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Will Destruction Of Johnson Amendment Destroy Charity?
President Trump made a down payment on his promise with an executive order. Unless you apply the “truthful hyperbole” standard that then developer Trump recommended in the Art of the Deal, the executive order did not destroy the Johnson amendment. Arguably it did not do anything at all to it. Section 5201 of the House version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is much more robust.
Under the provision, this language, known as the Johnson amendment, is qualified so that an organization exempt from tax under Code section 501(c)(3) would not fail to be treated as organized and operated exclusively for its respective non-profit purpose for engaging in political speech, assuming such political speech is made in the ordinary course of the organization’s business and the associated expenses of that speech are de minimis
That hardly puts the Johnson amendment on the eve of destruction, but it does address the concern that generated the fairly silly protest known as Pulpit Freedom Sunday which fell on October 2 this year. The idea is that preachers would give politically oriented sermons, record them and send them to the IRS – daring, nay double daring the IRS to come after them. Given all the attention given to Pulpit Freedom Sunday, it probably worked up to a triple dawg dare.
Tax Cuts And Jobs Act – House Bill Invokes The Culture War With Unborn Child Definition
A gift to an unborn child is considered a present gift and not a future gift. Here is a tax court decision from 1940 on point.
The term “life in being” is part of the Rule Against Perpetuities originally and has to do with the maximum term of a trust under common law. If the child is ventre sa mere (or in utero) at the time of the gift, then the child is “in being”. As Lord Chief Justice Willis (you remember him don’t you?) said:
” An infant en ventre sa mere, or in the mother’s womb, is supposed in law to be born, for many purposes. It is capable of having a legacy, or a surrender of a copyhold estate, made to it. It may have a guardian assigned to it, and it is enabled to have an estate limited to its use, and to take afterwards by such limitation, as if it were then actually born. And in this point the civil law agrees with ours.”
Tax Cuts And Job Acts – Senate Bill Favors Jobs And Gigs
My tendency is to think that the traditional employer-employee relationship, much as I might mourn it, is doomed. Arguably, its origin in the laws about masters and servants might mean that it will ultimately not be missed. The dystopian nightmare would be that as inequality explodes, some form of indentured servitude will be instituted for people without property. If you want to be really disturbed read Cannibals All! Or, Slaves without Masters by George Fitzhugh which was published in 1857.
What is falsely called Free Society, is a very recent invention. It proposes to make the weak, ignorant and poor, free, by turning them loose in a world owned exclusively by the few (whom nature and education have made strong, and whom property has made stronger,) to get a living. In the fanciful state of nature, where property is unappropriated, the strong have no weapons but superior physical and mental power with which to oppress the weak. Their power of oppression is increased a thousand fold, when they become the exclusive owners of the earth and all the things thereon. They are masters without the obligations of masters, and the poor are slaves without the rights of slaves.
House Bill Repeal Of GST Would Defuse A Ticking Time Bomb For Trust Fund Kids
You can’t beat the GST by having your trust have a 1,000-year term in Colorado. The law indicates that when the last of the children pass, there is a termination for GST purposes. At that point the grandchildren get promoted to non-skip persons and the trustees can start distributing to them without incurring GST. When the last of the grandchildren die, there is another termination and the great-grandchildren are promoted. When the last of them dies, there is another termination, and so on.
IRS And Scientology – Everything You Want To Know And More
The long struggle between Scientology and the IRS was put to rest with a 1993 secret agreement, that was later leaked. The IRS refused to confirm the leaked document, but there is little doubt about its authenticity. I thought the agreement was pretty benign, but Scott Pilutik thinks I got it wrong. I find it ironic that the agreement is similar in length to the Treaty of Westphalia.
Senate Tax Cuts And Jobs Bill Caters Less To Billionaires Than House Bill – Does More For Jobs
The House bill does nothing for people making less than $260,000 (joint returns, lower thresholds) when it comes to business income. And above that, it discriminates against people who actually work in the businesses and many service providers who don’t require a lot of capital.
The Senate bill is much more generous to those further down the food chain. The Senate bill is probably a little simpler than the House bill. Rather than creating a special maximum rate on a certain class of income (25%), it allows a deduction of 17.4% on pass-through income. Arguably that is equivalent to a rate of around 33% on top bracket people, but it benefits everybody who has flow-through income. Even the service providers like doctors and accountants get the break if their taxable income is below $150,000 ($75,000) for singles.
Not Everybody Gets A Pony From Santa Trump This Tax Cut Christmas
Some commentary will indicate that the act favors the high income, but I see a different theme here. The really big cuts – the corporate rate reduction, the maximum rate on business income of individuals and the repeal of the estate tax and GST seem to favor those who get wealth without working – the New Gentry or the Entitled Children (I think I might have a poll as to which of those to use). Many people who provide services without using capital don’t get the new preferred rate. And some of those revenue gainers are directed at people who might be quite well off, but are still working for their money. I’m thinking the deferred comp, entertainment expenses and rules that make it more painful to pay high salaries.
This is quite a bit different than the tax reform push in the seventies and eighties. There was a hands the cross the aisle kumbaya moment between Ronald Reagan and Bill Bradley when they commiserated about the very high rate that they had had to pay – Bradley for playing basketball and Reagan for playing the Gipper. Prior to the big rate reduction in 1986, there was a maximum tax on personal service income that made the maximum rate on income you worked for 50%, while the coupon clippers still had to pay 70%.
Republican Tax Cuts And The New Gentry
Actually I think, we may and it looks to me that the Tax Cuts And Jobs Act is meant for them, It’s really amusing because a more accurate title might be The Tax Cuts For People Who Don’t Need Jobs Act. I use the word “need” advisedly. Many of the New Gentry have, what you and I might call jobs. And they might work very hard at them and be well paid. What they actually have though are careers. Careers and jobs look very similar from the outside, but they are different. A career is something you do to contribute to society and have a sense of affirmative purpose. It might be a sacred calling or perhaps a frivolous pursuit. A job is something that you do to feed your family.
A good job is clean work with no heavy lifting that pays well. Those jobs look a lot like careers.
Everything You Need To Know About The Tax Cuts And Jobs Act
My reaction to that is “Twenty bucks a week, whoopty doo”. Don’t get me wrong, I have a rule that my kids are not allowed to use the word “only” in association with any amount greater than four dollars, but still. Imagine Joe Median saying to himself “Thank you, President Trump, now I can finally take the kids to Disneyworld. ” And then he realizes that a thousand and change would maybe pay for the tickets for three days and he lives a long way from Orlando and does not have any relatives he can crash on. OK OK you want to know what is in the bill, not my thoughts about the Magic Kingdom.
Using The Coen Brothers To Learn About Tax Cuts Act Special Business Rate
We finally have a tax bill to look at (The Tax Cuts And Jobs Acts - H.R. 1). You can look at the new rates and learn about the mortgage deduction and the enhanced...