Posted on 04/30/2007 5:14:11 AM PDT by Brilliant
...Mr. Rangel and other key Democrats ...have come up with their plan to protect the middle class from the growing reach of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). If nothing is done this year, 25 million workers will be liable to the AMT when they pay their taxes next April. So to defuse this political time bomb the House plans to exempt families with incomes below $250,000. So far so good. But the Democrats' dilemma is to figure out how to come up with the $650 billion of revenue this stealth tax would have raised...
The top AMT rate would increase to 31.5% from 28%. Democratic tax experts also recommend ...raise the capital gains tax rate to about 31% from its present 15%...
The changes in the AMT rate, and the treatment of dividends and capital gains, still leaves Mr. Rangel at least $600 billion short... to close this final gap, they will have to look to personal income taxes. Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts... says this will require raising the top tax rate of 35% by no more than three to five percentage points.
Mr. Neal should check his math. Tax experts on Capitol Hill and in the Treasury Department calculate that ...would more likely require rate hikes of 10 to 15 percentage points. This would lift the top federal marginal income tax rate as high as 50%.
"I can't think of a better way to throw the economy into recession and end the bull market expansion of recent years than to raise tax rates like this," warns Michael Darda, chief economist for MKM Partners. It's hard to argue with that assessment. Overnight, the U.S. would go from being a nation with one of the lowest set of income-tax rates to one of the highest in the developed world...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
By differently, they meant even more ineffective than previous.
To paraphrase President John F. Kennedy:
Let every American know, regardless of his or her wishes, that we shall pay any price, impose any burden, force any hardship (upon you), support any enemy, oppose any friend to assure the survival and the success of socialism.
Such is the nature of liberalism and the goal of Democrats.
Perhaps the federal government should think of ways to cut that $650 billion out of their pork projects. It is really a drop in the bucket of all the cash they loot from personal paychecks and company profits in the U.S., all the while producing such an inferior product that Charlie Rangel winds up being in charge of Congressional spending. Good grief.
Delta Airlines is coming out of bankruptcy today. They did it the way businesses, who can’t take money at the point of a gun, do it...by cutting costs and laying people off. This never occurs to Rangel and other believers in the bloated, wasteful monster we have created in Washington D. C. Government never will get enough until they get it all.
And by the way, rich people don’t have to live in this country. They have many choices to improve their lot when this government becomes as onerous as those in Europe.
Pubbies: Reduced tax rates = increased revenue, productivity, employment....
Defeatocrats: Raising taxes = reduced revenue, productivity, employment....
It’s all about power and screw the peasents.
THAT is a very good way of putting it. From now on let’s start saying ..democrats are LOOTING Americans!!
People get that!
There is 7% attrition in Federal government employees every year — through retirement or just career change.
If they were to just stop replacing those people for 3 years, we could cut the government employee costs by 20%.
If we were to take some common-sense approaches like businesses do, such as giving raises and bonuses based on cost-savings rather than seniority, think about how quickly headcount and all other expenses would be slashed. Right now, government bureaucrats have an incentive to build and expand their little empires, but if their raises were based on some percentage of the savings compared to the previous year, they would have an incentive to run the most efficient operation possible.
So cutting the cost of government would be almost pathetically easy if there was a will to do it.
As far as the AMT goes, this is the most ridiculous tax there is. A TRUE “Alternative Minimum Tax” would be one that ensures EVERYBODY pays taxes, including the poorest of the poor. Instead, the AMT is simply a way to squeeze more money out of the country’s most productive people — those that are already over-taxed and paying ten times their fair share. When will the poor pay their fair share ? It costs money to provide the security and rights they enjoy. Why is it free for them ?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.