I do not know about you but I don’t have the ability to comprehend the magnitude of these figures. In any event, read all the links.
Home › T19 Categories › * Economics, Politics › TaxProf–President Obama's Budget Contains $1.9 Trillion in Tax Increases
TaxProf–President Obama's Budget Contains $1.9 Trillion in Tax Increases
7 comments on “TaxProf–President Obama's Budget Contains $1.9 Trillion in Tax Increases”
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“Even in Washington, where we throw around trillions of dollars as if they were Hershey’s Kisses at Halloween, these numbers take your breath away.”
So says TaxVox–one of the links, and I say amen.
For perspective, if you take one thousand brand new dollar bills, packed and stacked as tightly as possible, it will make a stack about 4 inches tall. In the Obama-proposed budget, such a stack would reach to the moon.
Do the same thing with Hunskies, and it would circle our equator ten times.
certainly he promised during the campaign a tax increase of this magnitude? er, ummm, no, he would have NEVER been elected.
Joe the Plummer was right.
We don’t have to let this ridiculous mess continue, y’all know. We can change the entire House of Representatives, and one-third of the Senate, come November. If we do it, and do it right, this nonsense is done!! And then, come 2011, (November) we can finish the electoral job. We put ourselves in this outrageous position by voting for an ephemeral guy named “Not-Bush.” We can fix it, if we hurry.
The scary/sad part is that increasing taxes by 1.6 trillion doesn’t make a dent in reducing the deficit (or debt). It also doesn’t make a dent in the expected future increases.
Speaking as a guy who is much more inclined to be Conservative than Republican, I’d like to see a complete flush of Democrats and RINOs in the House of Representatives and to unload every RINO and Democrat squatting in the ~1/3 of the Senate up for election this November. And if the Republicans/RINOs don’t see the need to move out smartly with a real program of fiscal and Constitutional restoration and sanity over the next two years, then flush them out as well at the next opportunity – hopefully, through primary elections, but out none the less, until Congress gets the picture that the citizens of the United States do not exist to be the State’s piggy bank Proletariat. It is near to being pitchforks and torches time.
Kendall, so far as not being able to grasp the size of the numbers being tossed around, don’t worry. If the current incumbent of the White House and his cohorts in Congress have their way, the impact of their very big numbers will become painfully and personally clear to you and your family in very short order. And the impact of the policies the budget numbers represent will go a long way toward giving us all the most unwelcome opportunity to relate to our children and grandchildren (if the State permits us to live that long) what it was like to live in the United States of America before it was transformed into a Democratic Socialist Republic.
For a main-stream media assessment of the Obama budget, here is the text of a Reuters article on the subject. (Find it at – http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/100201/us/usreport_us_budget_backdoortaxes – Maybe.) Interesting to note Reuters withdrew the article shortly after it was posted. Too brutally honest for the good of the State?
“Backdoor taxes to hit middle class
Mon Feb 1, 4:09 PM
By Terri Cullen
NEW YORK (Reuters.com) –The Obama administration’s plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.
In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year — effectively a tax hike by stealth.
While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases.
The targeted tax provisions were enacted under the Bush administration’s Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. Among other things, the law lowered individual tax rates, slashed taxes on capital gains and dividends, and steadily scaled back the estate tax to zero in 2010.
If the provisions are allowed to expire on December 31, the top-tier personal income tax rate will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. But lower-income families will pay more as well: the 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent; the 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent; and the 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent. The special 10 percent bracket is eliminated.
Investors will pay more on their earnings next year as well, with the tax on dividends jumping to 39.6 percent from 15 percent and the capital-gains tax increasing to 20 percent from 15 percent. The estate tax is eliminated this year, but it will return in 2011 — though there has been talk about reinstating the death tax sooner.
Millions of middle-class households already may be facing higher taxes in 2010 because Congress has failed to extend tax breaks that expired on January 1, most notably a “patch” that limited the impact of the alternative minimum tax. The AMT, initially designed to prevent the very rich from avoiding income taxes, was never indexed for inflation. Now the tax is affecting millions of middle-income households, but lawmakers have been reluctant to repeal it because it has become a key source of revenue.
Without annual legislation to renew the patch this year, the AMT could affect an estimated 25 million taxpayers with incomes as low as $33,750 (or $45,000 for joint filers). Even if the patch is extended to last year’s levels, the tax will hit American families that can hardly be considered wealthy — the AMT exemption for 2009 was $46,700 for singles and $70,950 for married couples filing jointly.
Middle-class families also will find fewer tax breaks available to them in 2010 if other popular tax provisions are allowed to expire. Among them:
* Taxpayers who itemize will lose the option to deduct state sales-tax payments instead of state and local income taxes;
* The $250 teacher tax credit for classroom supplies;
* The tax deduction for up to $4,000 of college tuition and expenses;
* Individuals who don’t itemize will no longer be able to increase their standard deduction by up to $1,000 for property taxes paid;
* The first $2,400 of unemployment benefits are taxable, in 2009 that amount was tax-free.”