Category Archives: Congressional Campaign

Remarks on Filing Your IRS Federal Income Tax Return for Free and My Plans to Expand the IRS and Offer Free Pre-Filled Tax Filing

From my recent tweets:

When filing your federal income taxes for FREE this year, check criteria and click through here: https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/

Many use TurboTax, which is still pulling the same stunt as in prior years: You MUST click through the above page or else they’ll force you to pay at the end.

In Congress I will push to greatly increase the IRS’s staffing and funding as well as fund modernizing their computer systems. Tens of $$$ billions a year are going uncollected due to inability to enforce tax laws against the well-heeled.

I will support the IRS offering its own FREE online tax filing service that auto-fills forms based on W2, 1099, and other data the IRS already receives. This will save lots of $$$ and aggravation for Americans and IRS agents in the long run! See also: NPR: Bill Would Ban IRS From Creating Free Electronic Tax Filing System

Campaign Videos by Richard and Kristy Thripp for Congress #FL06, January 31, 2020

Here’s a video with my son introducing myself and my campaign to flip #FL06 blue in 2020. Florida’s 6th Congressional district includes Daytona Beach, Deltona, New Smyrna Beach, Palm Coast, and part of Eustis. We can do it!

Campaign Video by Richard Thripp for Congress #FL06, January 31, 2020

Transcript:

Hi, my name is Richard Thripp. This is my son, Ricky. I’m a teacher educator at University of Central Florida teaching technology and I studied financial literacy among future teachers. I’m running for Congress in Florida’s 6th district as a progressive Democrat. I think we need a change in government. What we’re seeing now is unbelievable. We have basically seen every promise that Trump has allegedly made be torn down again and again. Now, they’re actually coming for your Social Security and your Medicare benefits, even though you spent your whole life paying into them, as many seniors have in the 6th district. This district has an incumbent Republican who is not a good guy at all. He comes out and he says things that are just unbelievable, [but] it’s [a district] we can WIN. I think we’re going to see that all over the country—what you saw in 2018 [blue wave in the U.S. House]—we’re going to make it even bigger this time, and we’re going to restore the government to what it should be: Working for the people, instead of the special interests and the wealthy corporations that are receiving the largest tax giveaways in modern history. Thank you, and please pitch in if you can, and as we get closer to the primary and general election, we’ll be building a movement with volunteers and possibly even staff. Thank you.


Here’s a better video by my wife, Kristy Thripp, which you should definitely watch!

Campaign Video by Kristy Thripp for Richard Thripp for Congress #FL06, January 31, 2020

Transcript:

Hi, my name is Kristy Thripp. This is my beautiful son Ricky, named after his father Richard Thripp. His father’s running for Congress in Florida’s 6th district. His primary focus is going to be the climate crisis so we can protect the world for our sweet beautiful baby boy and other children like him. Thank you. Vote for Richard Thripp.


Call to Action:

I am a clear and present danger to the GOP and the establishment. They don’t know what to do about a young Ph.D. graduate / teacher educator who demonstrates broad-spectrum competence in this many areas toward demolishing their propaganda and clobbering them with facts and rhetoric. I need your help to get my message out. Please donate or contact me to volunteer today.


I will not forget the people of Hastings, Crescent Beach, Marineland, unincorporated St. Johns, Flagler, Volusia, and Lake counties in #FL06, Seville, Pierson, DeLeon Springs, Bunnell, Ormond Beach, Edgewater, Oak Hill, Lake Helen, Osteen, DeBary, Holly Hill, DBS, NSB, & beyond.

Port Orange, Orange City, Ponce Inlet, mid-town Daytona Beach will get a DISTRICT OFFICE (NOT a “mobile” office for 2 hours once a quarter), Bethune Beach, Gobblers Lodge, Bethune Beach, Lake Helen, SPOOKY Cassadaga, Barberville, Ormond-by-the-Sea, Flagler Beach, Bimini, & more.

I will FIGHT for federal protections for our migrant fruit pickers and farm workers, for those living in the projects in Daytona Beach, girls and women being abused, trafficked, or worse, for our birds, waters, air, and sea, for Medicaid expansion, seniors, veterans, & beyond.

And our wonderful county capitals included within #FL06 Florida’s 6th Congressional district, DeLand (Volusia) and Bunnell (Flagler) will get the representation they deserve, and the students, faculty, and staff of Daytona State College, Bethune–Cookman University, Stetson University, Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University, Palmer College of Chiropractic, Florida Technical College, University of Central Florida at Daytona Beach, Florida State College of Medicine at DSC, WyoTech, Keiser University, Northwest Lineman College, our K–12 schools, hospitals, & more.

The district #FL06 had to be reconfigured due to a court case over gerrymandering between the 2010 Census and now, and in the 2022 elections the lines will all be re-drawn (with more GOP gerrymandering) based on the 2020 Census.

My opponent Michael Waltz, a shill for Lyin’ Donald Trump, is RUNNING SCARED putting out videos visiting food banks to try to reform his out-of-touch, bought-and-paid-for image. Let’s VOTE HIM OUT so he can get back to making $$$$$ at Metis and Askari running guns in Libya! #FL06

SWARM Michael Waltz’s district offices and rare mobile office visits with questions on Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act. I BET they say “Oh, we don’t help with that.” STOP SLASHING the ACA navigators and educational budget! 25% of Americans think Obamacare is dead. NOT SO!

Paid for by Richard Thripp for Congress

Amazon Keeps Stealing: Social Media Influencer Loses $11,000 in Gift Card Balance; Commentary on the Parasitic Gift Card Industry

Here’s a story from mid-January 2020 from another customer that Amazon stole money from (purportedly a social media influencer and/or YouTuber with a large following). Amazon encourages customers to load gift cards onto their account, unlike most corporations that have you input or swipe the gift card at checkout. Their recent profitable quarter was undoubtedly partly funded by straight-up theft from individual customers who build up a large Amazon gift card balance on their Amazon account. This is on top of getting massive subsidies and corporate giveaways at all levels including incentives for their new distribution coming to Deltona, Florida, relief from state and federal income taxes, and highly favorable laws that allow them to treat employees and vendors badly (non-compete and non-disclosure agreements), compete directly with third-party sellers on their marketplace who are already paying Amazon an arm and a leg to be on the platform, and so forth. In Congress, I will not be on Amazon’s side… I will be going after them for their consistent patterns of grand theft and other unlawful, manipulative, and abusive behavior.


Ron on January 15, 2020

Subject: Amazon closed my account , won’t refund 7k gift balance

I found you on google search.

My case is very simple

I have been using amazon as a prime member for many years, I am a social media influencer and have many people sending me amazon gift cards. I have never had an issue and have always had a balance over 3k. I usually buy all my computers and music equipment on amazon as well as photography/ videographer gear. I was recently saving up for the new Mac Pro which is over 12k as the monitor alone is 6k

I didn’t think much of it I was at 7k maybe a few bunch more and woke up to an email saying my account has been closed

I call every day and they say it’s on hold, they make me give my name and billing address and say a specialist will contact me in 24 hours. I have never, not once spoke with a specialist not have a even got a reason for my account to be on hold. They don’t mention anything about gift cards, or fraud or anything like that. They always just say it’s on hold and it’s most likely because of unusual activity. They also shut down my wife’s account which uses the same address and shares the family prime plan. She also had a gift card balance of a little over $4000. So together this is over 11k . This is extremely frustrating, and has to be illegal. We do not break any terms of service, we don’t buy gift cards randomly or at all, anyone who sends us a gift card is intended as a gift only, we have 100’s k followers on all forms of social media and have a large support system with our fans. No one gets anything in return from sending us a gift card ever. Nothing more than a thank you email if that.

My questions are what do I do to get my account opened so I can spend my gift card balance, as I will never keep a balance ever again. This is a horrible mess and left me out a lot of money that I saved for a while to get to the 7k balance that I was planning to use on my new Mac Pro. Now I am lost, and can’t even sign in to amazon to get normal stuff for around the house.

Please respond if you can.

Thanks,
Ron [alias]


This e-mail was sent from a contact form on Thripp.com


Richard Thripp on January 16, 2020

Hi Ron,

I agree 100% that this is illegal and have heard so many stories like yours, including ones for sums as large as $80,000.

The laws at both the federal and state levels are clear… but there is magically no enforcement against Amazon I presume because of their size and influence. Also, most other companies (Walmart, Target, etc.) don’t pull stuff quite like this. Target sometimes refuses to restore a gift card balance but their app is prone to fraud so in that case another person hacks someone and steals their gift card to spend at Target. With Amazon, no one is getting to spend your gift card. Amazon is just pocketing the money they stole from you and from the people who gave you those gift cards.

In this case, I think your best weapon will be your social media presence. You will have to take to social media to get attention about this issue. It is very helpful that you did not have anything else going on such as drop-shipping items, trading gift cards for BitCoin, or receiving gift cards to evade income taxes.

You can also file complaints, typically online, with your state attorney general’s office and your regional Better Business Bureau. It is also possible to sue in small claims court as a last resort.

I would be happy to also write about your case on my website, although I am fairly unknown and don’t get much traffic. Let me know.

Presently, I am running for Congress, and Amazon definitely has something to fear if I get elected, as I will be taking action on their pattern of theft that could even be classified as racketeering and has been ongoing since October 2008.

Best regards,
Richard Thripp, Ph.D.
Democratic Candidate for U.S. Congress (FL-06)
Adjunct Faculty, University of Central Florida


Ron on January 16, 2020

Feel free to write about it
Thanks for your help
Ron

Sent from my iPhone


Richard Thripp on January 17, 2020

Can I include your original email in the post? I will remove your name. Sorry. Should have asked this in prior email. It might be a few days as I have a few campaign-related things going on. I think you’ll get your money back. Just have to keep fighting and be patient.

– Richard


Ron on January 17, 2020

Yes that’s fine
Thanks for the help
So far nothing from amazon support
Just the same run around

Sent from my iPhone


Conclusion by Richard Thripp on January 31, 2020
Including Commentary on the Parasitic Gift Card Industry

Amazon particularly enjoys going after customers who are doing something shady such as receiving gift cards as payment to evade income taxes, trading BitCoin for gift cards, or perhaps committing straight-up credit card fraud. However, when Amazon bans customers they give no notice and actually have a fake script with call center employees to pretend an “account specialist” will call them back in 24 hours, which does not occur. Amazon has been following this same unlawful pattern since the 2008 financial crisis. When banned, you can’t even log in to view your Amazon order history, gift card balance, or gift card activity history. They also won’t share any information with you, typically even if you complain to the BBB or attorneys general, citing a blanket boilerplate response about the proprietary nature of their business and their privacy. It’s easy to go after customers on shaky ground because they can’t fight back, and Amazon makes no effort to refund the legitimate portion of gift card balances nor to escheat such funds to customers’ states of residence.

Amazon’s gift card company is a subsidiary, ACI Gift Cards Inc., set up in Washington state to avoid escheatment due to a lack of such laws there, whereas Amazon itself was initially incorporated in Washington state in 1994 but then Bezos had to reincorporate in Delaware in 1996 in order to go public. I have no evidence that Amazon escheats gift card balances to the states based on customers’ state of residence for states that do have escheatment laws, even though they are lawfully obliged to do so. It is funny that Amazon is a public company when it comes to taking advantage of American capital markets and massive corporate welfare, but private, proprietary, and incredibly secretive whenever it benefits them. It’s all part of corporate America’s playbook of privatizing profits while socializing financial burdens and losses, although Amazon takes it to a new extreme.

Another example of the extreme behavior of Amazon is that on their Amazon Mechanical Turk platform (MTurk) on which people complete repetitive tasks or surveys for micropayments, workers in other countries can participate but can only be paid in Amazon gift cards. Is this even legal? Many of these workers then have to arrange with Americans to order goods on their behalf at a 10–15% discount in order to be paid back in U.S. dollars or their preferred currency. A couple months ago a man in Vietnam contacted me about Amazon stealing $3,400 from him, as he had saved up his gift card balance over an entire year from working on the MTurk platform and then got banned when placing drop-shipped orders to U.S. addresses in order to attempt to get actual spendable money for his labors. He did get his accounts restored, but he had to fight with Amazon for quite some time, and for him this was a huge sum—an entire year’s work.

Donald Trump doesn’t like Amazon either, but not for the same reasons as I. He hates that Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post which is harder on him than other journalistic outfits, although in fact still gives him free media coverage that actually benefits him and normalizes his behavior. Just, less so than other newspapers. Even NPR has to clean up Donald Trump’s wild, incoherent rally speeches and convey his message for him, because what Trump actually says does not make a whole lot of sense. I also think there is some jealousy going on here as despite Amazon’s crimes and heavy-handed practices, there is no denying that Bezos is a business mastermind who has been far more successful than Trump and doesn’t have a string of bankruptcies behind him.

When it comes to Amazon, don’t think of them as your friend. Don’t carry a gift card balance unless you are prepared to lose it. The whole gift card industry is like a parasite on our economy and the American people. You are enculturated to believe you can’t give cash because it’s taboo. Says who? Why do we buy into this narrative? I do use gift cards frequently but they are for me and only when I can buy them at a discount. For example, I like to do my Target shopping using gift cards I buy on one day a year in December when Target sells them for 10% off. Another good source is Sam’s Club which offers hefty discounts on many gift cards. With a gift card you are lending a corporation money, and they might try to steal it from you despite that being illegal, or they may go bankrupt such as Circuit City, Borders, Toys ‘R’ Us, and so many others. You should be paid to do so, in the form of a hefty discount compared with the face value of the gift card.

Please donate to my progressive Democratic campaign for Congress in Florida’s 6th district if you can, or contact me to become a volunteer. I will never stop fighting for you.

How TIAA Locks Down Teachers’ Retirement Money

This is my Facebook comment to someone on a Democratic group about retirement accounts for teachers that do not act in their best interest.

January 31, 2020

I’m not a fan of TIAA. They do have some good products but it’s hard when there are so many bad options on there and of course annuities are like negotiating a field of landmines for most Americans including educators as only the single premium immediate or deferred annuities are good, but bad options are heavily marketed due to high profit potential for the agent and company. Try taking your money out of TIAA and you’ll see the ridiculous hoops. As an adjunct at University of Central Florida I don’t get to participate in Social Security. Instead the university compels me to contribute at least 7.5% to a FICA replacement account with TIAA (the only option), and when I leave this position, to roll it over to Vanguard, TIAA requires signed forms to be sent by postal mail by me, UCF’s HR department, and the receiving institution (Vanguard). It’s ridiculous. They want to lock your money down so they can keep bombarding you with fees. There could be an index mutual fund in there that’s only a 0.04% annual fee at Vanguard or even 0% at Fidelity that they’ll charge upwards of 0.5% per year.

Correspondence on Social Security and Medicare

This is an email by me to a Lake County constituent and shared with Ambassador Nancy Soderberg, Clint Curtis, and others discussing Social Security and Medicare as “entitlements” versus earned benefits, and on policy points regarding FICA taxes and funding Social Security in perpetuity rather than cutting benefits as Trump, Waltz, and the GOP now want to do.

January 31, 2020

Re: Liberal super PAC to run digital ads slamming Trump over Medicare comments

I love your points, Grace! Of course there was that SCOTUS decision saying that paying FICA taxes does not confer property rights, but we all know it is only fair that people who have paid in their whole life have earned their benefits. The GOP talking points are all about pitting people against each other, and they are very good at using psychological gamesmanship as the people who are most vocal and upset about so-called welfare queens (which is based in racism; see Dow, 2014) and having to pay for others’ so-called laziness are the ones who actually are living paycheck-to-paycheck possibly below the federal poverty line. They would most benefit from Democratic rather than Republican policies and many are actually going without health insurance or are affected by tariffs now but turn a blind eye to it.
FICA payroll deductions are 15.3% of gross income so many Americans pay more toward this than they do in federal income tax. The idea that SS/Medicare are bankrupting us is ridiculous. Those who earn over approximately $132,000 per year do not pay anything more toward these programs. If we got rid of the cap it could be fully funded ad infinitum. Some will say this is not doable but we used to have much higher federal income taxes at the top bracket. Of course many high-earners do not get most of their money from wages. Wage-earners do not have the luxury of long-term capital gains tax at lower rates with no FICA deductions, getting to time when they take their profits, tax loss harvesting, 1031 accounts for real estate, and so many other advantages.

I believe the top tax rate is in California for income about $1,000,000 per year being taxed at 14% which is on top of 37% top federal bracket for 51% total, so FICA being extended to all income would raise this to 60% or so for the portion of earned income in excess of $1 million per year. There would probably need to be a modification whereby such high earners are capped on the outgoing end in what they can receive per month in retirement despite contributing more. Pundits’ ideas that this will ruin the system by making high earners have to subsidize low earners is overblown… Progressivism requires such sacrifices and we all know the USA is, has long been, and will continue to be the best country for entrepreneurship, small and large businesses alike, and upward mobility (although we need to extend these opportunities to everyone!).

Most people don’t know their employer is paying half the FICA behind the scenes. You could actually just get rid of the cap on the employer portion and leave the $132,000 cap in place on the employee portion and it might fund SS/Medicare in perpetuity without anyone really feeling it. Already, if someone works for multiple employers they have to file a tax form to get the portion of their personal employee FICA taxes back on income that exceeded $132,000 when combined between all their jobs, but the employers themselves are individually subjected to the cap with respect to that employee, so there are some employer FICA taxes being paid for individuals in excess of the annual cap in income already.

Best regards,
Richard Thripp, Ph.D.
Democratic Candidate for U.S. Congress (FL-06)
Adjunct Faculty, University of Central Florida