Tax and Death, the Only Two Certainties in Life

I have written in the past about the illegality of the current income tax scheme; or more correctly, the illegal and unconstitutional methods the IRS uses to force people who are not liable for income tax to pay income tax. We the people need to keep more, if not all of our own hard-earned money. "That is the great problem of socialism, those employed by the state will act in their best interest and in this case, it is to take money from you so that they can have a bigger pay check--that is the point of this tax. Why not now? The options are numerous. On a personal note, the most logical and responsible thing to do with this money is to use it to pay down debt.

That aside, Bush hopes this windfall will give the economy a "shot in the arm"--he obviously anticipates that that spend-happy consumers will fritter away the funds on consumer electronics, overpriced sneakers, fried snacks, or whatever useless junk Madison Avenue can shove down our throats. Buy tax-exempt municipal bonds. Donate it to charity: Some people say, "I would do more of this if I had the extra money to spare". A 1031 exchange allows you to exchange your existing property for another property and defer paying the capital gains tax.

He wants to raise the tax rates on capital gains and dividends for "rich" people from the current 15% rate to somewhere in the 20%-28% range. The government won't be robbing us in broad daylight and take money directly out of our pay checks. Most economic opinions do not favor pre-paying a mortgage. Everywhere you turn, there is talk about how bad things are and, it is my opinion that half the problem may be that people believe that things are bad whether or not they are personally affected.

And, prices on many key products have gone up, like gas and food. We are working towards that right now. Part of the problem is that we have just been spoiled and lucky over the past 20 years by lower than usual tax rates on income and investments relative to US history. During the recent debate between Democratic politicians, Obama indicated that he wanted to almost double the maximum tax rate on capital gains from 15% to 28%. Continue to give assets with large capital gains to charities.