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That assumes they will return and bring foreign purchases with them. What about those who live abroad, return only to visit friends or make business deals, and spend very little of their US earned income here in the states ?

Thanks for playing, idiot.

If tax reform eliminates a bunch of deductions and tax credits, they will not be able to claim Trump benefits any more than anyone else in his tax bracket. I do not recall this EVER coming up before for any other President, yet EVERY other President benefited personally from lowering tax rates, including JFK.

Of course, if they mean any cut in the top marginal tax rate will benefit Trump and therefor is impossible, they need to be roundly ignored as pure obstructionists.

What really needs to be done is to get the lower end of earners back on the tax rolls by making everyone subject to the AMT — no matter what your deductions, exemptions, allowances, and credits would otherwise dictate, EVERYONE should pay a minimum 10% of AGI. And all businesses should pay a minimum 2% of gross revenue, between payroll and income taxes — businesses should not be paying nothing, even if they are losing money, just set aside tax payments from every sale like any other expense.

In SoCal it always seemed like there were a lot of them, too. But the news keeps saying there are only 80,000 H1B visas issued each year, so maybe they are just more concentrated in areas we worked and other parts of the country have very few. Or maybe they don’t expire and that 80,000 builds up year after year ?

At any rate, money talks. Make the visa fee $100K per year for each of them and companies will have to be truly desperate to utilize H1B visas. Then put a tracking anklet on them a month before their visa expires so they don’t disappear into the woodwork.

Yes, the doubling would raise averages, except ... the employer could still fill a “Jr xxxx” position with an experienced H1B worker and then require they do “Sr” level work. So instead of a job that is really a $150K position if an American with ten years experience had it, they claim they only need a junior level person at $60K and bring in the ten year H1B worker at $60K to do that $150K job. Unless they complain about being required to do work above their pay grade, how would the government know ?

Beyond that, we are talking about less than 100K H1B workers, so they are not going to affect the averages very much in industries with millions workers.

If the “AMT” really did what it says, there would be no such thing as these 52 million. It should not be possible for ANYBODY to use deductions and credits to reduce their tax bill below a certain level. There should be an AMT that ensures everyone pays the “greater of 10% AGI or whatever the regular tax code requires”.

I don’t think employers have to pay FICA for foreign workers, since they are not eligible for SS/M. The employers also treat the H1B workers like indentured servants — salary, not hourly, and work them more hours than the would an American. They may not even have to provide the same fringe benefits — 401k matching, pensions contributions, health insurance, etc. They can also hire a senior person into an H1B slot where the the job title is “Jr xxxxx” which means a lower “average wage”.

All in, H1B workers might still be considered a “bargain” at 2x the “average” salary of American workers.

I would just make the H1B Visa Application Fee $100K/yr per worker.

The American workers are promised severance packages, but only if they sign an agreement to not sue. If they don’t sign or refuse to train their foreign replacements, no severance package.

Ending the H1B program would require Congress, I think.

I wonder who decides what the “application fee” is for these ? Maybe it is within Trump’s power to raise the fee to $100K per visa. Let’s see how many businesses “really” can’t find American workers.

Not if there is a minimum income tax rate regardless of deductions or credits. Currently, people with low incomes can reduce their taxable income to zero with deductions and even get refunds so they pay negative tax rates via child tax credits, EITC, etc. If there was a minimum tax rate of 10% of GROSS Income, including everything as Income like government benefits and muni bonds, then those people would not be able to skate.

The problem with a sales tax is that it encourages people to spend their money outside the country instead of here. The Fairtax, for example, NEEDS the very wealthy to spend all their income in America — if the top 1% does not spend their $3T annual income in America, the Fairtax has a huge hole in its claimed revenue to the tune of $700B/yr.

There are many other problems with the FT in particular, but any tax that has high rates at the margin and low rates at the bottom are bad. It pushes the idea that government should be free for the less successful citizens and expensive for the more successful.

You don’t need a sales tax to make sue everyone pays.

You could make a minimum income tax rate no matter what deductions and credits would otherwise do — an AMT for everyone, not just the high earners.

Or you could have businesses pay a 5% tax on gross revenues instead of profits, and everyone would pay as that tax was embedded in the price of everything they buy. A 5% GRT would replace ALL other federal taxes including Corporate and Personal Income taxes and SS/M taxes. It would have to be paired with import tariffs and export credits, however, or it would kill off American manufacturing even worse than the embedded corporate and payroll taxes are doing.

We could get closer to a flat tax and eliminating deductions and tax credits if an AMT applied to everyone, not just those of higher incomes.

Suppose everyone owed the GREATER of 10% of AGI or whatever the tax code dictated for their bracket after deductions and credits. If deductions, exemptions and credits take your tax bill under 10%, tough, you still owe 10%. When deductions are useless, people won’t care when they are eventually phased out.

Of course the Dimms would go crazy saying it would negate the goal of EITC for poor workers, be a “regressive tax”, etc. Compromise by giving them the Minimum Wage increase they want to $10/hr indexed to inflation so we don’t have to revisit it every few years. So the “poor workers” they are championing get a 25% pay raise but have to now pay 10% tax, and they are still way ahead.

I think you have that exactly backwards.

Wages are not “income” because you have traded your labor for money of exactly the same value.

Capital Gains, Dividends, and Interest are “income” because you put in a certain value and received a higher value in return.

Isn’t there a disconnect between “rebuilding infrastructure” and “permitting and environmental impact studies” ? If the infrastructure — highway, bridge, port, dam — already exists but needs upgrading, what is the point in requiring studies or permits ? Screw the “streamlining” from 10 years to 2 years. Request bids for a month and then award the contract.

As far as public/private partnerships go, all I ever hear about is “toll roads”. In the 19th century, the railroads were granted land and rights of way, and built the railroads out of their own pockets and for their own use.

We should trade some of the public lands to businesses to develop in exchange for them building the infrastructure — roads, rails, water, power — we need. No federal spending, just land grants. One benefit of a private company building infrastructure on their own dime, and then gifting it to the government, is the amount of graft and union padding and cost overruns would be less.

Goût de Diamants, Taste of Diamonds – $2.07 million

Still, maybe the $950,000 figure was supposed to refer to the cost of the 150” UHD TV and not the champagne bottle that struck it.

The campaign would have seized all cameras and equipment. To me, it seems drunk violent rage is likely BECAUSE there is no video or photo essay of a dignified poll watching party.

We have all the footage of euphoria fading to concern turning to disappointment turning to grief, but only of her supporters waiting out in the big room. Nothing of the campaign principals upstairs in the suite.

I am surprised the hotel staff hasn’t gone on the record after having to clean up the suite.

Ridiculous ! Why expect federal funding for school choice programs ? Vouchers for school choice would actually SAVE MONEY for local governments compared to public schools. Private K-12 schools spend barely half a much per student as public K-12.

This is a red herring for people to claim they are “supportive” of school choice but are waiting for federal funding — the only reason for federal funding would be to further pad the public school systems and bribe them into releasing students from their evil clutches.

You make a good point, and one that many of us anticipated and hoped for as far back as the transition. The serial nature of Washington and especially the media political coverage was not ready for Trump’s style.

I suggested back then that if Trump just kept moving, constantly creating new issues, the media would not be able to keep the public’s attention on any one issue for fear of not covering the new issue. This article points out that the media doesn’t seem to want to give Trump “credit” for any accomplishments, and that is obviously true. It doesn’t point out that there are so many things going on, that the MSM have not been able to even dwell on those issues that would otherwise have them up in arms — like the arctic oil drilling, the pipelines, the changes at the EPA, the Wall prototypes, ICE raids, etc. These stories have come and gone so fast compared to other Presidents.

It seems amazing that the media, with literally thousands of “journalists” available, cannot keep up with what Trump is doing. Unfortunately for them, there is just limited space on a page, limited airtime available, and limited appetite for news. Even political news junkies like Freepers are missing a bunch of what goes on.

It still worries me a bit that Congress is not on the same page as Trump, and moves at a snail’s pace in the same serial, one-item-at-a-time methodology it always has. There is no excuse for it as there are hundreds of Congressmen and dozens of committees specifically intended to work multiple problems at once. They need to get with the program of streamlining and simplifying government. As Ozero proved, you can do a lot through the Executive branch control of Departments and Agencies, but big things like Tax Reform and spending cuts need Congress.

Yes, that is the definition of ‘cheap labor express’. But how does that make them supporters of border adjustment taxes ? Is a BAT going to make anyone more likely to support amnesty ?

I don’t see immigration and corporate tax reform a likely link, unless they think a BAT will cause such a huge demand for workers that immigration will have to be relaxed to fill manufacturing jobs.

The question is why the champions of cheap labor would support a Border Adjustment Tax ? The whole purpose of a BAT would be to make imports more expensive and American goods less expensive. Basically to increase American manufacturing. How does that fit in with cheap labor in America? I don’t see the connection.