Tag Archives: Tax Rate

News

Rick Santorum’s pro-family economic plan TRIPLES the child tax deduction

Leave a comment

The title of this article in the liberal Washington Post is “Santorum wants tax code to reward traditional marriage and families“. HOLY SNARK.

Excerpt: (links removed)

Rick Santorum’s socially conservative brand has helped him break through with a last-minute surge in Iowa. But his agenda isn’t restricted to reimposing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,”outlawing gay marriage nationwide, or promoting prayer in public schools. Santorum also wants to use the federal tax incentives to promote traditional marriage and families.

“Tax policy as social policy” is the most distinguishing characteristic of Santorum’s tax reform platform. The Pennsylvania Republican wants to reduce taxes by tripling the child tax credit, which currently stands at $1,000 per child. Santorum also wants to reduce federal taxes that penalize married couples. Under the current tax code, some spouses who earn about the same salary on the middle-to-upper end of the spectrum pay more in taxes by filing jointly as a married couple than they would as individuals. Justin Wolfers explains further: “The U.S. has a household-based taxation system which subsidizes married families when one person stays home and taxes most people extra if they choose to marry and both work full-time. The average tax cost of marriage for a dual-income couple is $1,500 annually.”

As James Pethokoukis points out, such policies are in line with a pro-natalist policy that some policy analysts have pushed for, both for social and economic reasons, citing Robert Stein’s commentary in National Affairs. “Too many free-market economists still consider families an afterthought — ­arguing that the tax code should be ‘neutral’ about raising children, as if parenting were merely one hobby among many. But raising children is hardly just another pastime: It is one of the most important services any American can perform for our country,” Stein writes, arguing that higher fertility rates would also bolster the financial future of Social Security and Medicare. By contrast, candidates like Rick Perry would eliminate the child tax credit and most other kinds of deductions in the tax code.

Since when did politicians care about ordinary families? Rick Santorum cares about working class families.

Related posts

News

Do secretaries usually pay more in taxes than their rich bosses?

2 Comments

From ABC News.

Excerpt:

Treasury Secretary Geithner yesterday declined to answer a key question about the president’s proposed “Buffett Rule”:  How many millionaires and billionaires pay lower tax rates than middle-income families?

The answer: not that many.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has crunched the numbers and found that Warren Buffett and his secretary are the exception to the rule.  For the most part, the wealthy pay a significantly higher percentage of their income in taxes than middle-income workers.

The key numbers:  this year those earning over $1 million will pay, on average, 29.1 percent on federal taxes.  Those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15 percent.

That’s not to say that there aren’t wealthy people who are even better than Buffett at avoiding taxes.  In 2009, 1,470 people with incomes over $1 million a year paid absolutely no taxes.  But that represents less than 1 percent of those earning over $1 million a year.  Raising their taxes may be the fair thing to do, but it will not bring in much revenue.

The Cato Institute has a lovely graph of income tax rates by income earned.

Well, how much revenue can we generate if we take 100% of everything that people making over earn? (Assuming that they keep working solely for the government, of course, which Democrats would assume)

The Tax Foundation explains.

Excerpt:

So taking half of the yearly income from every person making between one and ten million dollars would only decrease the nation’s debt by 1%.  Even taking every last penny from every individual making more than $10 million per year would only reduce the nation’s deficit by 12 percent and the debt by 2 percent.  There’s simply not enough wealth in the community of the rich to erase this country’s problems by waving some magic tax wand.

Finally, to put everything in perspective, think about what would need to be done to erase the federal deficit this year:  After everyone making more than $200,000/year has paid taxes, the IRS would need to take every single penny of disposable income they have left.  Such an act would raise approximately $1.53 trillion.

George W. Bush’s last deficit, with a Republican House and Senate, was 160 billion. But Obama’s deficits are about TEN TIMES that amount.

See:

Obama Budget Deficit 2011
Obama Budget Deficit 2011

But Obama’s current annual budget deficits exceed 1.53 trillion. So taxing the rich at 100% isn’t enough to pay for All of Obama’s spending. That’s how big a hole Barack Obama has got us into.

By the way, Warren Buffett’s blathering about wanting to pay more taxes is a load of garbage. His company is currently in a dispute with the IRS to avoid paying as much as ONE BILLION DOLLARS in back taxes. You would not have heard of this if all you watched was Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on the Comedy Channel, or Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.

Videos

Paul Ryan debates on the relationship between tax rates and job creation

Leave a comment

On the Larry Kudlow show, discussing incentives and economics.

Here’s Paul Ryan on MSNBC talking about the budget and tax rates.

The Democrats on MSNBC really respect him.

And here’s Marsha Blackburn, too – on Fox News.

I’m getting very depressed about this economy, but it makes me happy to see these two fighting for me.