Tag: IRS

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Trumped

CREDIT: Imdan | Dreamstime.com

I don’t think I’ve ever used the term “bafflement” before, but I am now in a total state of bafflement. I can usually use reason and objective thinking to figure things out, but on this one I am stumped. I can’t seem to be able to think of one single fraction of a reason why anyone claiming to be a member of the human race could possibly think that it would be a good idea for Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States. Is there some kind of Kool-Aid out there that I don’t know about? Have we sunken this low? Is everyone smoking crack? Is this an alien invasion in disguise? Is this an ISIS plot?

Now the next time I travel to another country, I am going to have to tell people again that I am from Canada, so I don’t suffer the shame and humiliation of their knowing I am from a country where this repugnant, nouveau riche cartoon character is leading the polls in his party for the upcoming presidential election.

I don’t know who or what is worse: Trump, his supporters, or the sad state of the Republican Party, if this is the best they have to offer. I never thought these words would cross my mind in any way, shape, or fashion, but I sincerely think I’d rather see Sarah Palin in the White House than Donald Trump. Or Charles Manson. Or — God forbid — someone who is almost as frightening as Trump is: Marie Osmond. She scares the crap out of me on those weight-loss commercials, with the way she points into the camera when trying make a point. Come to think of it, she and Trump maybe have a lot in common. They’re both monsters.

Trump is the sleaziest, worst kind of opportunist, because all he really wants is attention. I don’t think he even wants the job of POTUS at all. He just wants people to pay attention to him. Thus, the hair. I know, I know. It’s an easy target that has been maligned for decades. But if he weren’t just out in the limelight to get attention he would do something to correct that magic carpet ride. After all — and he has said this on camera about two million times in the past week — he IS worth $10 billion. I think he can afford a stylist, but then that would take away from his shtick. And he is nothing but shtick. NOTHING. Other than hateful, racist, laughable comments about immigrants, I haven’t heard him say anything other than his gag-a-maggot claims of how rich he is. But then, I turn away in horror every time I see him on the television screen, so I might be missing something. Anyway, he’s a delusional creep, and it’s a shame even I am paying this much attention to him. Trump, be gone before one of your tacky skyscrapers falls on you.

So I’m going to turn my attention elsewhere and get down on my knees and thank Barack Obama for being the first sitting president to visit a federal prison. How in the hell it took so long for this to happen is anybody’s guess. But at least he did it, and at least he is going to try to do something about the crooked, for-profit, privately owned prison system in this country, where thousands and thousands of people are living like animals because they happened to have been caught with weed or pain pills on them. Oh, how violent and scary they are.

I can’t wait to see what else Obama does during this last period of his presidency. If I were him, I would go nuts. Now that gay marriage is finally legal across the country and he doesn’t have that to worry about, I would start enacting laws that replaced nonviolent drug offenders in the prisons with people who place unwanted telecommunication and scam calls to innocent people’s cell phones.

My phone is like a slot machine some days, with all the dinging from any number of bullshit calls. The other day I got one, and it was a recording from a robot voice telling me this was my final notice and that the IRS was filing a lawsuit against me. Right. I was so skeert. Like the IRS is going to leave an automated message on my cell phone voice mail, and like I make enough money for them to care about anything in my tax return.

So I tried to call back to play a little game. A woman did answer saying, “Hello, Internal Revenue Service,” in an unamerikan accent, and I could actually hear a television and a kid crying in the background. I called back from a landline, and when I tried to lay into her, she hung up. So I tried calling back from my cell phone numerous times but kept getting a fast busy signal and finally a number-disconnected message. Damn! I was all ready to play into her hand and fall for it before I told her my bank’s pin number was 666 and that I was Satan and was on my way to eat her children. But alas, no luck. Does anyone have a number for Donald Trump they can share with me?

Categories
Opinion

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Two things are troubling about the selection of Henry Hooper to replace Rickey Peete on the Memphis City Council:

First, the IRS assessed nearly $400,000 in tax liens against Hooper between 2000 and 2005. Second, Hooper didn’t volunteer this information and explain it to the council, and members didn’t ask him about it.

Hooper, agent/owner of State Farm Insurance and Finance Agency and a former United States Secret Service agent, was chosen to replace Peete for the remainder of the term that expires at the end of this year. It’s not clear yet whether Hooper will be a candidate in the October election.

Peete resigned shortly before pleading guilty in federal court last week to bribery charges. It is the second time Peete has been convicted of bribery in the performance of his public duties. He was indicted in December along with Councilman Edmund Ford. Ford has pleaded not guilty and is still on the council. Ford’s unpaid MLGW bills have drawn federal scrutiny and taken up hours of council time.

If there was ever a time for full disclosure of potentially embarrassing money matters, this is it. With Memphis at the center of the Tennessee Waltz, Main Street Sweeper, and MLGW investigations, this is no time for don’t ask/don’t tell. Hooper, who ran for sheriff in 2002 and the Shelby County Commission in 1994, is no virgin. The City Council, which is rewriting its ethics code, well …

The IRS assessed Hooper for $109,958 in taxes, interest, and penalties for 1998, $99,755 for 1999, $73,138 for 2000, and $113,112 for 2001. The assessments were in 2004 and 2005. The notice of a federal tax lien reads as follows:

“We have made a demand for payment of this liability, but it remains unpaid. Therefore, there is a lien in favor of the United States on all property and rights to property belonging to this taxpayer for the amount of these taxes.”

In an interview Tuesday, Hooper said the civil dispute involves a business trust and deductions which the IRS did not allow. He said he has hired an attorney and taken the case to tax court in Cincinnati. He said the investigation began when the IRS looked into an illegal offshore trust in which he was not involved, but the same people who set up that trust also set up his trust. He is hopeful of a settlement.

“Our trust was not illegal, but they were not going to let us deduct everything we wanted to,” he said.

He said he wasn’t trying to hide anything from the City Council.

“I was not under any legal obligation to go into a personal tax matter,” he said. “There has never been any question of my integrity at any time in my life. Now it becomes a question because somebody is trying to discredit me.”

He said the tax lien is “totally different from” Ford’s overdue utility bills because his tax issue is in court and there are no charges of favoritism.

On the resume Hooper submitted to the council, he lists his federal employment including the Secret Service for 24 years, six years with the Green Berets, and 22 years as an insurance agent and businessman. That was enough for council members. Jack Sammons said he learned of the tax lien after Hooper was chosen, but “it wouldn’t have bothered me” because it is not unusual for businesses to have IRS disputes that drag on for several years. “It’s sort of refreshing to be dealing with someone who has enough business to have a tax challenge,” he said.

Councilman Carol Chumney, however, said the tax lien should have been disclosed and “would have influenced my vote.”

The Secret Service, until 2003, was, like the IRS, a division of the U.S. Treasury. Hooper said he worked with IRS agents during his career.

Memphis politics is a forgiving business. Once you’re in the club, it’s a new day. It wasn’t only the voters in his district and his colleagues who embraced and forgave Peete. He was chairman of the board of the Center City Commission for five years and also served on the board of the Riverfront Development Corporation.

After pleading guilty last week, Peete stopped to shake hands and make a brief statement in front of the news cameras. Then he grinned and waved and climbed into an SUV. If you weren’t listening, it was hard to tell if he won or lost.

That was Rickey Peete. Henry Hooper is no Rickey Peete. He should take pains to make that clear.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Tax Season

“I hate to be the one to remind you, but pretty soon it’s going to be April 15th — tax time. You know what I am saying? Are you ready? Well, you know when something like this happens, New Yorkers always try to put the best face they can on a situation. For example, the hookers in Times Square: For an extra $50, they will handle your extension.” — David Letterman

The best part of spring just ended — the NCAA basketball championship and the Masters. Now comes the bad part — pollen and tax time. This year, we are measuring pollen by the inch here in Atlanta, but it is not near as annoying to me as paying this idiotic government’s ever-increasing taxes.

April 15th is when people like Kevin Federline have to answer awkward questions like “Occupation?” George Bush should have to answer a similar question: “Why Occupation?” (In the most expensive political/social-science course of all time, we have spent $500 billion just so our government could learn that Shiites and Sunnis will never ever get along.)

The Republicans, who say they are the party of limited government, created the second-largest entitlement of all time with the prescription-drug-coverage giveaway. As it turns out, the giveaway was mostly to drug companies who, through spending a ton of money on lobbying Congress, do not have to compete on prices any longer. The drug lobby actually hired the congressman who ran this bill through Congress — right after it passed — and is paying him $2 million a year. I need a Prozac.

With all their goof-ups and lack of truth in advertising, the GOP has left the door open for the classic tax-and-spenders, the Democrats. It is a given that we are not going to get a tax break under Hillary Clinton, who has already picked out her inaugural pantsuit, she is so sure she will win in 2008. Her Thighness will not be concerned about the high taxes we pay. She only wants to raise taxes and redirect the money.

And there will be more gas taxes, created by Democrats out to stop the bogeyman called Global Warming. Currently, the villains — oil companies — make about 10 cents a gallon profit on gas. The government takes about 40 cents a gallon. Expect that to get worse. It will drive me nuts when the Democrats take charge. I fear that I may get suicidal and throw myself under an oncoming glacier.

The federal budget is more screwed up than Paris Hilton’s checkbook. We have an incomprehensible, lobbyist-written tax code that costs us $195 billion a year to comply with. Many in our society, of course, do not pay anything.

The top 1 percent of taxpayers accounted for 37 percent of all taxes paid in 2005, up from 34 percent in 2003. The top 5 percent of taxpayers, those with around $130,000 and above in income, paid 57 percent of all collected taxes. The bottom 50 percent paid only 3 percent. I find it amazing that people think that somehow upper-income people are not paying their fair share. My fear is that they will leave the country and stop supporting the rest of the United States.

The only answer is the “fair tax.” It abolishes the IRS and collects tax at the point of sale. The IRS has a 10-billion-dollar budget and four times as many employees as the FBI. If the fair tax gets enacted, we would no longer have to file tax returns. Only the IRS could devise a system whereby we are forced to predict how much tax we owe by guessing how many dependents we should deduct. Somehow, the government views children as deductions, while most of us who are parents view them as taxing.

As for me, I am just going to claim one dependent this year: the U.S. government.

Ron Hart is a libertarian and an investor who lives in Atlanta. His e-mail is RevRon10@aol.com.