Free Republic

Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax reform is attracting enough attention to become the focus of this week's Presidential debate. As a plan for overhauling revenues and unleashing the private sector, it's a bold gambit that shows Cain is willing to take chances and shake up the Capital. The 9 percent business tax is a stroke of genius. It would give us the lowest business rates in the world and would make us the "tax haven" for investment from everywhere. The stock market would barely be able to stay abreast. The 9 percent personal income rate would eliminate all the deductions and...

....Of Mr. Cain's many ideas, the most well-known -- in part because of its clever sound-bite name -- is his 9-9-9 plan which aims to replace most current federal taxes (including income tax, death tax, payroll tax, capital gains taxes, and double-taxation of dividends) with a 9% flat tax for business income, a 9% flattax for individual income, and a 9% national salestax. The plan would eliminate almost all deductions. While Mr. Cain's consistent results-oriented approach is admirable -- not least for its contrast with the other candidates -- voters should be wary of the 9-9-9 plan despite its initial...

WASHINGTON — It's not just millionaires who'd pay more under President Barack Obama's latest plan to combat the deficit. Air travelers, federal workers, military retirees, wealthier Medicare beneficiaries and people taking out new mortgages are among those who would pay more than $130 billion in new government revenues raised through new or increased fees. These fees are advertised as "savings" in administration budget documents.

Pelosi for tax reform only if it increases revenueBy Mike Lillis - 09/15/11 01:21 PM ET The top House Democrat warned Thursday that the GOP's push for sweeping tax reform would win Democratic support only if it increases overall revenues. Republican leaders have been highly critical of the nation's 35 percent corporate tax rate, and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is expected Thursday to ask the budget supercommittee to overhaul the tax code as part of its deficit-slashing mandate. But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) preempted Boehner's speech Thursday with the stipulation that any such tax overhaul would have to...

IT HAS BEEN a little over a week since billionaire Warren Buffett called for higher taxes on the richest Americans, and now comes the reaction. Harvey Golub, a former chairman and chief executive of American Express, writes in the Wall Street Journal that he “resents” Mr. Buffett’s suggestion. I already pay plenty of taxes, Mr. Golub asserts, adding: “Before you ‘ask’ for more tax money from me and others, raise the $2.2 trillion you already collect each year more fairly and spend it more wisely.” Who’s right? Mr. Golub points out that almost half of the population pays no income...

What Obama and Democrats don't understand, is that tax cuts provide capital needed to start new businesses.

The Democrats, David Brooks claims, “have agreed to a roughly 3-to-1 rate of spending cuts to revenue increases, an astonishing concession.” Not if you know your recent history. “Congress is locked in yet another rending slugfest over tax increases,” the Heritage Foundation reported on November 14, 1983. “In one corner is Senate Finance Committee Chairman Robert Dole (R-Kan) who set off the bruising campaign last year that resulted in a $99 billion tax hike.” “That package promised three dollars in budget cuts for every one dollar in tax increases. It turned out to be a lemon. The actual result was...

Over the last couple of days, we’ve had a good debate at Hot Air over the nature of our fiscal crisis between Jazz Shaw, and J. E. Dyer, and me. At least we all recognize that we have a fiscal crisis; some members of Congress and “intellectual authorities” (with interesting if unreported conflicts of interest) still act as though nothing at all is wrong. My friend Jazz wrote yesterday that we have a revenue problem as well as a spending problem in answer to my post rebutting David Brooks’ column, so let’s take a look at federal revenue to see...

<p>GOP Senators and Speaker Boehner set to cave and raise taxes. This is the start of the set up.</p>

Microsoft stopped giving forward guidance a couple years ago when the company hit a rough patch, but yesterday at a Rotary event in Seattle, CEO Steve Ballmer spilled some rough figures about the company's 2011 fiscal year, which ends today. As reported by GeekWire's John Cook, who was at the event, Ballmer said: There’s a reason why we’ll do almost $70 billion in revenue this year, and we will make over $20, whatever, $26, $27 billion in profits. That $70 billion would be a 12% increase from last year's revenue of $62.5 billion, and would mean a quarterly revenue figure...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House said Monday that a "significant" deal with Republicans on cutting government spending and raising the nation's debt limit is still possible, even as the administration hardened its stance on the need for increased tax revenue to be part of any agreement. President Barack Obama made his first direct foray into the deficit negotiations Monday. He met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the Oval Office for about 30 minutes Monday morning, and planned to meet with Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell in the early evening. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama's meeting with...

Republicans should support targeted "Revenue Enhancements."

The intelligentsia of the Democratic Party is growing increasingly enthusiastic about raising the highest federal income tax rates to 70% or more. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich took the lead in February, proposing on his blog "a 70 percent marginal tax rate on the rich." After all, he noted, "between the late 1940s and 1980 America's highest marginal rate averaged above 70 percent. Under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Not until the 1980s did Ronald Reagan slash it to 28 percent."

Among sentences I do not like to write: Andrew Leonard is mostly right about this one. Tax cuts do not generally increase revenue, and Republicans should stop saying otherwise. But he’s not quite right to treat all these statements as equivalent: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here’s Rep. Joe Walsh, (R-Ill.) the self-styled “conservative Tea Party activist” who upset Democrat Melissa Bean in the 2010 midterms, on ABC’s “This Week.” “In the ’80s, federal revenues went up,” said Walsh. “We didn’t cut spending. Revenues went up in the ’80s. Every time we’ve cut taxes, revenues have gone up. The economy has grown.” Walsh may...

After decades of increasing tobacco taxes at the federal, state, and local levels, some states are beginning to buck this fiscally burdensome and irresponsible trend. On March 17, the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a bill that would cut the state’s cigarette tax by a dime, to $1.68 per pack. Two other states with high tobacco taxes—New Jersey and Rhode Island—are also considering proposals to reduce taxes on tobacco products to make their state’s tax rates more competitive. This reversal in policy would be fiscally responsible and especially beneficial to low-income people. Many economists have noted that many states’...

On Tuesday, the president will deliver his State of the Union message. The con ventional wisdom is that President Obama will continue his "move to the center." This undoubtedly means Obama will try to seem as if he's meeting Republicans halfway on their "reasonable" demands while drawing a stark line against their "unreasonable" ones. This sort of strategizing leaves most Americans cold. These days, they're less concerned with "triangulation" than they are with the creation of good jobs that aren't bogus make-work, or paid for with money borrowed from China or our grandkids. If that's true, the solution is right...

Over the years, conservative economic policies have been the subject of heated attack by liberals seeking to justify punitive taxes and a bloated regulatory state. But far from failing, conservative economic values have delivered on every point. Liberal economists frequently claim that tax cuts -- the centerpiece of effective conservative economic policies -- harm revenues and contribute to deficits. But this claim is patently false. Out-of-control spending, not tax cuts, causes huge deficits. President Reagan cut the top tax rate to 28 percent for joint filers during the eighties. During the Reagan expansion, total revenues jumped nearly one hundred percent....

A successful parasite must keep its host alive, finding the point where it can maximize its intake without killing off its source of sustenance. So, too, with governments taxing their citizenry. With taxation, governments can reach the point where higher rates produce less revenue. An academic study found that a tax increase of just 1% of GDP causes a recession and then a permanent loss of 1.84% of GDP compared to what it would have been without the tax increase. The results of this study have some really broad and interesting implications. The punchline is that this study was done...

Weak Sales Pose Threat to Recovery in Stocks Monday, August 9, 2010 08:26 AM Weak revenue growth, which corporate America managed to mask in the second quarter by holding costs at unsustainably low levels, stands as the biggest threat to a recovery in U.S. stocks. Many of the largest U.S. companies sailed past Wall Street's expectations, their profit boosted by last year's brutal cost-cutting campaigns. Companies laid off tens of thousands of workers, sent remaining staffers out on unpaid leave and halted contributions to employee retirement accounts. Their top-line performance, though, was less stellar. Shares of blue chip companies, including...

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio's highest court has ruled that a person may be convicted of speeding purely if it looked to a police officer that the motorist was going too fast.