If Frontline can explain Tax shelter loss,made up by us,can Kerry/Edwards?

[papau]

‘Frontline' expert takes on corporate tax shelters (2/19 broadcast)
By AARON BARNHART
The Kansas City Star


Frontline
Hedrick Smith put on a protective suit and boots before examining the sewers in Bochum, Germany, as part of the latest "Frontline" report.

“A lot of people in media think that you can't do financial stories on television because they're too difficult to understand,” Hedrick Smith says. “I just don't believe that.”

The Pulitzer- and Emmy-winning reporter knows of what he speaks. For years Smith has been breaking arcane business concepts into bite-sized pieces for the viewers of PBS' “Frontline” series.

On Thursday he strikes again with “Tax Me If You Can,” an investigative report into the highly complicated system of corporate tax shelters. It airs at 9 p.m. on KCPT and KTWU.<snip>


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tax /

The tax shelter was one of corporate America's biggest hidden profit centers in recent years. Shelters have become so lucrative that some experts estimate as much as $50 billion is lost to the U.S. Treasury each year. And ordinary taxpayers wind up footing the bill. FRONTLINE correspondent Hedrick Smith provides an inside look at how big corporations and wealthy individuals cut their taxes with intricate, hidden, and abusive tax shelters and investigates the role of blue chip accounting firms in these secret deals.

Following the broadcast, visit FRONTLINE's Web site for more on this report, including:

· Frequently Asked Questions about the abuse of tax shelters and what the U.S. government should do to attack the problem;

· The debate over corporate taxes and the taxing of capital;

· Experts' views on how best to deter bogus tax shelters -- piecemeal measures or sweeping reforms;

· A closer look at how grassroots citizen action in Germany halted some of the bogus transactions by U.S. firms;

· Plus, extended interviews and streaming video of the full program.

http://finance.pro2net.com/x42526.xml

Tax Me If You Can: PBS Special Feb. 19 Investigates Tax Shelter Abuse
Accounting firms, legal firms and bankers put in the hot seat
BOSTON, Mass., Feb. 17, 2004 (Market Wire) — It was one of corporate America's biggest hidden profit centers in the past decade -- the tax shelter -- and it became so lucrative that last year it helped major U.S. companies cut their tax rate to just half of what they had historically paid, leaving individual taxpayers to make up the difference.

The General Accounting Office estimates that illegitimate tax shelters cost the government more than $85 billion in recent years.
"Anything that's not being paid that should be paid, that's basically what the honest taxpayer is making up," asserts Charles Rossotti, a Republican businessman who became commissioner of Internal Revenue in 1997 and spent five years battling bogus shelters. Rossotti estimates that because the government is not collecting all that is owed -- the biggest piece of which is illegitimate tax shelters -- everyone else is paying 15 percent more than they should.

[einniv]

1. From Kerry's web site.

http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/economy/
He isn’t afraid to crack down on corporations that are hiding their money in Bermuda to avoid paying their fair share and will end special tax giveaways to companies that ship jobs abroad.

[RobertSeattle]

2. Good for him

The anti-IRS black helicopter nutcases won't vote for Kerry anyway. We need a tough, fair, thorough IRS. The sham "hearings" back in the 90's that tried to smear the IRS were a disgrace. (Most of the "shocking news" that came from the hearings later turned out to be bullcrap)

[papau]

5. Yes - but Clinton enforce IRS code -including 482 - and scared folks

from outsourcing so much.

We had constant IRS seminars and warnings about 482 (international accounting, allocation of profits, and world wide tax effects of same) under Clinton - now nothing under Bush as he chases the working poors earned income credit via audits

[Nicholas_J]

3. Most of the tax loopholes that now exist

Are the result of Reagans Tax Simplification Act of 1986 (a misnomer if ever) Reagan supposedly reduced taxes, but virtually everyone in the middle class actually had to write a check to the government that first year (I remember making 19,000 a year, and the prior years getting back 2 or 300 dollars, and with Reagans tax cut, I ended up having to write a 210 dollar chaeck to the I.R.S. with no change in my salary, as the local government I worked for swept in a Republican Comission who decided that people did not derserve cost of living raises) Of course Democrats howled because if you think the current Bush tax cuts favored the rich, Reagans virtually gave the rich tax cuts by raising taxes on the poor and middle class and living it to the rich. Kerry was one of the few who vocally pointed this out (along with Ted Kennedy) But they were literally beaten down by reagan Democrats.

Kerry has been frequently assailed by the Cato Institute for his ideas about Washington paying the lions share of Social Programs. His ideas for aving the federal government pick up the states Medicaid Programs in their entirety is not new with Kerry. This was the idea he presented to the CLinton's when they were trying to pass their health care programs in Clinton's first term, and his original legislation for Kid Care had the federal government picking up 75 percent of the state cost for childrens health care, but he and Ted Kennedy were beaten down on this one by Newt GIngrich and Orrin Hatch. The original bill for Kid Care was the Kennedy Kerry Act of 1996. The bill was so popular with the public, that Republicans did not dare oppose it, but they signed onto it as a bi-partisan bill, and the Republicans cut the legs out from under it, creating a much lower percentage of federqal share of the cost of the program lowering it to the same percentages as Medicaid, 60/40. Kerry, in fact, has the longest record of attempting to expand the strength of federal government, because he bleeives that the government must be stronger than big business in order to prevent big business from co-opting government and setting the rules to favor themselves. Which is why another one of Kerry's suggestions is a complete re-write of the entire tax code to remove loopholes. WHen Kerry talks of progressive taxation, he really means progressive taxation.For a while he even discusses removing the deductions for mortgage interest, as it is a deductions which grreatly favors the rich, and large corporations, while giving the middle class a pittance, His suggestions to remove the mortgage deduction met with great opposition, even though the tax distribution under his plan would have given back more money to the middle class than they receive under the mortgage dedustion.

The DLC's largest problem is trying to run Kerry as a centrist or a moderate, as he is neither. Kerry is a liberal advocate of larghe, but fiscally responsible government. His opposition to virtually all new weapons systems was based on the vast amount of pork in those plans, rather than in oposition to defense systems.

Early in the campaign when Kerry was in the lead, the DLC's biggest concern was how they were going to run Kerry as a centrist, as his record is far from centrist, according to those who measure such political positioning.

Kerry has frequently had to be restrained by the party leadership, particularly in the 1980's when he was calling for the impeachment of Ronald Reagan over Iran-Contra. For the most part, while Kerry was ging full speed ahead on the Iran Contra investigations, Senate Democrats were keeping their distance from him, expecting the popular Reagan Administration to cmpletely destroy him politically. They failed.

Going back and looking at the voting record,while Kerry is a DLC member, he has the record of voting against the DLC position more often than any of the other candidates.

Expect Kerry to behave like Clinton. He speaks in terms of fical responsibility, but like Clinton, when it comes time to balance budgets, and pay for government programs, the lions share of the funding will come from corporations, and the wealthy.

Bill CLinton's personal life was the excuse for his impeachment, but the reason that Republicans sought it so vehemently was Clintons start at reversing the Reagan Giveawy to the rich, increasing the top tax rate from Reagan's 28 percent top bracket, to Clinton's 39 percent tax bracket. Taxing the rich in order to get rid of Reagan's enormous deficit made Clinton the target of Neo_conservatives and corporate America. The fact that Clinton proved that you could rasie taxes on the rich, pay down the deficit, balance the budget, crate 22 million jobs, move 21 percent of the population from poverty to middle class, and at the same time not drive the wealthy into bankruptcy was Clinton's crime. Clinton completely destroyed the myth that taxing the rich would destroy the economy almost led to CLinton's impeachment and removal from office. Kerry and Edwards, have had the guts to stick to Clinton's vision stating that you dont have to tax the middle class, or repeal the middle class tax cuts to accomplish what Clinton did, the way Clinton did it. All you need to do is make the wealthy pay their fair share. And not mute the anger of the wealthy by repealing the tax cuts on the middle class as well

[papau]

4. I could grow very fond of Kerry!

Perhaps I could offer my tax avoidance (corporate/international)skills for gratis to the campaign - or actuarial re scocial security!

Just my big ego talking as I know he has good folks on board -

But I do like his positions!

peace

:-)