Socialism at its finest from the man who chairs the House Ways & Means Committee:
The venerable New York Democrat finally introduced his $1 trillion legislation Thursday — affectionately called the “mother of all reforms,” since it’s said to be the largest reform of the tax code since 1986.
As expected, Rangel’s proposal would eradicate the alternative minimum tax — a levee expected to hit 24 million middle- and upper-income Americans this year — and cut the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 30.5 percent. It would also expand the child tax credit, standard deduction and earned income-tax credit for low-income families.
The costs will be offset by a 4 percent surtax on taxpayers earning more than $150,000 a year — $200,000 for couples — and by closing various corporate tax “loopholes.”
Another $48 billion will be raised by increasing taxes paid by hedge funds, venture capitalists, private equity managers, and other types of partnerships will also increase from 15 percent to 35 percent and limiting the executives’ ability to defer compensation tax-free offshore.
Congressional Republicans and the White House oppose the tax hikes. And House Republicans shot back immediately calling the bill the “mother of a tax hikes” and “one bad mother.”
“This crushing high tax rate will affect approximately 10 million taxpayers directly — including those who report business income, like small business owners and farmers — but the damage will ripple throughout our economy,” said Rep. Jim McCrery of Louisiana, the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee.
Getting rid of the AMT is great, but not on the backs of others. Reduce spending and lower taxes, then our coffers will fill even more. This was proven with Bush’s tax cuts and can be done again. But as typical, the Democrats wants to take from those who have it to ensure that those who don’t alway depend on them.
Congressman Ryan from Wisconsin has an intriguing alternative but either way federal revenue has increased from 1.7 trillion in 2003 to 2.5 trillion in 2007 while the deficit has been cut in half in 3 years to 162 billion, down from 400 billion in 2004. Tax cuts help the economy, tax raising damages it. Not too hard to figure out.
But we are talking about redistribution Democrats here. All in the village ay?
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I like the no offshore accounts. That’s going to hit Soros hard but most of his money is already offshore.
Tom
You know…all they’d have to do is change the dollar amounts before the tax became effective.
One of the things people don’t realize is that by not increasing the dollar amounts in the various tax % columns, there’s an automatic tax increase due to inflation. I don’t know exactly what the relative numbers are today, but at one time, if you earned under $13,000 and were single, you didn’t pay any tax. They raised the minimum wage to – what…$7 per hour? that’s $14,560 per year. So even if you earn minimum wage, you’re paying taxes. Wonder what the minimum wage was when that $13,000 was set? What if they left all the taxes just as they are, but raised the dollars triggering the % by the COLA percentage each year?
Taxes. What a racket.
I wonder how those people who sat on their hands in the 2006 election feel now?
Have their “principles” been better served by a Democrat Congress?