Posted on 09/17/2011 4:54:13 PM PDT by kristinn
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials.
With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts from Medicare and Medicaid.
Mr. Obama, in a bit of political salesmanship, will call his proposal the “Buffett Rule,” in a reference to Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained repeatedly that the richest Americans generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers, because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages.
Mr. Obama will not specify a rate or other details, and it is unclear how much revenue his plan would raise. But his idea of a millionaires’ minimum tax will be prominent in the broad plan for long-term deficit reduction that he will outline at the White House on Monday.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Absolutely true.
We use to have income averaging to help with that.
But that’s long gone.
You work for years for something to finally pay off and then you get screwed in taxes as if you made that level of income every year.
I understand the concept and in theory I agree with you. But the reality today is that you are lucky to get a $12/hr. job which equates to roughly 480/wk minus $72 in taxes per week. Give the working poor a break, and pass a constitutional amendment preventing welfare/foodstamp recipients from voting.
Let me get this straight - Obama wants to take $535 million from Warren Buffet. What’s he going to do with the cash? Invest in more “green energy” companies?
Now I’m no fan of Buffet’s politics, but if I had $535 million, I would feel much more comfortable GIVING it to Warren Buffet to invest rather than letting the the bureaucrats at the DOE anywhere near it.
By the way, when it comes to tax hikes, don’t you love the way Ubama and the Democrat newsroom scumbags use the word “ask”, when what they actually mean is “with a government jackboot on the neck, a gun to the head, and under threat of prison”?
We are being ruled by a buffoon.
Why, that's a BRILLIANT plan! It's a wonder that it hasn't been tried before!
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/s (just in case)
I was trying to post a general response to the article but I responded to Post #51 instead of Post #1...
How about an “Anti-billionaire Bill” Take anyone who is a Billionaire and liquidate them until they have only have 1 million dollars in total assets?
I am sure all the Obama Billionaires that support him would just love that plan.
Personally I want to see Warren Buffett go down over his stuipid statements and non-tax-paying habits.
0bummer is calling his tax the rich plan the “Buffet rule”
Guess he doesn’t know we know that buffet has spent millions and has ongoing legal suits with the IRS on his tax bills. He’s had like 20 attorneys working on it full time last 10 years or so.
I don’t hold that against Buffet but it makes his statements about not paying enough taxes look pretty disingenuous and self serving then to base policy on such statements, well then we get to the level of 0’s brinkmanship and political gaming playing.
TERRIBLE IDEA. Grossly stupid, and congress would increase the flat rate every chance they got.
What is to stop them from raising the Fair Tax rates or hiding other taxes in the cost? Unless there is a constitutional amendment to set the rate at some percentage with no exceptions, Congress WILL make exceptions for “favored” companies (read that companies who bribe the congressmen with “campaign donations”) and they will tinker to make it “more fair”.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for lowering tax rates and even making the tax rates less progressive or flatter. I think the “flat rate” should be lower than 10%. I don’t mind having some level of exemptions and/or deductions to reduce the base. For a family of four, perhaps the exemption/deduction combo would mean that the flat rate applies to income above $48,000 or so. As with anything the difficulty is in the details. What income are you talking about? Just wages? Wages and interest earned? Wages and interest and dividend income? Wages and interest and dividend income and capital gains? What about rental income? Do you treat that differently, and if so what “deductions” do you allow for expenses of maintaining the rental property?
The tax rate should be low and the base very wide. Tax all forms of income and wages and capital gains, with capital gains tied to the rate of inflation.
I know it's sarcasm but if you grabbed ALL of the wealth of the top one % it would fund government operations for only about 4-6 months at current spending levels.
Pathetic ain't it?
Surely, someway, we can convince the citizenry that our biggest problem (of many) is a spending, not taxing problem.
Obama is saying that they’re going to “ask” the wealthy to pay more. That’s the opposite of confiscation.
They’re going to “ask” nicely.
(He needs a repeated nut kicking for using the term “ask” when it comes to taxes.)
But, he IS playing to his base. It’s a rare sheeperal that will admit to the distasteful truth that all gov’t policy is implemented at gunpoint.
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