Poor Kim Kardashian
Essex & Associates:: www.essexinc.biz January 10, 2012
Greetings!
Well, poor may not be the right word. By all accounts-especially those she televises for her reality shows-Ms. Kardashian manages quite comfortably on her income. According to the New York Post, that includes as much as $17.9 million that she raked in for her well-publicized August wedding to NBA star Kris Humphries.
Public morality can be a tricky thing, however, and apparently Ms. Kardashian has now crossed a line.
It's not her split from Mr. Humphries only 72 days after their wedding, which raised questions about whether the marriage was simply one big publicity stunt. Nor was it the earlier sex tape that earned her celebrity and riches.
No, Ms. Kardashian's sin is this: She only pays taxes on what she owes (by using legitimate tax write-offs) in state taxes under California law, instead of the much larger amount that some self-appointed advocacy group thinks she ought to be paying.
It's tempting to dismiss this campaign as the work of a bunch of California crazies. The problem is that its assumptions about wealth and taxes extend far beyond the Golden State.
They will not be swayed because they are not being driven by their economics. They are being driven by their conception of immorality: the idea that millionaires have more than they should-and that any wealth they have is not something they have earned but something the state has allowed them to keep.
It says much about the progressive Puritanism of our age that what these folks really find most sleazy about Ms. Kardashian is not her sex tape or her marriage, but that she's unembarrassed about making money and paying minimal taxes.
Many years ago in the Wall Sreeet Journal, Irving Kristol famously wrote that the liberal paradigm "has led to a society where an 18-year-old girl has the right to public fornication in a pornographic movie-but only if she is paid the minimum wage."
Today, women like Ms. Kardashian make much more money exercising that right. The only question progressives ask is about the size of the government's cut.
I do not condone Kim's lifestyle but she does have the right to make as much money as she can and to avoid the taxation of such income in every legal way possible.
Information taken from a December 28, 2011 Wall Street Journal on line article.
Wishing you many happy returns,
Wayne
http://www.christianspeaker.net/speaker.php?mid=512
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Wayne T. Essex Ph.D.
Essex & Associates
Tax, Accounting, Payroll
7501 Paragon Road
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