One instance that really bothers me is when Cheney talked about John Edwards avoiding $600,000 in income taxes somehow. John Edwards immediately went on the counter-attack, playing the Halliburton card. To me, this is the tactic of "I'm bad but he's worse." I don't think Edwards has anything to be ashamed of when, in preparing his taxes, he takes advantage of all the mechanisms that allow him to pay less. He didn't cheat the system - he took advantage of the rules in place to pay the smallest amount of taxes. Do you think there are many accountants who, knowing all the loopholes that they can use, don't use some of them because they feel they owe their fair share? Thats a ridiculous notion.
What John Edwards should have said is something to the effect of, "Well, I pay someone to do my taxes, and that person does them the best way he knows how. I'm certainly not paying him to cost me more money. John Kerry and I want to close tax loopholes so that people in the highest income brackets, which includes both candidates on both tickets, do pay their fair share." From here he could segue into Halliburton. "Meanwhile, what the vice president's company, and others, like Enron and MCI, did, is deceptive business practices..."
No thinking person considers it immoral to try and pay the least amount of taxes possible. But deliberately misleading stockholders and clients is clearly immoral.
Posted by mill1991 at October 7, 2004 3:46 PM