Looking back at a ‘taxing’ debate
Published 6:08 pm Tuesday, October 11, 2016
oes anyone really ever win? During the Vice Presidential Debate in Farmville, listeners heard highs and lows. They
heard smart and probably some things that sounded pretty stupid. But one of the most ridiculous arguments made last night was over paying taxes (or rather, not paying them). Is there anyone in the entire U.S. who enjoys paying income taxes? If there is, they number in the few, the uninformed and probably didn’t nish near the top of their class.
The argument made during the debate to maximize tax payments instead of minimizing them defies common sense — business and personal. It’s just a guess, but the candidate making that argument is likely an investor in one form or another. If not as an individual, then as part of a larger group in a pension or some other, in his case, government sponsored investment group.
Large institutional investors and individ- uals alike look for efficiency and consis- tency in corporate earnings for companies that are part of their portfolios.
It’s difficult to think any well-informed in- vestment group would abandon a company that legitimately minimized tax payments. In fact, the opposite is probably more accurate.
Companies spend hundreds of thou- sands — even millions — of dollars hiring lawyers, tax specialists and accountants, all for the purpose of legally understand- ing complex tax laws and doing whatever they can — legally — to minimize those payments. It’s their part in the exercise to maximize corporate earnings — something that, by the way, keeps millions of people employed year after year.
(And by the way, legally maximizing earnings is not just economically correct, but it is also politically correct and certainly nothing to be ashamed of having done.)
So, when a candidate argues against the practice of creating efficiency in maximizing earnings by legally understanding and using tax laws to do that sort of thing, that candidate is either blindly ignorant of what business is all about, or just plain trying to pull the wool over voters eyes — again.
In any event, regardless of the motive driving that candidate to argue such a ridiculous and uninformed position, that candidate should not be considered quali- fied to run any business let alone the busi- ness of the American people, who are the government, and the taxpayers ultimately financially supporting that candidate, if elected.
PETER KAPUSCINSKI has lived in Buckingham for the past 10 years. He’s a retired business executive in the chemical industry and is currently a farmer and orchardist. His email address is petekap@ centurylink.net.
