Exactly. Rick’s tax plan is nothing but a list of vote-buying favors. He wants to make the tax code more complicated rather than less.
I like Newt’s plan better. It is better conceived, although I think it needs at least one tweak: If someone chooses to use deductions and credits to get a rate lower than 15%, what they owe should never fall below 10% of AGI. No more tax freeloading for anybody. I don’t care how many children YOU decided to have or how many electric cars YOU chose to buy or whether YOU get you income from labor or dividends or capital gains. Those were YOUR decisions and don’t deserve special treatment that only ends up forcing someone else to pay your tax burden instead of paying your own way.
I concur.
Well, you’d have a bigger disagreement with Newt’s policy then because he is eliminating the capital gains tax entirely (not sure if that’s just the “long-term” cap gains tax or if the time distinction goes away). You have to believe that the cap gains tax has a direct relationship to spurring on investment and building the economy in order to believe that’s the right policy. I haven’t studied the issue in great depth to be able to argue the case one way or another. But for a long time our long-term cap gains tax has been intentionally lower than the income tax, that’s for sure.
“I like Newt’s plan better.”
Arthur Laffer, well-known economist and former Ronald Reeagan’s economy adviser, wrote:
“Jobs and wealth are created by those who are taxed, not by those who do the taxing. Government, by its very nature, doesn’t create resources but redistributes resources. To minimize the damages taxes cause the economy, the best way for government to raise revenue is a broad-based, low-rate flat tax that provides people and businesses with the fewest incentives to avoid or otherwise not report taxable income, and the least number of places where they can escape taxation. On these counts it doesn’t get any better than Mr. Gingrich’s optional 15% flat tax for individuals and his 12.5% flat tax for business. Each of these taxes has been tried and tested and found to be enormously successful.
Hong Kong, where there has been a 15% flat income tax on individuals since 1947, is truly a shining city on the hill and one of the most prosperous cities in history. Ireland’s 12.5% flat business income tax propelled the Emerald Isle out of two and a half centuries of poverty.
Imagine what would happen to international capital flows if the U.S. went from the second highest business tax country in the world to one of the lowest. Low taxes along with all of America’s other great attributes would precipitate a flood of new investment in this country as well as a quick repatriation of American funds held abroad. We would create more jobs than you could shake a stick at.
Fairness in taxation means that people and businesses in like circumstances have similar tax burdens. A flat tax, whether on business or individuals, achieves fairness in spades. A person who makes 10 times as much as another person should pay 10 times more in taxes. It is also patently obvious that it is unfair to tax some people’s income twice, three times or more after it has been earned, as is the case with the death tax.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204652904577192660439187438.html