Tag Archives: taxes

Lies of the Progressive-Democratic Party Politicians

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Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and President Joe Biden (D) tout the just passed (I ass-u-me; I’m writing this on Sunday morning) Build Reduced Back Act as not raising taxes on Americans with incomes less than $400k per year. Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ) agrees with that by her relative silence on the matter.

However, their very own Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation demonstrates the lie of that claim.

Just the News aggregated those data:

Federal taxes will increase by $1.9 billion on those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 and by $10.8 billion on those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 in 2023.
Overall average tax rates would increase from 20.3% to 20.6% in 2023 alone, according to the analysis.

A three-tenths of a percentage point increase might seem like chump change to those politicians, but they need to explain that increase to the large fraction—majority?—of Americans who already live paycheck to paycheck and now will have that “chump change” taken out of their pockets in addition to the taxes they already pay, along with the rising costs of the food, energy, and housing with which they’re already confronted.

Tax Compliance and Pressure

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This time, pressure on another nation to comply with a global minimum tax regime. The Biden administration is unhappy with Hungary for standing in the way of the EU’s agreeing a global (or at least Western World) regime that would contain a minimum tax level. That minimum level was designed to eliminate tax rate competition among nations.

On Friday the Treasury said the US is withdrawing from a 1979 bilateral tax treaty with Hungary.

Eliminating that nearly 45 year agreement actually is a boon to Hungary, though, rather than pressure, since Yellen and the Biden administration have withdrawn a tool for pressuring that nation.

Never mind that pressuring Hungary on minimum tax compliance is economically idiotic—the race to the bottom of tax rates is a race all nations should be striving to win. Or at least those nations that believe their own citizens aren’t drooling imbeciles and actually can make their own decisions concerning what to do with the money lower tax rates would leave in their hands rather than being forced to give their money into the hands of remote bureau- and technocrats.

Scofflaw Blue States

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And guess who gets to pick up the tab. You get three, and the first two don’t count. Here are the scofflaws:

At least four Democratic-led states with budget surpluses this year have chosen not to fully repay the federal government for money borrowed to fund unemployment benefits, a move that will impose increased charges on businesses to help make up the difference.
California, Connecticut, Illinois, and New York have directed surplus funds to social programs and taxpayer rebates, among other causes, leaving unpaid debts to the federal government ranging from tens of millions of dollars to more than $15 billion.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party at the State level treating loans as grants. Of course, that’s entirely consistent with Party’s attitude toward student loans, so we shouldn’t be surprised.

Ken Pokalsky, Business Council of New York State Vice President:

We’re going to be at elevated levels of taxes for a decade[.]

Yep.

A Small Tweak and a Large…Tweak

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In his Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed, Travis Nix reminds us of this tidbit regarding IRS private letters that’s buried in President Joe Biden’s (D) latest budget proposal:

IRS private letter rulings—the agency’s written answers to individual taxpayers’ questions, which the IRS itself says cannot be relied on as precedent.

Here’s a small tweak: make the IRS stand by its rulings by making those rulings binding on the IRS, applicable to all taxpayers, and precedential. And require the IRS to answer the question that was asked—to issue its letter ruling—within 30 days of the question being asked, or failing to do so authorizes, as a matter of tax law, the questioner to answer the question (formally, via its tax return) in its own way.

Nix’ overall op-ed was centered on another item buried in that tax portion of the Biden-Harris budget: a lengthening of the time the IRS has to reach into the past to look at inadvertent tax errors in a taxpayer’s filing. The proposed time would be extended from three years into the past to six years.

However [emphasis added].

Since the IRS already has unlimited time to audit the returns of companies that seem to have deliberately omitted income they knew was taxable, the new regulation would largely target unknowing omissions that result from unclear regulations.

That brings me to a large tweak. The whole question could be entirely eliminated by rewriting our byzantine tax code to have no income tax at all on businesses and to have a single, low, flat individual income tax rate on all income regardless of source and with no subsidies, deductions, credits, or any other “adjustments.”

Such a code would allow individual tax filings to fit on the proverbial post card (but maybe stick it into an envelope for mailing, for privacy’s stake):

Line 1: How much income did you have this tax year? ______

Line 2: Insert income tax due ([10]% of Line 1):           ______

More Tax Credits?

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Now consumer companies are looking to get in on the Federal climate tax credit scam, this effort centering on “clean” energy claims.

More than 40 companies, including consumer brands such as Airbnb Inc, Lyft Inc, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co, and IKEA, are calling on Congress to adopt federal energy legislation to provide additional financial incentives for clean-energy projects such as wind turbine farms and solar installations.

And

They called for federal tax credits for developers and suppliers of major wind, solar, nuclear, and energy-storage projects, as well as for electric vehicles and charging-station tax credits, which could benefit company-run fleets.

Here’s a thought—work with me on this; it’s a concept new to politicians and to the Left generally: eliminate corporate taxes altogether (their customers are the ones paying those taxes anyway in the form of higher prices) and lower individual income tax rates to a single, low flat rate on all income regardless of source. Get our tax code completely out of the social engineering business, and tax credits (along with subsidies, deductions, the rest of the froo-froo) become irrelevant.

Businesses and people then could go about their decision-making based on what’s best for each of them without having to worry about what’s best for them from a Government taxing perspective.

Those decisions, naturally, would include businesses’ and citizens’ own assessment of the importance of such things as climate concerns, instead of having those concerns and their spending choices dictated to them by Know Betters.