The Horzontal Double Dummies

Nobody’s Opinion; Has anyone besides me noticed that the subject of “Taxes” never comes up, hardly anywhere? Taxes are never discussed much even though all of us here on the planet are taxed on every thing we do, unless it’s illegal.

The only time it’s even discussed is the week before April 15th, deadline when the entire local news guru’s are warning you to HURRY UP FOR GOD’S SAKE…YOU ONLY HAVE THREE DAYS LEFT! God forbid you should even think about not paying taxes. Who knows what would happen to you. You might end up in a Chinese gulag or worse yet, doing weekly recycling meetings at your local city hall.

Or stuck in Africa trying to find Wesley Snipes.

I don’t know why I’m even thinking about this around the upcoming holidays, but I ran across a piece in the special issue of FORBES magazine today. It was a story about this guy named Tom Siebel and how he avoided paying any taxes on the $58 million he made when he sold his Siebel systems to Oracle.

Tom made 58 million dollars and didn’t have to pay taxes…but if you and I don’t keep copies of every single little expense, we could be looking at fifty years sitting next to some murdering member of the Bolivian drug cartel.

He did it with a wonderful lawyer trick that I suppose is widely practiced by those somebodies with huge amounts of money floating around that they don’t want taxed. It’s called the “horizontal double dummy,” a name in other circles usually reserved for ex-wives.

Here’s what they do, (the rich somebodies) and it’s perfectly legal. They form a holding company called, whatever you like, he called his Ozark Holdings.

Then you form two transitory subsidiaries, the “dummies” of the deal. One dummy merged with Oracle, and the Oracle stock was exchanged for Ozark Holdings stock; the rest was exchanged for cash. Then at the time of the merger, Tom dissolved the dummies and Ozark Holdings was renamed Oracle.

You see, for a merger to qualify as a tax free transaction, at least 40% of the consideration paid by the buying company has to consist of stock. Oracle wasn’t willing to issue that many shares.

Isn’t this a corker? While poor people are out shooting each other for Play station 3’s, this guy just manipulated a few lawyers and made 58 million dollars---no sweat. And most importantly, he was not only NOT arrested for tax evasion, but he got written up in Forbes Magazine as a very savvy businessman.

While Martha Steward is put in jail and loses BILLIONS over something she told her broker, this guy is considered an upstanding citizen?

Yes, if you are rich, there is a lawyer for you. I’m beginning to wonder if ANY of the billionaires pay any taxes at all. We keep hearing about how seventy percent of the wealthy pay eighty percent of the taxes.

So where does the wealth begin? At $60,000? What happens if after a certain number the wealth just sort of…merges? It becomes untouchable.

So THIS is why for the last twenty years all the companies are merging.

How about that O.J. Simpson? We have all been told that he will get paid over 3 million dollars for his book and interview. The court says he owes money to both Nicole and Ron’s family.

I wonder…will the government get its share before Nicole and Ron’s family?

Has O.J. “merged” with the horizontal dummies and vertical lawyers?

In the meantime, we nobodies pay the accounts receivable taxes, building permit taxes, CDL License Taxes, cigarette taxes, Corporate Income Taxes, Dog License Taxes, Federal Income Taxes, Federal Unemployment Taxes, Fishing License Taxes, Food License Taxes, Fuel Permit Taxes, Gasoline Taxes (42 cents per gallon) hunting licenses taxes, inheritance taxes, inventory taxes, IRS interest Charges, IRS penalties, liquor taxes, luxury taxes, marriage license taxes, Medicare Taxes, property taxes, (my personal pet peeve) Real Estate Taxes, service charge taxes, Social Security Taxes, Road usage taxes, Sales Tax (another one of my personal favorites) recreational vehicle taxes, school taxes, state income taxes, state unemployment taxes, telephone federal excise tax, telephone federal universal service fee tax, telephone federal, state and local surcharge taxes, telephone minimum usage surcharge taxes, telephone recurring and non-recurring charges taxes, telephone state and local taxes, telephone usage charge taxes, utility taxes, vehicle license registration taxes, Vehicle Sales Taxes, watercraft registration taxes, well permit taxes, workers compensation taxes….

And the one that makes up for all of these--the lottery tax. If you win the lottery the government takes half of your winnings. And they always say “John Brown and his merry co-workers just won 350 million Dollars in Saturday Night’s Powerball!” When in fact, they only won 175 million dollars, and they are lucky if they see that.

Tell me I’m not right.

Personally, I was wondering today while standing in line for my groceries, if there was a website that said: “Today, the government made one trillion on all groceries bought in all fifty states.” And every grocery store in the United States was listed, and all the taxes collected for that day, reported.

For all us nobody’s to look at.

And then tell us exactly what that money from all the groceries was going to. Just do that on groceries alone, daily, weekly, monthly…I’d like to know.

OR even worse, the amount of tax revenue just made off of gas sales. (42 cents a gallon!)

Bill O’Reilly today, being even more pessimistic than this nobody, said that the status quo of politics was never going to change, but there might be a tax revolt sometime in the distant future.

I don’t know. Once Hillary passes her vast medical care system, we won’t be able to revolt. They will turn off our respirators.

After reading about this horizontal double dummy deal, I’m ready to merge myself.
All I need is some stock to merge with. I’m thinking seriously about merging my upstairs with my downstairs, and going for that double dummy deal.

I also plan to by laying down when I do it, just to make it effective.

I already am a perfect horizontal double dummy. And that’s taxable!

Hey, no WONDER they want to legalize prostitution! Think of all the merging!

Nobody’s Perfect; I have NO idea what I’m talking about, still, it seems obvious that if the subject of taxes ever came up and was revived by any reporter in the news seriously (besides by Steve Forbes) that reporter might find out that the old trick of horizontal double dummy would not work for him.

Nobody Knows: One hundred years ago, none of those taxes existed and our nation was the most prosperous in the world, had no national debt, and the largest middle class. Just where IS Michael Moore when you need him?

Nobody Cares; Now, President Bush, reprimanding anyone citizen of the United States for even thinking about “protecting” our markets, should think twice…and go forth with free trade. He is quietly “merging” the United States with China, which makes him a real walking dummy, and the rest of us horizontal double dummies for putting up with it all.