We have previously discussed (here and here) the growing conflicts over businesses that decline to accommodate same-sex weddings and events in a clash between anti-discrimination and free speech (and free exercise) values. Despite my support for gay rights and same-sex marriage, I have previously written that anti-discrimination laws are threatening the free exercise of religion. Some of these cases involve bakeries that insist that making wedding cakes for same-sex couples violates their religious principles. Now we have a twist on this trending litigation. The Azucar Bakey has been found to have broken discrimination laws by refusing to make an anti-same-sex cake. The bakery was asked to make a Bible-shaped cake with an anti-gay slur and owner Marjorie Silva refused. The customer brought a complaint to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and won.
The customer wanted the bakery to draw two males holding hands with “a big ‘X’ on them.”
Silva identifies herself as a practicing Christian and makes Christian cakes, but balked at making an anti-gay cake at her Lakewood bakery in December 2013. Previously in Colorado, Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips broke discrimination laws when he refused to make a cake for the same-sex wedding of Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig in July of 2012. That decision was upheld by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
Now we have the flip side. Silva offered to leave the bible page blank to allow the customer (who she describes as disruptive) to write whatever he wanted but she declined to write it herself. Ironically, she could have simply refused to serve him on the basis for any disruption in the store. She was later sent a notice by the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) that a religious discrimination complaint has been filed against Azucar Bakery. She has since received a notice from DORA requesting a final letter describing her account of events.
The question raised by these cases is whether anti-discrimination laws are driving too deeply into free speech rights. Bakers and photographers view themselves as engaged in a form of speech generally. The loss of a bright-line defining free speech has meant that we are finding ourselves increasingly on a slippery slope of speech regulation. On the other hand, we fought hard to guarantee accommodation for all races in places of public accommodation. Stores are not allowed to ban black customers under the same rationale. The question is whether there is a difference between refusing to serve customers on the basis for sexual orientation generally as opposed to taking an active or direct role in a same-sex wedding.
Where do you think we should draw the line?
Source: KDVR
Karen
Complete horseshit on inheritance taxes. I inherited a comfortable estate from my parents and owed no taxes. You make up stuff. Try reading this:
The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 called for the phaseout of the federal estate tax. Although most tax experts expected Congress to change the law before that happened, the estate tax did die in 2010.
It was reinstated, however, in 2011. That tax year, estates in excess of $5 million were taxed at 35 percent. For deaths in 2012, the estate tax exemption increased to $5.12 million thanks to inflation. And thanks to the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, or ATRA, which was passed Jan. 1, 2013, the estate tax was made a permanent part of the tax code and the exemption amount automatically indexed for inflation
Read more: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/estate-tax-and-gift-tax-amounts.aspx#ixzz3PR2mtx1p
Follow us: @Bankrate on Twitter | Bankrate on Facebook
fiver @12:51 am: Have no idea where you pulled “something for nothing” from (it certainly wasn’t from me)
fiver @10:59 pm: Ownership alone literally requires nothing more than “you just convert oxygen to carbon dioxide and get paid.”
I do hope you get a good night’s rest. Clear out those cobwebs.
“back to the Code for me”
Holy depreciation, Batman! I start reading, anticipating comments about wedding cakes (I’m going to write a play called “Wedding for Godot”) and end up reading about taxes. This after writing a court brief about taxes for the last few days. Sheesh! Can’t you all talk about something else?
Hmm. What’s more entertaining: a) reading more comments about “cultists,” “PC” and who doesn’t know about this subject or that subject, or b) re-reading the Internal Revenue Code? Well, it’s back the Code for me. I may not know much, but at least I know what I don’t know.
Don de Drain – let us know how it goes with the tax code. Word is the IRS has no idea what is in it. 🙂
Chip S,
Had you read the very next sentence after the one you quoted:
… your lesson might have been quite obviously unnecessary. But thanks anyway. I suppose we could quibble about the differences between interest and dividends, but neither requires work and any basic Google search makes any such discussion similarly unnecessary.
Have no idea where you pulled “something for nothing” from (it certainly wasn’t from me), but I’d probably rather not know. I also don’t really have the time. I have to go help those poor, hard working Walton kids re-stock the Walmart shelves.
Have a nice night.
In the Colorado “gay wedding cake” case, there was an interesting secton of the ruling that seems relevant here. The judge said that if instead of a “generic” wedding cake that any couple might use, the customer had asked for some sort of decoration that actually endorsed same-sex marriage, the baker might have had a First Amendment right to refuse the request. (Since that wasn’t the case, he didn’t actually rule on that question)
So, the “anti-gay” cake case is actually more analogous to the one in Ireland, where a baker was asked to make a cake affirmatively endorsing gay marriage. The reason the cases in the U.S. against bakers, florists, photographers, etc refusing to service same-sex couples have gone against the business owners is that the services are neutral; that is, the same for gay couples and straight couples, and don’t specifically require the business to “send a message” he or she opposes.
This anti-gay thing was of course a “set up” (less judgmentally, a “test case”) but it was skewed by the customer demanding the baker write offensive anti-gay stuff that was made up. A cleverer test would be someone ordering a perfectly inoffensive cake for the Westboro Baptist Church…from a gay baker.
As far as a return on capital versus ownership, I fail to see the difference
Loans or bonds illustrate one difference. As the person who wrote “most small businesses operate significantly on loans, not personal capital,” you should be able to remember this.
Debt and equity are the two basic ways to finance capital investment. Only one of them includes ownership as a component. The difference in average returns on debt and equity is a premium for bearing greater risk. None of these sources of income represents “something for nothing.”
Then there’s the return to the entrepreneurship involved in starting a business in the first place.
Small-business ownership is an amalgam of all three types of income.
For information regarding effortless ownership in a business, I suggest taking a look at the S&P 500. As far as a return on capital versus ownership, I fail to see the difference. Stock is ownership.
Yes, I have someone manage my accounts. I believe the investments are stock, and not commercial paper, but, like I said, I pay someone to make those decisions for me. I’d rather waste my time on an internet comment board at night rather than throwing darts at the Wall Street Journal.
But it is ownership nonetheless, and it doesn’t even require respiration.
Please tell me where I can find some of these self-creating businesses I can get ownership of effortlessly.
Actually, my retirement accounts are doing exactly that
According to your own argument, your retirement fund is earning a return on your capital, not on your ownership. What point are you trying to make here?
Speaking of your portfolio, does it contain any debt instruments? If ownership involves no effort and a nice income, you should be 100% in equities.
I think it’s a smart move on your part to rely on a fund manager.
Actually, my retirement accounts are doing exactly that (not wasting time on the internet – the other thing). So are yours. And, no, I put zero effort into selecting the individual investments, I pay someone for that.
Is it the same as small business ownership? Assuredly not. Like I wrote, small business owners often wear two hats. But it is ownership nonetheless, and it doesn’t even require respiration.
How much time do you think the Walton kids spend checking out customers at Walmart? My guess is: not much.
fiver wrote: “How much time do you think the Walton kids spend checking out customers at Walmart? My guess is: not much.”
I think your guess is wrong, and there is little doubt in my mind that their father, Sam Walton, worked long and hard hours building Walmart into the largest retailer and private employer in the world. While his family might have inherited it, and could sit back and loaf if they wanted to do so, Sam Walton built it. You don’t do that approaching business the way you do. If you are an astronaut, then you probably are a government employee. Yes?
Gruber
We elicited four key observations from our analyses:
Competition and choice are increasing. In the 41 states releasing exchange participation carrier data, the number of health insurers increased by 26 percent between 2014 and 2015.2 In the 19 states with complete filings, the number of products grew 66 percent, with most in the silver tier.
Gross premiums for most 2014 plans are likely to increase. In the 19 states, proposed gross premiums are increasing for 65 percent of all exchange renewal products (plans offered in 2014 that were re-filed for 2015).3 In 2015, therefore, enrollees could see a
1 Complete details about the specific states analyzed and our methodology can be found in the appendix.
2 Our calculations are based on the number of carriers that offer plans in each state. For example, a national carrier that offered plans in 12 states in 2014 would be counted as 12 “unique payors” in that year. However, a carrier that offered 2014 exchange plans in 4 rating areas within 1 state is counted as a single entrant in that state.
3 In the 19 states, 81 percent of all 2014 products were re-filed.
McKinsey Center for U.S. Health System Reform
2015 OEP: Emerging trends in the individual exchanges
2
median increase of 4 percent when they receive their renewal notifications.4 However, the actual increase they pay could be less than half that amount, given that many people will have the option of switching to a lower-price plan.
Price leadership volatility is high; in many rating areas, proposed 2015 premiums are lower than 2014 premiums. Because price leadership is likely to turn over in 59 percent of the rating areas, over half of QHP-eligible individuals could have a new lowest-price carrier (either a higher-priced 2014 competitor that lowered prices substantially or an aggressively priced new entrant). Two-thirds of the rating areas with a less expensive lowest-price silver plan in 2015 have a new price leader.
http://healthcare.mckinsey.com/sites/default/files/2015%20OEP%20Emerging%20Trends%20-%20McK%20Reform%20Center_0.pdf
In addition, rates cannot go up willy nilly as some big insurers are trying to do.http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2012pres/01/20120112a.html
“Before the Affordable Care Act, consumers were in the dark about their health insurance premiums because there was no nationwide transparency or accountability,” said Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “Now, insurance companies are required to disclose rate increases over 10 percent and justify these increases. It’s time for Trustmark to immediately rescind the rates, issue refunds to consumers or publicly explain their refusal to do so.”
Exactly right that WC premiums are a deduction, not a credit. My mistake. Thanks, Darren.
Ownership alone literally requires nothing more than “you just convert oxygen to carbon dioxide and get paid.” And, yeah, it must be nice.
Good to know. But now I have to ask:
Why are you wasting your time on an internet comment board when you could be out setting up a business and then watching the $$ roll in while you do nothing?
Karen: There’s statistical evidence that confusion about Obamacare continues to dampen support for the law, too. Surveys continue to find that the Medicaid expansion is more popular than the Affordable Care Act. The subsidies to help families buy health insurance are more popular than the Affordable Care Act. The provision allowing children to stay on their parents’ insurance plans for longer is more popular than the Affordable Care Act. Even Republicans support the major coverage provisions of the law — just not the law itself. “If the public had perfect understanding of the elements that we examined, the proportion of Americans who favor the bill might increase from the current level of 32 percent to 70 percent,” one team of researchers found.http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/obamacare-works-and-america-will-always-hate-it.html
Just like studies showed that people like the ACA but not Obamacare not understanding ACA is Obamacare. The sad fact is the dems and president let the repubs shape the conversation and their lies exaggersations and distortions and people bought it, despite actually liking the benefits they have seen as a result of the ACA.
YOu are wrong about mpost people not liking it: As Michael Hiltzik reported in the LA Times yesterday, when Americans are asked whether they like “Obamacare,” a majority say no. But when Americans are asked whether they support what Obamacare actually does, they love it:
Here are figures from Kaiser’s March 2013 poll:
Tax credits for small businesses to buy insurance: 88% in favor.
Closing the Medicare drug benefit doughnut hole: 81% in favor.
Extension of dependent coverage to offspring up to age 26: 76% in favor.
Expanding Medicaid: 71% in favor.
Ban on exclusions for preexisting conditions: 66% in favor.
Employer mandate: 57% in favor
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-republicans-hate-obamacare-2013-10
Yawn. It has nothing whatsoever to do with a female vs. male mind. It has everything to do with an absurdly weak and irrelevant appeal to personal authority – and on an internet comment board fergoshsakes. Like marrying a businessperson somehow grants a person an honorary degree in accountancy? Please. I’m an astronaut and a pornstar (ain’t the internet great?), but, if I claimed to be married to a neurosurgeon, it would hardly qualify me to start drilling into someones brain.
It must be incredibly generous, and I do mean incredible, of your husband to take his workers’ comp payments out of his own profit instead of including that cost in calculating the wages he will pay. In other words: workers pay those rates in the form of reduced wages.
As for ownership requiring work, let alone requiring hard, brutally long hours, to make money: nope. Capital and labor are two very different things despite the fact that small business owners can often wear both hats. But that is hardly required; owners can always hire professionals to do that work – and in significant enterprises they almost always do. Ownership alone literally requires nothing more than “you just convert oxygen to carbon dioxide and get paid.” And, yeah, it must be nice.
Don’t like it? Join the Communist Party and change it. Otherwise, that’s our system.
fiver – you realize that most small businesses fail because they are under capitalized. Because of that they could not possibly hire someone to run the business at any point. Where do you think capital comes from? Do you think owners just magic it from the air?
I have tracked down a number of sources on this bakery story. The man wanted a hateful message on a cake. The baker offered to bake the cake and leave the text area blank so he could write whatever he wanted. He refused, wanting the baker to write it.
He filed a complaint. Lissen up peepul! ANYONE CAN FILE A COMPLAINT!
Just like anyone with a filing fee can file a lawsuit.
As in golf, it is the follow-through that counts. How far is this going to go? Not far, methinks. I have served on a regulatory board. Petty people with a personal axes to grind file crap complaints all the time.
This is not as if the baker refused to bake the cake in the first place, as was the case of the “Masterpiece Cakeshop.” In that matter, baker Jack Phillips refused to make a wedding cake for Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig in July of 2012. The refusal to bake a cake at all was what got Phillips in trouble.
Azucar Bakery has offered to bake the cake and let the purchaser deface it all he wants. Maybe he is literacy challenged and can’t write. Falcon three zero zero three. Yep. I am sure that’s the explanation.
Hopefully, sanity will prevail in the end.
Chuck – you can rationalize for the baker all you want, but what goes around comes around. Baking the cake come with complete decorating: it is part of the total package. Kind of like buying a car. They do not sell it to you paint ready, they sell it to you already painted.
Yes, there have been some infamous cases of misspelled cake decorations, but this baker’s excuse was not that he was illiterate and a product of the local public school system.
fiver has never run a biz either. This is like shooting fish in a barrel. Big ol’ retarded, bullhead actually. Karen, DBQ, et al, are you believing this?? It would be funny if we weren’t supporting people like this. They probably are all asleep after their cult leader gave them orgasms. I wonder if they lit up afterward?
Nick Spinelli wrote: “Karen, DBQ, et al, are you believing this?? It would be funny if we weren’t supporting people like this.”
Yeah, and those Democrats think it is a good thing to give an equal vote to people like fiver. People wonder why Congress becomes gridlocked. I blame equal and universal suffrage along with a self serving media that brainwashes people with their glorified gossip.
Here at the marina the dogpac reserved the right to bite. No male human should come around here in a short skirt.
Write off is not an accurate term. Worker’s compensation payments are a deduction not a credit. They contribute to total expenses which are factored against revenues and other tax items. The employer still must pay the worker’s compensation in full and they, depending on tax structure and other issues, takes a deduction on this. All things being equal the tax benefit is roughly equal to the tax rate the business pays. Say 35% of the Worker’s comp premiums and that is what you get back.
The reason that many small business owners work long hours is because 1) that is the nature of owning any business or being in a senior position and 2) it is not just that easy to hire a manager. The reason is, because it costs money to do so in the form of salary and benefits. Sometimes it is not feasible to have an employee for everything and just sit back and watch TV at home. For every dollar in salary/benefits paid to an employee is another dollar the business owner does not receive.
As to most small businesses starting on loans and not capital. I doubt the accuracy of that. Money is difficult to get for small businesses especially after Dodd-Frank went into effect. Most small business owners start up shop by investing significant capital into the business to float it because the banks are very reluctant to loan to new ventures, especially family owned businesses until they have been in existence for several years.