Posted on 12/22/2011 8:42:05 AM PST by 92nina
The Democrat hyperbole regarding the payroll tax debate has obscured the actual events leading to the current standoff: the GOP-led House is the only body that has passed a comprehensive tax and spending cut package that ensures American families and employers will not see a payroll tax hike for the entirety of the coming year. The President's allies in the Senate have instead offered a short-term extension of the payroll tax holiday, refusing to confront the expiring tax relief head on. Beyond the poor policymaking represented by short-term fixes, the tax relief the Senate bill ostensibly provides is undermined by the logistical implications of implementing it. As explained in a letter sent to lawmakers from the National Payroll Reporting Consortium:
[M]any payroll systems are not likely to be able to make such a substantial programming change before January or even February. The systems affected tend to be highly complex, normally requiring at least ninety days for a change of this magnitude for software testing alone; not to mention analysis, design, coding and implementation.
What's more, the Senate bill is not a flat extension of the current payroll tax rates, As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would have you believe. Phil Kerpen at AFP explains:
Instead, [the Senate bill] creates a two-tiered payroll tax with a rate of 4.2 percent for the first $18,350 of income in those 60 days, with a 6.2 percent rate above that. For the first time, we would have a graduated, progressive system of tiered rates for payroll taxes.
The House, then, in demanding the Senate to negotiate a compromise, is not holding up tax relief for American families - it is preventing the Senate's vision of a tax relief bill from replacing a comprehensive extension of the payroll tax cut. If the Senate Majority Leader truly does not wish to see Americans families' payroll taxes rise in the new year, he should appoint conferees to get the job done.
Read more: http://www.atr.org/senate-dems-holding-up-tax-relief-a6659#ixzz1hHWKOvI0
Take this article and others I found to the fight to the Libs on their own turf; put the Left on the defensive at Digg and in Reddit and in Stumbleupon and Delicious
A little taste of 2012
Mike
Let me see if I can clarify the payroll tax cut issue. Pandering a payroll tax cut by telling people that will have more money in their paycheck is the equivalent of telling you to cut your contributions to your 401k for more take-home. The results are the same, higher take home now.... lower retirement payments later.....
Oh and this doesn’t address the gutting of social security by hundreds of billions in funding just for some political game.....
And this is a winning issue?
Sadly, we’ve lost this particular battle - we should cut our losses and come back in Jan and fight with a united House-Senate Plan.
I don’t know how the Senate Republicans allowed the vote if they knew that their House colleagues would reject it? Where is the strategy that worked so well earlier this year. They got played by Ried - simple as that.
When you have the WSJ telling you to wrap it up, it’s time to accept defeat and move on. The narrative is lost.
The problem is the two-month extension isn’t the old Payroll tax; this is a new form, it’s graduated. Most payrolls are electronic now, there isn’t time for the developers to come up with the new software.
If it were just a plain two-month extension, systems could handle it. But then all the 1099 employees would ask for much larger paychecks in January and February so their take-home payments would be hire, voluntarily receiving lower checks the rest of the year.
All so that the president, at the State of the Union, can say he fought to keep the Payroll tax low...
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