They Write Letters
Letter printed, surprisingly, in Beacon Journal 6-19-06.
Their title:
Giving until it hurts?
Uh, not exactly
CPA Bill Conte's May 30 letter about Dick Cheney's generosity (``Our generous vice president'') is so typical of Enron-style deception. Conte asked us to ``kindly observe... the Cheneys' itemized deductions totaling $6,857,849 -- the majority of which went to charitable organizations,'' and then ``maybe those who hate all that is good with our nation would come to embrace capitalism, leadership and compassion in a more reasonable state of mind.''
Funny about that ``reasonable state of mind'' thing. Consider this: Approximately two-thirds of these deductions were mandatory under the agreement Cheney signed, upon becoming vice president, that all future financial benefits from his former company, Halliburton, would be given to charity. An independent administrator then exercised his Halliburton options in 2005.
Dick Cheney, willingly generous or altruistic? Hardly.
It gets even better.
The Hurricane Katrina tax relief act allowed for a one-year-only change in charitable donation limits. Normally, only 50 percent of a person's adjusted gross could be claimed for charitable deductions. With the Katrina tax relief act, that limit was raised. Of course, this act was meant to increase donations to Katrina victims.
So did Cheney give to Katrina-type charities? Oh, no. Taking full advantage of the new Katrina law, he wrote out a check for $2.3 million and sent it to his administrator, who then gave it to Cheney's original charity list.
This brought the vice president's charitable donations up to 77 percent of his 2005 adjusted gross.
Sleight of hand? No, all perfectly legal. But all this ``compassion and leadership'' led to a fact that Conte omits:
The Cheneys received a refund of $1,938,930.
Am I ``spewing forth venom in the direction of our vice president''? No, just including the facts so conveniently left out in a discussion about tax returns. Kind of like auditing the books.
Isn't that what CPAs are supposed to do?
Their title:
Giving until it hurts?
Uh, not exactly
CPA Bill Conte's May 30 letter about Dick Cheney's generosity (``Our generous vice president'') is so typical of Enron-style deception. Conte asked us to ``kindly observe... the Cheneys' itemized deductions totaling $6,857,849 -- the majority of which went to charitable organizations,'' and then ``maybe those who hate all that is good with our nation would come to embrace capitalism, leadership and compassion in a more reasonable state of mind.''
Funny about that ``reasonable state of mind'' thing. Consider this: Approximately two-thirds of these deductions were mandatory under the agreement Cheney signed, upon becoming vice president, that all future financial benefits from his former company, Halliburton, would be given to charity. An independent administrator then exercised his Halliburton options in 2005.
Dick Cheney, willingly generous or altruistic? Hardly.
It gets even better.
The Hurricane Katrina tax relief act allowed for a one-year-only change in charitable donation limits. Normally, only 50 percent of a person's adjusted gross could be claimed for charitable deductions. With the Katrina tax relief act, that limit was raised. Of course, this act was meant to increase donations to Katrina victims.
So did Cheney give to Katrina-type charities? Oh, no. Taking full advantage of the new Katrina law, he wrote out a check for $2.3 million and sent it to his administrator, who then gave it to Cheney's original charity list.
This brought the vice president's charitable donations up to 77 percent of his 2005 adjusted gross.
Sleight of hand? No, all perfectly legal. But all this ``compassion and leadership'' led to a fact that Conte omits:
The Cheneys received a refund of $1,938,930.
Am I ``spewing forth venom in the direction of our vice president''? No, just including the facts so conveniently left out in a discussion about tax returns. Kind of like auditing the books.
Isn't that what CPAs are supposed to do?
posted by bluester | 12:48 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home