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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (644109)	1/30/2012 11:43:06 PM
From: i-node	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1580812

But we know that's not true don't we.........hundreds if not thousands of special "tax laws" are written for favored individuals or businesses....there are probably dozens in Arkansas alone... I can't speak to Arkansas tax law and I'm quite sure you can't, either. While the Internal Revenue Code does provide special tax laws written for certain businesses, they were generally written with specific objectives in mind. In the case of oil, the deduction for certain costs is present to encourage drilling and development -- a reasonable objective. There is no business move favored by the Code as is agri, for which the tax rules are utterly ridiculous. Still, those provisions were put there with good reason and generally with a considerable amount of review and substantial influence of the JCT and its staff. I would also point out that there are at LEAST as many provisions that are designed to work against specific industries as there are FOR. As an example, special laws that treat capital assets (like stock and real estate) as stock-in-trade for dealers in those items, to avoid them getting capital gain treatment. The At-Risk provisions of IRC 465 specifically targeted limited partnerships engaged in the oil and gas business (taking a few others down with it), to limit tax sheltering opportunities from oil and gas activities. The PAL provisions of IRC 465 specifically targeted deductions taken for ownership of rental real estate. Limitations on depreciation of transportation equipment targeted small business. Dividends paid by corporations are routinely taxed multiple times. And high-income individuals are targeted with such items as the limits on deduction of medical expenses certain other itemized deductions. What is a fact is that it is complicated business and people who do not understand it (like you, for example) are easily led to believe that there are inequities where none exist. There are plenty of inequities to begin with; exaggerating them is a game politicians play that is tantamount to demagoguery. There are plenty of people out there who get sucked in by it.