and my employer plan (both high-quality national PPOs). As far as the ACA, what's in it for me (and everyone else) is that I would still be able to buy insurance if I got sick with a pre-existing condition. Same for you, @25, although maybe you're near Medicaire age. I"m okay with having my capital gains taxed to support Obamacare. So if you insist on calling the ACA a charity, then I'm paying into the charity too. I don't see why we can't have some form of universal coverage like the UK, Canada, Sweden, Australia...

    I *am* sympathetic to the burden the ACA is placing on small business owners and something needs to be done. But not full repeal.


    Democrats won the midterms based on healthcare policy. If they try for true government-controlled single-payer healthcare (e.g. Bernie Sanders), they're certain to lose future elections. If the Democrats continue to improve the ACA incrementally, they may just succeed. But as I said, nothing will improve at a national level while the GOP controls the Senate.
  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    ^ it would be nice to see a fairer system written by folks with our best interests at heart, your ACA was written by lobbyists working for the insurance companies, if you really want to do this get the insurance companies out of the healthcare business completely, and institute a Medicare type program for all, and keep the cost to the taxpayers below the-current cost to the ratepayers, but that would take some work by our elected representatives, and as it stands now none of them want to do any actual work. But don’t Increase the cost to small businesses that are already shouldering the burden of 70-80% of this economy without a proportional increase to stock companies that actually have lobbyists and all kinds of clout with the two major political parties and their lackeys.
  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    ^And while we’re at it get this fucking turd of a president to shut his fat trap and quit this trade war that is choking the stock market, and erasing all of the gains from this year.
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    That's a good post @25.

    I worry that if we had medicare-for-all with full government controls, we might push MDs into the middle-class. I think MDs deserve to make a lot of money and want that field to attract the best and brightest.

    Also worry that medicare-for-all would result in rationing -- which is what they complain about in the UK. For example a diagnostic test is expensive and you end up with stage-4 cancer before the test is ordered. @Burlington had a good post a long time ago about the Swedish healthcare system which has some similarity to the ACA. That's what I prefer -- something that retains best features of capitalism.

  • FTS
    6 years ago
    Way to hijack my thread and talk about a completely different topic.....
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    ^^ I think the chart just shows that the tax cut is resulting in less money for the government. So most of the posts are spot-on topic.
  • JeffTUSCL
    6 years ago
    I don't get my financial advice from posts on strip club web sites, but thanks for the effort.
  • Warrenboy75
    6 years ago
    I don't see why we can't have some form of universal coverage like the UK, Canada, Sweden, Australia...

    Because we are not those nations and from what I have heard you wouldn't want the coverage in the UK unless you want to play roulette with your own life.

    twentyfive gets my point because he lives it day in and day out. Understanding that the term government assistance really is liberal speak for taxpayer funded and for a large part that means small business funded.
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    ^^ Agree that the UK system has rationing and I personally wouldn't want that for my family. I'm the one who made that point above.
    I keep saying that I'm a moderate Democrat and that's a prime example: completely government-run healthcare is a mistake. The Swedish system is similar to the ACA in that it requires everyone to buy insurance.

    Please try to remember that the ACA is nearly identical to RomneyCare -- invented by a Republican and intended to be the market-based solution to getting everyone covered.

    What would you do @WarrenBoy, if you were caught uninsured with a pre-existing condition? There's something in this for you, too.

    As I said, my captial gains are taxed to support ObamaCare and I'm perfectly happy with that. I have very little feeling for the burden ObamaCare places on small business. To you @WarrenBoy and @25: I'm curious how much the ACA affects your profits? Is it more like 0.1%, 1%, 10%? Seems like both of you are doing well, and I'm curious about the magnitude of the burden?


  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    ^ funny but most don’t realize that a large portion of so-called taxpayers really pay no taxes at all, either the get refunds or just pay SS, the point is my matching contributions don’t get refunded to me regardless of where I fall on the income scale, most people don’t have any real idea, of how much of this government is funded by small businesses. Maybe it’s futile to complain about it, but there is not a single legislator that truly understands the burden placed on businesses that receive +- than 5milliin dollars in revenues It’s time we were afforded the respect that we deserve, after all as a group we actually employ 70-80% of all Americans
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    @25- I asked a direct question: How much does the ACA affect your profits as a percentage?
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    I"ve also asked multiple times what you would do if you were stuck with a pre-existing condition. Nobody every answers?
  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    I’ll guess that my health care costs are up 15% since the implementation of Obamacare, most of that is administrative and provides no benefit to my employees.
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    ^^ that does sound like a lot and the system should be fixed
  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    I’ve never been w/o insurance to answer that, but why the would that raise administrative costs?
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    Don't understand the question. Are you talking about pre-existing conditions?
  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    Respond of that littleLater
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    Anyway @FTS, I have an alternate title for your great thread:

    "Trickle-down economics is horseshit and here's direct evidence."
  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    @Random I haven’t needed to deal with the pre-existing condition, but that shouldn’t be a problem of anybody it’s easy enough for that to be mandatory without all of the record keeping required on my part I would think the onus should be on the insurance companies not the ratepayers,
    Now as to an explanation of the increase in cost, prior to ACA all of my back office admin functions were handled by two women working a total of 8 workdays 1 full and one partimer, an additional three days is now necessary bringing the total to 11 working days per week, of those working days 4 are now devoted to HR issues where it was 2.5 prior to that, so out of 11 days 35% is devoted to HR issues with at least half of that time wasted by paper work required to fulfill the burden created by the ACA
    @ FTS if that fat dipshit you guys elected would shut his ignorant mouth, the stock market would be much better off, his lies have impacted the evaluation of risk, leading to a severe amount of volatility, he was handed a pretty good set of facts, and he sand he alone bears responsibility for the trade war, the growing lack of confidence in the market, if he kept his mouth shut a bit things might actually improve.
  • Warrenboy75
    6 years ago
    First the easy one.....if trickle down economics doesn't work can someone explain what happened when Bush II was able to end the recession of 2001 by November of that year? Wasn't his legislation successful? Wasn't the problem as it is with most government attempts to insert themselves into economics that he didn't reverse the program and cuts in 2004/5

    For those of you old enough to recall Regan didn't trickle down economics also work to end the 1980 recession? If not specifically and if you can't answer the question don't dodge and divert?

    And then of course if you go back further ( the one Democrats really hate to discuss) didn't it also work for JFK?

    The real issue and it has always been the issue is that when government meddles in the economy it never works long term and of course once a democrat passes a tax increase they never want to give it up or are satisfied. And once a republican cuts taxes they never want to increase them to match any necessary spending that comes along afterwards.

    And as twentyfive stated Obamacare really has not slowed down healthcare cost( and from what I can tell that 15% is yearly not overall) and in my case the amount of time needed to administer Healthcare is at 25% increase in admin cost.

    One last point if you look beyond the MSNBC's and New York Times of the world there is plenty of evidence out there that support what is being discussed that Small Business is never supported by government, in fact the only time we hear from elected officials is when they are running for office.
  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    @Warrenboy it’s generally futile to explain costs to salarymen, the correlation between what their rate of pay and what it actually costs to employ them just gets eaten up in their minds as they will not understand the concept of EBITDA or COG&S as they never really see those bills, and in reality if a man earning an hourly wage of $25. Is really costing in my business between $75 and $95 actual dollars per hour, I need to bill approx $110 per hour just to break even.
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    "@Warrenboy it’s generally futile to explain costs to salarymen, the correlation between what their rate of pay and what it actually costs to employ them"
    ____________
    Well, yes, I bet the six-grade math is beyond most of them.
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    On Obamacare:

    I take it that both of you (@25, @WB) are lucky and have never had to deal with a serious illness and both of you are near Medicaire age. You're almost home-free. Still neither one of you has answered my question: suppose you had a chronic illness earlier in your career and insurance companies charged exorbitant amounts or flat out denied your coverage? Would you sit at home reading your Ayn Rand novels, explaining to yourself that your impending bankruptcy and death is a necessary evil of American capitalism? So you got lucky. There's over 50 million non-elderly people with pre-existing conditions. The Democrats won the midterms over healthcare, and for very good reason. Over 60% of bankruptcies in this country are due to medical bills.

    To protect those with pre-existing conditions, insurance companies need to bring in young, healthy, people. Do you guys understand this key point? To protect pre-existing conditions you must have an individual mandate to get young people in the insurance pool. Since some are too poor to buy insurance, you need subsides.

    What I was really curious about, for the two of you, is the percent change in your profits. If your bottom line yearly profits were X before Obamacare and Y after, then calculate ((X-Y)/X)*100 and tell me how much it's hurt you personally. Is that percentage more like one-tenth of a percent or ten percent?

    Most common gripe about Obamacare is that upper-middle class, self-employed people pay more and make too much for subsides. Valid gripe. Then there are the top 1-percenters who whine about getting their capital gains taxed. Tough shit. Why don't you go to Bermuda or the Cayman Islands and take your library Any Rand books with you.

    To my knowledge, nobody has claimed that Obamacare is slowing down healthcare costs. Medicare-for-all -- with the government dictating the what MDs can charge -- would sure put a lid on healthcare costs. The problem is that little Jimmy, taking AP calculus and AP biology, might get the idea that his financial future is not worth spending 12 years in school and residency. He'll go into finance instead, and that's not what we want as a society. Medicare-for-all is too far to the left.
  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    ^ I’m sure some get it but the majority do not, most people are not able to comprehend what it really takes to run a business and be successful at it, working as an IC or a SC, or a consultant, doesn’t make you a businessperson, it just defines how you get paid, there is a world of difference between consulting and running a successful business.
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    @25-

    For the third time, how much did Obamacare hurt your business profit on a percentage basis?
    For the third time, what would you have done in the event of a serious, chronic, illness in the old days before Obamacare?
  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    I answered you as best as I was able, I don’t know what I would have done I have never been in a situation where I didn’t have health coverage, I stated my costs are approximately 15% higher than they were, my profit as a percentage of revenue I don’t have a real number for you because my revenues are higher, yet my bottom line is probably close to the same, maybe net/net +/- 7-9% not really sure as I don’t calculate that very often.
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago


    @Warrenboy- I was in middle-school and high school during the Reagan years in southern California and I remember a huge increase in military spending that benefited all defense contractors in the area. Part of my grad-school was supported by fellowship money from one of those contractors. There was also a big increase in state and local spending across the country. It's very hard to disentangle whether the recovery was the trickle-down effect or Keynsian stimulus. You could spend the rest of your life trying to prove that one way or another.

    Take a look at the original chart in this thread. We just had a corporate tax cut that basically went into stock buybacks and there's clear evidence that it's going to increase our debt and deficit. Exactly as predicted. It wasn't paid for and the trickle-down effect is just fantasy. I've already stated that the CBO projects 2 trillion over next decade.


    @25- Part of this discussion is getting ugly and I have the upmost respect for business owners. Just trying to gauge how much of burden Obamacare is on small business owners.
  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    Not my intention for this to get ugly, my points are based on my personal experiences, as far as trickledown or Keynesian economics are concerned IDAF my experience is that no matter who is running the government Democrats or Republicans small businesses get squeezed constantly, one day they’ll go to far, at that point let’s see how those entitled spendthrifts on the Fortune 500 pull this country out of trouble, want to talk truth, the bailouts from the last recession came from me and others like me, yet if I run into trouble is GM or AIG gonna float me a no interest loan so I can work out my problem, fuck the whole bunch of self entitled crybabies.
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    utmost not upmost.

    "fuck the whole bunch of self entitled crybabies."

    LOL! you got it.
  • twentyfive
    6 years ago
    Additionally if you want to have that convo about the Great Recession those scumbags in Washington that were supposed to be minding the store let those princes of the realm march out the back door with my tax dollars so they could continue to fly their privat jets and buy up oceanfront properties and furnish them with solid gold toilet fixtures, that’s where my animosity towards government comes from.
  • RandomMember
    6 years ago
    Can't have too many of those gold toilets!
  • san_jose_guy
    6 years ago
    Very hard to stop busts. But if we don't support the booms, then the busts will go away. If you support booms, then you are helping to bring on the next bust. We are long over due now for another bust.

    On the ground here it does look like things have started to slow down, construction is often a key component of it. Often big layoffs are announced just before Xmas.

    And when there is over construction, like especially of commercial space, a bust can last a real long time.

    With the organization I am building, we will largely be immune to booms and busts.

    SJG

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