Higher Federal Taxation under Obama...

[BlackDragon24]

Apparently congressman oompa loompa did not get his daily briefing before he went on the Sunday morning shows:

GOP colleagues seek distance from Boehner on tax issue

Figures that the most sensible thing I have ever heard him say is going to end up being his downfall. I'll go out on a limb and predict that he won't be on the top of the list for speaker IF the repugs take the house.

[AMDScooter]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/09/...ex.html?hpt=T2

And in the end, he is going to try and do exactly what he told us he was going to do.

Maybe the post turtle should get his house in order first. There seems to be some dissent among those he assured this time would be different... because "you got me"..

More House Dems balking at ending Bush tax cuts for rich

&

Bush Tax Cuts For Wealthy Gaining Ground With Worried Democrats

&

Divided Democrats battle each other over extending tax cuts for rich

&

Are Democrats abandoning Obama on Bush tax cuts?
Many in the president's party are backing away from his policy of letting taxes rise for the wealthiest Americans

&

Democrats challenge Nancy Pelosi on taxes

[AMDScooter]

Apparently congressman oompa loompa did not get his daily briefing before he went on the Sunday morning shows:

GOP colleagues seek distance from Boehner on tax issue

Figures that the most sensible thing I have ever heard him say is going to end up being his downfall. I'll go out on a limb and predict that he won't be on the top of the list for speaker IF the repugs take the house.

Well.. if they do I sure hope CNN can dig up some better sources.

according to several Republican sources...

One GOP aide characterized...

Several GOP sources...

[smoked trout]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezr...l_busines.html

1099 on every purchase over $600?

I'll think I'll invest in 1099 forms...

[Dutchcedar]

^^^ When you put people with no business experience in charge of making laws for business, that's the kinda crap you end with.

We've seen a lot of ridiculous stuff out of this administration, but that one has to be one of the dumbest.

[AMDScooter]

^^^ When you put people with no business experience in charge of making laws for business, that's the kinda crap you end with.

We've seen a lot of ridiculous stuff out of this administration, but that one has to be one of the dumbest.

Didya catch that twit pelosi today? Cannot locate the video but she continued the re-badgin' effort of calling the Bush tax cuts "Obama middle class tax cuts". But when referring to the tax cuts for the "rich".. they once again belong to GWB. This was in the space of less than a minute or so apart. Freaking comical..

[BlackDragon24]

I'm curious, partisan BS aside, if you think the the repubs will break ranks on the tax cuts the way they did on the small jobs bill. Looks like you've got a couple of senators on their way out who aren't as concerned about party loyalty any more. Of course the dems would have to get their ship in order too, but I'm just curious your thoughts.

[AMDScooter]

I'm curious, partisan BS aside, if you think the the repubs will break ranks on the tax cuts the way they did on the small jobs bill. Looks like you've got a couple of senators on their way out who aren't as concerned about party loyalty any more. Of course the dems would have to get their ship in order too, but I'm just curious your thoughts.

Depends on the guy/gal leaving and what's being promised of course. But overall.. I'd say not much. I've heard/read that ambassador and like jobs could be being offered by the administration (business as usual in both (R)&(D) administrations)to both sides. Repugs to break ranks and dems to get back on board. Honestly, I don't see it as being effective on either side to candidates whom planned for life after their "retirement" from public office.

More on nanners rebadgin' stupidity..

“The Obama Tax Cuts”?

There’s an effort underway amongst Democrats to re-brand the Bush tax cuts (except for those that apply to the top two brackets) as “the Obama tax cuts“:

At her weekly press conference this afternoon, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicted that Bush tax cuts on the first $250,000 of income will be extended. But she was unable, or unwilling to say whether the top-bracket tax cuts benefiting only the wealthy will be renewed.

“Without getting into procedure and timing and process, what we’re going to do is to say: At the end of the day the extension of the Obama middle-income tax cuts will take place,” Pelosi said. [emph. added]

Josh Marshall, proprietor of the site where this report appeared, eagerly adopted Pelosi’s terminology. This is A) pure propaganda, and B) just silly. Under the “Obama tax cut plan,” your tax rates would either stay the same as they were before or go up, depending on your income. There is no disagreement about that underlying fact. The expiration dates that apply to the Bush tax cuts were built into the legislation for procedural reasons; in reality, that’s left us with a choice between keeping tax rates constant or raising all of them or raising some of them. People who pay income taxes are not going to confuse the procedure with the reality any more than they would confuse Nancy Pelosi with the Queen of England if that’s what she started calling herself. There are no “Obama tax cuts,” Marshall’s bogus rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.

[BlackDragon24]

Ouch.

Taxing My Patience
Five points to keep in mind as Congress debates the Bush tax cuts

Here are five things you need to know about the debate over extending the temporary tax cuts Congress passed almost a decade ago. (For those of you who haven't been paying attention in class, these are known as "the Bush tax cuts" because they were passed at the former president's urging, and if Congress does nothing, they will expire at the end of the year.)

1) All the representatives and senators who voted for the tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 also voted for their expiration. That's how they were designed.

2) The tax cuts could have been made permanent or extended at some point before now. Alternatively, the folks who ran fiscal policy from 2001 through 2008—the Republican White House and a Congress that was controlled for most of that period by Republicans—could have created the conditions that would have made it possible to extend the tax cuts or make them permanent. But they didn't. Instead of running balanced budgets, they appropriated hundreds of billions of dollars to fight two wars, created an expensive, open-ended entitlement without a funding mechanism (Medicare prescription drug coverage), and increased discretionary spending. Oh, and their failures of oversight, regulation, and management led to expensive, deficit-enhancing bailouts.

3) Many Republicans and some Democrats have spent much of the last year warning (falsely, it turns out) that the large deficits we face this year and in coming years would cause inflation, result in high interest rates, and turn us into indentured servants to China. Now, the same folks are arguing for … even-larger short-term deficits that somehow won't have all those ill effects. President Obama's proposal to extend the tax cuts for those making less than $250,000 per year will add $3.2 trillion to the debt. But as the Congressional Budget Office noted, extending them all will add $3.9 trillion in debt. Now, advocating tax cuts without specifying spending cuts (and, no, John Boehner, saying you want to roll back spending to 2008 levels doesn't count) means you're advocating a huge increase in new debt creation. It's sad to say, but it's nearly impossible to find a Democrat or Republican who can speak seriously about how we can align revenues with expenditures. (And, no, Rep. Paul Ryan, your much-discussed "road map" doesn't count, since it cuts taxes on the rich but doesn't lower deficits over the long term.)

4) The bold and confident assertions made about the links between tax rates and economic growth, market performance, and prosperity are almost certainly wrong. Turn on CNBC or look at the Wall Street Journal op-ed page these days, and you'll learn that we must keep tax rates on capital gains, dividends, and income precisely where they are because shifting them to different levels will retard economic growth. Keep this in mind: The people who designed the current, unsustainable tax system promised us that lower marginal rates, and lower taxes on capital and dividends, would boost the economy, promote investment, create jobs, spur market performance, and raise everybody's income. They were wrong. (It's no coincidence that these same people also warned us that raising taxes in 1993 would kill market returns and the economy. They were wrong then, too. They're pretty much always wrong.) As I've pointed out, the years under the current tax regime have been a lost decade. Pick your metric—median income, employment, stock market returns, economic growth—the low-tax '00s sucked. Yet proponents of keeping the tax cuts persist in making the argument: To avoid a repeat of the past decade, we must have the exact same tax policies as we did for the past decade.

5) Stopping all the tax cuts from expiring requires the passage of legislation. But the people who most want all the tax cuts extended—i.e., Republicans—don't have the ability to enact legislation. They don't control a majority in either legislative body, and for the past two years they've proved successful only at stopping or delaying legislation.

The upshot is this: If you're in the $250,000-per-year-and-up camp, even if you don't think you're rich, I'd start planning to pay higher taxes next year. But I wouldn't discount the scenario of all the tax cuts expiring. Look at what happened with the estate tax, another sop to the rich. In a bizarre turn of events, it was designed to decline throughout the decade, disappear entirely in 2010, and then return at a much higher level in 2011. Rather than compromise with Democrats on a permanent reduction that would leave lots of people better off but still require the richest of the rich to payer higher taxes, Republicans held out for a maximalist, all-or-nothing approach. They ended up with nothing. History may not repeat, but it sometimes rhymes.

[tucker]

How Expiration Of The Bush-Era Tax Cuts Could Affect You
By BRIAN WINGFIELD


Democrats and Republicans alike agree that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts should be extended for 97% of Americans. The debate that’s now got Washington tied up in knots is whether to keep those tax breaks in place for households with more than $250,000 in income as well.

That controversy will be settled this fall, but a larger one looms: When to put an end to the continued extension of the Bush-era tax cuts? At some point the lower rates are likely to end, perhaps for everybody. And if that’s the case, the loudest cries of opposition wouldn’t necessarily come from the richest Americans.

According to an analysis of different tax scenarios by Deloitte Development LLC, if the Bush-era tax cuts were to expire as scheduled, a married couple (with two kids) earning a combined $70,350 would see its tax liability increase by 113%–from $2,300 to $4,900. If that same family earned $500,000, its tax liability would increase by 9.4% upon expiration of the tax cuts, from $115,200 to $126,000.

Keeping middle- and lower-income people from having higher tax burdens is one reason the White House has proposed keeping the tax cuts in place for these Americans. Another is that by allowing the tax cuts to expire for the rich, the deficit could be reduced by $700 billion over 10 years. That is, assuming Congress doesn’t spend that additional revenue elsewhere.

Have a look at Deloitte’s comparisons below to see how an expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts might affect someone in your income and family situations. A “household” is a married couple with two children under 17. Keep in mind that if the tax cuts expire, rates on salaries and other ordinary income, as well as the rates on dividends and capital gains, are expected to rise. The information below also shows various tax liabilities under President Obama’s budget proposal. In each case, it’s assumed that Congress “patches” the alternative minimum tax to keep it from encroaching on the middle class.

For a more detailed explanation of Deloitte’s analysis, click here.


INCOME: $50,000

Single

Current tax liability: $5,900

After expiration of tax cuts: $7,000 (18.6% increase from current law)

Under Obama budget: $5,900 (no change from current law)

Household

Current tax liability: none

After expiration of tax cuts: $2,900

Under Obama budget: none

INCOME: $70,350

Single

Current tax liability: $8,400

After expiration: $9,700 (15.5% increase from current law)

Under Obama budget: $8,400 (no change from current law)

Household

Current tax liability: $2,300

After expiration of tax cuts: $4,900 (113% increase from current law)

Under Obama budget: $2,300 (no change from current law)

INCOME: $100,000

Single

Current tax liability: $14,500

After expiration of tax cuts: $16,600 (14.5% increase from current law)

Under Obama budget: $14,500 (no change from current law)

Household

Current tax liability: $5,000

After expiration of tax cuts: $9,500 (90% increase from current law)

Under Obama budget: $5,000 (no change from current law)

INCOME: $150,000

Single

Current tax liability: $25,600

After expiration of tax cuts: $29,300 (14.5% increase from current law)

Under Obama budget: $25,600 (no change from current law)

Household

Current tax liability: $17,500

After expiration of tax cuts: $22,400 (28% increase from current law)

Under Obama budget: $17,500 (no change from current law)

INCOME: $325,000

Single

Current tax liability: $73,000

After expiration of tax cuts: $79,600 (9% increase from current law)

Under Obama budget: $79,600 (9% increase from current law)

Household

Current tax liability: $63,600

After expiration of tax cuts: $71,000 (11.6% increase from current law)

Under Obama budget: $69,000 (8.5% increase from current law)

INCOME: $500,000

Single

Current tax liability: $115,200

After expiration of tax cuts: $132,500 (15% increase from current law)

Under Obama budget: $131,200 (13.9% increase from current law)

Household

Current tax liability: $115,200

After expiration of tax cuts: $126,000 (9.4% increase from current law)

Under Obama plan: $126,500 (9.8% increase from current law)

INCOME: $1 Million

Single

Current tax liability: $247,400

After expiration of tax cuts: $295,900 (19.6% increase from current law)

Under Obama budget: $301,600 (21.9% increase from current law)

Household

Current tax liability: $236,200

After expiration of tax cuts: $289,400 (22.5% increase from current law)

Under Obama budget: $292,500 (23.8% increase from current law)

INCOME: $5 Million

Single

Current tax liability: $1,331,400

After expiration of tax cuts: $1,603,100 (20.4% increase from current law)

Under Obama budget: $1,654,900 (24.3% increase from current law)

Household

Current tax liability: $1,320,200

After expiration of tax cuts: $1,596,600 (20.9% increase from current law)

Under Obama budget: $1,645,800 (24.7% increase from current law)


http://blogs.forbes.com/brianwingfie...ld-affect-you/

..

[AMDScooter]

I sure hope this post turtle prez has more up his sleeve other than raising taxes and spending more money we do not have...



Nine Days’ Deficit

“Raising taxes on the top 2% of households, as Mr. Obama proposes, would bring in $34 billion next year: enough to cover nine days’ worth of the deficit,” notes The Economist. So that is what all the political fuss about extending the Bush tax cuts for another year is all about. Does this make any sense? After all, errors in estimating next year’s revenues are typically much larger than $34 billion.

The arithmetic is even more absurd than it appears, because the alleged $34 billion of extra revenue is a static estimate. That means the number assumes higher tax rates do literally no damage at all to the affected taxpayers, and therefore no damage to consumer spending, business investment, employment, stock prices, housing prices, new car sales, etc.

In an economy producing a GDP of $15 trillion a year, even the slightest ill effect from Obama’s punitive tax hikes would quickly turn that hypothetical $34 billion revenue gain into a big revenue loss. Even if one could somehow believe there would be no harmful effects on small businesses’ hiring, or on decisions of second earners to cut back or retire early, upper-income families in the president’s target zone are nevertheless very important prospective buyers of big-ticket items like homes and cars. They account for 25 percent of consumer spending, as Mark Zandi points out.

If anyone could really believe the proposed tax hikes could possibly have no harmful effects on the economy, the $34 billion revenue estimate would still be wildly optimistic. Why? Because it also assumes high-income taxpayers make no effort to avoid the added burden. In economic jargon that means assuming an “elasticity of taxable income” of zero, although recent studies put the actual elasticity closer to one. Evidence from past changes in the highest tax rates suggests affected taxpayers will be able to conceal almost enough incremental income (above the $250,000 threshold) to offset the steep surtaxes tax on such income, leaving even the IRS no better off.

For example: More professional and small business income would be sheltered as retained earnings inside new corporations. More managerial income would be deferred, or received as perks. More investors would maximize contributions to tax-favored savings plans, or switch to tax-exempt bonds. The academic evidence is especially clear that a higher tax rate on dividends would dampen investors’ appetite for dividend-paying stocks, and that a higher tax rate on capital gains would reduce the frequency with which investors sell assets and therefore have to pay the tax.

As puny as it is, the official $34 billion estimate of the revenue from Obama’s crusade against high incomes is wildly optimistic to begin with, because it fails to take into account how taxpayers will react. To make mattes much worse, if there are any adverse effects on the economy at all, however slight, the net effect must be to reduce rather than increase federal, state, and local tax receipts in 2011. Are these risks worth taking in the foolhardy hope of paying for nine days’ worth of deficit?

— Alan Reynolds is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute, and author of Income and Wealth