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Bush's advisory panel on tax reform largely agree that the individual alternative minimum tax, or AMT, should be fully repealed the committee's chairman said Wednesday.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.
Mark for later reading
Yes, it does.
THERE IS NO LAW SAYING THE EMPLOYER HAS TO GIVE THE EMPLOYEE THE EMPLOYER PORTION.SHOOT, A LOT OF EMPLOYEES DON'T EVEN KNOW THERE IS AN EMPLOYER PORTION.`SEC. 903. WAGES TO BE REPORTED TO SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION.
`(a) In General- Employers shall submit such information to the Social Security Administration as is required by the Social Security Administration to calculate Social Security benefits under title II of the Social Security Act, including wages paid, in a form prescribed by the Secretary. A copy of the employer submission to the Social Security Administration relating to each employee shall be provided to each employee by the employer.
There isn't anything in HR25 that says they have to give them 100% of their paychecks either...
If your intent is to fool your employees you could also tell them they don't need 100% of their paychecks because they no longer have to pay income tax....after all, why would they need 100% of their wage, isn't everything going to be 20-30% cheaper?
You don't need to yell.
I said you didn't agree with the rate, now didn't I?Yes. My bad.
Do you agree with my illustration, if my rate was correct (in your mind)?Well, no. To determine a person's real income you would have to factor in the certain increase in state and local taxes.
The profit on this higher amount using a 25% seller's margin would be something like (using the higher $20 amount) $20 x 0.25 = $5. The tax on this $5 would be something like $5 x 0.15 = $0.75 in tax "contribution" from the underground economy due to embedded taxes (or perhaps $3.75 optimistically in the buyer's favor in viewing the whole transaction) instead of $100 x 0.23 = $23.00 under the FairTax.
Using your own math and those same numbers from your example above please show where the seller gets the $23.00 for the fairtax and what he would have left after remitting it....
On the $100 sale, the FairTax would be $23.00. The seller would keep none of that since he is paid to collect it and send it to the state. You can't understand $100 x 0.23 = $23.00???
Could you subtract $23.00 from $100.00 to see what the seller had left???
Could you subtract $23.00 from $100.00 to see what the seller had left???Sure. By my count he had $2.00 for profit and overhead after remitting 23% of his gross to the fairtax collectors.
By your numbers the seller/dealer had - "a good margin of 25% on sales or $25 on the drug dealer's $100" - meaning his costs were $75.00.
Using your choice, math or arithematic, the sellers "good margin" has disappeared after remitting $23.00 of the $25.00 "good margin" to the fairtax collectors.
How much of the "good margin" was profit again?
Under the current system______
Under the Fairtax________
No, Looey - wrong again.
THe $23.00 tax receipt for the FairTax is not from the seller's profit. It is an amount paid by the buyer and held in trust by the seller for forwarding to the state at the end of the month. The seller's margin is whatever it might be of the $77.00 ($100.00 minus $23.00) cost.
In fact, chances are the seller's margin might even be higher than under the IT since his incoming costs on the thing sold would be lower after the removal of embedded tax costs.
You are taking two different circumstances and trying to pretend they are one and apply Looey-rithmetic to both as though they were one. They are different and the seller's margin on the FairTax side is not reduced by the taxes paid - that's a separate sum from profit margin and is tax revenue and not "margin" as you try to make it.
Good thing you used the word "estimated" since this paper is heavily footnoted showing the "usual suspects" such as Gale, Brookings, Gravelle, Mikesell, etc. At least they didn't footnote Bartlett.
Seems like another "Chicken Little" presentation by those opposed to the FairTax and the paper has a number of questionable assertions and even some outright errors. They throw out the number without providing sufficient detail as to its derivation so that it can be readily analyzed by anyone.
The fact that their claim that states will be bankrupted - or nearly so - by the NRST is hardly credible. They also overlook the typical points overlooked when the SQL crowd "analyzes" the FairTax and try to give the presentation great weight by presentation of formulas ... seems right out of tht Brookings/Gale SQL playbook. As a whole, not too convincing and asserting a huge extra revenue requirement requires several leaps of faith that are never justified in the presentation.
You should consider it.
LL, I think I'm taking expatpat's advice and just ignoring pigdog.Uh huh, and principled too. I stopped bothering to read 90% of the AFT shill's posts to me a long time ago. Haven't you noticed? I think Ancient Geezer and many die hard AFT supporters with any sense beat you to it...
He's just a dogmatist who cares nothing about reason or truth.Which one of them does? Pigdog's an AFT shill or lapdog whose job is being a mindless thread bumper...period.
Trying to engage him is one thing. Exposing his lying, contradicting himself as well as the other AFT supporters and double talking stupidity (it's not mathematics it's arithmetic) is sometimes great sport.
His name for me is mentioned in almost every one of his posts anyway. He's either in love with me and can't get me off his mind or I'm doing something right.
No, but there is in the Labor and Texas Payday laws. If you make X salary your employer cannot deduct anything (besides withholding taxes) from your paycheck without your permission. If he lowers your salary you have the right to move on.
Section 903 of HR 25 is irrelevant to your argument. It is just saying that your employer reports your income to SSA so they will know how to calculate your future SS benefits. Nowhere on that form will be the employer or employee portion, because there won't be anything to report. This is like the W-2 form employers send to SSA and give their employees now every year.
If your intent is to fool your employees you could also tell them they don't need 100% of their paychecks because they no longer have to pay income tax....after all, why would they need 100% of their wage, isn't everything going to be 20-30% cheaper?
Now you're just grasping at straws.
You don't need to yell.
If you will go back to my original post you will see that I apologized in advance for using all caps to distinguish our comments. Jerk.
Good idea, Nightie - someone you can't refute and detest because he won't agree with you, just don't bother reading his posts! Matter of fact, maybe you can just ignore all FairTax supporters' posts - that would allow you all that time to hone your Nightmare Tax to present to the Ways and Means Committee.
In the meantime you might do as I (and others) have asked several times and inform us why, for starters, your favored flat tax - a real one, not the theoretical Nightmare Flat version - is superior to the FairTax in collecting tax revenue from the underground economy, in removing tax costs from prices, and in helping exporters by offering border-adjustable taxes.
Once you've done that, we can pose some other things for you - idle fingers are the devil's tools, you know.
If the flat tax and fair tax aren't going anywhere then scrap the
AMT and estate taxes and pass a law to lower federal spending by 1 % of .5% per year for the next 10 or 20 years, or until deficit spending stops and the national debt is reduced to a reasonable level.
Certainly you shouldn't count out the FairTax. It clearly is attracting more recognition and support all the time. By passing the FairTax, the AMT is automatically eliminated along with payroll taxes, income taxes, and other taxes (e.g., estate taxes).
Yes, federal spending should be lowered but right now with the present tax system, the taxpayer can have little effect on choosing not to be taxed. With the FairTax one has greatly more choice in that regard.
Hang in there and watch. The libs are getting paniced by the very thought of the FairTax disrupting their little cozy little game of living off of the taxpayers since they (the hapless taxpayers) have no idea how much their government costs them. That will change.
Hey, I am for the fairtax. I'm not for the flat tax. I was simply responding to the various posts that neither seemed to be making much headway in Washington.
The reason I'm for the fair tax is that nobody, but nobody can cheat with the fairtax.
So am I - and BTW, thanks for supporting the FairTax.
The reason for the "not making headway" posts are because there are a numbef of posters that always come on these threads who support the Status Quo and want, preferably, NO change (or as little as possible) and post such comments from their own wishful thinking.
These individuals continually post as much in the way of negative information as they possible can ... including some that is totally ludicrous! They're not hard to spot.
Keep up the good work ampat. We'd almost ALL like to work to see government spending greatly reduced - but that's the battle AFTER tax reform.
Why? It was just found money in the first place. Replace it, hell, they should be forced to REFUND the amounts stolen from the employed in contravention of the law's original intent. Let them instead cut whatever socialist wet dream programs they funded with this money they admit they never should have had in the first place.
what a great post. is this original?
Yep, I wrote that.
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