Corporations Don’t Pay Taxes — You Do. Here’s How. (Ep. 337)

When it comes to things economic or financial,
few people understand what the play is all about.
But what is worse is they can't keep the characters in the play straight.
It appears to me that this is because they have incredible ability to swallow lies.
And that's just getting easier for everybody to swallow lies because of social media.
He said, I can't think of a worse thing to do to a fellow human being than cripple his mind.
We have crippled minds at every turn in America today.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the podcast.
Thank you very much for being here.
All right.
Today, we are going to go over Chapter 6 of Warehouse of Wealth.
And this is actually...
I just love all of Nelson's chapters.
I swear I say the same thing every single time.
I just love this chapter.
I do love this chapter.
And it just is really common sense that people don't understand.
And so, okay, we'll just get into it.
Okay.
All right.
This chapter is called Lies, Lies, and Lies.
This is one of Nelson's favorite little sayings is lies, lies, and lies.
And so, this was a fun chapter to read.
He is talking about just all the lies that we are being told with taxes.
This whole chapter is about taxes.
He says here that he was driving behind a trailer, a semi-trailer.
And the semi on the back of the trailer, it said that this truck paid $8,423 in taxes.
And Nelson said it finally dawned on him, that is a lie.
That trailer never paid.
That company never paid that.
The truck never paid that.
The trailer didn't pay that.
The consumer paid that.
Because the company was simply performing an act of tax collector.
And think about that.
Every business owner, as Nelson goes through this chapter, he talks about the same thing throughout the entire chapter.
That is exactly what business owners do, right?
That is going to get passed off to the consumer.
That guy collected those taxes, and he passed that on to whoever he was delivering the goods to.
The guy that was delivering the goods passed it on to the consumer.
So, everything is passed down.
And I talked about this a little bit when I was talking about tariffs.
And how the companies aren't paying those tariffs.
The end result is going to be the person at the end of the line, the consumer that's going to be paying those tariffs.
And Nelson goes on to say, the consumer is the one that pays all the taxes.
George Wallace was governor of Alabama.
I remember him saying during his re-election speech, I'm going to reduce the taxes on all you little folks.
And I'm going to increase the taxes on all those big corporations.
Lies, lies, and lies.
Corporations don't pay taxes.
They collect taxes from their customers in the form of higher prices than the consumer would have to pay otherwise.
He said, I was trying to explain this to a client.
That social security is a huge fraud.
There is no such thing as the employee that pays half the tax and the employer pays the other half.
He said, the employer pays it all.
His client said, oh no.
We pay half of that tax always.
Nelson goes on to say, this is a result of the Scalawag FDR.
When social security was first adopted in the late 1930s, it was first proposed to be non-contributory.
The employer was to pay it all.
But then genius of FDR appeared and said, no, let's make it contributory.
The employer will pay only half and the employee will pay the other half.
That way, the employee will think it is his own money.
Now, by God, let's see anyone try to wreck my plan on social security.
He locked their minds on that thought and the vast majority of the people in the U.S. have never gotten over it.
I really don't think they ever will.
That's because how the government has conditioned them to think.
Think about it.
This is actually a little interesting piece to me.
Because if we really think about what's happening on the employer-employee standpoint, I can pay my employees more per hour than other companies pay because I don't have medical benefits.
I don't have dental.
I don't have all the fancy benefits.
Right?
They have to go find their own health insurance.
Like it or not, doesn't matter.
They're paying for it.
That's what people don't understand is if I have a job that has all the benefits, then you're paying for it in the price of wages.
That is why a lot of people should be 1099 employees if they can.
Because of the fact that you're going to get paid more and you may be able to go shop around for cheaper health insurance.
You can write things off because you are now an employer.
You have a business that you're running.
And people don't understand that.
Instead, they want to be an employee.
They want to punch a clock.
They want everything to be easy.
With easy comes a price.
Everything goes back to you.
The employer is not paying for half of the Social Security.
The employee is paying all of the Social Security because it gets passed down to the employee.
Right?
If you are an employee and you think that, oh, this is great.
The company gave me a Christmas party.
The company is giving me a per diem.
The company is providing a meal for us and doing all these nice things for us.
That's coming at your dime.
And so for me, I get super irritated when I see companies that are spending foolish money.
And let's just use insurance companies, for example, because that's who I work with.
Right?
I might see an insurance company put on a big event and I think that's foolish.
Why do you need to be so elaborate with this event?
Whining and dining.
Whining and dining.
If you come to town, and this is what insurance companies do.
It's what pharmaceutical companies do.
Right?
They wine and dining and dining.
They wine and dining people.
And so if I have somebody from the insurance company come into town, like you can buy me a burger.
I'm totally okay with that.
I don't need a steak dinner.
If you're not coming over lunch or dinner, then I don't need anything.
I don't even need you to fly here for heaven's sakes.
Let's just do a Zoom meeting.
I don't need you to incur that expense for the company.
Now, there are other agents, and this just blows my mind.
There are other agents that I have seen at events demanding their steak dinner, demanding
a $100 shot from the bar, and demanding that the insurance company pays for that.
Excuse me?
The companies do that with the hopes that, oh, that person's going to write insurance with them.
So what do I do?
I go back and I look at, we call it the leader report.
And I'm like, what do you mean?
This person's not even on the leader report.
They're not even writing enough business with you to pay that for that $100 shot.
That is ridiculous.
It is an absolute no.
You don't need to wine and dine people.
That is the point of having a mutual company, is I'm going to watch what they're spending their
money on.
I'm part owner of this company.
If they foolishly spend money, then that affects my dividend.
Right?
Don't need my dividend affected.
You guys need to be better stewards of your money.
You shouldn't have to wine and dine people to get good people into your company.
And they all do it.
And some of them are more elaborate than others.
And so it all gets passed down to who?
The consumer.
And so I don't want to be overpaying for life insurance either because you want to wine
and dine somebody.
Right?
That's part of their budget.
If I'm not being overcharged for insurance, then you're not paying your employees as much
as you could be paying your employees because you think you need to wine and dine me.
It's absolutely crazy.
Right?
And it doesn't matter where you go.
I don't care if you're going to the sale barn and you're saying, hey, I'm going to get a
free cup of coffee when I go to the sale barn.
It's not free.
It's in your barn fee.
Right?
If you're going to sell something at the barn, they're going to take a barn fee so that you're
going to end up paying that.
You're going to be paying for everybody's free coffee.
All the old guys that come in and don't have anything to sell, you're paying for that.
So I just have a really hard time understanding why people can't understand that it all gets
passed down to them.
Tariffs gets passed down to the consumer.
The tax code is written in such a manner that as a business owner, you have the ability
to adjust your income so that you can continue to have a business so you can continue to pay
employees.
Right?
Nelson goes on to talk about in this chapter that he sells books.
I also happen to sell some books.
And I don't pay for the shipping.
You pay for the shipping.
If you've ordered a book from me, you're the one paying for shipping.
If I had to pay for shipping and I had to pay somebody to put the book together and I had
to pay somebody to physically take it to the post office to mail it, I'm not making any
money on the books.
That is horrible business practices.
I would not be in business very long.
Right?
So the consumer is the one that's going to pay it so the business can stay viable and the
business can stay there and pay employees.
The consumer is paying the employees.
This is another rant I'm going to go on here.
Employees, you are being paid by your customer.
It is not your boss.
You do not need to kiss your boss's butt.
You need to kiss the consumer's butt.
And granted, no, let's be realistic.
If the consumer is decent, right?
The poor customer service we have in this country right now is astonishing to me.
Those that are helping the consumer in whatever capacity you are.
I don't care if it's a waitress.
I don't care if you're standing behind a till.
I don't care if you're answering a phone in your front desk.
That customer is paying your payroll.
Because if your boss did not have that customer, there would be no business.
And we seem to have forgotten that.
I had my tires rotated.
I had new tires put on, tires rotated, whatever, years ago.
And I barely get out of town.
And I'm like, why am I shaking?
Like, why is my car shaking?
This is absolutely crazy.
Well, of course, they didn't balance the tires, right?
And they didn't fill them properly.
It was an absolute disaster.
And so I call the guy that owns the place because I happen to know him.
And I said, hey, what is happening here?
And he said, oh, well, they must have did this, this, and this wrong.
I left town.
And so he said, when you get to X town, go and stop at a tire shop.
See if they can balance those for you.
And then fill them properly and tighten the lug nuts.
Okay, good to go.
I said, this is your job.
Like, that's their job.
Why can't they do their job right?
And he's like, Mary Jo, if you want to yell at them,
you're welcome to come in here and yell at them.
Because I've already yelled at them.
I've already yelled at them multiple times.
They don't get it.
And this was years ago before I, like,
I had just started teaching infinite banking.
And I said, do they not understand that that customer is paying the bill?
I can see if you're 18, 19 years old, you don't understand that.
But when you're 20, 30 years old, and you don't understand,
that that customer had to pay your payroll, I don't want to call it ignorance.
Because if you don't know, it's just blind financial literacy,
like a lack of financial literacy of how money works.
Do we really think that the boss just prints money out of thin air?
No, your customer is the one paying for that.
So when we have a lack of customer service,
and people don't come back,
it's almost like the employee doesn't care.
I think as employers, we need to do a better job
of telling our employees how the business works,
where the money is going.
Like, you make the money.
As the employer, you're making the money.
So you're taking the risk.
Yes, you're going to get more money.
Employees see that you're taking more money,
but they don't understand the risk
because you're not talking about the risk.
Nobody's teaching employees this, right?
If they knew this, and then they still screamed about it,
and were still horrible with customer service,
then we can call that ignorance.
But at this point, I think it's a massive lack of financial literacy.
And Nelson actually goes on to say in this chapter,
when it comes to things economic or financial,
few people understand what the play is all about.
But what is worse is they can't keep the characters in the play straight.
It appears to me that this is because
they have incredible ability to swallow lies.
And that's just getting easier for everybody to swallow lies
because of social media.
He said, I can't think of a worse thing to do
to a fellow human being than cripple his mind.
We have crippled minds at every turn in America today.
And prior to that, he was talking about the government schools
and how they are purposely crippling minds, right?
They're not teaching kids what needs to be taught
because they don't even know what to teach themselves.
Let's be honest.
The people that are teaching in the schools today
don't either know how to manage their finances.
They don't know how to run a business.
We have college professors teaching a business course
and they've never run a business in their life.
What is the point?
What is the absolute point of getting a four-year business degree
from somebody that's never run a business?
I will never understand that.
Then he says that he's talking about contractors
who work for the government.
Like a contractor may bid a city job and they bid in a fudge factor.
And guess who gets to pay for the fudge factor?
The taxpayers.
Because that's a government job.
So they're paying for that.
He also goes on to say,
suppose that some higher paid executive is negotiating with the company
for possible employment and has concluded that he would get by on $300,000 a year.
He's going to have to negotiate his pay to $500,000 a year in order to take home $300,000 a year.
That $200,000 is tax money is coming from the employer who then passes this on to consumers
in the form of higher prices.
Yes, that's exactly right.
So if there is an executive that's getting paid a lot of money,
the consumer is paying that, right?
The company has to make the money somewhere is coming from the bottom.
He said that he was listening to some talk radio shows
and they were saying that all taxes are being paid by the rich folks.
The poor don't pay any taxes at all.
Lies, lies, lies.
The customer of the rich guys pay all the taxes in the form of higher prices
than they would have if they would pay for products without the taxes imposed on the producer of goods.
The price of the good is simply passed on to the consumer.
Rich people are paying taxes, but who paid them the money to pay the taxes?
The consumer, right?
Just how many ways does one have to demonstrate this fact
before the typical American begins to understand truth
and cut out all the silly games that are nothing more than lies.
I'm afraid it will take at least a century if it ever does take place.
So how do we reduce taxes?
How do we get the consumer into a better position?
You want to tax the wealthy people?
The wealthy people are the ones that own the business.
So the wealthy people are going to just increase their product
and that is going to get passed down to the consumer.
How about we just stop collecting all the taxes that are unnecessary
because everything has to be taxed.
The government wants money.
Oh, let's just tax that, right?
That's all we're doing is creating all these new taxes.
No different than a few weeks ago, I did a podcast.
And this obviously so bothers me because I've talked about it several times since.
But this Trump money or whatever the heck they're calling it for these kids that are born.
It's $1,000.
Every new baby in the U.S. gets this $1,000 for their whatever,
retirement plan, for their college, whatever it is, right?
Where do you think that's coming from?
That is government money.
That comes from taxes.
In order to give billions of dollars out for these children,
that means we are going to be taxed billions more dollars so that we can redistribute that.
The fact that some people truly believe that the government makes their own money
and that they can just redistribute that
and they don't truly understand how business works is mind-boggling to me.
With today's technology and the information that we have,
and we still are confused by this, is crazy.
I saw a meme yesterday that said,
we used to say that people were ignorant because they didn't have access to information.
In today's world, that now proves that was not the case.
The people that understand how to make money are always going to be the wealthy people.
And the consumer is always going to be the one that gets the short end of the stick.
And so at some point, we need to sit down and say,
do I want to be the consumer or do I want to be the business owner?
Because the tax code favors me, the consumer is paying for everything.
And so as a business owner, yes, it's more work.
100% more work.
There's more work.
There's more stress.
There's no downtime.
Being a business owner is not easy, but we pick our heart.
I would rather have the income and have the stress and the ability to manage my own income in and out
than be an employee hoping that my boss can give me a raise and have a ceiling, right?
We need employees.
There's nothing wrong with being an employee.
But if we're an employee and if we are the consumer,
we have to understand that we are paying for everything of the chain.
When I am a consumer of something,
I understand that that company needs to make X amount of profit so they can pay payroll.
They can pay unemployment taxes.
They can have some money in the coffers if something should happen
and they need to live on savings because of COVID or something happened.
I can understand that.
And I know exactly what they're doing.
Here's another little story about being passed to the consumer is I bought flooring.
We remodeled our house and I bought flooring.
And I went to the flooring store to pay for my flooring.
And I forgot my checkbook at home.
And I was like, man, this is like $20,000 of flooring, right?
And I said, oh, geez, I forgot my checkbook at home.
And he said, oh, well, we'll just take a credit card.
I said, what?
He's like, we'll just take a credit card.
If you get a credit card along, you can pay with credit card.
I said, you're going to let me pay for $20,000 worth of flooring on a credit card?
And he's like, yeah.
I said, oh, okay.
Well, that's crazy.
And I had already paid for some flooring prior to that with a check.
And I said to him, so you wrap the credit card fees up in the flooring?
And he just looked at me and smiled.
And I said, next time I'm going to ask for a discount on my flooring because I'm going to pay cash.
Right?
But he's smart.
He doesn't say, hey, Mary Jo, if you want to pay with a credit card, you can, but it's going to be another 3%.
On that kind of money, I would have never paid 3%.
But he already wrapped it up into the price of the flooring.
So regardless, if these people are paying for cash or if they're paying with credit card, they're paying a credit card fee.
Not stupid on his behalf.
Because then he doesn't have to look like he's nickeling and diming somebody to death with the 3% fee.
You want to tick me off real fast?
That's telling me that, oh, you can pay for that with credit card, Mary Jo, but that's going to be another 3%.
What do you mean it's going to be another 3%?
Why did you not think ahead to put that in the price so that you didn't have to tell me it's another 3%?
Because now I feel nickeled and dimed, right?
If you wrap it up into the price, you don't have that problem.
Why would you not do that?
As a business owner, you don't want your customers to think you are nickeling and diming them to death.
You think, oh, well, I'm going to save them money and I'm going to save me money.
Yes, but there's also this convenience factor.
And so wrap it up into the price and forget about it.
And then people are going to pay you.
And I have had to tell several blue collar business owners this because they will bill me.
And I'm like, what are you doing?
Why are you adding on another 3%?
Just put it into the price.
It's a mind shift.
But even credit card fees, the business owner is not absorbing those fees.
They are making you pay for those fees.
It's just how business works.
Because if the employer or the business owner absorbed all of those costs, there would be no business.
So it's all lies, lies, and lies.
Nelson's not wrong.
Again, he's right.
All right, you guys.
Know the routine.
Email me, maryjoe at withoutthebank.com.
If you have questions, comments, whatever, I'm happy to answer those.
If you've not gotten your books, go to farmingwithoutthebank.com.
Grab your books.
Get your Warehouse of Wealth book if you want to read this.
You know, I basically highlight the whole chapter, but you should read it anyway.
Okay, let me know if you guys need me.
And you have a fantastic rest of your day.
Thanks for listening to the Farming Without the Bank podcast.
We hope today's episode has inspired you to take control of your finances in new ways.
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Thank you.