Tax season! Tax season! Tax season (is still four months away). But in case you're actually worried that the Internal Revenue Service is going to catch on to your eight years of unpaid taxes and audit you, don't worry. They're too busy catching the real offenders. CONTINUED »
If raging skinhead plumber Sam Joe Wurzelbacher is what we're now considering an "average American," things are much worse than we thought.
In an interview with Diane Sawyer today, not only did Sam Joe admit to lying directly to Barack Obama, telling the Democratic nominee at an Ohio campaign stop that he makes $250,000 (he does not) and demanding to know why he should pay more taxes because of it, he then goes on this really crazy tear about how rich people work harder than poor people and shouldn't be punished for their intense labors. That, of course, is an opinion only crazy morons have. And it's especially nutty when it's the opinion of a moron who's not even rich! Oh, and check out that still of Sam Joe sizing up Obama as if he were about to throw down in some shitty roadhouse instead of listening to the answer of a question he asked. What a patriot!
A clip of this bald, angry, simplistic, tax-cheating, lying American hero Sam Joe, after the jump.
Remember when movie people had to exert even a minimum amount of effort and money for the opportunity to become multi-millionaires playing pretend? Well choke on it, taxpayer, because now film crews on the path to get rich don't have to do shit but show up, videotape a dog in a necklace running around California and cash their large checks, and all on your dime! Whaddya mean financial crisis?
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Why buy the cow when its way of life is so reliant upon you that it can't leave, despite the fact that you rob it blind? That's apparently the abusive husband-like thinking of the city of Los Angeles, which continues to watch shows formerly filmed in its borders – Ugly Betty, In Treatment – head east after failing to offer film and television productions tax breaks comparable to those of New York City.
LA has always sucked, but it's going to suck even more if visitors driving around and looking at it can't every 20 minutes go, "Hey, that's that building from that one movie." According to the numbers, that's happening quite frequently these days. The mayor's office estimates that in just five months since the city of New York enacted their massive tax breaks, city-based shoots have contributed $505 million more in spending than they did during the same time last year.
And New York's not the only city wising up to how profitable playing nice with the movie stars is:
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Mexican hater and Bystolic medication candidate Lou Dobbs earns a reported $6 million a year from CNN. How does he spend it? Some of it goes toward the property taxes for the 270 acres of land he and his wife own in Wantage, New Jersey. Just how much of his income goes to the local government? A whopping $1,793.27, or $6.64 per acre.
"… in 2003 the New York City Finance Department socked Keith's "Empire" with a $46,055 judgement for failure to pay taxes to New York City. The judgement, since vacated, was filed on June 30, 2003.
"This latest tax problem, the fourth to surface in as many days, shows Keith struggling to pay his taxes on time in either New York State, New York City or California for five of the past nine years: 2000, 2001, 2003, 2007 and 2008." [OW]
First there was the $2,300 his personal corporate owed in state taxes, with a judgment issued against him in August. And now a second back tax record, against his person, pops up, with him owing $77,425 from 2001. [OW]
For the working class out there that toils away in coffee shops trying to eek out an existence writing front-of-the-book blurbs for beauty magazines, today represents a special kind of hell: It's tax day, and while most everyone else in employed life already had their government dollars withheld by their employer, you, dear soul, have not, and had to sort through all of your 1099s and receipts to figure out how much Uncle Sam is stealing from you this year.
Salon's Catherine Price found herself in a similar situation. Last year. It involved the scenario your cramped studio apartment looks like right now: Forms strewn all over your parquet floor, coffee rings bleeding through important government slips, and yourself, curled up in a fetal position. So she came up with a handy listicle of tips to get you through your pain and suffering. Most of her ideas are smart; all of them are obvious.
Get a tax adviser. Set up different bank accounts for business earnings. Pay your taxes quarterly. Set aside funds specifically for taxes. Bathe. (One we don't agree with: Don't own a coffee maker. This forces you to go outside and socialize. Good for your mental health, bad for your ability to get out of bed in the morning.)
But what's the one thing wrong with all of this good advice? CONTINUED »
The IRS knows when you are sleeping, they know when you're awake and, most importantly, they know when you've forgotten to pay the lion's share of your yearly income taxes. And now, thanks to an afternoon spent trolling the IRS records, so does the New York Post. Among their startling (and gleefully delivered) findings:
The records show that hip-hop mogul Damon Dash - whose estimated $50 million fortune bought him a chauffeur-driven $400,000 Maybach sedan, diamond-encrusted watches and more than 1,000 pairs of sneakers - owes the state more than $2 million.
$2 million dollars? Sounds like someone needs a better tax attorney and/or personal shopper! By our calculations, that means Damon "Leona Helmsley" Dash stands to lose approximately 4% of his estimated total net worth. On the plus side? He'll still have $48 million.
Sinbad, OJ Simpson and Dionne Warwick are on the California Franchise Tax Boards list of delinquent tax payers.
Hopefully the California Franchise Tax Board has also levied some fee on Sinbad for his role in the 1996 monstrosity First Kid.
