Posted on 07/20/2005 12:51:23 PM PDT by Your Nightmare
Members of President Bush's advisory panel on tax reform largely agree that the individual alternative minimum tax, or AMT, should be fully repealed the committee's chairman said Wednesday.
"I think the obvious consensus was on the AMT on the individual side. We didn't end up with a consensus on the corporate side, even though I think it's fair to say that I think all panel members felt the corporate AMT was really not an effective way to tax," Chairman Connie Mack, a former Republican senator from Florida, told reporters after a public meeting of the committee.
The AMT is a parallel tax system created in 1969; it was enacted after it was revealed that a handful of extremely wealthy Americans paid no income tax. But thresholds for the AMT were never indexed for inflation. As a result, it has encompassed or threatened a growing number of middle-income taxpayers over the years. Lawmakers and administrations have responded by temporarily pushing up the threshold, but have yet to come up with a complete fix.
It's also become a substantial revenue source. Full repeal would reduce revenues by more than a trillion dollars over 10 years.
During the panel discussion, committee member Bill Frenzel said he agreed that it was time to "bite the bullet" and press for full repeal, but warned that doing so will put a "huge burden" on the panel to find a way to make up the lost revenues.
The panel's vice chairman, former Democratic Sen. John Breaux, said that while he's not a fan of the AMT, the panel must examine whether the full repeal of the system would allow some of the nation's highest earners to get away with paying no tax at all.
Mack replied that if that were the case, the committee would have to make adjustments in order to maintain roughly the same tax burden on the upper quintile of earners that is now in place.
The panel members agreed that changes to the corporate AMT would best be tackled as part of a broad corporate tax reform, Mack noted.
The committee, formally known as the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, must present the Treasury Department with a set of tax-reform proposals in September.
Bush has set a number of ground rules for the panel, however. The proposals must be revenue-neutral. Also, future tax measures can't touch the code's most sacred cows -- mortgage interest deduction and charitable giving.
You haven't been paying atention, Looey.
The amount of taxes collected from the higher prices under the embedded taxes of the present system are actually quite small. I gave an example of a $100 purchase that ended up with (very generously) a $3.75 tax revenue amount which, under the FairTax, would have been $23.00.
The tax "contribution" of an income tax system is on the profit involved which is even smaller than the higher prices caused by the tax cascading. One determines that using arithmetic, BTW.
Ok, ok, you asked for it.What exactly do you thing you are illustrating here? You claimed "I seem to recall someone swearing his allegiance to the flat tax, only to have his prior posts extolling the virtues of the VAT pointed out" and the post you copied has nothing to do with that.
I would say that a casual review of this thread would contradict that point.Please. Everytime you use the term SQL you are calling people name. You do it in this very post, you hypocrite.
So calling you a Status Quo Lover is an insult and calling us fanboys, cultists, joke, idiot, moron, whore, Scientologist, etc. is not?So you insult us and we insult you. What should we do about it? [BTW, I think it obvious that the insults increased dramatically when pigdog showed back up. So maybe you should talk to your own.]
And it's compliment, not complement.Thanks. My bad.
Fanboy 3 times.Four. You forgot my tagline.
The FairTax is replacement, not reform. It replaces federal income taxes including, personal, estate, gift, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment, and corporate taxes.
Are you claiming that if I hadn't "showed back up" that you wouldn't be insulting posters nearly as much???
Or is it that insults go only in one direction per your definition? Seems to me that you do much more than any proportional number of insults - and to more posters. You merely don't like it because you're proved wrong so much - you can't stand that as we all now know.
But - once again - back to the tax reform issue. How about telling us how your beloved flat tax is so superior and, for example, how it obtains far more in tax revenue from the underground economy than the FairTax. Once you do that and it's been discussed we can move to the next topic. So far we haven't had a peep from you demonstrating how your much-superior tax plan works in that regard. Why is that Nightie?
The FairTax is replacement, not reform. It replaces federal income taxes including, personal, estate, gift, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment, and corporate taxes.So now the FairTax isn't "tax reform"?!? I guess that's why the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform won't suggest it.
That's not what the post says. You just made it up... as usual.
pigdog #341: The amount of taxes collected from the higher prices under the embedded taxes of the present system are actually quite small.
Frequently, liars are also tax cheats.
"The FairTax is replacement, not reform." - Principled in post 346So now the FairTax isn't "tax reform"?!?That's not what the post says. You just made it up... as usual.
That's not what the post says.You are lying again.
Frequently, liars are also tax cheats.
You are lying again.That's your opinion.Frequently, liars are also tax cheats.
Most sales tax advocates are Scientologists, Scientology is a lie, draw your own conclusions...
That's my opinion
The amount of taxes collected from the higher prices under the embedded taxes of the present system are actually quite small.
That does not say than the effect of embedded taxes is small, but that the taxes collected from the increase caused by embedded taxes is quite small - and it is.
If embedded taxes cause, say, 10% of the price as an increase in a $100 purchase, the profit on that $10 increase is almost vanishingly small; much less than the $10 increase itself.
Stop and think.
Where in the world did you come up with such an absurd comment and opinion? Let's see your sources showing that about MOST FariTax advocates ... or did you mean sales tax advocates as opposed to FairTax supporters?
Misleading again and again in a attempt to prevent any tax reform. You are nothing if not consistently misleading.
Retail businesses collect the tax from the consumer, just as state sales tax systems already do in 45 states; the FairTax will simply be an additional line on the current sales tax reporting form.
Retailers simply collect the tax and send it to the state taxing authority. All businesses serving as collection agents will receive a fee for collection, and the states will also receive a collection fee. The tax revenues from the states will then be sent to the U.S. Treasury.
Are you admitting to being a tax cheat? Not so smart of you to let go of any information at all in this "google-able" world. Have you searched yourself lately?
Have you searched yourself lately?Are you also wondering what I'm wearing?
Where in the world did you come up with such an absurd comment and opinion?You could ask the same of the nitwit I responded to who seems to thrive on absurd comments and opinion.
Although, it's a widely known fact about Scientologists and the sales tax movement..AND the fairtax director of research herself.
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