And Elisha Cuthbert should find me irresistible:
Posted on 07/16/2010 11:34:49 AM PDT by WOBBLY BOB
ST. PAUL, Minn.—As Minnesota governor, Independence Party candidate Tom Horner says he would "take a hard look" at tax exemptions and deductions, including mortgage interest for homeowners. Horner said Thursday he favors capping the deduction homeowners can claim, although he didn't set an amount. "I don't think we ought to eliminate the mortgage deduction. I don't think that we ought to exclude second homes," Horner said. "But I do think it is reasonable to say that at a certain level Minnesotans shouldn't be subsidizing total investment in mortgages." There are some limits in place now: State law lets Minnesota taxpayers deduct on interest paid on loans of up to $1 million toward primary or secondary homes.
(Excerpt) Read more at twincities.com ...
There shouldn’t even be a mortgage deduction.
Do you want to encourage home building and sales, or do you want to discourage.
I am all for doing away with all government incentives and disincentives, but if you are going to punish successful people for building big houses (with all the associated jobs and taxes that they create), then they aren't going to build those houses and your going to be looking at giving union construction workers extended unemployment benefits.
Which do you want, Tommy? Employment, or class warfare against successful people.
You can't have both.
I’d like a flat tax, no deductions.
41 percent of metro area single-family homes believed ‘underwater’
More tough news for Twin Cities metro homeowners surfaced this morning as home values in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area slid 4.6 percent in March from a year ago. More troubling, the real estate website Zillow.com calculates that more than 268,000 Twin Cities area single-family homeowners with mortgages owe more than their homes are worth. That number is about 41.2 percent of the total. That compares with an estimated national average of 23.3 percent of single-family mortgages with negative equity, according to the report.
http://www.minnpost.com/bradallen/2010/05/10/18023/41_percent_of_metro_area_single-family_homes_believed_underwater
Why not just have a flat tax instead of our silly “progressive” income tax? (no deductions for anyone)
And there shouldn't be federal income taxes either!
Unfortunately the Realtor lobby has such a stranglehold on the congress that even with the AMT mortgage deductions are still allowed.
Imagine that. A family that can no longer deduct their dependent children can still deduct their mortgage interest.
How upside-down is that?
Horner for years was the voice of the republican party on Minnesota People’s Television and Radio. At least he is no longer besmirching the republican brand name.
And Elisha Cuthbert should find me irresistible:
Best way to deal with that is to eliminate the income tax. Than you don’t have to worry about it.
The progressive income tax is anything but silly.
It is one of the ten planks of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, along with free public education, inheritance taxes, centralization of credit in the hands of the state (Federal Reserve, student loans, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac), abolition of private property rights (Kelo v. City of New London), centralization of means of communication/transportation in the hands of the state (FCC, DOT, NTHB), ownership by the state of industrial manufacturing (Government Motors), etc.
Good luck with your dream.
If there were no deduction then house prices and/or interest rates would come down.
When credit card debt was removed as an exemption credit card interest rates came down immediately. They were only propped up where they were because people knew they could get the money back from their tax refunds.
No other major country allows people to deduct mortgage interest, and lots of those countries (including Canada) have higher rates of home ownership than we do.
People will still buy houses, only they will pay less because they won't be expecting a government check to cancel out the overpricing.
Conservatives need to be consistent. We need to oppose all government incentives and disincentives. No incentives for saving, health expenses, education expenses, home ownership, solar power, etc.
If a person makes good decisions they will be rewarded by the free market. They don't need a pat on the back from Uncle Sam to assure them they are headed in the right direction.
That ‘’Fair Tax’’ idea is looking better all the time. Try it, and cancel the IRS by constitutional amendt. Revalue the dollar to 1 for 10 or more. Return to gold, silver, copper, nickel, etc for coinage, scrap paper money. Copper is about $3.00/lb. now. If it became 30¢/lb. or less in new money, you could make a lot of pennies from 1 pound. Inventing new taxes ain’t gonna solve anything, for sure.
#14,,P.S. it’ll be even more fun if we wait for India, China, etc. to do it first. Then, it’ll be ‘’sh-t creek, here we come.’’
If we could get a majority of liberals/conservatives to support a simple tax with no deductions and a moderate level of progressivity I think that would be good for America.
A flat tax with a high deductible (like $20-30,000) would be progressive at the low end and flat at the high end.
If the liberals ask for a few different tax rates for various income brackets, I would go for that if we could eliminate all deductions.
I would rather fight the concept that government knows whats best for us, than worry about specific tax rates.
So long as the uppermost rate is not too high entrepreneurs will continue to thrive in America while the rest of us are freed from the shackles of government noseyness.
The Communists/Socialists rationale for a progressive tax rate was to set the rate so high at the top end that everyone would end up with about the same income regardless of how hard they worked or what they worked at.
If the top rate is less than 40% then hard work can still return huge rewards. I'm not saying that the top rate should be that high, but I'd rather see that then the continuous stream of idiotic tax breaks (like that stupid Katrina one) that clog up the tax forms and require PhD mathematics to calculate your taxes.
You are preaching to the choir.
I was just pointing out the deranged thinking of the good politician, and how guys like him always want to pass another law to solve problems they created with previous laws.
I was pointing out that a progressive income tax is part of the Communist Manifesto.
The people who like progressive income taxes are not interested in anything other than class warfare, so all your logical arguments are lost on them.
Taxation should not be coupled to income. The portion of the amount of money needed to fund the federal government that is the responsibility of individual taxpayers should be divided equally by the etnire population. Then everyone pays their portion through their income.
If the individual portion of the cost of governement is 1 trillion dollars, and there are 300 million people in the country, then 1,000,000,000,000 / 300,000,000 =$3,333 from every man, woman and child in the country.
End all withholding. What you earn you keep, but you get a tax bill every year for your portion of the budget, regardless of what a person makes.
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