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Earth to Democrats/media: All smart people try to minimize their tax liability



Preferably to zero. You're a fool if you don't. One of the reasons I hate politics is that political people exist in a world completely divorced from the reality in which normal people live. In the fantasy world of political people, the most wonderful and high-minded thing you can do is fork over an enormous chunk of your wealth to the federal government, because this is how you keep everyone else living, breathing, fat and happy. And in this fantasy world, anyone who would not want to do this is a greedy pig, beneath contempt and unworthy of a place in polite society.
In the real world in which real people have to earn money in the private sector and then make good decisions about what to do with it, all smart people try to minimize their tax liability. And because of the complicated Leviathan of a tax code the political class has given us, there are many legal methods by which you can do so. I know this comes as a shock to Democrats and media types who don't have the slightest idea what it's like to run a business, but minimizing your tax liabilities is not some scandalous behavior practiced only by the cretins of the business world. It's Economics 101. If you don't know how to do it well, you're seriously hamstringing your business and its chances of success. And if you're not even trying to do it, you're a bleaming moron. All of which makes one of today's leading criticisms of Donald Trump so absurdly hilarious:
Then there was the damage done by the things he did say. At one point, Lester Holt, the moderator, asked Trump about his refusal to release his tax returns, a subject that Trump must have known would come up. He replied by saying that he would release his returns “when she”—Clinton—“releases her thirty-three thousand e-mails that have been deleted.” Perhaps Trump thought he was being smart with this answer, but it only gave Clinton a chance to respond, which she did with relish.

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“So you’ve got to ask yourself: Why won’t he release his tax returns?” she said, seizing the moment. “Maybe he’s not as rich as he says he is . . . maybe he’s not as charitable as he claims to be.” Then Clinton raised another theory, one that I and others have written about: “Or maybe he doesn’t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes.” Here, you’d expect the target of the attack to sense the danger. Evidently, Trump didn’t. Having interrupted Clinton during most of her previous answers, he did so again. “That makes me smart,” he said. Even on Twitter, where people were pulling apart Trump’s words with the relish of a class of third graders dissecting a worm, it took a few seconds for this statement to sink in. Had he really just boasted that he didn’t pay any federal taxes? Indeed, he had.

And indeed, he should. The political class may think it's a scandal when someone doesn't pay taxes, or doesn't pay as much in taxes as the political class thinks they should. But normal people understand that when you prevent the federal government from confiscating your money, you can always do far more positive things with it than the politicians would have done with it - not to mention the fact that you earned it and the politicians didn't. I don't know if Trump is going to win this election, but if he does, one of the reasons will be that Hillary has spent so much time in the bubble of the political class and its media megaphones that she really thinks everyone in the country sees these things the same way she does. They don't. Most people view taxes the way Trump views them. If you can get out of paying them, that makes you smart. It also makes a lot of other people better off, because the things Trump has done with his capital have created far more jobs and far more wealth than anything politicians would have done with it. If we get a president who sees taxes the way normal citizens see them, and not as the political class sees them, that could be the best thing that's happened to this country in a long time.


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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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