Posted on 11/12/2006 4:20:41 AM PST by shrinkermd
Here's the deal.
I work overseas, in a location where housing is very expensive. I mean to say that a fairly non-descript house rents for about $5,000 a month. My employer actually pays the rent for my housing at my work location, but that housing cost is reported and attributable to me as income. At $5,000 per month, that's $60,000 per year that I never see and don't get to spend as I choose - but it's taxable to me.
Until the recent round of tax cuts, the excess foreign housing exclusion allowed us to exclude from income any housing costs over a government determined nominal US base housing cost that worked out to around $1,000 per month or a little less. The foreign housing exclusion was repealed. Now I have to pay taxes on virtually the entire excess amount. (it's actually a bit more complicated that this, but this is the essense of it - the excess foreign housing exclusion was repealed).
I have to pay tax now on about $48,000 of imputed (not actual) income that I never had to pay before, and the money to pay the tax comes right out of my pocket. Excess housing costs ought not to be considered income to me in any case. It is properly a cost of deployment to my employer, but as long as I could exclude the excess from income, it worked out fair.
It's NOT fair any more. Ultimately, my employer is going to have to find a way to pick up this cost, or he won't be able to hire Americans. Australians and Brits don't have to deal with this kind of rapaciousness from their home countries. Ultimately this will make them much cheaper for American companies to hire to staff their overseas operations. The company I work for is actively recruiting in Australia right now.
So, on top of everything it hurts American competitiveness overseas. I call it the Australian full employment act of 2006.
By the way, this tax "cut" was retroactive to January 1, 2006. We weren't even given the chance to duck.
You mean it's not enough to keep yelling "Bush is bad! Bush is bad!"?
Your tax situation is simply outrageous.
The tax code is FULL of all kinds of arcane rules, exemptions, exceptions to the exemptions, loopholes and catches. Look at the "alternative minimum tax" as one real outrage. If one set of tax rules doesn't get you hard enough, they have an entirely separate set of rules that come in to do the job.
What we need is tax SIMPLIFICATION, so that there aren't all these dark secrets buried in there. Whether that simplification comes in the form of a simple "flat tax" or a "fair tax" on consumption, I really don't care.
It just has to be simple enough and short enough that they can't hide outrages inside thousands and thousands of pages of code and regulations.
And it Republicans can't pass legislation like this, even when they are in control then who, and when?
Don't you ever feel like a frog in a pot of increasingly hot water? We take the Republicans only because the Demoncraps are worse not realizing that the difference between the two is becoming so convoluted that it's only a matter of time before we are boiled to death?
If the second coming is to be delayed for any period of time I am hoping that some real, principled, honest leaders will emerge but I fear that all that is before us is an increasing decline and ultimate end to life as we now know it.
Think about this. JFK was considered a liberal in his day and yet he was far more conservative than any "conservatives" we have today.
Sad isn't it?! The progressives take two steps forward and one back… two steps forward and one back… two…
They are taking us where they want to go and no one has the intestinal fortitude to stop them.
This is what happens when you don't take a position. Your base, your big money donors, your most media savvy party members all decide on which position they want to jam down your throat.
The right would never embrace a concept like socialized medicine, one proven to consistently fail wherever it has been tried. And this is an example of the difference.
The left embraces ideas based on the notion that because they are collective and cooperative, and derived from groupthink, they must be good; but at the same time, they are annoyed with cooperation that does not rigidly seek their goals. They see in it annoyance, hypocritically: "I'll meet you halfway, we'll do it my way instead of your stupid and wrong way."
The right favors a competition of ideas. They believe that the best idea will win out, so while they are less hopeful of cooperation, they are actually willing to cooperate. They resent those that say they embrace the best idea, but then betray that idea for some other purpose. They also have little respect for those who are both sure theirs is the right way, if only everyone would just do it that way; yet are unwilling to stand their ideas up to competition.
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