The taxman cometh

Whenever I hear a Democrat talking about tax cuts for middleclass workers, I remember Bill Clinton’s 1992 promise to cut taxes for working families. Funny thing was, when he got into office, he announced it was too hard for him to cut our taxes so he raised them. Finally, in his second term, our only “tax cut” was a per child tax credit of $500 for children under seventeen. It gave us a whopping $75/child/year in real dollars, political rhetoric aside. Yippee!

Well, now tax cuts seem to be popular again and Obama is promising what he calls tax cuts, but it’s really just more income redistribution away from working families. Peter Ferrera writes in this morning’s Wall Street Journal;

He proposes to raise marginal rates for just about every federal tax. He also proposes a raft of tax credits that taxpayers can receive if they engage in various government-specified activities.

Moreover, the tax credits would mostly go to those who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. His trick is to make the tax credits “refundable.” Thus, if the tax credit is for $1,000, but the taxpayer would otherwise only pay $200 in taxes, the government would write a check to the taxpayer for $800. If the taxpayer pays nothing in federal income taxes, the government would pay him the whole $1,000.

Such credits are not tax cuts. Indeed, they should be called The New Tax Welfare. In effect, Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand a slew of government spending programs that are disguised as tax credits. The spending on these programs is then subtracted from the total tax burden, in order to make the claim that his tax plan is a net tax cut overall.

Income redistribution plain and simple. Obama plans to raise marginal tax rates and give the money to people who don’t pay taxes. It’s Obama buying votes. George Bush moved millions of low income workers off of the tax rolls by actually lowering marginal – that’s aid to low income workers, not paying them a couple of bucks to remain low income workers. And the increases in the marginal rates;

The top individual income tax rate, for example, would be increased by 13%, to 39.6%; the next-highest rate would be raised to 36%. The top rates on capital gains and dividends would rise by a third, to 20%

The Social Security payroll tax would be raised between 16% to 32% for families making over $250,000 a year. This means that the real returns these people get from their lifetime payments into the retirement program will be driven below 0%…

So all of those years you’ve been paying into Social Security will net you a less than 0% return. The benefit all along is that you funded social programs…failed social programs that accomplished nothing in the long term. Yet Democrats still want to call our taxes “contributions” and “investments”.

But the good news is that, if you’re tired of watching your money flow straight from your paycheck into Washington’s pockets, Obama has a solution for you;

Obama will ensure that the IRS uses the information it already gets from banks and employers to give taxpayers the option of pre-filled tax forms to verify, sign and return. Experts estimate that the Obama proposal will save Americans up to 200 million total hours of work and aggravation and up to $2 billion in tax preparer fees.

Yup, you can just let the IRS do your taxes for you. I mean, we can trust the IRS to do us right, right?

Cigar Mike at Babalu Blog compares Obama to Castro;

 When fifo and his pals took over Cuba, they brought fairness to their system by making everyone poor and miserable. 50 some years later, in the US election of 2008, an interesting contrast between the candidates. McCain and the GOP want everybody to be rich. This infuriates the left as they loathe success. They loathe when someone makes it big on their own. The left is like a drug pusher. They want you to get hooked on their handouts so they can control you.

Well, control your votes until they own you.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Politics