This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Taxes

  • Obama tax hikes loom

    Remember those “Bush tax cuts for the rich” we heard so much about for eight years? Well, it seems that now that they’re about to expire in the New Year, it’s the poorest working Americans who will suffer the most, according to the Washington Post;

    For most taxpayers, the bulk of the increase would be triggered by the expiration of tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 during the George W. Bush administration. The expiration of President Obama’s payroll tax holiday, which shaved two percentage points off the 6.2 percent Social Security tax, comes in a close second.

    But the lowest earners would be hit hardest by the expiration of tax breaks enacted as part of Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus package, the study found. The stimulus includes a temporary expansion of the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit for working families. And it temporarily bumps up a two-year, $1,800 tax credit for college tuition to four years and $2,500.

    “The fiscal cliff turns out to be quite complicated,” said Donald Marron, director of the Tax Policy Center, the result of “an accumulating snowball of temporary tax provisions.”

    Yeah, not complicated at all by calling them “tax cuts for the rich” when they were really tax cuts for working Americans. Some people who were exempted from paying taxes because of their low wages will have to pay taxes for the first time.

    Just like those stupid Obama ads I see that say that Romney will raise taxes on the middle class while cutting taxes for the richest Americans. There’s not a bit truth in that, either, but you can use the the Bush “tax cuts for the rich” catch phrase as an example of how truthful the Democrats are when they talk about taxes. Like Clinton’s middle class tax cut which became the tax hike on all Americans, even Social Security recipients. Yeah, it turns out that we’re all rich according to Democrats.

  • Bernie Sanders’ blind spot

    This is a headline at Huffington Post today;

    While Social Security may be the “most successful” government program, I don’t think Sanders should be bragging about it since the news last month that the program pays out more than it takes in.

    To keep Social Security’s finances sound in the future I have introduced legislation — identical to a proposal that Obama advocated in 2008 — to apply the payroll tax on incomes above $250,000 a year. Under current law, only earnings up to $110,100 are taxed. The Center for Economic Policy and Research has estimated that applying the Social Security payroll tax on income above $250,000 would only impact the wealthiest 1.4 percent of wage earners.

    That makes complete sense, Bernie, you old commie, tax the people who will never collect a penny of Social Security. That’s not a transfer of wealth or class warfare at all, is it?

    I’ve been haunted by Sanders since I taught ROTC at UVM in Burlington, VT when Sanders was just the funny little carpetbagger communist mayor of Burlington. Who would have guessed that Vermonters would have inflicted him on the rest of us?

    There’s a guy back home who was fired from his job for smoking pot in the parking lot. Now no one will hire him, so he went on welfare, went through the dry out program, still can’t find a job, so he’s on SSI and started before he turned 50. I can’t imagine that he’s the only one like that, but it’s easier to keep people like that on the program and raise taxes on the rich than to make him get a job filling the ketchup baskets at McDs.

    While I’ll admit that, yeah, there’s a need for Social Security, there doesn’t need to be one that takes my money to pay a living wage to people who made bad choices.

  • When will they stop being the “Bush tax cuts”?

    The president has recently called for extending the “Bush Tax Cuts” for lower income Americans – you know, when President Bush cut the Clinton tax hikes back and probably saved the post-9-11 economy. The last of the cuts was more than nine years ago. So, I’m wondering when the president and the media are going to call them the “impending Obama tax hikes” and move past the “Bush tax cuts” phrase. From CNN:

    President Barack Obama revitalized his push for holding down middle-class tax rates Monday, calling on Congress to pass a one-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for people earning less than $250,000 a year.

    In a White House statement delivered while people described as working Americans stood behind him, Obama said his proposal would provide the certainty of no tax increase next year for 98% of Americans.

    Noting that Republicans seek to maintain all of the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003, Obama said both sides therefore agree on extending the lower rates for middle-class families.

    Of course, the one-year extension is nothing more than a campaign ploy, and not preventing the Obama tax hikes on wealthier Americans is just class warfare at it’s essence. We’re supposed to hate on Republicans because they’ll be holding up stopping the imposition of the Obama Tax Hikes on us because of their support for continued lower tax benefits for Americans making over $250k.

    But we didn’t call Bush rollback of the tax burden imposed on us by the previous administration the “Clinton Tax Hikes” so why are we still calling them the “Bush Tax Cuts”? Of course, the answer is that the media and the Democrats for so long told us that they were tax cuts for the rich, even though the current debate proves that lie is just that, since we’re all looking at higher taxes without the benevolence of this president and the Congress.

    A one-year extension won’t help the economy in the long term, though. They need to stop holding the economy and voters hostage and make current tax rates permanent.

  • Their fair share

    Yeah, you rich Americans are expected to pay your fair share, well, unless you rich Americans work for the Obama White House (Investors’ Business Daily link fixed);

    A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 of President Obama’s executive office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. These people working for Mr. Fair Share apparently haven’t paid any share, let alone their fair share.

    Previous reports have shown how well-paid Obama’s White House staff is, with 457 aides pulling down more than $37 million last year. That’s up seven workers and nearly $4 million from the Bush administration’s last year.

    Nearly one-third of Obama’s aides make more than $100,000 with 21 being paid the top White House salary of $172,200, each.

    Raise taxes on the richer Americans, raise healthcare costs on veterans, end COLAs for retirees, so our betters can skip out on paying what they owe.

    Thanks to ROS for the link.

  • Solz doubles down on teh Stupid

    Jon Soltz, the executive director of VetVotes, freshly bathed from his tour of the war against terror, continues on from his blunt point last week about Mitt Romney’s tax returns. Apparently, last week, the meme from the White House was to beat up Romney about not releasing his returns, now his returns weren’t enough for the White House/Soltz’ likings.

    “Particularly disturbing are all of these off-shore accounts. While it seems that he and his accountant decided to pay taxes on those in 2010, what about the years before this campaign? While men and women were putting their lives on the line on the battlefield, and military members and retirees were paying a higher tax rate, was Mitt Romney trying to weasel his way out of paying taxes that care for those troops when they are in the field and come home?”

    Yeah, it’s a veterans’ issue again. He cloaks his language in the DNC’s approved words like “contributions” for “taxes”. Where are Soltz’ tax returns? How much money has he weaseled out of paying. And let’s see how much he’s “contributed” to the war effort. If people are sheltering their money overseas, that means the tax rates here are too high. If you want to bring that money home, cut taxes and spending.

    Will he cut veterans benefits to pay to lower his taxes even more? Given Mitt Romney would like to lower taxes for him and other multi-millionaires like him, it’s a fair question.

    I don’t know how Romney will be able to cut veterans’ benefits any more after Obama gets through with them. Where is VoteVets on the hikes in Tricare instituted by the Obama Administration? And why haven’t we heard VoteVets complain about the lack of a COLA increase for military retirees for three consecutive years?

    Of course, my breath isn’t bated waiting for an answer or REAL support for veterans from Soltz or VoteVets because that might result in a reduction of their “contributions” from MoveOn and the Soros Foundation.

    Thanks to TSO for the link and the title of this post.

  • Naw, this ain’t class warfare at all

    The Washington Post this morning decides that for some reason they’d take some shots at Mitt Romney’s income taxes by publishing a chart from Citizens for Tax Justice who they say “is liberal-leaning but nonpartisan”. Yeah, I could almost imagine the Post calling an organization like the Cato Institute or the Heritage Fountation “right-leaning, but non-partisan”. But here’s the chart, which, you already know shows Romney taxes going down;

    But the cheapest shot is that they still call it “the Bush tax cut for the rich” like you can’t say any of those words without the other in Liberal Land. I seem to remember the whole country in an uproar when the bush tax cuts were about to expire and everyone suddenly realized that everyone’s taxes were going up, not just the rich.

    But, me personally, I hate taxes and I don’t trust anyone else to do my taxes. My taxes hover around 5% of my real income because I take every tax credit I can find. It might go up a few points this year because I used up all of my home improvement tax credits last year.

    The difference between me and the Washington Post, I don’t wish for anyone to pay higher taxes than they do. If Romney legally takes steps to avoid paying taxes, good for him. If he has plan to reduce taxes for the rest of us, good for him again. I’m not jealous because other people pay a lower rate than me, and I’m not jealous if they make more money than me, they probably worked harder at it than I did.

  • A 62 year-old timely poem

    Old Trooper sent us this poem which reminds me of something that is occurring at this moment even though it was written in 1949. I won’t vouch for the accompanying story, but it’s still a good poem. I put it below the fold because it’s a fairly large file;
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  • Yay! Another Obama tax cut!

    Earlier this morning, Old Trooper sent us a link about the Department of Agricuture’s impending Christmas Tree Tax which was $.15 levied on each purchase. The tax would be used to promote the Christmas tree industry – like there’s some Americans who don’t know about Christmas trees yet and that tax would allow the industry to finally reach those ignorant potential consumers.

    Well, now I see from Fox News that that the Obama Administration has swooped in at the last minute and rescued we the informed Christmas tree consumers from the oppressive tax just in time for the season.

    “I can tell you unequivocally that the Obama administration is not taxing Christmas trees. What’s being talked about here is an industry group deciding to impose fees on itself to fund a promotional campaign, similar to how the dairy producers have created the ‘Got Milk?’ campaign,” he said. “That said, USDA is going to delay implementation and revisit this action.”

    So like jobs “saved or created” this will be counted in the President’s “tax cut” math come election season next year I suppose.