| A.
R. Kakhsaz Company
an accountancy corporation
Member
American Institute of
Certified Public Accountants
International associates:
Tavana & Co.
Chartered Accountants
Toronto, Canada
Tel.416-229-2221
|
The United States of America
is the biggest debtor nation in the
world, by far. The U.S. national
debt is nearly $10 trillion today. And
when you add the national
commitments, such as funding
Social Security, Medicare and the
"banking rescue plan" on the recent
disastrous financial melt-downs,
then the shortcoming is nearing
$60 trillion. At stake are the nation's
standard of living, national security
and even the very existence of the
U.S.A. Some refer to the situation as
"Rome before fall." Representative
Paul Kanjorski, Chairman of the U.S.
Congress's Financial Services
Subcommittee on Capital Markets
referred to it as "cowboy capitalism."
Meanwhile, President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad of Iran, in his U.N.
speech said the "American empire"
is near collapse! It's truly a shame
that America is entrapped like this.
Federal income-tax brackets for
2009 are estimated as follows:
Tax On taxable income of more than
|
Rate |
Joint filers |
Single filers |
|
10% |
$ - |
$ - |
|
15 |
17,000 |
8,000 |
|
25 |
68,000 |
34,000 |
|
28 |
137,000 |
82,000 |
|
33 |
209,000 |
172,000 |
|
35 |
373,000 |
373,000 |
Caution: Nobody knows what
tax-law changes may lie ahead
next year under a new president.
The universe, of which planet
Earth is a tiny part, came from
nothing in the big bang and will
disappear into nothing at the big
crunch. Its glorious few zillion
years of existence will not even
remain as a memory!
More tipsters, lured by big
rewards offered by the IRS:
A sharp increase in rewards to
informants in large cases of tax
cheating, has helped generate a
torrent of tips, says the IRS.
For more of the Generalist,
please visit ARKCPACOM.
|
theGeneralist,
a one-page monthly
publication of the accounting firm of
A. R.
Kakhsaz Company, is in its 14th
year of providing information,
presented
fairly and accurately, from sources we
can depend upon and
trust.
Inequality in the U.S.:
In a new
sign of increasing inequality in the
U.S., the richest 1% of Americans
in 2006 garnered the highest
share of the nation's aggregate
gross income for two decades,
and possibly the highest since
1929. That's according to the IRS
data. Meanwhile, the average tax
rate of the wealthiest 1% fell to its
lowest level in at least 18 years.
The richest 1% reported 22% of
the U.S. aggregate gross income
in 2006. That's up from 21.2% a
year earlier, and is the highest in
19 years that such data has been
kept. The 1988 level was 15.2%.
The average tax rate in 2006 for
the top 1%, based on gross
income, was 22.8%, down from
2005 and the fifth straight year of
declines. The average tax rate of
this group was 28.9% in 1996, and
was 24% in 1988. The group paid
39.9% of all federal income taxes
in 2006, compared with 27.6% in
1988. In the most recent five
years, however, the share of
income reported by the very
wealthy has risen faster than the
group's share of income taxes.
Kamran Khavarani is a
long-time
friend of mine. He has been a
successful architect and later a
distinguished artist. His paintings
have now been proclaimed as a
new style of painting described as
"Abstract Romanticism" by Albert
Boime, a social art historian and
professor of art history at UCLA.
To an engineer, good enough
means perfect. With an artist,
there's no such thing as perfect.
We see more in numbers
than just numbers...
Ali R. Kakhsaz, CPA, MAcc
www.arkcpa.com
|
