Posted on 11/10/2017 5:31:05 AM PST by C19fan
After the billionaire investor Warren Buffett exposed the unfairness of a federal tax code that assessed his secretary at a higher rate than him, it was hard to imagine a tax reform plan that would be even less fair.
House Republicans have come up with one.
That’s not because the plan indiscriminately favors the rich. It’s because to a degree unprecedented in American tax history, it favors the investor class, Mr. Buffett prominent among them, at the expense of people who work for a living, like his secretary.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
A flat 10 percent tax..no deductions..none...and the economy will explode!
But what about my mortgage deduction, what about my cold plants deduction, what about my highway traffic tickets deduction, what about my internet deduction, what about my child healthcare deduction, what about my kid has a cough deduction, what about my cable deduction, what about my...blah blah blah...People can be quite clueless.
The GOP couldn’t organize a piss up in a pub but this is not a loophole. It is just the tax program of the past with the increase in cap gains from 15% to 20%.
Unless all gains from wages and investment are taxed at the very same rate it is all loopholes and larceny by the feral gubment.
The tax code has more angles than a shattered piece of glass but will cut you much worse.
How about the fact that it’s not the government’s money? And screwing someone else out of more of theirs does NOT make me feel better about the theft of mine.
Yes but it will never happen and if it did they would never leave it alone. The tax code is a political power play.
Buffet probably takes 1 dollar a year as salary and the rest goes into stocks. I am not sure why Republicans didn’t yell this loud and clear. I think Republicans are the dumbest when fighting back on exaggerations and outright lies. Sure Buffet told the truth that his secretary paid more in taxes but he failed to mention why and Republicans let the message get told and it stuck. Ask a random person on the street about this and they will say, “it is outrageous that Buffet pays less then his secretary” because they don’t have the full story. So frustrating.
You want to raise revenue? Eliminate the tax exemption of “non profit” investment income. Tax the Clinton Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, etc.
i disagree with you on the piss-up statement...the GOPe consistently organizes piss-up to piss on their constituents...
Buffett is a shill for the crooks in government. A good part of his fortune is due to sheltering his company’s capital gains in insurance companies.
The debates in this tax reform cycle centers on being revenue neutral. The real wilderness the GOP has lost its way in is spending.
Let me see, I take an already taxed dollar and I risk it as an investment. My investment makes for liquid markets, diversified capitalization that reduces the power (somewhat) of the oligarch class, thus benefitting the national economy. If I do this as an INVESTOR, holding the money for a year+1 day, then I get a beneficial tax rate as opposed to paying normal rates on dividends and interest.
This upsets the LEFTists at the NYTimes because they regard anything to the right of Socialism as unfair treatment. I say that, barring a uniform flat tax, what other economic system has done better at building the middle class as a bulwark of economic strength over the past century?
More on Buffett and how he avoids taxes:
http://www.barrons.com/articles/warren-buffetts-nifty-tax-loophole-1428726092
The purpose of taxing capital gains at a lower rate than income is that it serves as an incentive for people with money to invest it in productive assets rather than sitting on it.
The one point in the system that drives me up the pole is the “capital gains” rate. I completely agree that when you invest your money in a company, you are driving business development. What I don’t get is how one is doing that when they sell a stock they bought from someone else, not in an IPO. That “gain” should not be a capital transaction. It is no different than putting money in a bank and drawing interest (well that used to happen) and being taxed at your regular rate.
As far as the great Buffet goes, I believe he is still fighting a tax assessment from the last decade. He is only interested in other people paying their share but like all libs, what they do is above reproach.
It’s interesting these Buffet-type people never complain about the HUGE tax loophole of the foundations they start.
Like the Clinton Foundation, all they have to do is give away five percent of their income each year. What they do is give it away to some other foundation.
For some, it’s the biggest scam out there.
But these so-called rich people are completely silent on that score.
It’s unfair to take a $million less from a rich person unless the government also takes a $million less from the “women’s studies” graduate working at starbucks. /sarc
I’m all for discussing this “loophole” (and others). Lots of people can make good points on both sides. But anyone who wants to discuss it, does not start off with a few paragraphs about a rich man and his secretary. That’s an admission that the loophole isn’t the issue and you just want to engage in class warfare. And they tell us in those paragraphs that rich men don’t “work for a living” in case we didn’t understand the goal of the article from the secretary example.
Any INCOME tax code that does anything except tax your INCOME (above the poverty level) at a fixed rate for everyone with no deductions, exclusions, credits etc is unfair and made to insure the Government wins and the taxpayer loses. If it takes more then one sheet of paper to file your income tax then you are being screwed
What “tax loop hole”??
There are ZERO deductions for the rich that others don’t get. None. In fact, after about $109,income 000 there are very few tax deductions; no student loan deductions, for instance.
There should be no tax on income or property.
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.