• Tag Archives taxes

  • Taxes: President Obama’s budget would hit middle class

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    President Barack Obama rarely misses a chance to call on upper-income Americans to pay more taxes.

    But his annual budget is doing more to target middle-class taxpayers than any of his previous proposals, calling for caps on deductions, changes in the way some tax benefits are calculated and a big hike in cigarette taxes — all proposals that would make middle-class Americans pay more.

    Obama’s budget is still being picked apart on Capitol Hill, but his openness to an even wider range of tax increases will frame the coming fiscal debates.

    “It’s a new paradigm,” said Bob Williams, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “This is the first budget he’s presented that has proposed raising taxes on people below the $250,000 thresholds he’s maintained over the past five years.”

    It also has some Democrats worried, especially those who represent districts where their constituents make a good salary but don’t see themselves as rich stand to get hit.

    “It’s a concern,” Rep. Allyson Schwartz, a Pennsylvania Democrat who represents some of Philadelphia’s suburbs, told POLITICO in reference to Obama’s proposed deduction cap. “For many people, the mortgage tax deduction is your biggest deduction. It’s very significant. And just as the housing market is coming back, there’s a question about the timing of that.”

    Republicans are lapping up the proposals as evidence — despite Obama’s rhetoric — the administration won’t spare the middle class from higher taxes.

    “The president keeps breaking his campaign pledge to not tax the middle class — first with his health care law and now with these tax hikes in his budget,” Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top GOP member on the Finance Committee, told POLITICO. “As I’ve said before, when it comes to this White House and its penchant for wanting to raise taxes, everyone — including those middle-class families the president says he wants to help — needs to watch their wallets.”

    Full article: http://www.politico. … kes-90469.html?hp=f2


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  • The absurdities of the income tax

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    There is some finite cost to defending the borders, running a court system, and administering “justice.” For those who believe that government should do more (like conservatives and liberals), there is likewise a finite cost for building roads, running healthcare programs and taking care of the poor. That cost doesn’t change significantly overnight or even from year to year.

    But the income tax doesn’t reflect this. If productivity and therefore incomes double due to some new technology, the amount of money owed to the government doubles, even though there are less poor people, more private sector “infrastructure” projects and less crime (crime goes up during recessions, down during booms). The more productive Americans are, the bigger and more oppressive a government they get.

    Talk about a bad incentive.

    via The absurdities of the income tax


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  • MARYLAND GOVERNOR TAXES RAIN

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Maryland Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley has instituted a tax on citizens for the amount of rain that falls on their property.

    The tax, officially known as a “storm water management fee,” will be enforced in nine of the state’s counties. The state legislature passed it in 2012 purportedly to “raise revenue to cleanup [sic] the Chesapeake Bay,” according to MarylandReporter.com.

    Former 2012 GOP U.S. Senate candidate Dan Bongino bashes the tax in a Wednesday afternoon press release. The law “requires individuals, businesses, and even charitable organizations and houses of worship to pay a tax based on the amount of rain that falls on their property and the ‘impervious surfaces’ on their land,” he says.

    The tax, mandated by the EPA and enforced locally, will be calculated “through satellite surveillance of your property,” the statement claims.

    Bongino blasts “out of touch political aristocrats in Maryland will do anything to diminish your economic liberty and starve your wallet while padding theirs.”

    According to the conservative organization Change Maryland, the rain tax will cost Marylanders about $300 million annually.

    Full article: http://www.breitbart … -governor-taxes-rain


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