Posted on 01/13/2003 4:51:21 AM PST by from occupied ga
One learns over the years not to get too excited about any proposal coming from Washington that seems like a good thing. One must wait for the dust to settle, read the text, examine the fine print, and generally look past the sloganeering. The Bush tax cut is a good example. The more we know, the more suspicious we become.
Bush may be the biggest big-government president ever, but his tax-cut proposal has bought him time. It seems that he wants to step up the timetable for implementing his last tax cuts (only now is the word getting out that the last one hasn’t even come into effect yet!), increase the child-tax deduction, and eliminate taxes on dividends (which, on the margin, helps companies that pay them, old-line companies with more political connections).
It's not perfect, but surely this is a step in the right direction, right? Not so fast. Buried on the business pages today is a stunning revelation. The Bush tax cut does not address what will be the most aggressive means of taxation in the coming ten years, the thoroughly evil Alternative Minimum Tax. If nothing is done about this, it will become a larger revenue generator in the future than the current income tax. The Bush plan does nothing to remedy the problem.
The AMT was originally justified as a way to further loot the well-to-do. Mark Thornton explains:
"It was instituted at a time when the highest marginal tax rate was 90 percent, and the tax code provided lots of juicy tax loopholes for wealthy Americans. Tax rates have dropped – but now the AMT, like a stealth bomber, is raising the tax burden on those earning as little as $33,000.
"You could be one of the nearly 30 million taxpayers (according to an estimate from the Joint Committee on Taxation) that will have to pay the AMT. That is roughly one in five of all taxpayers. The Bush-league tax cut pushes more taxpayers into the AMT because it lowers regular rates without lowering the AMT rates.
"Therefore, just a few itemized deductions and – whammo! – you pay the AMT, and your deductions go right out the window. Say goodbye to deductions for state income taxes, medical expenses, business expenses, and even certain home-equity loans.
"With the AMT, you still have to fill out your conventional tax forms, but if you make the minimum, you must refigure your taxes without all your deductions and then pay the 'flat tax.' Given that low-income Americans pay little of the total tax burden, we now effectively have a tax system with all the complications of the old tax code alongside the crushing burden of a system designed to stick it to the rich."
The trouble is that the AMT is deliberately not inflation adjusted, and hence is imperial vis-à-vis the decline in purchasing power. The more the Fed inflates, the more people get roped into the system. The AMT starts to hit one-child families with incomes of $71,000 by 2006, and couples with two or more children will see their tax credits destroyed. Even with Bush's plan, the number of people paying the AMT will rise by 9 percent this year and the taxes paid will rise by 28 percent, and then it expands year by year. Over the next 8 years, the AMT monster will seize half a trillion dollars, looted from the middle class and the upper middle class, to fill government coffers.
The Bush administration says that it doesn't have any intention of addressing the AMT. His first tax bill didn't address it and neither does this one. "President Bush was elected on a promise to cut taxes," said the administration's first tax policy official Mark Weinberger, "not reform the alternative minimum tax." Meanwhile the beast continues to fatten and grow longer teeth.
But does the AMT make headlines? Of course not. Only tax accountants seem to care. Just the letters "AMT" alone are enough to induce stupor. The information that the Bush tax proposal does not address the problem, and the implications of not doing so, appears buried deep within the business section that political reporters don't even read. Or if you read the Electronic Accountant, you surely know all about the problem.
Meanwhile, the news of the supposed tax cut, and the usual sham between the small-government Republicans and the big government Democrats, is all over the place, and the illusion continues. Ten years, hence, however, we will look back and note that the Republicans controlled the White House and Congress, and did nothing to slay the beast that is preparing to devour the American middle and upper middle classes.
Of course, the Bush administration knows exactly what it is doing. Whether you look at foreign policy, privacy concerns, government spending, or tax policy, the goal is the same: Build the State!
January 11, 2003
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail] is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and editor of LewRockwell.com.
Copyright © 2003 LewRockwell.com
Why not contact the authors of the AMT and ask them if this was what they intended and what they are going to do to end it?
Besides, as things go.....Who is going to pay for cutting/killing the AMT? (how it would be commented on)
Utter nonsense. You are just advocating replacing one sort of confiscation with another. It is not the mechanism, but the amount taken that is the problem. And, the amount taken would not be a problem if 99% of what the government spent wasn't unconstitutional.
You all have probably already read this, but I found this article on the AMT interesting too:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/673083/posts Whenever I go through my taxes each year I dread that the AMT's scope-creep will have finally roped me in. I'm tired of these nickel and dime tax changes and wish Bush would take on the whole unfair tax system by the horns. I can only hope that intends to do so, just apart from his stimulus package.
On this we are in total agreement
It has far and away exceeded its original purpose of taxing the few extremely wealthy people who were not paying taxes otherwise.
Here we disagree. It's original intent was to disallow legitimate expenses on wealth taxpayers. It was another method of sticking it to the "wealthy"
Bush has absolutely no intention of getting rid of the AMT. He plays the politics of envy just was well as his Democratic friends. The US government is the enemy of every hard working and productinve citizen in the country, and putting a liberal Republican in charge of the government hasn't changed this.
Here is the short version of the scenario that I believe will play out. Underlying this scenario is the assumption that the American people have not seen fit over the past 75 years to elect people to office who promise to cut the size and scope of government -- quite the opposite, in fact.
So, given the propensity of the American people to elect "tax and spend" politicians, what we must do is devise some method to cause government to shrink -- starve it, if you will.
What better way than to replace a miserably failed tax system which punishes those who work,save and invest with a tax system which will reward those who work,save and invest? Such a tax system will increase the size and rate of growth of the economy, i.e., raise economic output.
Raising the economic output of the USA will raise the standard of living of all Americans. Wealthier Americans will demand less government services. Lower demand for government services will result in smaller government.
Smaller government costs less. Tax rates will decrease, resulting in more economic growth. More economic growth will beget less demand for government services, resulting in even less government.
Do you begin to get the picture?
The National Retail Sales Tax is a solution to many problems, only one of which you have identified. So far as I know, no other solution to the manifold problems 75 years of liberal insanity has been offered,
And another thing: If you and I don't do anything but sit around and bitch about the problems we face, the problems will not get solved.
Having said all that, what is your proposed solution to the problems America faces on the domestic front?
The National Retail Sales Tax is a solution to many problems, only one of which you have identified. So far as I know, no other solution to the manifold problems 75 years of liberal insanity has been offered,
I fail to see how shifting from an income tax to a sales tax will miraculously solve 75 years of liberalism. This just shifts the mechanism of collection and does not address the ultimate problem - profligate unconstitutional spending.
And another thing: If you and I don't do anything but sit around and bitch about the problems we face, the problems will not get solved.
well of course this is true, but we have to allocate our resources on that which we feel to be our highest priorities. Cutting government spending is much more important to me than th mechanism of collection.
Having said all that, what is your proposed solution to the problems America faces on the domestic front?
There isn't one solution to the host of problems. What would I do if I were made tyrant for a month?
I could have put up 31 things, but I though 14 was enough to get the idea across. I left out issue arrest warrants for all UN personnel so that when they overstayed their deadline they could be handily clapped into jail.
Localities practice direct taxation: usually on land, sometimes on sales and income. States do, too, although there's a powerful argument for having states tax counties rather than laying direct taxes on individuals. The federal government originally operated on indirect taxation: excise taxes levied not on Americans or their routine commerce, but on goods that moved across the national border, in either direction.
During the years of federal indirect taxation, Washington ran embarrassing surpluses that were often quite difficult to distribute. With the rise of direct taxation came the explosive growth of the federal government and the creation of a permanent debt. Of course, there were other changes as well, and some of them undoubtedly contributed, but it's hard not to see direct taxation at the heart of federal growth.
Why not consider going back to indirect taxation for all units of government that are more remote from the citizen than the county legislature? Since indirect taxes can usually be avoided if one is determined to do so, they'd provide a way we could restrain government spending and activism without having to stage an in-your-face revolt. An attractive idea, isn't it?
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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It was my understanding that the corporate tax rate would not be affected by this, only the individual taxes on dividends. Further if you are unfortunate enought to work hard enough to qualify as an AMT victim, you wouldn't see any tax relief.
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