Posted on 12/02/2008 2:09:40 PM PST by SerafinQ
There is a proposal by the congressman from Tyler, TX, that would give Americans a break from federal income and social security taxes for the first two months of 2009.
Of course, I support any tax cut. However, there are a few things to think about here:
1. If two months without income taxes is a good thing, then why not 3 months, or 6 months, or a whole year...get the picture?
2. Cutting the SSI contributions for 2 months will accelerate the insolvency of the social security "entitlement". Although I am for the dismantling of this welfare program, I think that care needs to be taken so as not to lead to a crash of the system for the elderly that depend on it.
3. The liberals will oppose, obviously, because the tax breaks would take the money away from their corrupt buddies in corporate America and leave it in the capable hands of the people. Also, they know that if Americans get a taste of how much they would take home without federal taxes, there will be plenty of folks out there that will finally figure out how much the government takes from them.
I’ve done it for a living, and any system that can’t handle it should have already failed. You should just admit you went a little crazy with the hyperbole. Her’s the reality of the situation:
You say the software can’t handle zero, well it’s always been possible for someone’s assessed taxes and/ or withholding to be zero, so any software that can’t handle that is already busted and will have probably run into the problem and been fixed.
You say they can’t handle a change in under a year, yet every single year the tax tables change and do so usually with about 3 months lead time. If you can’t handle the change in under a year then you can’t handle the normal annual cycle.
Now things can be more complicated for this because it would be a midstream change and midstream changes are always a pain in the butt. But twice in the time you say you’ve been doing this midstream changes have happened, once when Bush41 screwed with the withholding but not the core tax tables, and once when Bush42 changed the tables themselves. And there were no dire stories of companies unable to process their payroll, which if your 1 year was the reality would certainly have happened.
I’m in QA it doesn’t take that long to run a test at all. If it took that long to run the tests you wouldn’t be able to run payroll. Once again your hyperbole is showing.
There aren’t hundreds of tax tables, too much hyperbole.
Tax cuts without spending cuts are an illusion. Send me your address, I’ll send you some wooden nickles.
I have only been doing this for 30 years and have seen many systems - M/D. IA, ISI, Westinghouse, PS, Oracle, home grown.
Implementing/upgrading for state governments, global corporations with 25K-250K employees, Financials grossing in the $1-25B range.
What the heck do I know? A kid who has done QC on companies that do their processing on an Apple II knows so much more.
A quick quiz: How do you handle after-tax MOAs? I mean, since you know so much and all.
“The government should get OFF MY BACK!”
Well, IMHO, you’re foolish if you’re not looking out for yourself, your family and your own economic bottom line.
God. Family. Country.
We have nearly 50 years of Socialism to thank for the way things are today...and 50 years of spineless Republicans putting up with it, and also contributing to it.
I’m also one of the few making money in this bearish economy. :)
You can either beat them at their own game, or you can basically give away what you’ve worked for and earned through the sweat of your own brow.
I chose the former. :)
Again if it was as hard as you’re saying you guys wouldn’t be able to handle the annual tax table change. Stop appealing to false authority, stop throwing ad hominems, stop the red herring questions and just admit you went hyperbole. Had you said “it can’t be done in January and February because that’s less than a month and it takes 3 months to do this” you’d have been fine.
But you had to say minimum of 1 year, probably 2 possible 5, that’s simply ridiculous. If your company really needs that long everyone there is incompetent, criminally so. And that’s not hyperbole, that’s real, if you legitimately can’t run accurate withholding on your payrolls for most of the year because you need 1 year to get the new tables in then you’re committing felonies every payroll between January and September.
You hyperboled. Not a crime, but being unwilling to admit it, unwilling to the point of throwing insults is pathetic.
Now it seems to me, and correct me if I’m wrong here, that some country was founded on the concept of a permanent tax holiday. What was that place called again?
Income Tax Holiday Proposed in Congress
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1262340/income_tax_holiday_proposed_in_congress.html
Tax Holiday for 2009
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977524131
Congressman Calls For Tax Holiday
http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=20211048&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=638428&rfi=6
These are three of many non-vanity links you could have used.
You can post these articles and then comment in the comment section prior to posting.
OK, let me break it down for you.
I do this for a living. I have done it for very very big companies and public sector entities. I have done it for a very long time -- over 30 years.
I have had experience with many different Payroll systems. I know their abilities and weaknesses.
You do not. You don't even work with Payroll systems. You don't even do implementations on a large scale. You work with little tiny implementations by your own statements.
My 30+ years of direct experience across multiple large companies and systems trumps your handful of years in itty bitty systems.
The proposal cannot be implemented quickly.
People can believe your assertions or my contentions.
I note (as should others) you can't even answer my simple question about the most primitive of payroll issues.
Answer my question or admit you have no idea of what you are talking.
oh yeah..it was in a land far far away..wasnt it! :) hehe...love your humor
thanks for the expert opinion, it did seem a bit odd that it would take a year to impliment or not be possible at all.
There you go again, waving around an unverifiable resume, throwing insults and asking red herring questions. Lots of fallacies, no logic.
Here’s the logic:
The tax code changes annually.
Those tax code changes generally get finalized in the summer, July to September range.
Those tax code changes go into effect Jan 1.
If you can’t get tax code changes into your payroll software in under a year, as you state, then you can’t have payroll software that actually works.
Mid year changes have happened twice in the last 20 years (a withholding change by Bush41 and a full tax change by Bush43 both with about 3 months notice), so even if this change was somehow “bigger” than the normal annual change it’s still a demonstrated FACT that these changes HAVE BEEN (and therefore CAN) be implemented in months not years.
That’s the basic reality, your 1, 2 maybe 5 years claim flies in the face of the annual changes every payroll software has had to deal with since the first one got written. These kind of changes ARE implemented quickly EVERY SINGLE YEAR by EVERY PAYROLL SYSTEM in the nation. Wave your fallacies around all you want but the FACTS show your original statement is BS.
I am waiting for an answer to my simple question to prove your quals.
I do this for a living. You don't.
People can believe you, a tester (the lowest of the low on the IT ladder BTW), or me, a developer and implementer with more years experience than you have years on the planet.
This proposal can't be implemented quickly. Those of us who know things understand this.
If you can't answer my simple question then you don't do ERPs. For real companies, anyway.
Do you know what div/0 is?
ummmm...lemme see hear..is it the name of a rock band..either that or dividing by zero???? duh?
i plead ingnorance in HR/Payroll..despite at least a decade overseeing payrools for hundreds at times...but can’t taxes owed be determined through multiplication and without division, thus avoiding the “div/0” problem?
I’m not going to answer your red herring question, and I’m not going to play your appeal to authority. I’m dealing with logic and facts, not logical fallacies. And the facts are that the companies you work with will be using the 2009 tax tables next month, and those tax tables weren’t finalized 1, 2 or 5 years; they were finalized just a few months ago. And the logic from that fact is that if your company, and every other company in America can do that then your claim that such a change can’t be made in under a year is 100% BS.
Now if you have FACTS or LOGIC to counter that then bring it. If all you’ve got is more declarations of your knowledge, insults, and red herring questions then stop wasting electrons.
In general yeah, but there are some things that come in as a percentage of fed tax (for instance AZ state income taxes) and the math can get a little weird if you weren’t careful and the fed tax winds up 0. In general though any production payroll system would have run into that already since it’s not impossible under normal conditions to wind up with a fed withholding of 0.
yeah, it would be wierd to think that of all the big payroll systems out there, a system for handling a 0 value would not have come up before.
besides, if this other guy was really what he says he is, he would welcome cush a change because it would bring a lot of business his way.
Likewise, why would a conservative be opposed to a tax cut?
Now I can see saying you can’t do it for January and February, that’s less than a month out and rolling out a new set of tax tables in under a month is near impossible. March and May would probably be doable, May and April certainly.
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