OT: Earthquake Aid to Italy

Have you seen Obama bin Biden's charitable contributions? I think they did pretty well here, considering they gave the Brit PM a couple of DVDs that wouldn't play. Cut them some slack!

Nope but I saw a video of Obama making a deep bow to the Saudi king - so deep I thought he'd fall over.

Michael

Un bel giorno snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com digitò:

I normally have a very low opinion of Berlusconi, but this time I couldn't agree more: offering 50 k$ for a disaster like this is an insult.

Madonna's offered $500k of her own money. Or, we should say, about $900k of her own money, since, under the new rules, Obama's going to get nearly half of it.

So Madonna's the actual donor, the U.S. government would skim ~$400k, pass $50k on to Italy, and Obama's net contribution is actually -$350k.

That's the new "generosity."

Cheers, James Arthur

It's a slap in the face: "... but we ask them not to send us aid," and Prez Barry is sending money anyway. Italians can be pretty proud people.

Thanks, Rich

He's now falling all over himself trying to explain how he wasn't bowing before to a foreign power.

At her level of income she won't be able to write off the deduction. More good ideas from Obama bin Biden and the House bitch.

Yeah, you're right. Charitable deductions are reduced by:

min( 0.8*restricted deductions, 0.03*(AGI-160K) ----------------------------------------------- 3

So charitable deductions = 0 for AGI >= $260k.

My less-affluent friends are positive that rich people deduct everything under the sun and pay no tax. It's a lie.

So Obama's proposal to eliminate that deduction is really a tax increase on those making less than $260k--a broken election promise.

James Arthur

After double-checking the byzantine conditions for the first term of Eq. 1, AIUI Madonna would get to deduct, under the

She's in the 35% bracket, plus 13% self-employment tax, plus roughly 10% state income tax for either California or New York-- I'm not sure which she claims.

So, she gets to deduct about $375k of $500k, reducing the People's Ministry of Extreme Fairness and Redistribution of Wealth's take by about $190k.

To donate the same amount under Obama's rules she'd have to earn an extra $1M.

James Arthur

No, "she" just doesn't give as much (or at all). Just what the weenies want.

It's a two-fer: they get more $$, at the expense of people they generally oppose. It's a tax on conservatives, mostly.

Anyway, _they_ want to spread the wealth. They don't want you spreading your money generously, that's their job.

Cheers, James Arthur

Exactly my point. They can't control your choice of charities. You won't give to ACORN.