American Republic Online

Barak Obama has REPEATEDLY stated that he will “not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000″, but if you’re above that 250k “rich” line - watch out!  Lets take a look at how this is a flat out LIE.  Obama has repeatedly voted against extending/making permanent the Bush Tax Credits because they are “for the rich”.  His current position is that he will let those credits that expire in 2009 & 2010 as they only benefit the rich.  Let’s see how much more taxes you’ll pay without “raising taxes”. Because merely “letting tax credits expire” and reverting to “older” -cough- higher -cough- tax rates isn’t “raising taxes” - its different.  Well its different verbage… too bad its effects are exactly the same.

1. The Child Tax Credit will return to $500 from the current $1000.  Tax Increase: $500 per child.

2. The death tax after being slowly phased out to make the transition easier for the government it will jump back to 55%.  While taxing inheritance seems like a good way to “get the rich”, it actually tends to hurt family businesses -like farmers- the most.  The dastardly rich, you see, spend tens of thousands of dollars on estate planners (both lawyers and accountants) but shield their millions from most of this taxation through trusts, off shore investments, etc. Tax Increase: varies.

3. The Marriage Penalty will return for all income levels.  This “penalty” is the fact that in dual income homes (most of America these days), couples end up paying a higher amount of taxes than they would if they were still single and paying their taxes individually.  A “fair” tax system that cares about the “working man” (and working woman) would want to tax people the same if they are single or married.  Tax Increase: varies but often several thousand dollars.

Read the rest of this entry »

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher has shot onto the national scene and captured (threatened?) an election with a simple question.  Before you believe all the hype in the chopped up videos from both sides you should check out the full video for yourself (it should be around 5 minutes).

Two significant issues have emerged from the now famous meeting with Joe.  First -most importantly- is how it highlights Obama’s tax plan.  Second, is the aftermath reaction to the now famous socialist slip.

OBAMA: …If your revenue is above 250…

The majority of people are missing the fact that Obama is talking about small business REVENUE not profit. Total sales before you pay your employees, rent, materials cost, etc… NOT the cash going into your pocket as the owner after you’ve paid all your bills.  I keep hearing people talk about $250k paychecks of these owners when that’s not what he’s talking about at all.  Just looking at the payroll expenses of a mom and pop whatever with more than 5-8 employees and you quickly exceed 250k. Read the rest of this entry »

Just a friendly reality check for those believing the lie that Bush’s tax cuts helped the rich and hurt the poor.  Sorry, the numbers don’t lie. We know, sometimes the truth hurts… the liberal world view.

Washington is teeing up “the rich” for a big tax hike next year, as a way to make them “pay their fair share.” Well, the latest IRS data have arrived on who paid what share of income taxes in 2006, and it’s going to be hard for the rich to pay any more than they already do. The data show that the 2003 Bush tax cuts caused what may be the biggest increase in tax payments by the rich in American history.

The nearby chart shows that the top 1% of taxpayers, those who earn above $388,806, paid 40% of all income taxes in 2006, the highest share in at least 40 years. The top 10% in income, those earning more than $108,904, paid 71%. Barack Obama says he’s going to cut taxes for those at the bottom, but that’s also going to be a challenge because Americans with an income below the median paid a record low 2.9% of all income taxes, while the top 50% paid 97.1%. Perhaps he thinks half the country should pay all the taxes to support the other half.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Wall Street Journal has a piece that shows that even though food prices are at all time highs, farms are still a great way to spread around some political love:

We can’t wait to hear how Members of Congress explain their vote this week for the new $300 billion farm bill. At a time when Americans are squeezed at the grocery store, they will now see more of their taxes flow to the very farmers profiting from these high food prices.

This year farm income is expected to reach an all-time high of $92.3 billion, an increase of 56% in two years, making growers perhaps the most undeserving welfare recipients in American history. But that won’t stop this bill from passing the House and Senate by wide margins. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was once a farm subsidy skeptic, but she now has some 30 freshman Democrats from battleground rural districts to protect. So more than $10 billion a year in giveaways to agribusiness is a necessary taxpayer sacrifice to keep her majority.

Read the rest of this entry »

That’s right since leaving the White House the Clintons have sure found a lot of GREEN. They couple’s recently released tax returns show that they have made $109,200,000.00 since 2007. That’s an average of $15.6 Million per year. Which makes you wonder if Hillary has her fingers crossed when gives campaign speeches about how she’s going to stop the evil rich or when she explains how she can empathize with the poor and downtrodden in this country.

Something I’ve always wondered: if the Big Wig Democrats actually believed the things told to the adoring masses, why don’t they donate their own money to the government? I mean it’s a widely held democratic belief that the rich are “bad” and can “afford” to give more of their wealth to the government… so where is the leading by example? I think this question could be asked of any multi-millionaire Democrat, (I’m looking at you Hollywood) but particularly a leader of said political movement. If the government is the best method to more justly/correctly/fairly distribute the money that the rich don’t need to help those that do need…. doesn’t it follow that wealthy politicians (that claim such beliefs) should just give the portion of wealth that they don’t need to the government? I mean sure raise taxes as soon as you can, but you don’t have to wait to help the masses with your money - right? Right?
Read the rest of this entry »

This looks promising:

A U.S. Treasury report on ways to cut corporate taxes will include discussion of a national sales tax, a senior Treasury official told CNBC.

The U.S. currently has no national sales tax, also known as a value added tax, or VAT, though many states do. The tax would be one option to help offset revenue lost from lowering corporate taxes. The report is due in the coming weeks.

Of course, a sales tax is not the same thing as a VAT tax, but it’s encouraging that the government is recognizing that we can’t keep taxing business as much as we do and expect them to stick around (or even incorporate here). Note this, it’s important (emphasis added):

But the Treasury document will also discuss cutting corporate taxes and not offsetting them because, the official said, of the urgency to bring U.S. rates in line with competing nations. Both developed and developing nations are cutting corporate taxes to the point where the U.S. rate is no longer competitive, the official said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Warren Buffett has issued a challenge to his fellow billionaires:

“I’ll bet a million dollars against any member of the Forbes 400 who challenges me that the average (federal tax rate including income and payroll taxes) for the Forbes 400 will be less than the average of their receptionists.”  

I don’t think I’d take that bet.  As Phillip Ruffin points out, “He is forgetting about the 55% estate tax at death that goes along with making the money…”  and with that it is probably more than the receptionists’ combined lifetime earnings.  However, Buffett makes a very good point: the very rich don’t really pay taxes.  It comes down to a pesky little thing that politicians don’t really bring up.  The whole “raise taxes on the rich” really means “raise taxes on the high income earners.” You see, our system of taxation is based on income, not wealth.  Once you reach a certain amount of wealth, you tend to not bring in as much income, and as a result tend not to pay much income taxes.  It is a fine line, but a big difference.  So when politicians promise to raise taxes on the rich, they are really raising taxes on those in higher income brackets.  It really has little to do with the really really rich.  When they point to people like Paris Hilton and Bill Gates and say we need to raise taxes on the rich, they do so with a wink.

On the other hand, there is a way to better tax these super rich: the Fair Tax (yup, you knew this was coming).  You can tax every single dollar they spend, without having to worry about all the crazy different ways they keep from paying income taxes.  That is, if taxing the rich like crazy is what you’re really after…

Via the Instapundit:

A Google Earth map of where pork barrel spending goes:

If the Democrats have their way,

“We would actually have for more people higher tax rates than what we had under Jimmy Carter” is the way Lawrence Lindsey, former director of President Bush’s National Economic Council, described to me what might happen if the tax reform bill from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel ever became law.

So says James Pethokoukis. It would seem that they think the White House will inevitably be blue come January, 2009. I have little doubt that they will try their hardest to bring taxes back up. However, the allusion to Carter raises an interesting thought: what happened after Carter? Reagan Revolution anyone? This follows a similar thought I commented on a couple weeks ago:

If [Thompson] loses the election (or nomination for that matter) it would be on principle: he stuck to his guns. Or, as Henry Clay once said, “I’d rather be right than president.” And then if a Democrat wins and promotes a “progressive” agenda [or raises taxes like crazy], he can point out his unflinching conservative principles, and float to a win in 2012.

Read the rest of this entry »