8/10 Death..I Mean Stocks and Taxes

Written on August 10, 2010

G’day-

You know, I may suffer from tall man syndrome, white guy syndrome, arrogant American syndrome, W.A.S.P. syndrome, former football player syndrome. I throw my folders on desks. I push open doors too quickly. I walk into offices without being announced…and pretty frequently I apologize, in one way or another for being me. One thing I cannot stand is when I watch idiotic things happen again and again and the same guys are doing the same things unapologetically. There has been a little ditty being hummed about over the last several weeks…it goes something like this:

“U.S. companies have emerged from the financial crisis in robust health; they've paid down their debts, rebuilt their balance sheets and are sitting on growing piles of cash they are ready to invest in the economy.”

It just ain’t so…people and their businesses are up to their eyeballs in debt.

In any case, the markets bought it, got relaxed, sold off their hedges option volatility dropped and again the market gets a nosebleed and has a down move…this is a recording. And, it is going nowhere in a hurry.

How about something simpler today like taxes…WHY NOT A FLAT TAX? Lots of countries that don’t/can’t/won’t trust their country’s governments have imposed flat taxes. You or your company make a million bucks in Bulgaria or Mongolia, you pony up 100k and your loved ones get use of $900k to use as they see fit. In Czech, Hanza keeps $850k. In the US…not so much, they have a lot better plans for your money, they are far more charitable than you are and clearly they are better managers of money than you are so, they will just take it and handle it for you….

	Tax Rates
Country	Personal	Corporate
Montenegro	9%	9%
Bosnia and Herzegovina	10%	10%
Bulgaria	10%	10%
Mongolia	10%	10%
Turkmenistan	10%	20%
Albania	10%	20%
Kazakhstan	10%	15%
Kyrgyzstan	10%	10%
Macedonia	10%	10%
Georgia	12%	20%
Russia	13%	24%
Serbia	14%	10%
Iraq	15%	15%
Mauritius	15%	15%
Ukraine	15%	25%
Czech Republic	15%	15%
Hong Kong	16%	17.50%
Romania	16%	16%
Slovakia	19%	19%
Guernsey	20%	0
Jersey	20%	20%
Estonia	21%	0
Lithuania	24%	15%
Trinidad and Tobago	25%	25%
Jamaica	25%	33.30%
Latvia	25%	15%
Iceland	35.70%	18%
Average	16%	15%

Or MAYBE WE COULD LET THE “SMART GUYS” fix it up again…and add another 11,000 pages to our tax code over the next 5 years….it has almost tripled since 1985. Hey, it keeps lawyers and accountants paid!

I might have to start drinking tea…

All the best,

Leon