EXEMPT Logic from XjCherokee at LH - priceless

[iplawyer]

Let us look at the W-4 instructions to find if this could help us from withholding. From instructions:
"You cannot claim exemption from
withholding if (a) your income exceeds $950
and includes more than $300 of unearned
income (for example, interest and dividends)
and (b) another person can claim you as a
dependent on his or her tax return."
Since most of us are not dependent's, and the Supreme Court has already stated (in the Phone Tax case, credit on tax form for past few years) that "and" means as well, not either. Then can we be exempt by their own instructions? You be the judges, I am the clerk in this case Wink

I found this last year but not sure if my thought's are correct.

[Dr. Caligari]

So, now they've gone beyond torturing the meaning of "includes" and are on to the meaning of "and"?

[silversopp]

Actually, the poster would be correct about the use of the word "and" in a strict logical sense. If one of the two criteria is false, then the you would be able to claim exemption. Of course, not all written language is meant to be logical statements. The use of the word "and" in common conversation can often be interpreted to mean "and/or" which I believe in the case in this law.

[The Operative]

Actually, the poster would be correct about the use of the word "and" in a strict logical sense. If one of the two criteria is false, then the you would be able to claim exemption. Of course, not all written language is meant to be logical statements. The use of the word "and" in common conversation can often be interpreted to mean "and/or" which I believe in the case in this law.

Actually, not quite correct and this is a minor quibble. What the statement means is that if one or both of the two criteria is/are false, the person is not prohibited by that statement from claiming exempt. However, that does NOT mean that he or she CAN claim exempt. What the poster fails to acknowledge is the instructions also direct the person to publication 505. Within that publication, it specifies the instances where persons that are not dependents are eligible for claiming exempt.

The end result is this yet another example of the typical tax protester's lack of reading comprehension.

[Judge Roy Bean]

It's a pretty good example of bureau-speak. You can't take any single paragraph or sometimes even a sentence at face value - there will be other references, additional instructions, obfuscations and good old-fashioned errors.

[Demosthenes]

If your dog weighs more than 80 pounds, you cannot rent apartment J.

Normal people: I have a 12 pound cat. I better call and make sure cats are allowed.

Sovrun Citizens: Awesome, the apartment is mine, even though I have a 12,000 pound elephant!

[Quixote]

Actually, the poster would be correct about the use of the word "and" in a strict logical sense. If one of the two criteria is false, then the you would be able to claim exemption. Of course, not all written language is meant to be logical statements. The use of the word "and" in common conversation can often be interpreted to mean "and/or" which I believe in the case in this law.

The reasoning is not valid even in formal logic. A and B --> ~C is not equivalent to ~A and B --> C. For example, if a couple are under age 16 and lack their parents' permission, they cannot get married in Texas. That is not the same as saying that if a couple are not under age 16 and lack their parents' permission, they can get married. They must also be of opposite sexes.

[LPC]

Let us look at the W-4 instructions to find if this could help us from withholding. From instructions:
"You cannot claim exemption from
withholding if (a) your income exceeds $950
and includes more than $300 of unearned
income (for example, interest and dividends)
and (b) another person can claim you as a
dependent on his or her tax return."

There is a difference between "if" and "if and only if."

The statement that "You cannot do X if Y" does not exclude the possibility that you cannot do X because of Z.

Which is the same point that Demo made.

[LPC]

the Supreme Court has already stated (in the Phone Tax case, credit on tax form for past few years) that "and" means as well, not either.

A typical tax protester combination of misinformation and gibberish.

1. The Supreme Court never ruled on the telephone tax.

2. There were a series of Circuit Court decisions that held that the US could no longer collect the excise tax on long distance telephone service. See, for example, Am. Bankers Ins. Group v. United States, 408 F.3d 1328 (11th Cir. 2005); OfficeMax, Inc. v. United States, 428 F.3d 583 (6th Cir. 2005); Nat'l R.R. Passenger Corp. v. United States, 431 F.3d 374 (D.C. Cir. 2005); Fortis v. United States, 2006 U.S. App. LEXIS 10749 (2d Cir. 2006); and Reese Bros. v. United States, 2006 U.S. App. LEXIS 11468 (3d Cir. May 9, 2006).

3. The statute in question, IRC section 4252(b)(1)(A), defines taxable "toll telephone service” as a telephonic communication for which there is a charge "which varies in amount with the distance *and* elapsed transmission time of each individual communication." (Emphasis added.)

4. The circuit courts uniformly held that "and" meant "and" (not "as well"), and that in order to fall within the definition of " toll telephone service," the charge had to vary by both the length of the call and the distance of the call. Long distance telephone charges which were based solely on the elapsed time of the call, and not the geographical distances (which is how most long distance calls are billed nowadays) did not fall within the definition.

[Randall]

Let us look at the W-4 instructions to find if this could help us from withholding. From instructions:
"You cannot claim exemption from
withholding if

Clearly this does not apply to me. The sentence starts with "you". I am reading it, so it may apply to "you" but not to me, myself or I.

[silversopp]

Actually, not quite correct and this is a minor quibble. What the statement means is that if one or both of the two criteria is/are false, the person is not prohibited by that statement from claiming exempt.

A statement of the form A or B is true when at least one of the statements A and B is true. Otherwise it is false.
A statement of the form A and B is true when both of the statements A and B are true. Otherwise it is false.

Since the statement was written in the form of an "AND" statement then the statement is false unless BOTH A and B are true. In my case, A is true because I earn more than $950 and have more than $300 unearned income and B is false because no one can claim me as a dependent. Thus the statement, "you cannot claim exemption if A and B..." is false. I would not be restricted from claiming exemption based on that part of the form - and of course there could be other things that restrict me from claiming exemption.

This isn't to say that this the TP magic bullet, but if this were written as computer code, it would spit out a much different result than most of us would expect. But law isn't computer code.

[The Operative]

Actually, not quite correct and this is a minor quibble. What the statement means is that if one or both of the two criteria is/are false, the person is not prohibited by that statement from claiming exempt.

A statement of the form A or B is true when at least one of the statements A and B is true. Otherwise it is false.
A statement of the form A and B is true when both of the statements A and B are true. Otherwise it is false.

Since the statement was written in the form of an "AND" statement then the statement is false unless BOTH A and B are true.

Right. That is what I said.

In my case, A is true because I earn more than $950 and have more than $300 unearned income and B is false because no one can claim me as a dependent. Thus the statement, "you cannot claim exemption if A and B..." is false. I would not be restricted from claiming exemption based on that part of the form - and of course there could be other things that restrict me from claiming exemption.

This isn't to say that this the TP magic bullet, but if this were written as computer code, it would spit out a much different result than most of us would expect. But law isn't computer code.

Right. However, in your original post you said...

If one of the two criteria is false, then the you would be able to claim exemption.

Which is not correct. If at least one of the two criteria is false, the statement in the instructions does not preclude a person from filing in exempt. However, that does not mean a person WOULD be able to claim exempt. In your latest post, you quantify the ability to claim exemption. In your previous post, you did not.

[Cpt Banjo]

Actually, the statement is not simply in the form of "A and B". It is a statement of material implication: if A and B, then C.

The statement translates to "If (A) your income exceeds $950 and includes more than $300 of unearned income (for example, interest and dividends) and (B) another person can claim you as a dependent on his or her tax return, then (C) you cannot claim exemption from withholding."

Under the standard rules for material implication, the statement "If A and B, then C" is true under each of the following circumstances:
"A and B" is true and C is true
"A and B" is false and C is true
"A and B" is false and C is false

It follows that the falsity of the premise "A and B" (because either or both of A and B is false) does not mean that C must always be false because it is entirely possible that C is true.

[Imalawman]

Leave it Quatloos to turn a moronic post into an esoteric debate. Man, I love this place.

[silversopp]

Well any way you slice it the poster still has to pay taxes

[Judge Roy Bean]

Leave it Quatloos to turn a moronic post into an esoteric debate. Man, I love this place.

It's symptomatic. Even the IRS recognizes the problems but congress won't leave well enough alone. Consider these from http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/08_tas_arc_msp_1.pdf:

If tax compliance were an industry, it would be one of the largest in the United States.
To consume 7.6 billion hours, the “tax industry” requires the equivalent of 3.8 million
full-time workers.
...
Compliance costs are huge both in absolute terms and relative to the amount of tax revenue collected. Based on Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on the hourly cost of an employee, TAS estimates that the costs of complying with the individual and corporate income tax requirements in 2006 amounted to $193 billion – or a staggering 14 percent of aggregate income tax receipts.
...
Tax regulations, which are issued by the Treasury Department to provide guidance on the meaning of the Internal Revenue Code, now stand about a foot tall. The CCH Standard Federal Tax Reporter, a leading publication for tax professionals that summarizes administrative guidance and judicial decisions issued under each section of the Code, now comprises 25 volumes and takes up nine feet of shelf space.
...
Small Business Burdens. Small business taxpayers face a particularly bewildering
array of laws, including a patchwork set of rules that governs the depreciation of
equipment, numerous and overlapping filing requirements for employment taxes, and
a vague set of factors that govern the classification of workers as either employees or
independent contractors and that can keep businesses and the IRS battling each other
for years with no obvious “correct” answer.

[Colonel_Buck]

Simplifying the tax code will never happen. Too much money is being paid to put special interest legislation in the code and more is being paid to keep it from being removed.

[Imalawman]

Simplifying the tax code will never happen. Too much money is being paid to put special interest legislation in the code and more is being paid to keep it from being removed.

True...to a point. But even if we still said, "no more policy implementation through the tax code", the complexity would still exist because we live in a complex economy. We would still have to figure out what we're going to tax. Then we would have to define what would tax, which leads to regulations and complex code sections. Then us tax lawyers would come up with transactions that avoided those definitions, so they add new code sections...etc...etc..

People blame policy for the complexity, but that's really a part of the story. Sure, if we got rid of capital gains and dividend rates and depreciation, it would help to simplify a great deal of the tax code. But taxes will always be complex as long as we live in a complex economy.

[Famspear]

This discussion calls to mind the famous quote from Judge Learned Hand:

In my own case the words of such an act as the Income Tax… merely dance before my eyes in a meaningless procession: cross-reference to cross-reference, exception upon exception -- couched in abstract terms that offer [me] no handle to seize hold of [and that] leave in my mind only a confused sense of some vitally important, but successfully concealed, purport, which it is my duty to extract, but which is within my power, if at all, only after the most inordinate expenditure of time. I know that these monsters [the income tax laws] are the result of fabulous industry and ingenuity, plugging up this hole and casting out that net, against all possible evasion; yet at times I cannot help recalling a saying of William James about certain passages of Hegel: that they were no doubt written with a passion of rationality; but that one cannot help wondering whether to the reader they have any significance save that the words are strung together with syntactical correctness.

--from the article by Learned Hand, Thomas Walter Swan, 57 Yale Law Journal No. 2, 167, 169 (December 1947).

[Gregg]

Simplifying the tax code will never happen. Too much money is being paid to put special interest legislation in the code and more is being paid to keep it from being removed.

True...to a point. But even if we still said, "no more policy implementation through the tax code", the complexity would still exist because we live in a complex economy. We would still have to figure out what we're going to tax. Then we would have to define what would tax, which leads to regulations and complex code sections. Then us tax lawyers would come up with transactions that avoided those definitions, so they add new code sections...etc...etc..

People blame policy for the complexity, but that's really a part of the story. Sure, if we got rid of capital gains and dividend rates and depreciation, it would help to simplify a great deal of the tax code. But taxes will always be complex as long as we live in a complex economy.

Eliminate taxes on the portions of profits corprations paid out as dividends, tax retained profits as gross amounts (maybe with some allowance to hoard a bit of cash), tax dividends recieved as regular income and tax equity appreciation at a lower capital gains level.

...and while we're at it, eliminate the power of corporations and/or fictious entities to spend money on political campaigns, allow real people to give as much as they darn well please with full disclosure but only to candidates in jurisdictions where they can themselves vote.


...and finally, call off direct election of US Senators, and have them be there to represent the States, and not just be a more expensive bribed direct represenative of the people....

okay, back under my rock I go