To make matters worse, leaders in Congress also slipped in a new reporting requirement to help pay for this health care law that will require all businesses to now file tax Form 1099 on every business-to-business transition of $600 or more, including buying normal supplies.
This has nothing to do with health care and everything to do with taxing small businesses and increasing their paperwork burden.
I hardly call this a reform that any small-business advocate should support.
We had to pass the law to know what was in it.
I am no partisan of the reform legislation as passed. To my simple minded way of looking at it, it favors coverage over cost control, which is in effect making things worse. This from someone who supported the effort. However, given the massive disinformation campaign (remember the summer of death panels?), a letter to the editor is simply not an acceptable source of information, especially given the seriousness of the issue raised.
J. Champlin – this issue has been in the news for weeks or months – see the AP story here: Paperwork nightmare: A struggle to fix new law:
This was slipped in to generate taxes to pay for the health care bill, but the figures were just guessed at and no one thought what a burden this would be on small businesses (perhaps because Congress has very little concept of how to run businesses). Democrats pushed this through by passing the health care bill without proper debate, and with no idea about how its provisions would hamstring the private sector in red tape. Elections have consequences.
Letter to the editor or not, the 1099 reporting feature of Obamacare is there. The Financial Regulation bill just passed also contains a provision for the government to track and analyze all consumer credit/debit card and any other financial transactions. Make no mistake about it, big brother is coming for all your goods, and they are using the power of modern information technology to make sure they utterly control every aspect of your health care and finances.
These bills represent an unprecedented and unconstitutional power grab by the apparatchiks in Congress and federal agencies. If we, as citizens, do not do something quick (vote the bums out) we, and our progeny, will live to bitterly regret all that has happened. Given the current regime’s approach to fair and honest elections, our opportunity to change things at the ballot box may also be gone soon. Welcome to the future comrades! Four legs good, two legs bad – too bad for you, poultry.
But look at the bright side – just the cost of mailing the forms should generate 200 million for the post office (stamps) – double that if the business has to mail a request for the Tax ID information. That’ll reduce the post offices deficit.
4 the problem is deeper. The federal government is operating outside the Constiution. Changing parties simply switches who is in charge but does not stop them from operating outside the Constitution. The problem is not the party in control but structural.
Br. Michael,
These laws may be unwise, but how, exactly, are they “outside the constitution”?
…somewhere Obama, Pelosi and Reid are wondering how to create jobs. A good start would be to stop killing jobs first.
As a small business owner, this is just insanity. Plus the amount of paper recieved by vendors. Imagine power company, telephone, water, heck even the state will get one. I don’t think anyone has any clue as to the massive amount of paperwork this will require. Plus the cross checking from you to your vendor. I report one number and they will have a different number becasue of credits, discounts etc. But then it will make it easier for the “state” to take over. Small businesses can’t hadle the additional costs and headaches, so they go under. Big business takes over, etc etc etc.
The abuse of the Commerce Clause for one ever since Wickerd v. Filburn. Comandeering the states to perform federal functions. Expansion of the executive power to wage war. Presidiential decrees masked as executive orders. Recess executive appointments to avoid the Senate’s advise and consent power. The creation of executive branch “czars” designed to avoid the Senate. Illustrated by this: http://www.breitbart.tv/congressman-at-town-hall-the-federal-government-can-do-most-anything-in-this-country/
I am sure we can come up with others.
None of these examples are, on their face, unconstitutional. One may argue the merits, but all are within the bounds of the constitution.
Strongly disagree. That you don’t see it is the strongest evidence as to how far we have come from the founder’s intention for limited federal government. The commerce clause gave the government the power to regulate duties levied by one state on the goods of another. Nowhere does this give the government the power to fine a farmer for growing wheat for his own consumption or to require individuals to purchase products from private corporations.
John Madison wrote:
[blockquote]”Yet it is very certain that it grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the nonimporting, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government, in which alone, however, the remedial power could be lodged.” – Letter to Cabell, February 13, 1829. [/blockquote]
From: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=17597
#9
The Wal-Martization of the country!
According to several coin dealers I have done business with, the manufacturers (mints) have stopped making gold coins smaller than one ounce. The price of these coins is greater than $1,000 each, so every gold coin bought or sold will now generate a 1099.
That’s just creepy! Could you imagine what the framers of the constitution would have thought about a federal tax form being generated every time a single gold coin changed hands? I think we would still be part of England if they had imagined this would be the result of the revolution.
I will be flying my Gadsden flag from September to November this year, and I am not even a member of the TEA Party. In fact, it’s primary week here in CT…I think I’ll put it up right now.
#11, most of what the Fed Govt does (based on budget numbers) is outside of the scope of the Constitution, that is, powers and responsibilities specifically delegated to the Central Govt. If you think otherwise, you have either not read it or you engage in the sophistry of liberalism in which case I will invoke Rush’s two essential laws of politics:
1. Liberalism fails everywhere it is tried
2. Liberals lie: they have to, no rational person wants to buy what they are selling so they have to disguise it with mighty words and grand intentions (eg, sophistry).
Civil disobedience anyone?
How about a constitutional convention?
#16: I guess I must have skipped that day in law school.
#19
Hi. I’m genuinely curious what you were taught about the 10th Amendment. I was always under the impression that the constitution limited the powers of the Federal Government and that the 10th Amendment reserved powers not enumerated in the constitution to the states or to the people. Were you taught anything like that, or was it different?
#19, ahhh Mr. Thimsen is a lawyer! Or, he attended law school. One might think then he is an a-priori expert on the Constitution. You may fool others into believing that, but let me ask you this: did you really read and study the Constitution and the Founder’s writings, or did you just take a course or two on Constitutional Law?
For those who may not be aware, those two alternatives are not the same.
My guess is Mr. Thimsen took the Constitutional Law courses. What he believes he knows about the Constitution was poured into his head by those who taught him.
Fortunately, the Constitution is written in plain english, as are the writings of the Founders; and even us unwashed masses can read it and understand it and know when the so-called elites are blowing smoke up where the sun don’t shine.
21, I had those Con Law in law school and, although I had a superb Con Law teacher, now on looking back, I agree with you. Con Law classes should add the Founders theory of govenrment, the Consittuional Convention debates and both the Federalist and anti-Federalist papers.
We also should have been taught to be more skepitical of judicial interpretation which can in practice amend the Constitution with out the other safe guards of Constitutional amendment. Indeed, operating under the guise of “interpretation” the Courts can, and have, functioned as a sitting Constitutional Conventions. The best example of this is Wickard v. Filburn which reversed 150 years of commerce clause interpretation and acted as a substantive amendment to the Constitution. And of course the Court did this to save its hide from FDR and his court packing scheme.
Such discussions do not come up in most Con Law classes.