The rich aren't like us!

They pay less taxes - even when they're of the party of the "little people". You know - the party that says the rich should be paying a bigger share to help out the proles.

Two cases in point: Lurch and Opie. Or more precisely, since Lurch is just a gigolo: Teresa and Opie.

Donald Luskin takes a look at Teresa’s Taxes and asks

Mrs. Kerry is filthy rich. Why is her taxable income so small?
...
Such evidence as one is able to assemble from publicly available information raises deeply disturbing questions. The Kerry campaign has disclosed Mrs. Kerry's 2003 income as $5,115,000. Using a conservative estimate of her wealth at $1 billion — at the low end of the Los Angeles Times' estimates — then we can easily see that her investments yielded only a miniscule one half of one percent last year.

In 2003 even Treasury bills yielded twice that much. Dividends on the S&P 500 yielded three times that much. Long-term Treasury bonds yielded eight times that much. If Mrs. Kerry's investment income really was only one half of one percent, then she is perhaps the world's worst investor. Or if her income is in fact greater, and she has found some way to minimize it for tax purposes, then Mrs. Kerry may be the world's greatest cheat.

Let's put this in terms that people of less extreme wealth can relate to. If you had $100,000 invested last year and your investment income was only $500 — the same percentage as Mrs. Kerry's income — then something would be very much out of whack.

More details by following the link, but since Teresa isn't revealing her tax returns, it's all speculation. Hmm, maybe she's hiding most of the dough under the mattress!

And wait a sec, I was too hasty in dismissing Lurch's contribution.

His proposal last March to end tax breaks for U.S. corporations that do business overseas was designed with a loophole that would let the H. J. Heinz Company — the centerpiece of Mrs. Kerry's family fortune — keep its overseas tax breaks, and get a lower domestic tax rate at the same time.

He's not just a pretty face!

Speaking of pretty faces, The Wall Street Journal describes how Opie is also doing his part when it comes to taxes:

Senator Edwards talks about the need to provide health care for all, but that didn't stop him from using a clever tax dodge to avoid paying $591,000 into the Medicare system. While making his fortune as a trial lawyer in 1995, he formed what is known as a "subchapter S" corporation, with himself as the sole shareholder.

Instead of taking his $26.9 million in earnings directly in the following four years, he paid himself a salary of $360,000 a year and took the rest as corporate dividends. Since salary is subject to 2.9% Medicare tax but dividends aren't, that meant he shielded more than 90% of his income. That's not necessarily illegal, but dodging such a large chunk of employment tax skates perilously close to the line.

The Internal Revenue Service takes a dim view of such operations and "may collapse the structure entirely and argue the S corporation is not truly a separate entity," in the words of Tax Adviser magazine. Attorney CPA magazine lists it as No. 11 of its "15 best underutilized tax loopholes," but warns that the IRS "has successfully litigated cases against individuals, particularly sole shareholders of personal service S corporations, reclassifying such deemed distributions as wages subject to social security taxes."

As a political matter, the dodge is especially hypocritical because the income limits on which Medicare taxes are paid were lifted by Democrats in 1993 specifically to hit "the rich," as Mr. Edwards likes to call people in his tax bracket. And the supreme irony? Mr. Edwards has claimed that he set up the subchapter S company to protect himself from legal liability. You know it's time for tort reform when even the trial lawyers say they're afraid of getting sued.

Who knew Opie was a comedian too!