Can someone expand on why Joe Louis shouldn't have been made to pay taxes...

Where are you getting the 81% from? I just did a quick google search and the numbers are different but surprisingly high.

Also, charitable deductions started in 1917.

 

That’s a really bad ratio! Surely any advisor on board worth anything at all would have checked this out and warned Joe to pay the tax on it?

I wonder about black and Roxy. They were too well thought of by Louis to have let him down or given bad advice. Im starting to think Louis is responsible for his situation.

Roxy and Black must have paid their end then donated their purse. Joe didn’t.

 

http://federal-tax-rates.insidegov.com/l/25/1940

Actually, according to that link I provided, it went up to 88 percent in 1942.

http://federal-tax-rates.insidegov.com/l/27/1942

If charitable deductions started in 1917, Louis did get robbed. The relief funds were charitable donations. Unless they didn't allow those deductions during the War.

 

The other part thar's not adding up for me is that he should have counted as a corporation. He was self-employed and therefore could've incorporated and cut his rate down to 20 something, unless that's more of a recent practice that wasn't allowed back then.

 

Yes all boxers are self employed by definition. They actually employ their manager, trainer and staff, although it never seems that way.

 

Sorry Im not buying into the cry me a river argument about his tax bracket. The guy was still wealthy by any standard of measurement of the day and still would have been wealthy taxes or not. Taxes are the price you pay for living in a great society any 1 percenter crying about high tax rates particularly during a war fought to preserve the freedom that gave Louis the opportunity to migrate from a sharecroppers son to the charmed life he had is going to fall on deaf ears with me. The guy simply didnt fulfill his obligation and thats on him. It doesnt take a mathematical genius to add up Louis' purses each year and then subtract his taxes and see that had he paid his taxes regardless of the high tax bracket he still had far more than the average person. If he went broke because he didnt pay his taxes in 1942 its because he mismanaged ALL of his money, not just 1942s purses, and thats on him.

 

He needed a better accountant.

Still, a travesty in my opinion.

 

He should have kept the money instead of donating to the war effort. No good deed goes unpunished.

 

Tbh I have sympathy for Ali on that as much as I dislike him as a person in general. "His" war was unnecessary, stupid, had actually nothing to do with the US (see how it started out with the French trying to hang on to their colonies) and illegal (see "gulf of Tonkhin incident").

Tax people are doing their job like everyone else. And just like everyone they are expected to do it as good as they can. They are not anymore of an a**hole for doing their job than you are.

Thank you. If you work and have income you pay taxes. This taxes makes it possible for you to live in a stable society with a reliable rule of law, a working (more or less) police, infrastructure and so on. Without this it is very likely you wouldn't have a job.

No, he should have paid his taxes first and then donated the rest. That he didn't was on him.

 

Absolutely!! I think on some level These educated, middle class writers find it particularly galling that 0.1% of street kids, share croppers sons etc end up more wealthy than they are through sports. Swanning around in their pink Cadillacs, handing out silver dollars to wide eyed kids. They relish embellishing the hard luck, tragic ending and secretly hope for it.

I can just imagine the sympathetic press men coming out to write about Floyd Mayweather losing his fortune...

 

Well yes there’s hard up by millionaire standards then there’s guys on skid row. I remember Holyfields financial problems and Tyson’s financial problems. The press loved it! Yet both were still rich by most people’s standards. Certainly their standard of living didn’t change much.

All it takes is a divorce or three.

 

I can't see it happening either... Floyd is surrounded by extremely successful, wealthy, businessmen who are savy at making money. A luxury that most other ATG boxer's didn't have. Floyd will always have the opportunity to come back out of retirement again and make another 300 million if he wants .. He is a marketing genius and knows people will pay to see him again

 

Maybe the IRS isn't as malicious as out local tax guys, who will string together endless "queries" if you are due a refund, and each query takes a couple of months to filter through the system. They wear people out until they give up on getting money that's legitimately due to them. They also penalize you for not submitting a return when one isn't legally obliged to submit a return being under a certain threshold. The attitude is, "pay first and you can dispute later." Obviously taking on the state in court for a relatively small amount is risible, because they will simply appeal until you run out of money. Meanwhile, our president hadn't submitted a tax return for a decade, and they seemed to be cool with that. **** those guys.

 

Well, I was working as an accountant for small businesses and free lancers for a few years and had to deal with the (German) tax department a lot. The attitude you describe is the same. It is not because of malice but because of the guidelines and laws they are working under. In my experience if you need something from them you need to know the law better than them and make their life as easy as possible, reduce the amount of work they have to put in as much as possible, anticipate any question they potentially might have and provide the answers before they ask them. You make their life easy, they make your life easy. You annoy them, they gonna push everything as far as they legally can against you. You need to "play" the people not the taxes/law. Doubt it's much different over on the other side of the pond.