Charles and Kathleen Moore are about to have their day in the Supreme Court over a $15,000 tax bill they contend is unconstitutional.
The couple from Redmond, Washington, claim they had to pay the money because of their investment in an Indian company from which, as Charles Moore, 62, said in a sworn statement, they “have never received a distribution, dividend, or other payment.”
But significant parts of the story they have told to reach this point seem at odds with public records.
The Moores are the public face of a high court case backed by business and conservative political interests that could call into question other parts of the U.S. tax code and rule out a much-discussed but never-enacted tax on wealth. The case is set for arguments on Dec. 5.
Luckily the SCOTUS justices have no ties to the wealthy and are such excellent, impartial arbiters of blind justice.
I’m sure we all have full faith in them.
/s
My thoughts as well. I love the optimistic tone of the headline, but it isn’t happening.
Welcome to US jurisprudence, where the rules are made up and the points precedent standing facts of the case don’t matter!
Cool, I’ve never received a distribution, dividend, or other payment just from owning my house. Are my property taxes unconstitutional too?
That’s absolutely a goal of many Republicans.
In Texas there was a guy running for governor in the primaries last cycle with “Eliminate Property Taxes” as the central message of his campaign.
The thing about property taxes is they go to municipal governments, counties, and schools. Lots of cities have laws protecting water, trees, workers, etc that the Republicans hate. By eliminating property taxes, they could gut municipal governments in Democratic areas and public schools.
Local property taxes are a way to assess your share of tax burden based on something approximating your share of enjoyment of what’s provided by those tax dollars. I.e., by owning property somewhere, you benefit from that location’s fire fighters, police, roads, etc. Investment in a foreign property would have nothing to do with consumption of local government services/infrastructure.
The purpose of it doesn’t really determine whether or not the taxing authority has the authority to levy tax or not. This is all a fight to try to stop taxation of capital until/unless it is sold,at which point capital gains taxes apply. If it’s unconstitutional to tax that equity in a foreign property/enterprise solely because it isn’t income (distribution, dividend, other payment) then I don’t see how it would be constitutional to tax a stake or equity in real estate.
Of course, I’m being slightly facetious here. Obviously we have a long history of taxing property, so I don’t see how logically this tax is unconstitutional either. In the same vein, the US also taxes foreign income that has no real nexus in the US, so if that’s fine I fail to see how they can’t tax a citizen’s foreign assets.
In the same vein, the US also taxes foreign income that has no real nexus in the US, so if that’s fine I fail to see how they can’t tax a citizen’s foreign assets.
On that point I’ll have to grudgingly agree with what I assume is the conservative position. I see no moral or legal basis for a county to tax activities that take place outside their jurisdiction. The citizenship of the people involved shouldn’t change that, but according to the US (and, as far as I know, no other county), it does. I generally see any conservative legal victory as a setback, but if this case some stops the practice of taxing US citizens living abroad, I’ll consider it a silver lining.
Democrats should just ignore any SCOTUS rulings they disagree with from now on. The institution has lost all legitimacy.
“Let them enforce it.”
Idk, they have these fascist pigs with retired military gear everywhere. Their enforcement system is already in place.
See the way you solve that is you arm yourself as well. We may not be able to beat them if it comes to that, but we can damn sure make them bleed for it.
I still think the stupidest thing democrats imposed on ourselves is by telling everyone to vote on restricting gun ownership.
Meanwhile rural Republicans can buy and arm up way cheaper with higher quality guns than anything the democrats can get from their city gun shop selling “featurless” bullshit non-ergonomic trash firearms that legitimately make it more dangerous to use over the scary black guns.
That, and the rural Republicans never stopped training use of their firearms. If you own a firearm but never train with them, you might as well give them your fucking gun anyways, bend over and let them strip you of your basic rights.
You will never make them bleed if your silly ass doesn’t train regularly and frequently.
I am armed just fine, but you’re nuts if you think anything we can buy legally in the states would leave much of a dent in military grade people movers and armored craft.
I live in a small town of 50-60k people and the small village police department near me has an APC. The kind designed to be able to survive IEDs and small caliber rounds.
Just because they “have never received a distribution, dividend, or other payment” doesn’t mean they haven’t benefited from it. The way truly rich people get their money isn’t by a simple paycheck or even by selling stock or getting dividends (though this is part of it). They own a shitload of “stuff” and can leverage that “stuff” to get loans to pay for other things. Banks will give preferential loans to a person who has a billion in stock, since they are confident that person will be able to pay it back. The loans aren’t considered income, so they aren’t taxed.
Much like leveraging your home equity for a loan to pay for whatever, these people can leverage owning that stock to get a loan to pay for whatever. And if we have to pay property taxes on homes we own to ensure the homes are safe (roads, police, fire dept, etc), then I can see the validity of having a tax on stocks we own to pay for the resources to ensure those stocks are safe (regulators, safe computer networks, insurance, etc).
I feel like this is a big component of inflation that no one talks about. The stocks they use as collateral aren’t worth what they claim, since any attempt to sell all of those stocks would immediately drastically decrease their value. The loans then act as a sort of money press, for value that doesn’t really exist. That then drives up prices.
They need to start taxing collateral over a few hundred thousand as income. It’s an easy loophole to close, but of course it won’t be.
You can’t tax something that isn’t income as income.
Create a new tax structure? Sure, could be a mandatory interest on the loan that goes to the IRS or something.
But not income. It’s not income.
Being used as collateral to obtain preferential rates, it’s being spent as income to make interest payments that are deferred due to the security of the collateral. A thing of value being used to pay for an exchange is a thing that has been obtained as income.
