Word: taxed
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...spread of cannabis consumption has prompted repeated debate over the past two decades on legalization - a move that would allow the state to monitor and tax a clandestine market worth an estimated $1.2 billion per year, in the same way that it regulates and taxes sales of alcohol. Average monthly budget for cannabis smokers runs from $110 to $205, with rising volumes of sales over the past decade having driven street prices per gram of hash down by 30% to $5.50, and of cannabis down...
...Seems unlikely: according to Forbes, he's worth $2.6 billion. So is he addled by greed or what? Kravis, Stephen Schwarzman and other princes of private equity (the financial deal of the moment) have been visiting Congress and wielding their checkbooks in an effort to save a tax-code provision that allows them to pay an income tax of 15% rather than the normal top rate of 35%. Have they lost their minds...
...provision Kravis and others are lobbying to save is spectacularly unfair. These billionaires enjoy a lower tax rate than the people who clean their toilets. Oh, sure, arguments can be made for this. These arguments usually turn on the metaphysical distinction between ordinary income and capital gains. And there are counterarguments challenging this artificial distinction, in general or in this particular case...
...thinking. And I didn't start out that way. I'm certainly open to persuasion that these private-equity deals are on balance a good thing, that they clear the cobwebs from dusty corners of the economy. But that doesn't mean they need or deserve a huge tax break. Tax breaks aren't free. Lower taxes on Stephen Schwarzman mean either higher taxes on somebody else or a bigger national debt...
...even mind that these players discovered and exploited a loophole to reduce their tax bills. No one is under any moral obligation to pay more taxes than he or she legally owes. (And I hope the lawyer or accountant who figured out how Blackstone could call some of its income a capital gain when calculating its taxes and then relabel the same pile of dough as ordinary income when computing its deductions, as reported last week in the New York Times, got a big, big bonus.) For years, these folks got away with murder. Congratulations. But then, when the sheer...