It was actually 26 hours.
How many hours does it take before it counts as a tax cut when you pass a bill that cuts taxes from that listed in current law?
Your argument is that if we pass a law that temporarily lowers taxes, and later someone replaces it with a law that permanently lowers taxes but not as much, that the 2nd law is a “tax increase”, even though taxes will be lower than they would be if you don’t pass the 2nd law.
In 2001, we passed a law that said the top tax bracket would be taxed at 35% through 2010, and then taxed at 39.6% afterwards. That was the law of the land (we extended that 2 years). That same law passed in 2001 raised ALL the tax brackets back to 2000 levels in 2011, again extended to 2013. You can’t just pretend the law didn’t exist, or that the law didn’t include raising the tax rates after the 10-year period was over.
So under current law, the tax rates for the top 2 levels, as of January 1, 2013, for married filing jointly, were 36% for $223,050 to $398,350, and 39.60% for $398,350 and up.
Under the President’s original proposal, the top tax bracket would be LOWERED to $250,000, so while those under $250,000 would pay less than current law (the same as they did in 2012, but less than the law required for 2013), those who made between $250,000 and $398,000 would actually see their tax RATE go up from $36 under current law to 39.6%.
Under the revised proposal passed today, the top brackets are of 39.6% will start at $450,000 for married filing jointly, instead of $398,000.
So the bill finally passed gave a tax cut to all earners, compared to the 2001 tax bill, compared to the 2000 taxes if we never enacted a 2001 tax bill, and compared to the president’s proposal.
The only way to do better would have been to pass a law that permanently extended the tax rates in the 2001 bill for all earners.
That would have been best, but that doesn’t mean that what passed isn’t a tax cut. My taxes today are lower than they were yesterday. And even if I made more than $400,000, my taxes today are lower than they were yesterday.
This isn’t counting the SS payroll tax “increase”, which was a stimulus measure that had a short-term expiration date. I guess by your reckoning NOT passing a new stimulus is a “tax increase”, which would suggest that if we ever do stimulus, it has to be permanent or else it is a tax increase.
You should run for congress. You’d do great there. You probably also believe that if we increase a department budget by 10% but it was supposed to be increased by 15%, then the budget was actually cut, even though it was increased by 10%.
You can play with the numbers and semantics all you want but if my tax rate was at 28% at 11:59 PM on 12/31 and at this very minute my rate is at 28%, then my taxes have not been cut, any changes that happend in between notwithstanding. I deal in reality, not Washington-think.