180
votes
Accepted
Did Amazon pay $0 in US taxes in 2018?
When Bernie Sanders claimed Amazon didn't pay federal income taxes in 2017, Snopes wrote a helpful article:
In regards to U.S. federal income taxes, the claim that Amazon paid none in 2017 is almost ...
- 30.2k
153
votes
Are US workers legally required to pay income taxes?
The IRS has a section of their website, The Truth About Frivolous Tax Arguments dedicated to explaining the flaws of popular incorrect arguments of why taxes don't have to be paid.
Specifically, it ...
tim♦
- 51.4k
129
votes
Accepted
Does Shell get $2 billion a year in subsidies from the US government?
The infographic is false. Shell does not receive $2 Billion in subsidies a year. They do receive tax breaks, but not for "no real reason".
The $2 Billion claim in the infographic seems to ...
- 22.3k
107
votes
Does the United States have more tax preparers than police and firefighters combined?
No
As per the statistics that @gerrit cited, the statement as listed is untrue. There are almost as many firefighters alone as tax preparers.
There is a true way of stating it. If we explicitly ...
- 10.2k
92
votes
Accepted
Can the US government garnish 100% of your income?
No, the IRS cannot garnish 100% of your income.
Before I begin, obviously, IANAL. Some of my sources will come from law advice websites that also have that disclaimer.
There is a process that the ...
- 22.3k
69
votes
Were the women of Travancore, India, taxed for covering their breasts by breast size?
This appears to be a myth manufactured by S. N. Sadasivan from oral history. He wrote:
The breast tax was levied as soon as a woman of the Ezhavas and castes below, attained puberty and more ...
- 44.4k
64
votes
Accepted
2 % of 'the rich' pay 50 % of taxes in Germany
Not true for "taxes", not even true for "income tax" alone.
According to the official government statistics for the year 2014 –– and include those a bit more who are not really considered "rich ...
- 44k
60
votes
Are US workers legally required to pay income taxes?
No it is not true. The Sixteenth Amendment was adopted in 1913, so taxes not apportioned to states are constitutional. US Code 26 Subtitle A is the relevant law.
The quoted text seems to allude to a ...
- 15.8k
49
votes
2 % of 'the rich' pay 50 % of taxes in Germany
The top 20% of income earners pay 50% of Einkommensteuer&Lohnsteuer (income tax), which in turn accounts for 33% of total tax income for the state. (Lohn and Einkommen are separate here, because ...
- 1,585
39
votes
Accepted
Is the US tax code only 2,600 pages long?
According to the IRS itself (2008):
The Code has grown so long that it has become challenging even to figure out how
long it is. A search of the Code conducted in the course of preparing this ...
- 104k
35
votes
Accepted
Do Greeks evade taxes by not finishing their houses?
The short answer to the question is: It's not true.
Please let me state beforehand that my answer doesn't try to prove that Greeks in general do not try to avoid paying taxes. Although being a ...
- 534
33
votes
Does Shell get $2 billion a year in subsidies from the US government?
The number in your claim appears to come from a 2014 report by a "subsidy tracking group" called Good Jobs First, quoted in
an article in "cheatsheet.com" about corporate welfare recipients. They ...
- 4,350
33
votes
Does the United States have more tax preparers than police and firefighters combined?
True, almost true, or false, depending on sources and interpretation.
Depending on sources, the number of professional firefighters + law enforcement officers is either the same or slightly smaller ...
- 17.6k
31
votes
Accepted
Are the ABA and IRS foreign-owned private debt collection agencies?
The IRS is a U.S. Government agency.
Its website says:
The IRS is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury
...
Statutory Authority
The IRS is organized to carry out the ...
- 7,319
30
votes
Accepted
Will the Republican tax plan cost Donald Trump "a fortune"?
tl;dr: it is impossible to know for sure if it will cost President Trump "a fortune" since he has not released his tax returns, but it is very unlikely that he will come out behind under ...
- 22.3k
25
votes
Accepted
Did NASA receive a tax refund on a diamond window when it left the Earth aboard a space probe?
Hughes Aircraft Company received the refund.
A first hand account is given by Bruce Leeds in his article What the Heck is Drawback and How Do I Use It?
Early in my career I took a position as ...
- 104k
24
votes
Are US workers legally required to pay income taxes?
Let me take a different tack on this. The statement as presented,
There is no law which requires the average American worker (in the
private sector) to pay a direct unapportioned tax on their ...
- 387
21
votes
Accepted
Do the Republican tax cuts cost more than forgiving student debt?
It's nebulous.
Total student loan debt is estimated at around $1.5 trillion Forbes, while NerdWallet places the total federal student loan debt at $1.4 trillion (and puts the total at $1.6 trillion).
...
- 5,550
17
votes
Accepted
Is the GOP tax plan the 'largest tax cut in history'?
A Reuters article, Trump's tax cut won't be the biggest in U.S. history looked at this claim in early November, 2017.
They do consider various definitions that might be used.
Corporate
If it were ...
- 140k
16
votes
Accepted
Does the USA have the highest taxes?
Mostly false.
According to Wikipedia, List of countries by tax rates, Belgium has the highest maximum income tax rate (64% tax), Cameroon has the highest corporate tax rate (38.5%) and Netherlands ...
- 15.7k
15
votes
Does an American taxpayer fund $870 in corporate subsidies for every $36 in food stamps?
The last three numbers seem to be based on the same data as this Common Dreams article:
$870 for Corporate Tax Subsidies
We've heard a lot about tax avoidance and tax breaks for the super-...
- 10.2k
15
votes
Accepted
Does the Inflation Reduction Act increase taxes on people making less than $10,000 / year?
There is no change in the US Federal Tax Rates for individuals included in the Inflation Reduction Act. The "Increased Taxes" that Joint Committee on Taxation's analysis shows is based off ...
- 22.3k
13
votes
Accepted
Does a tax on drinks with high sugar content reduce sugar consumption?
Summary:
Based on current research, there is evidence from several studies that higher tax on drinks with high sugar content might reduce sugar consumption. However, researchers feel that the levied ...
- 22.7k
12
votes
Accepted
Do over 20 countries have zero tax, but high-quality services?
There are only 15 countries in the world with no income taxes, listed here. These are countries such as United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, The ...
- 22.7k
12
votes
Accepted
Can I avoid property tax by showing a judge my land grant?
This question might be too board to answer as-is as tax codes differ state to state and tax law is extremely complex. Here are some points of thought about the claim.
Pulling up the original land ...
- 805
12
votes
Are razor blades tax-free in the UK?
The MP's claim that "razors are zero-rated" is false, and the comic has it backwards. Unlike tampons, razors are subject to full VAT at 20%. At the time of the claims in 2015, tampons were ...
- 751
12
votes
Accepted
Do rich Americans pay a lower portion of their income in federal taxes than the middle class?
This is highly contentious depending which taxes (and benefits) are included. The wiki page only includes federal income tax offset by ("in-kind benefits from social insurance and other ...
- 57.1k
11
votes
Do Greeks evade taxes by not finishing their houses?
Seems like the best info so far, so I'm turning this into an answer:
The Telegraph makes this claim in a May 2010 article:
Innumerable buildings have steel girders protruding up from what appears ...
- 423
11
votes
Were the women of Travancore, India, taxed for covering their breasts by breast size?
I've found two recent peer-reviewed publications that suggest that such a breast tax did exist in Travancore in the early 19th century. However, the wording used in the Economic Times "article" is ...
- 9,539
10
votes
Is the average effective corporate tax rate in US only 15% in 2017?
There is a lot of confusion about effective tax rates but the consensus is that the effective rate in the USA is in the 20-25% range
The trouble with almost any article that quotes an effective tax ...
- 56.2k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible