RUSH: Lana in Greeley, Colorado. Nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi! First, he’s a hard act to follow.
RUSH: Yeah, but I know you can do it.
CALLER: Oh, I’m gonna. I am real tired of hearing people get by with the phrase, ‘They may not pay income taxes, but they pay payroll taxes.’ In many cases, they don’t. They get earned income credit, additional earned income credit, child credit. Most, if not all of their payroll taxes, in many cases, are given back to them. And, of course, if Obama’s benefits go through, they’ll get even more. And yet these are the people who will scream the loudest if they don’t get benefits and conservatives don’t point this out.
RUSH: You know that is a brilliant point. You are exactly right. In fact, some conservatives are actually for increasing the earned income tax credit, mistakenly so. But overall, your assessment of this is correct.
CALLER: Oh, it’s okay if they want to do it, I don’t agree with it, but it’s okay, but don’t let other people get by with the quote, ‘but they pay payroll taxes.’ They don’t even pay it with their paycheck sometimes because they get advanced earned income credit.
RUSH: Yeah. And let’s not forget the underground economy, the cash economy.
CALLER: Well, yeah.
RUSH: You know, all of this is done, by the way, this whole notion of how many people don’t pay income taxes, this is all done to further the mistaken notion that most people in this country are just barely getting by.
CALLER: Well, I wish everyone, and I know there are people who really can’t afford it, but I think everyone should have to pay at least a dollar in taxes so that they would know it’s their money the government is spending.
RUSH: No, that’s not the way to do it.
CALLER: Oh?
RUSH: Because if somebody said just pay a dollar, I’m in there.
CALLER: Well, I mean at least a dollar.
RUSH: No, here’s what you do. This is not how you do it.
CALLER: Okay. Educate me.
RUSH: I’ll be happy to. Doubt that I can very much, but if you really want to make that kind of impact, starting on day one of your idea, let’s just do it for two months, just do this for two months — we’re fantasizing here, folks.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Everybody in America gets paid the gross, whether it’s twice a month, once a month, or weekly, however they get paid, every week, every two weeks, every month, they get paid the gross. They then have to pay their state taxes every month; their federal taxes every month; their property taxes every month; they have to go pay whatever community taxes there are for the fire department and the police department; they have to go pay the taxes for the municipal swimming pool; they gotta pay their garbage taxes. All of it, they pay, they write a check, or they have it debited from their credit card so that they actually are paying it. The problem is that a lot of people do not even consider the gross to be what they earn. They look at the net on their paycheck and they think that’s what they earn.
CALLER: Well, it wouldn’t work, because they wouldn’t pay it, ‘Oh, I can’t afford to,’ and —
RUSH: No, no, no, no.
CALLER: People like the IRS wouldn’t collect it.
RUSH: No, no, no, no, no, no. They would pay it. It’s automatically deducted from the credit cards. But it will be deducted 30 days after they get paid, so they’ve got it there.
CALLER: Ah.
RUSH: And then one day, it’s gone.
CALLER: Hmm.
RUSH: So they’ve got their gross for a month. What would happen is, you’re right, they’d go out and spend it. And when the time came for it to be debited, guess what? There would be no money there, so they would be over their limit or they would pay an interest penalty or what have you. But this would be the way, or maybe eliminate the credit card business, make them write the checks. I don’t know. But just making sure everybody pays a buck, you’re never going to see it.
CALLER: Well, yeah, but I couldn’t figure out another way because I used to work for a certain federal agency, and a lot of people didn’t get collected from, for all the complaints, a lot of people didn’t get collected from.
RUSH: What agency did you work for?
CALLER: The agency that deals with taxes.
RUSH: Too scared to mention it.
CALLER: Yeah. (laughing)
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: I don’t even — you know, I barely do my own taxes now.
RUSH: (laughing) That’s funny.
CALLER: Well, I did a good job. I did what I did well, but the system itself is screwed.
RUSH: I don’t know. They always seem to find me.
CALLER: Yeah. Well, you’re higher income, but there’s a lot of jokes about — comments about them going after the little guy, but there were so many payment agreement plans and stuff out there, and, you know, they just —
RUSH: Well, I’m not going to get into sob stories about being harassed by tax authorities, but I had my share of them, not feds either, it’s New York state.
CALLER: Yeah, I heard about that years ago. Okay.
RUSH: It hasn’t gone away. (laughing)
CALLER: Thanks for listening.
RUSH: They are still obsessed with the notion I’m lying to them and I don’t live in New York. They think I live in New York and I’m only saying I’m here in Florida to escape their taxes.
CALLER: Those are what people who have so many homes —
RUSH: You know what I have to do?
CALLER: Yeah?
RUSH: I have to prove to them 14 different ways where I am every working day of the year.
CALLER: Well, you see these people who have all these homes and can’t keep track of how many homes they own just have to deal with these problems.
RUSH: I know where every one of my homes is. But that is the root of the problem. They even wanted to come to all the homes to see which one I really lived in. I said, ‘How you gonna know it’s that?’ ‘We’ll be able to tell, the pictures, we can tell when a home is really more lived in.’ They really wanted to do all that.
CALLER: They’d need a search warrant to do all that, wouldn’t they?
RUSH: Well, if they forced their way in, they want you to cooperate.
CALLER: Oh, okay.
RUSH: They want to you cooperate. And of course the tendency is to cooperate with them because when the taxing authorities call you, you’re guilty. And what you have to do is prove your innocence. It’s the only court in America where you’re guilty when they call you.
CALLER: Hm-hm. Hm-hm.
RUSH: I can understand you not wanting people to know that you worked at the IRS.
CALLER: I didn’t say that.
RUSH: (laughter.)
CALLER: Oh, I’m so relaxed now, I’m retired, I listen to way too much talk radio.
RUSH: By the way, how far is Greeley from Golden?
CALLER: Greeley is east. You’re talking to somebody who doesn’t drive, you know, they don’t let blind people drive.
RUSH: But you gotta know —
CALLER: It’s not too far away. It’s not close. It’s I think the other side of Denver, and that would be, I don’t know, 40, 50 miles away. I’m just really guessing here.
RUSH: All right, I’m just questioning how close you were yesterday to the candidates.
CALLER: Well, I didn’t go.
RUSH: I could have Google Mapped it.
CALLER: Transportation doesn’t happen, you know.
RUSH: How do you get around if you don’t drive?
CALLER: I don’t. I really don’t. If the bus goes there or I have —
RUSH: Oh, you’re blind. I didn’t hear you say that you were.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Oh. Oh. Oh.
CALLER: And so I have to depend on bus, friends, cabs. There’s Paratransit, but you have to know half hour to 45 minutes before or after everywhere you gonna go before you go there.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: But as far as getting out of town, unless I have somebody I know that’s going there, I don’t go. It’s just how that is.
RUSH: I can relate, in my own way with my hearing loss.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: There are certain things I will just not go or not do.
CALLER: Certain things that —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — you just have to admit that you — you know, there’s a lot of things I can do. You know, I had a job, I worked, I’m on retirement like any ex-federal employee, and I have my own home and all that. So I have a lot of good stuff.
RUSH: You know what you might want to do, and especially in Denver, you might want to apply for a job as an official in the NFL. They have ceased the requirement that their referees can see.
CALLER: (laughing) That’s cool. I couldn’t get to Denver, though, remember? I can’t get to Denver.
RUSH: I know in Denver they like the fact the NFL refs can’t see. (laughing)
CALLER: (laughing) Okay, thanks a lot. You listened to me rant and rave a long time. I had a lot of fun this morning.
RUSH: Thanks, Lana. I’m glad you called. Same here.