Posted on 06/14/2007 11:43:14 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
Last week, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee released a draft of their tax plan that would raise the highest income tax rate by 4.3 percentage points to 39.3 percent immediately. And because the proposal doesn't extend the Bush tax cuts, the highest income tax rate would rise to the neighborhood of 44 percent after 2010; this would lift the top federal income tax rate higher than it was even under Bill Clinton, says the Wall Street Journal.
Moreover, families with incomes between $250,000 and $500,000, the "marginal" tax rate paid on the next dollar of earned income could soar to 80 percent, or in some cases even above 100 percent. The point of this revenue grab is to pay for making families with earnings under $250,000 a year exempt from the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT):
**Without legislation this year, the number of Americans who pay the AMT will rise as much as six-fold to 23 million.
**Even those with incomes as low as $60,000 could pay the AMT in some high-tax states.
**Maryland's Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has said his party risks a tax revolt in 2008 without some kind of AMT patch.
So Democrats are proposing to raise taxes on three million Americans in order to exempt 20 million from the AMT, says the Journal:
**The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans already pay more than one of every three income tax dollars into the Treasury.
**Under the Ways and Means proposal, the share of all income taxes paid by the top 1 percent would rise to nearly 40 percent.
**The top 2 percent would pay roughly as much as the bottom 98 percent of all taxpayers.
Source: Editorial, "100% Marginal Tax Rate," Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2007.
$250,000/yr isn’t that the new Federal Minimum wage amount? What a coincidence.
I take it you failed to understand the sarcasm in my post.
I didn't hit AMT until 2 years ago. My company went public and dumped about $30K (untaxed) on top of my gross. I use TurboTax for my taxes. It calculates the "normal" way, then AMT at the end of the process. You owe the greater of the two. In my case the difference was $940 this year. If I had not claimed my property taxes and home mortgage interest, the tax I had already paid would have been more than AMT. Once you hit certain income levels, the tax code starts playing little "phase out" games. You don't get to claim the same deductions as other people. The shoves even more of you income into the ravenously high marginal tax rates.
The bottom line is that I've reached the point in annual salary that it doesn't pay to work any harder. In fact, it might pay to work a lot less just to keep the socialist freaks out of my pocket.
The low income earners would scream bloody murder if they were taxed at the same rate that I'm taxed. That $5.15/hour would net a take home of $237 for an 80 hour pay period at my rates. I lose at least 42% of every paycheck to taxes.
yitbos
My parser missed the sarcasm tag
The best way to understand this is that dems are the modern-day incarnation of the communists whose avowed goal is to seize money from those who have some and give it to those who have less.
So do I.
What are the little triggers you speak of?
Don't ever read "The Onion". You'd be in a tither. Its for people who don't need a sarcasm tag.
Then you'll get hit by a bus.
Light off your copy of TurboTax. The AMT section contains a "help" area that details all the items that trigger AMT.
The very fact that it is published in the Onion makes it sarcasm. It's a little tougher to read between the lines on a thread with a variety of posters. Until I've seen enough of your posts, I can't discern whether you intend sarcasm or sincerity on an issue.
I probably won't care at that point.
Fair enough. My apologies if I offended you.
The idea was to make boats prohibitively expensive so that they wouldn't have to deal with the hoi polloi clogging the yachting services businesses, making them wait in line.
There was a TX congressman that asked the CBO what *their* take would be if the tax rate was 100%.
The CBO, of course, neglected to include the effects of the disincentive to earn, coming up with some inflation adjusted amount that was effectively the GNP.
The Soici-Psychocrat would say, "No one should make enough money to be in the 42% bracket!!"
What they won't say is that, "Anyone who earns enough to have to pay income taxes in this day and age is rich."
yitbos
Communist (turn of 20th century, USA) > socialist > progressive > liberal democrat > liberal > democrat > democratic > progressive
See tagline since 1998
yitbos
The avowed purpose of the AMT was to make sure nobody got away with paying nothing in income taxes.
Does it actually do that ? Heck no ! There are tens of millions of people with low incomes that get away with paying nothing for the spending programs they blithely vote for.
Rather than trying to eliminate the AMT, I’d rather it be rewritten as a TRUE minimum tax that hits EVERYBODY. It would give people a reason to really think about how much government is costing them.
If everybody had to pay the LARGER of a 10% AMT on ALL INCOME with NO DEDUCTIONS, or their personal income tax calculated the normal way, we would finally see a tax revolt and government spending fall.
The current situation, where 50% of the people are paying only 3% of taxes, cannot continue indefinitely.
Not quite. This refers to the 1 percent who make the highest income; they are not necessarily wealthy. To become wealthy, they have to keep what they earn.
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