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The Anti-Small Business Tax

Apr. 29 Economics, Taxes 12 comments

OPINION: the Self-Employment Penalty is a Barrier to Economic Growth

By Jordan Rickards | The Save Jersey Blog

money - liberty coinI don’t suppose any American looks forward to April 15.  This was especially true for me this year, because I knew my tax bill was going to be a bit stiffer than in years past.  I wasn’t complaining though.  I run my own law office, and the fact that I would have to pay more in taxes was a result of having done more business in 2012, and that’s always a cause for celebration.

Because I am self-employed, I am required by law to pay taxes on a quarterly basis in amounts designed to approximate that year’s expected tax liability, using the previous year’s earnings as a guide.  Since I had earned significantly more in 2012 than in 2011, I knew my withholdings would not cover the entirety of my tax liability, such that when my accountant called on the morning April 15th, I was fully prepared for him to tell me that I owed extra money.

But I wasn’t prepared for the amount.

It seems that in my mental calculations I had forgotten to factor in the bane of all small business owners, the dreaded “self-employment penalty,” which more than doubled my tax bill.  It’s actually called the “self-employment tax,” but it’s a penalty.  One of the most basic principles in economics is that you get more of what you subsidize, and less of what you tax.  Ergo, because a tax serves to discourage the activity to which it applied, in plain English that means it’s a penalty.

And the message this penalty sends is clear enough: the government would rather have me looking for a job instead of creating one for myself and others.

CONTINUE READING….

America is to Blame for the Massacre in Connecticut

Dec. 16 Cultural Issues, National, Second Amendment 9 comments

Cross-Posted at RickardsReview.com

I believe in the right to own a gun.  As a conservative, I believe in a right to be able to defend myself and my home, and I believe that that right is all the more necessary in today’s America. 

As a skeptic, I doubt that an outright ban on firearms would accomplish much more than to disarm the law abiding people who we don’t have to worry about in the first place.  And as a freedom loving person, while I certainly don’t believe in armed insurrection, I do confess discomfort with the idea of a world where the government controls all the weapons.

But I can’t avoid how I feel right now in the wake of the slaughter in Connecticut.  I feel angry.  I don’t remember feeling this way after Columbine, or Virginia Tech, or the Aurora Colorado movie theatre shootings.  I remember being sad and dejected, but not angry.

When tragedies happen, it’s natural to look to somebody to blame, and groups like the N.R.A. are always the first and easiest targets.  I’ve defended them in the past.  After all, you don’t see N.R.A. members committing massacres. That’s because, in addition to being obsessed about guns, they’re also obsessed with gun safety and education to ensure that guns are used in a responsible way, so that the right to own them is not compromised.

But in their seemingly reflexive opposition to even the most reasonable and common sense regulations, they fail to consider that maybe America as a whole is simply not capable of responsible gun ownership within the framework of the current regulatory scheme.  Or perhaps I should say, “no longer capable.”

Conservatives receive a lot of criticism for wanting to “take us back to the 1950′s.” That might not be a bad idea.

CONTINUE READING….

Taxpayer Funded Sex Change Operations For Prisoners, and Other Fluke-ing Crazy Ideas

Sep. 10 Cultural Issues, Feminism, Sandra Fluke, Women 1 comment

For more from Jordan B. Rickards, visit The Rickards Review

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In another sign that the liberal half of our government has gone completely off the deep end, a federal judge in Massachusetts has ruled that taxpayers must pay for the sex change operation of an incarcerated murderer.

The plaintiff in this action, Robert Kosilek, who was convicted of murdering his wife in 1990, convinced Judge Mark Wolf that for the Department of Corrections not to pay for his procedure would be a violation of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Ah yes.  This recalls the famous constitutional conflict between founding fathers James Madison and George Mason, debating the provisions of the proposed Bill of Rights, and ultimately determining that, yes, in fact, they intended their new American Experiment to include a government entitlement to taxpayer funded, elective, sexual mutilations for prisoners.  How could we have missed that all these years?  Life, liberty, and a right to subsidized sexual degeneracy for murderers.

That’s right folks.  You probably thought it was bad enough you have to finance $3,000 annually for contraceptives for women like activist Sandra Fluke (pronounced “fluck”).  Now we have a new constitutional right to $20,000 sex change operations for criminals who can’t deal with the reality of their reproductive organ.

You know, sometimes I think liberals go out of their way to make their arguments as inane as possible, as though to overwhelm their opponents with a tidal wave of ridiculousness that makes it almost impossible for a challenger to know where to begin.

Well, let’s try starting with the mundane.

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Joe Kyrillos: A Moderate Republican for a Moderate New Jersey

Sep. 05 Bob Menendez, Election 2012, Joe Kyrillos, National, Republican Party, U.S. Senate 97 comments

It has been forty years since New Jersey elected a Republican to the United States Senate.  No other state has gone nearly as long without electing a member of the opposition party.

Even liberal strongholds such as New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine currently have Republican representation in the Senate.  It’s time for New Jersey to joins their ranks, and the candidacy of State Senator Joe Kyrillos presents the perfect opportunity to do just that.

Joe Kyrillos is a moderate Republican for a moderate New Jersey.

CONTINUE READING….

Actually Mr. President, I DID Build That (From a New Jersey Small Businessman)

Aug. 27 Barack Obama, Economics no comments

If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

– President Barack Obama, who has never held a private sector job, much less run a business

 

Save Jersey Contributor and Central Jersey Attorney Jordan Rickards

This past Saturday was the fifth or sixth in a row that I spent at my office, Save Jerseyans, putting in hours on beautiful days when I’d much rather be enjoying the languor of summer, because that’s one of the many sacrifices that I, and countless other small business owners know we must make. I spend these Saturdays alone because, unfortunately, all those “other people” who President Obama thinks built my business for me apparently have better things to do with their time than to actually contribute to my business in any identifiable way.

It’s actually kind of funny.  When conservatives talk about the “invisible hand” of capitalism, we speak of free market forces that automatically coordinate economic activity and prices.  Obama’s idea of an “invisible hand” is when my business is built for me by the hands of people who are literally invisible.

I run a small law practice that I started three years ago.  It generates enough income to provide for myself, the salary of my staff, the fees of about a dozen or so sub-contractors, and various miscellaneous expenses concomitant with such a business.  There are certainly easier ways to make a living, ways that did not require me to invest (i.e., risk) my entire life’s savings, plus four years in college, and three years in law school, five years of low-paid training after that, and incalculable hours and weekends above and beyond the typical workweek.

But starting and running a business is about risk and reward.  You risk a lot and you invest a lot because even though failure stalks you at every corner, the potential return can be great.  You work to make a living.  You invest and risk to get ahead.  And this is the essence of capitalism, the greatest engine of wealth creation the world has ever known, which by far and away has done more to lift up the lot of the common man, and even the poor, than all the central planning in the world has ever achieved.

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Barack Obama’s 20 Most Impossibly Self-Absorbed Moments

Jun. 11 Barack Obama 9 comments

An editorial by Jordan B. Rickards cross-posted at www.RickardsReview.com

SOLIPSISM [sol-ip-siz-uhm] (noun): 1) Philosophy: the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist. 2) Extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one’s feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption. 3) Barack Obama.

President Obama is undoubtedly many things to many people.  Liberals see him as a genius, conservatives see him as a meddlesome dilettante. Liberals fawn over rhetorical skills, conservatives say the credit goes to his teleprompter. Liberals think he knows it all, conservatives think he’s a know-it-all.

Fine.

But if there’s an attribute central to Barack Hussein Obama which all objective, reasonable people should be able to recognize, it has to be his historic self-absorption.  Indeed, not since Maximilien Robespierre created and placed himself atop of the “Cult of the Supreme Being” has the world seen such an insufferable ego.

In light of that, what follows is a compilation of his twenty most impossibly self-absorbed moments, listed in reverse order.  Frankly, this is well overdue.  Note that originally this list was going to be limited to ten, and then fifteen examples, but there was simply too much material…

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A (Dan) Savage Attack On Christian Children

May. 03 Christianity, News 13 comments

At a recent presentation to a captive audience of public school students, gay activist Dan Savage engaged in a bigoted anti-Christian tirade during the course of which he called the Christian children in the audience “pansy assed.” He also repeatedly referred to the Bible as “bull shit,” and misrepresented basic biblical theology to assert that the Bible supports slavery and the stoning of women for sexual dalliances.

He also intimated that the Republican Party may seek to amend state constitutions to “make it legal to stone women to death on their wedding nights if they’re not virgins,” and made the bizarre claim that the very existence of the Bible is somehow causing people to be murdered.

Savage is the founder of the “It Gets Better” campaign, a project which serves to combat the bullying of gay youngsters, in particular in school environments. Apparently Mr. Savage, in addition to having no sense of decorum, also has no sense of the ironic, failing as he did to appreciate the hypocrisy of an anti-bullying activist bullying a bunch of children, preaching against hate speech by using hate speech, and asking for tolerance while demonstrating an astonishing degree of intolerance — heck, naked hostility — toward others.  Also lost on him was the utter ridiculousness of a gay activist using a homophobic epithet (“pansy assed”) to refer to people he perceived to be heterosexual.

It goes without saying that Savage should not be considered representative of liberals in general, nor of the gay movement specifically, the great bulk of whom would quickly distance themselves from such a flagrant display of bigotry. That does not mean, however, that the Left is immune from any criticisms stemming from Savage’s speech…

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Raising Arizona

Apr. 28 National, News 153 comments

The Supreme Court this week finally entertained oral argument on the matter of Arizona’s controversial immigration law which, amongst other things, requires police to check the legal status of suspected illegal immigrants in the event they have already been stopped by police for reasons unrelated to immigration.

Hoping to capitalize politically, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced his intention to introduce legislation nullifying the law in the event the Supreme Court does not.  Schumer knows such legislation has no hope of passing, but his purpose in proposing the law is simply to be in a position to keep raising the issue through the November elections in order to be able to campaign on it.

Republicans should encourage him wholeheartedly…

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