There was a Johnson vs Stein debate?

Apparently it was 2012...

Game ID=82632 Live North America Smackdown
Why would you have 15 minute deadlines? You'll maybe finish the game sometime next week.

ora, if you're already self-employed in one capacity or another, you could look into it. Indeed, that you haven't already looked into it suggests to me that you are not self-employed--in which case this most likely won't work. Your employers aren't paying your shell corporation, they're paying you. Cycling the money through your shell corporation could save you money, or it could land you in court for tax fraud. (IANAL, ask a tax lawyer for real advice. But this is probably a spiel tax lawyers have rolled their eyes at a thousand times.)

I have been self-employed in the past, and i have been employed by businesses who required me to send in invoices for my services instead of putting me on the payroll.

Though my understand is now that employers can't get away with pretending people are contractors (and thus denying them employees statutory rights, which in ireland are not insignificant, but also requires employers to pay a contribution to social security)

I do know that being a company director, if you start doing things like paying for your gorceries, or your rent out of company money, then you are liable to lose the protection you normal get (ie not being personally liable for company debt) - because i've been a company director in the past.

But i wonder is this the case in the US, where corporate tax rate is 35% and probably not as attractive (i'm not sure what the income tax rate is...)

In the US? The effective corporate tax rate is significantly lower, and at a guess it's a crapshoot of figuring out which deductions you can claim. But federal income tax is lower still, for most people. Of course, then there's payroll tax of ~14%, and state taxes on top, and I don't know how self-incorporation would affect those.

Aside: Jill Stein gets support from anonymous - https://youtu.be/8UuF7JZr3lA

Wow, an unorganized group of hackers no one actually pays attention to supports a candidate for president who has the same shot as a snowball in hell? That'll really change the election for sure.

"Though my understand is now that employers can't get away with pretending people are contractors (and thus denying them employees statutory rights, which in ireland are not insignificant, but also requires employers to pay a contribution to social security)"

Actually, this happens A LOT. The legal responsibilities, costs, and liabilities of having employees in the United States - especially for short-term work - are so perilous that corporations are always pushing the envelope on declaring the people that work for them contractors instead of employees.

"But i wonder is this the case in the US, where corporate tax rate is 35% and probably not as attractive (i'm not sure what the income tax rate is...)"

Big corporations never pay the top corporate tax rate. Through their lawyers, lobbyists, owned politicians, accounting tricks, and the legal bribes they can offer to regulators, there are always plenty of specially crafted tax loopholes available. The outrageously high US corporate tax rates are there mostly to keep small new companies (which can't afford all these things) from becoming a threat to the established order.

"Though my understand is now that employers can't get away with pretending people are contractors"

I don't know about where you're at, but I could do that quite easily here.

As a contractor, I do deduct all of my legitimate business expenses before paying income tax. Pretty sure your personal living expenses are not legitimate business expenses, though you can often claim a portion of your residential expenses as a "home office" depending on what you do and where you are.

One thing to note about deduction of expenses is that every dollar you spend is equivalent to one dollar less of taxable income, not one dollar less of tax. Spending $100 to save $35 is silly.

@Leon, it sounds like there could be some wiggle room.

Like if you 'spend' on someone who happens to be your child, and you're giving them their pocket money - probably not a legitimate business expense... Probably.

Then you reduce your taxable income while benefitting an immediate relative. (But it may add to their taxable income...)

I'm not sure how serious you're being, but a fair few people "pay" their spouse to do their accounts. It's a good way to split your income into lower tax brackets if one of you earns significantly more. Some countries actively incentivise marriage by allowing income splitting for tax purposes, so that sort of accounts nonsense isn't required.

You need advice from a tax law specialist
If you do set up a company to receive "income" then one option is not to pay yourself a wage, but to make it a dividend paid to you as the shareholder, when you set up your limited liability company, set up some different classes of shares, so you can pay different dividends to different classes of shares..but it depends on the tax laws that will apply.

"It's a good way to split your income into lower tax brackets if one of you earns significantly more" - in some countries / tax systems, you can have shared tax returns, where you double all allowance or tax credits, because it is for two people...

i assumed that was a non-trivial issue for marriage equality...

I don't know why I should pay less tax just because I'm married.

Because they assume you'll have kids, so you're paying your taxes through your blood. Dracula would approve.

In a country where women are entitled to the same tax credits, but don't get to take advantage of those tax credits while not working - and for some reason raising children isn't considered work... - then their husband gaining access to those tax credits amounts to a state subsidy of chil rearing.

Imagine it like your family is a corporation, except instead of incorporating the company via the normal means, you create it via the legally binding marriage agreement (whereby all property is jointly owned - ie by the company)

Now you are being taxed jointly as a corporation, not as individuals.

I don't see why taxation necessarily should be on an individual basis rather than allowing people form collectives of all kinds.

If we assume for a second that the state should subsidise child rearing, it doesn't seem like the most targeted subsidy in the world. The more you earn, the higher the effective subsidy, regardless of whether you have zero or infinite children.

@leon i don't know how you think tax credit systems work.

if each person is allowed work a certain lets say 20k per year without paying any income tax, and then the next 10k is taxed at 20% and the higher tax rate ontop of anything they earn over that.

This system would allow the joint first 40k jointly earned to be kept untaxed. with 20% going on earnings on the next 20k...

it doesn't become a larger subsidy the more you earn. Once you are earning over 60k you are paying the highest tax rate. You don't get any more subsidy for earning more.

But yes, in a social democracy it tends to be seperate from an actual payment to child-rearers, Ireland has a child benefit allowance - 1.6k per year for one child. 3.3k for 2,... up to 8.9k for 8 children.

Which you may note would be well below the minimum wage for actually paying someone to mind your children 24/7 for a year. And is only designed for covering the costs of feeding and clothing your children (along with children's clothes and food not having any sales tax applied)

I for one think these combined little things make for a rather messy and difficult to compare system, but each government wants a small change to the tax code rather than rewriting it from scratch...

Speaking of taxes!!
I actually have nothing to which to segue. Carry on.

Of course you can get creative with your tax administration by calling everything business expenses, but it's still illegal to do that.
As an entrepreneur, I look for as much honest business expenses I'm making as possible, but going any further than that you don't just have to worry about a bad conscience, but you also have to think about the risks, potential consequences and possible reward. Such assessments can also be made for profit without screwing over fellow taxpayers.

I think many entrepreneurs settle for cheating a bit, but even that is arguable because the line can be vague. Some things are indeed both. I believe in general you should approximate the percentage of private and business use.
I didn't look into it for like a year so I have trouble remembering details.

@" Such assessments can also be made for profit without screwing over fellow taxpayers"

Tell that to Apple...

I understand progressive tax systems, was just assuming a higher top bracket. Either way, I'm sure we agree there are better ways to financially assist parents.

oh, i'm not disagreeing, infact it does seem to apply to married couples who don't have any kids... so i don't know, maybe it helps them buy a house, or if one person only works part-time.

But while we might agree, and we might even agree what those ways with, with a little bit of discussion; the reality of tax code being edited a little bit at a time and never re-written from scratch is, imo, a weakness of the system.

Ok, Justinian and Napoleon managed to get pretty huge law reforms passed, basically wiping the slate clean from a thousand years of precedent and making laws up again from scratch... But most governments aren't up to the kinds of things that Justinian or Napoleon did.

The Australian taxation system has several ways that it gives tax breaks to families, single people without children pay more income tax at every level of income compared to parents. There's a few reasons for that..it's "justified" by Politicians who use the reasoning that parents produce the taxpayers of the future by having children. Cynics might say that Politicians are simply buying votes by "pork barrelling" to parents.
Key electorates in elections are called the "mortgage belt" seats, the new housing subdivisions on the periphery of major cities, where your average new home owners are the parents with young children.. workers plugging away in the early stages of mortgages and raising a family.
Tax concessions for families have been part of the taxation system for a long time, but we're substantially increased in the 1990's.
There was about a ten year period of significant economic reforms under the Hawke / Keating Labor Party Federal governments in the 1980's
John Howard's conservative government enjoyed booming tax revenues during the 1990's as it reaped the benefits of productivity growth and economic growth off the back of the Hawke / Keating reforms and as our mining industry expanded and commodity prices for iron and coal kept rising as a result of the growth in China..and spent a lot of that wealth in tax concessions to middle class families (as well as for the wealthy ) which has built in a lot of "structural" costs in the Federal government budget, and as tax revenues dropped since the GFC and commodity prices have dropped..eg iron ore from $140 per tonne to $50 per tonne, the results are about ten years of deficits in Federal government budgets as political paralysis means tax reform has stalled.

Returning to the USA presidential election.. Who is the one not telling the truth... Daffy Donald Trump or the Mexican President ? The Daffy Donald Trump says he discussed the "Trump wall" with the Mexican President but not the key point of who would be paying, and back in the USA he keeps saying Mexico will pay for his new wall...and the Mexican President has clearly said that he told Daffy Donald Trump straight up that Mexico will NOT be paying for the new wall..
There's two mutually exclusive versions of whether or not "Mexico paying, or not paying" was discussed in the meeting..both cannot be telling the truth..so who is the liar ? ..if I was taking bets I'd have Daffy Donald Trump as massively short priced favourite as the dishonest one

Watching Johnson and Stein debate would be like watching the voice on mute.

Watching Johnson and Stein debate would be like watching a Milwaukee Brewers baseball game.

Watching Johnson and Stein debate would be like giving a yelp review of your experience at Golden Corral.

@MM we all know Trump is a big liar, and those who don't, can just google 'Trump contradicts himself' and watch one of the many videos that appear.

Sadly, however, I can confirm that mex. president is liar too, and in any case, if we can be sure of something is that if he discussed the wall payment at all, he did in the most incompetent way possible.

Anyway, there are strong resons why his governmet just won't pay a cent (at least soon):

1. Basically, no mony
2. 2018 mexican elections. PRI paying a cent for the wall, would be a political suicide

New president would enter december 2018. By then, if Trump wins and he keeps serious about that bullshit, the political and economical crisis in Mexico might be BIG, so things wouldn't be so easy to predict. But most probably Trump crisis would appear in the US too.

^If Trumps provokes a political and economical crisis in Mexico, there's one thing I can predict however:

Migration pressions will just increase, and since no wall will have been built yet, even more 'dirty' brownies will arrive to your holy paradise