Of course, tax the rich, but tax everyone else, too.  The latest get (the) rich quick scheme, this one offered by Alan Davis, The Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund President and ex-founder and CEO of Conservatree Paper Company, though, falls into the same trap that all the other Progressive-Democrat schemes—Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D, MA) wealth tax, Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I, VT) estate tax expansion, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ (D, NY) 70% marginal tax—do.  What Davis is proposing is

a 10% surtax on the earnings (including both income and capital gains) of the top 0.1% of taxpayers

That’s the sucker trap.  Not singling out the rich for extra taxing, but maintaining the special treatment of capital gains, other than within his surtax.

Why should capital gains—or debt interest or any other form of income, or expense—get special treatment?  That’s just the social engineering distortion of our tax code that’s so badly counterproductive for our economy.

In 2007, the last year before the Panic of 2008, from which we’ve only begun a serious recovery over the last couple of years, we Americans earned $17.8 trillion dollars from all sources: wages and salaries, interest payments, dividends and capital gains, gambling earnings, pass-throughs from small businesses, and so on, and we paid, in aggregate, $1.15 trillion dollars in taxes on that income.

Of those taxes, the top 10% of us paid 70% while the bottom 50% of us paid little to nothing.

Take the social engineering out of our tax code.  Charge a flat 10% tax on all income regardless of source, and charge it to all who have income.  Americans will spend their money where they deem fit, not where Government dictates, and businesses will allocate their money according to sound business decision, not according to Government “desires.”

That will suitably tax the rich, as well as all of us.

Set our economy free.

Senator Ron Wyden (D, OR), Finance Committee Ranking Member, had this bit:

It looks like the Trump Treasury Department spent 2018, an election year, goosing people’s paychecks by under-withholding, and it should have been obvious that the bill would come due eventually[.]

Never mind that the IRS also warned taxpayers—and their employers—to carefully check their existing withholding arrangements, especially in this period of large changes to the tax code.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) was just as disingenuous:

Many Americans depend on their tax refund to pay bills and make ends meet….

Never mind that large tax refunds, far from being a savings account (that pays even less interest than a bank savings account), is an interest free loan to the government.  Leave it to a Progressive-Democrat, with his constant demands for OPM, to insist that this interest free loan to Government of a citizen’s money is entirely appropriate.

Keep in mind, too, that these are the same politicians who will work to prevent the tax reform’s current personal income tax cuts from becoming permanent.  Because the money in those paychecks isn’t the citizen’s; it belongs to Government.

Goosed paychecks?  Those could be permanently increased paychecks—because of the so far lowered income tax rates—but for those Progressive-Democrats.

No.  No way in H E Double Toothpicks.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo [D] visited the White House on Tuesday to urge President Donald Trump to rethink a provision in the 2017 tax overhaul that Cuomo says is prompting a sharp decline in state revenues.
The Democratic governor met with the Republican president to discuss the $10,000 cap on the federal deduction for state and local taxes—known as SALT.
Cuomo said the cap is prompting wealthy residents to flee New York and contributing to a recent drop of more than $2 billion in tax receipts.

If there’s a drop in State tax receipts from this, there are two intertwined parts to the obvious solution, and they don’t include raising the Federal taxes on everyone else so New York (and New Jersey and California) can continue their profligate ways.  Those two parts are reducing the States’ current usurious tax rates to more reasonable levels and reducing spending to fit within those collection levels.

Then step back and watch the increased economic activity that will result increase the prosperity of all the citizens of the State—and enjoy the increased revenues to the State that will result from the increased economic activity.

Aside: the AP‘s own distortion: Residents in high-tax states such as New York, New Jersey and California could see substantial increases in their federal tax bills this year because of the deduction cap. No, they won’t.  They may well see their total Federal and State tax bill go up, but that’s due entirely to the increase taxes owed the States from their high tax structure.