by | ARTICLES, BLOG, HYPOCRISY, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
(h/t) pjmedia
With all the reports coming in fast and furiously from different news agencies, here’s a pieced-together timeline of events. The information below is a timeline of events taken from numerous media outlets with their links provided.
Early 2010:
WSJ: The report [Inspector General’s report due out this week] indicates that in 2010 and 2011, some IRS workers weren’t just singling out groups because their names contained certain words, as IRS officials suggested on Friday [May 12], but appeared to be probing for indications of political interests or leanings.
March 2010:
Washington Post: The IRS targeted We the People, Take Back the Country, and 9/12, a group founded by political commentator Glenn Beck, starting around March 2010, according to a TIGTA timeline provided to congressional staff.
Also in 2010:
Jewish Press: the passionately pro-Israel organization Z STREET filed a lawsuit against the IRS, claiming it had been told by an IRS agent that because the organization was “connected to Israel,” its application for tax-exempt status would receive additional scrutiny. This admission was made in response to a query about the lengthy reveiw of Z STREET’s tax exempt status application.
In addition, the IRS agent told a Z STREET representative that the applications of some of those Israel-related organizations have been assigned to “a special unit in the D.C. office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s public policies”
March 2011:
WaPo: The report is being prepared at the request of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which asked in March 2011 for an audit of the IRS’s tax-exempt unit amid complaints from conservative groups who were seeking tax-exempt status.
Mid 2011:
WSJ: The investigation also revealed that a high-ranking IRS official knew as early as mid-2011 that conservative groups were being inappropriately targeted—nearly a year before then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told a congressional committee the agency wasn’t targeting conservative groups.
June 2011
WSJ: According to the report, by June 2011 some IRS specialists were probing applications using the following criteria: “issues include government spending, government debt or taxes; education of the public by advocacy/lobbying to ‘make America a better place to live’; statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run.”
June 29, 2011
AP: 2011: Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, said last week that the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias.
But on June 29, 2011, Lerner learned at a meeting that groups were being targeted, according to the watchdog’s report. At the meeting, she was told that groups with “Tea Party,” `’Patriot” or “9/12 Project” in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report says.
July 2011
WaPo The IRS switched to more generic search criteria in July 2011 due to concerns from senior agency officials, the timeline said.
and
WSJ The report’s timeline indicates that the criteria were changed to be more neutral in July 2011 after Ms. Lerner “raised concerns.” The criteria for heightened scrutiny continued to evolve over the next year or so, even as complaints from tea-party groups—and questions from GOP lawmakers—mounted over IRS inquiries to various groups about their activities.
Late 2011 – Mid 2012
WaPo: The IRS made no mention of targeting conservative groups in five separate responses to congressional inquiries between Nov. 18, 2011, and June 15, 2012, according to the TIGTA timeline.
January 2012
Reuters But then [instruction] changed again in January 2012 to cover “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the constitution and bill of rights, social economic reform/movement,” according to the findings contained in a Treasury Department watchdog report”
March 2,2012
NRO reports on the American Center for Law and Justice’s (ACLJ) interaction with tea party groups which had been receiving missives from the IRS to find out more about their activities
March 2012
WSJ The IRS also said the report reflects that “IRS senior leadership was not aware of this level of specific details” at the time of a March 2012 hearing where Mr. Shulman denied any targeting of conservative groups. Mr. Shulman, who no longer works for the IRS, declined to comment”
April – May 2012
WSJ Letters from Ms. Lerner in April and May 2012 responding to questions by Republican lawmakers made no mention of the problems that had surfaced in the IRS unit.
According to the draft report, on April 24 and 25 of last year, officials in Ms. Lerner’s office were reviewing “troubling questions” that had been asked of organizations, including “the names of donors.”
Ms. Lerner’s April 26 {2012} letter to Mr. Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that “there are instances where donor information may be needed…such as when the application presents possible issues of…private benefit.”
May 2012
Reuters The criteria for scrutiny were revised again to cover a variety of tax-exempt groups “with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention (raising questions as to exempt purpose and/or excess private benefit),” according to a TIGTA timeline included in the findings.
Other Factoids:
WaPo: Lerner said that about 75 groups were selected for extra inquiry — including, in some cases, improper requests for the names of donors, but added that the targeting was not driven by partisan motives.
AP: The report also said that the IRS asked “unnecessary questions” of conservative groups, according to the aide.The IRS’ Lerner said that about 300 groups were singled out for additional review, with about one-quarter scrutinized because they had “tea party” or “patriot” somewhere in their applications. She said 150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked, though some withdrew their applications.
The Anatomy of an IRS Process:
The Richmond Tea Party has been blogging about their interactions with the IRS since they began their IRS status request on December 28, 2009. Included in their reporting has dates and document links. You can read the overview here: and the chronicles of the Richmond Tea Party here
As more information comes out, I will update this timeline accordingly.
UPDATE: David Plouffe, former WH advisor, suggests: “What IRS did dumb and wrong. Impt to note GOP groups flourished last 2 elections, overwhelming Ds. And they will use this to raise more $” REALLY?s
FLASHBACK: Obama jokes in 2009 about the IRS auditing people — and a thoughtful responsive essay in the WSJ and a chilling prophecy: Should the IRS come to be seen as just a bunch of enforcers for whoever is in political power, the result would be an enormous loss of legitimacy for the tax system.” Indeed.
by | BLOG, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TAXES
Shhh! Don’t tell anyone your taxes are going up!
A couple of weeks ago, I spoke at a gathering of higher-income earners. The bulk of the discussion was a comparison of what this bracket of folks just paid in 2012 vs what they will pay in higher taxes in 2013. Some of those taxes had to do with the implementation of Obamacare and the new taxes associated with it.
However, many do not realize that Obamacare taxes, (levies created to help pay for the legislation) do not only affect high income earners. With the report out yesterday that 42% of Americans don’t realize that Obamacare is the law of the land, it is certain that many also don’t know that there are taxes — besides the “penalty” — that will affect many average Americans.
Say what you will about ATR; however, they have been one of the few organizations who have chronicled continuously since Obamacare was written, the various taxes that will be/have been imposed at various stages in the game during this Obamacare roll-out. From the perspective of a CPA like myself, having a list compiled together is very useful. Now that tax season is over, it is never to early to think about next year.
Below is a summary of new Obamacare taxes just for 2013,. These will affect (and probably shock) many Americans when they file their taxes next year.
“Obamacare Surtax on Investment Income: A new, 3.8 percent surtax on investment income earned in households making at least $250,000 ($200,000 single). This tax hike results in the following top tax rates on investment income:
Capital Gains: 23.8%
Dividends: 43.4%
Other* 43.4%
*Other unearned income includes (for surtax purposes) gross income from interest, annuities, royalties, net rents, and passive income in partnerships and Subchapter-S corporations. It does not include municipal bond interest or life insurance proceeds, since those do not add to gross income. It does not include active trade or business income, fair market value sales of ownership in pass-through entities, or distributions from retirement plans. (Bill: Reconciliation Act; Page: 87-93)
Obamacare Medicare Payroll Tax Increase:
Pre-Obamacare:
First $200,000, ($250,000 Married) Employer/Employee: 1.45%/1.45%; 2.9% self-employed
All Remaining Wages Employer/Employee: 1.45%/1.45%; 2.9% self employed
Obamacare:
First $200,000, ($250,000 Married) Employer/Employee: 1.45%/1.45%; 2.9% self-employed
All Remaining Wages Employer/Employee: 1.45%/2.35%; 3.8% self-employed
(Bill: PPACA, Reconciliation Act; Page: 2,000-2,003; 87-93)
Obamacare Medical Device Tax:
Medical device manufacturers employ 409,000 people in 12,000 plants across the country. Obamacare imposes a new 2.3 percent excise tax on gross sales – even if the company does not earn a profit in a given year. In addition to killing small business jobs and impacting research and development budgets, this will make everything from pacemakers to artificial hips more expensive. (Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,980-1,986)
Obamacare High Medical Bills Tax:
Before Obamacare, Americans facing high medical expenses were allowed a deduction to the extent that those expenses exceeded 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI). Obamacare now imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI. Therefore, Obamacare not only makes it more difficult to claim this deduction, it widens the net of taxable income. According to the IRS, 10 million families took advantage of this tax deduction in 2009, the latest year of available data. Almost all are middle class. The average taxpayer claiming this deduction earned just over $53,000 annually. ATR estimates that the average income tax increase for the average family claiming this tax benefit will be $200 – $400 per year. To learn more about this tax, click here. (Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,994-1,995)
Obamacare Flexible Spending Account Tax:
The 30 – 35 million Americans who use a pre-tax Flexible Spending Account (FSA) at work to pay for their family’s basic medical needs face a new Obamacare cap of $2,500. This will squeeze $13 billion of tax money from Americans over the next ten years. (Before Obamacare, the accounts were unlimited under federal law, though employers were allowed to set a cap.) Now, a parent looking to sock away extra money to pay for braces will find themselves quickly hitting this new cap, meaning they would have to pony up some or all of the cost with after-tax dollars.
Needless to say, this tax will especially impact middle class families.
There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. Nationwide there are several million families with special needs children and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education. This Obamacare tax provision will limit the options available to these families. (Bill: PPACA; Page: 2,388-2,389)”
So, while Obama claims he wants the wealthy to “pay their fair share”, he doesn’t tell you that he also expects millions of average-income Americans to do so — in order to pay for Obamacare. Unfortunately for all of us, as I wrote about earlier, Obamacare levies (many of which are still to come after 2014) still won’t pay for all of Obamacare in through 2023.
In that regard, we are certain to expect more taxes in the coming decade. Taxes are the government’s never-ending solution to raise more revenue (though we are on track to raise record revenue this year). How else are we expected to finance this brilliant, sinking ship?
by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, OBAMA, POLITICS
Four years without a budget — it’s delicious!
April 29, 2013 marks four years without a true operating budget for our country. 1461 days and running. In the realm of budget history, April 29 is an historic day.
First, an interesting juxtaposition exists between April 29, 1909 and April 29, 2009. On April 29, 1909, the world’s biggest Superpower — Great Britain — introduced the “People’s Budget”, which is famously noted for being the first budget in the history of Britain with the “expressed intent of redistributing wealth” among the British people. A century later, on April 29, 2009, the world’s biggest Superpower — the United States — passed its last operating budget, the first budget in the history of the United States with the expressed intent to run a trillion dollar deficit.
Back in Great Britain, it took both a full year and the threat of adding additional Liberal “peers” (seats) in Parliament by the British King to garner enough votes in Britain to actually pass the “People’s Budget”. This ultimately succeeded exactly a year later on April 29, 2010. Winston Churchill’s biographer observed that this budget, which Churchill supported, was a “revolutionary concept”.
Here in the United States, it has taken Congress a full four years of continuing resolutions, Supercommittees, Fiscal Cliffs, Sequestrations and trillion dollar deficit spending, and still we have failed to pass a new budget for the people of the United States.
Of course, there have been budget attempts. President Obama, for his part, submitted a budget late to Congress every year except for 2010. His last two budgets prior to this year’s submission, however, were so outrageous that not even one Democrat from his own Party either year would sponsor or vote for his budget proposals.
In 2010, the Democrat-led Senate chose not to offer their budget plan on the Senate floor. The GOP-led House of Republicans passed a budget for $1.2 trillion.
In 2011, the GOP-lead House passed a budget for FY2012, cutting $6 trillion in comparison to Obama’s budget, which failed 0-97 in the Senate. The Senate did not offer their own budget that year. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that would be “foolish”, while Senator Schumer remarked ““To put other budgets out there is not the point.”
In 2012, the GOP-lead House passed a budget for FY2013, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced in February that the Senate would not consider a budget yet again. The House this time voted on President Obama’s $3.2 trillion budget, which failed 0-414.
Now in 2013, both the GOP-lead House and the Democrat- led Senate passed their own budgets for FY2014 (the first for the Democrats in four years) President Obama presented his budget 2 months late on April 10, totaling $46.5 trillion over the next 10 years without ever balancing. It is also noted for even more taxes on the wealthy to pay for more social programs, a generous helping of wealth redistribution. But nothing has been agreed upon by Congress.
This past Saturday, President Obama described the “pain” of the current operating scenario from sequestration, and further urged,
“There is only one way to truly fix the sequester: by replacing it before it causes further damage…A couple weeks ago, I put forward a budget that replaces the next several years of these dumb cuts with smarter cuts; reforms our tax code to close wasteful special interest loopholes; and invests in things like education, research, and manufacturing that will create new jobs right now.”
Sounds similar to the threats of the British King used to pass the “People’s Budget”.
So here we are, 4 years without an operating budget for our nation. We also now consistently have yearly, trillion dollar deficits on top of the additional, higher taxes. Many will likely observe that — to borrow from their UK counterparts a century ago — this budget status, this new modus operandi for the United States is also a “revolutionary concept” for the land of the free and the home of the brave.
by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, OBAMA
John Steele Gordon’s recent Op-Ed in the WSJ opened with following observation: “The question of how to fairly and equitably tax capital gains has been a political problem since the modern personal-income tax was adopted in 1913”. Being a business/financial historian, he gives an adequate overview of the history of capital gains and how it has reached its present state. But because he is not an economist or CPA, he disingenously presents a one-sided treatment of the issue of capital gains and “carried interest” without actually exploring the merits of the tax. The result is that Gordon sounds like sour grapes on the wealthy and ultimately, he is wholly unable to answer his own question.
Gordon puts forth the notion that “carried interest” is a “cause of much recent controversy”. This much is true, in that the recently defeated Baucus/Grassley bill was attempting to “fix” carried interest because of a seemingly unfair low-tax capital gains income rate.
This is true. But so what? It’s not as though the income isn’t from capital gains. If the law was changed so that the operators were taxed at ordinary income only, it wouldn’t get rid of those gains — it would simply mean that the investors get the benefit of the capital gains lost by the operators. This fixes nothing.
Ultimately such a change, which is again being explored in Obama’s proposed budget, will merely shift the tax benefit from the operators to the investors. This takes a tax break away from people who are working for a living and gives it to millionaires who are just investing – pure hypocrisy from liberals who wish to inflict additional taxes on the wealthy at every step. It make compensation deals for hedge fund operators a bit more complicated (i.e. requiring more assistance from accountants), but the amount of compensation stays revenue neutral.
Therefore, it takes a whopping dose of either incompetence or disingenuousness from Gordon and other carried interest critics to look at the hedge fund industry and proclaim that the hedge fund operator “carried interest” is the problem that needs to be addressed.
by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, OBAMA
Peter Ferrara pens a fantastic Op-Ed in Forbes this morning. He documents the myriad inaccuracies claimed by the Obama Administration regarding his new budget, the staggering amount of spending contained therein, and the additional taxes to be levied. He also does some cost comparison to Ryan’s budget and dispels the myth of the tax cut vs tax credit, (a point I have made many, many times as a CPA), and discusses the problems with Obama’s treatment of entitlement reform.
Some of the highlights include:
- No reduction in spending, even net reduction from expected increase in spending.
- Cancels sequestration
- “Obama’s budget proposes to spend $46.5 trillion overall over the next 10 years, even more than the Senate Democrat budget, the highest government spending in world history
- “Obama’s budget also proposes $1.1 trillion in additional tax increases, on top of the $1 trillion in tax increases already going into effect this year under Obamacare, and the $600 billion in tax increases from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for them in January”
- Raises taxes on the middle class
- The “Buffett Rule” doubles the top capital gains tax rate from when Obama entered office — making it the 4th highest rate on the globe
- Explains the difference between tax credits and tax cuts — and how most of Obama’s so-called “cuts” are credits, which is government spending run through the tax code.
- “His own budget admits that after 10 years, the deficit would still be $439 billion, still about the highest in history before President Obama. Congressman Paul Ryan’s House Republican budget, in sharp contrast, would balance the federal budget within 10 years, with no tax increases, as scored by CBO”.
- “President Obama’s budget claims to reduce federal deficits by $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years. But that only results from calculating the effect on deficits from an “adjusted baseline” used by the Obama budget, and not the CBO baseline”.
- “Obama’s budget assumes a suddenly booming economy to result from these policies, with real GDP growth in 2016, the end of his second term, at 3.6%, more than four times the average of his first term”
- He assumes that there will not be another recession within the next 10 years
- Obama budget will “only reduce Social Security spending increases by one-fourth of one percent. Even with Obama’s “reform,” his own budget projects Social Security spending to soar over the next decade by 85%, from $768 billion last year to $1.427 trillion in 2023.
So what is the point of the President issuing a budget proposal now?
The point is to simply posture for all those low information, Twitter voters in the 2014 elections, who will hear only from all the Democrat Party propagandists at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and MSNBC and brethren. They will hear only about President Obama’s “spending cuts,” his grand, compromising, entitlement reforms, and how he is fighting for the middle class, with declining median incomes throughout his Administration, for the poor, with record, soaring poverty, and for “equality,” even as inequality has actually risen throughout his Administration. Is this generation of Americans in the process of proving America’s more than 200 year experiment with democracy a failure”
Ferrara analysis is spot on. I urge you to read the piece in its entirety.
by | BLOG, OBAMA, POLITICS
Obama asked for a gun vote during his State of the Union Address. He got it.
Not much more to say about that.
The “Manchin-Toomey” amendment failed in the Senate today on a 54-46 vote. It aimed expand background checks gun shows and to Internet sales.
Republicans who voted “yes” (alphabetically):
Maine Sen. Susan Collins
Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk
Arizona Sen. John McCain
Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey
Democrats who voted “no” (alphabetically):
Montana Sen. Max Baucus
Alaska Sen. Mark Begich
North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp
Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor
Nevada Sen. Harry Reid (It is surmised that Reid voted no for procedural reasons in order for Democrats to bring up the provision at a later date)
Update: Obama is blathering on now like a petulant child who lost.
by | BLOG, ECONOMY, OBAMA
In preparation for a talk to a group of financial people, I had to put together some numbers regarding President Obama’s “little bit more” that he has asked “the wealthiest among us” to pay. So I calculated the additional federal income taxes a high earner will pay in 2013 vs what one would have paid on the same income for 2012,
The increases are caused by 1) the increase in rates from the expiration of Bush era tax rates, and 2) the new 3.8% Obamacare tax on investment income of high income earners.
For someone making $1million, federal taxes go up by $55,700
For someone making $5million, federal taxes go up by $405,900
For someone making $10 million, federal taxes go up by $834,800
These numbers assume that the income is substantially all qualified dividends and long-term capital gains. But the increases are still approximately 90% of these amounts above if half of the income is earned income.
What’s worthwhile to note is that those numbers do not include anything from Obama’s budget proposal released last week. That proposal includes more hits to the wealthy, such as:
— implementing the “Buffett Rule” (which is no more than code for elimination of the special rate for qualified dividends and long-term capital gains)
— adding a 28% cap on tax deductions and other write-offs,
— adding a cap of $3 million on IRA and other tax-deferred retirement savings, and
— eliminating carried interest treatment for private equity, venture capital and other financial managers
Now, the president and his ardent supporters, such as Warren Buffet, Gene Sperling, Paul Krugman and other pseudo-economists, have repeatedly pushed forth the notion that the people who make America move financially — the investment bankers and equity partners — are all okay with having their taxes raised. And they further state that these substantial tax increases will not impact the amount that these individuals will invest.
Quite the contrary! I can tell you that with respect to my clients, there is a direct relationship between the amount of money they pay in taxes and the amount of money they invest.
My clients tend to invest the money left over after they have paid their (substantial) living costs and taxes. If taxes go up, the amount left to invest goes down.
There are those who will argue that “I don’t have $10 million or $5 million or even $1 million. Why should I care?” And “They have lots of money anyway — what’s the big deal?”
I submit to you that in making a decision as to whether to invest in a high risk start-up, whether as an individual or as a private equity decision-maker, the anticipated after-tax return is key. Higher tax rates therefore reduce the number of start-ups and other investments that get funded. The key to a healthy economy is investment, not consumptive spending. That is Economics IA. Hurt the investors, those with capital, and everyone is hurt.
One final thing to remember is the Obamacare effect. Remember, we were promised that Obamacare would not add one dollar to the deficit. Implicit in that was a multitude of new taxes such as the medical device tax of 2.3%.
The latest revised numbers from the CBO peg the costs of Obamacare to be $1.85 trillion through 2023. At the same time, the Heritage Foundation calculated that the 18 new taxes created for Obamacare would only raise $836 billion through that same period. Clearly, Obamacare is in a financial death spiral.
In sum, continuing to bleed the wealthy a “little bit more” (for Obamacare or other government spending) is only going to continue to hurt our economy. The problem with socialism is that we eventually run out of other people’s money.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ECONOMY, OBAMA, POLITICS
There was a lot of discussion this past weekend on the Sunday talk show circuit regarding the March Jobs Report released last Friday. Only 88,000 jobs were added in March. Compared to February, which added 268,000 jobs, this is a 180,000 drop. Actually, more like a plummet: economists had figured more than twice that number would be added. However, this number was the lowest jobs addition since in nine months (June 2012).
Why was this one so terrible? The pundit debate this weekend was puzzled and trying to discern the cause — Was it sequestration? The 2% payroll tax? The weather? Other? Why this anomaly when prior reports of the last few months were good. (Translation: how do we spin this atrocity?)
Here’s the truth. We haven’t had a good jobs report in nearly 5 years.
Yes, we are adding jobs, but they are not enough. We are barely adding enough jobs to cover the natural population growth. That is currently calculated (for this month) to be roughly 106,000 jobs in order to keep pace with population. In fact, this most recent report didn’t even cover that.
Yes, we are going down in unemployment (from 7.7% – 7.6%)– but not because we are adding jobs. It’s because less people are actively looking for a job. The Labor Department noted that 496,000 Americans stopped working or looking for work. That’s nearly half-a-million in one month.
This jobs report just compounds nearly 5 years of Obama’s policies. From Obamacare burdens, to increased regulation, to higher taxes, we are no where near a recovery, and really haven’t been.
If you are interested in a decent jobs calculator, the Atlanta Fed has a neat little one set up that gives you all kinds of data, percentages, etc in a multitude of categories. You can click here to play with it.
For instance, if you wanted to get the unemployment rate down to 6% over the next 12 months (a year to achieve this rate), the average monthly change in payroll employment needed to achieve the target unemployment rate would be … 303,141 jobs a month. When was the last time those numbers were consistently that high? Years…
As you can see, We haven’t been there with job creation in a long time. With Obama’s policies continuing to undermine our country and small businesses, the recovery will be continue to be excruciatingly slow and disappointing.
Crossposted at alanjoelny.com
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, FREEDOM, OBAMA, TAXES
In another class-warfare move, The Hill reports on the latest Obama gimmick: Obama’s budget includes a cap on IRAs and other retirement accounts.
The White House apparently has a problem with how much money might be in your retirement account(s).
The senior administration official said that wealthy taxpayers can currently “accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.”
The administration official then proceeds to define their level of reasonable retirement: $205,000/year, or around $3 million. Tax-deferred retirement accounts — like IRAs — will be prohibited from containing more than that.
The government is just salivating over the thought of tax-deferred money just sitting around. By capping the amount allowed in such an account, it keeps money from being deferred (hint: taxed now) so it can go directly in the government coffers. “The proposal would save around $9 billion over a decade, a senior administration official said, while also bringing more fairness to the tax code”.
So, what’s really going on?
$9 billion over a decade. That’s $900 million in revenue a year for 10 years. When that amount is checked against the more than $1 trillion in deficit per year the last several years, the suggestion that capping retirement accounts is part of a grand plan to reduce the deficit is insulting.
It’s not about deficit reduction. It’s about class warfare and need. The White House cites this measure as a way to bring more “fairness” in the tax code. Fairness? Restricting any American taxpayer how much money they can save for retirement is not fair. Pre-determining for any American taxpayer what is “needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving” is not fair.
They use the word need to get what they want. William Pitt the Younger sagely put it, “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
So it’s not about deficit reduction and it’s not about any real fairness either. It is about a body politic with a rapacious appetite. First it determines your needs, and then goes after the wealthy because the wealthy have what it needs (money for more spending).
As I have written before, the question of additional taxes on the wealthy is really a liberty and equity issue, impinging on the very entrepreneurial environment that made our country great. At the heart of any monetary decisions should be free will, not free money (for the government).
In a free country such as ours, it is entirely my judgment as to whether or not I want to work hard and try to earn a lot of money (or not), and/or save my money (or not). It is unequivocally immoral that our government – or any government – should feel it has the place and authority to come along after I earned my success and basically declare that because I have done well for myself, I should have to now pay more to that government. This is legal plunder.
Why should I, who have proven myself to be successful (according to the government) have to give my success over to people who have proven to grossly mismanage our country’s finances?
This is a true and concerted effort to keep the wealthy less wealthy. It a disincentive against saving and a punishment for success. Why bother to work hard, to be self-sufficient, if the government can potentially decide, willy-nilly, that it needs more money than you?
by | OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TAXES
Spring Issue of Health Matrix, the Journal of Law-Medicine out of Case Western, had a great piece on Obamacare and the legality and eligibility of certain tax credits. The abstract is below. I advise that you read the piece in its entirety. (more…)
