Category Archives

Archive of posts published in the category: Taxes

FDR’s Tax Secret

“In 1936, after FDR helped raise the top income-tax bracket to 79 percent, the revenue collected from income taxes dropped to $674 million, as rich investors withdrew their capital from taxable investments. The excise taxes, which hit the middle- and lower-income groups with full force, were over $1.5 billion. These new excise taxes, much more than income taxes, were helping fund the New Deal programs.”

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The Dirty Little Secret of Tax Policy

This is the biggest lie perpetuated from the left; that our vast social spending can be funded by only taxing the wealthiest 1%. The math just does not work. As Thatcher so famously noted, “You eventually run out of other people’s money.”

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Peter Has Options

When you rob Peter to pay Paul you can always count on Paul’s approval, but you cannot count on Peter to remain cooperative. Peter has options.

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Endless Tax Wars

Our biggest challenge is an endless appetite for government spending and an unwillingness and inability to raise taxes enough to support it. The idea that infinite spending can be supported by a small percentage of taxpayer defies basic math and principles of human action. This has caused record deficits and a belief that deficits do not matter and that tradeoffs are no longer required.

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Peter’s Wall

When you rob Peter to pay Paul you can count on Paul’s approval, but you can also count on Peter moving to another more friendly place.  When you try to build a wall to keep Peter in, you also discourage Peters from moving here, and you encourage young and enterprising Peters to move away BEFORE they become wealthy enough to be worth robbing.

Warren’s policy is as destructive of our long term financial health as any policy we can imagine. 

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Elizabeth Warren’s Wall

Warren uses ‘rich people’ as a scapegoat in the same way the classical bigots of history used religious and ethnic  vulnerable minorities and the ‘others’.  It is a form of intellectual bigotry and is clouded in the same lethal combination of ignorance and dishonesty.

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The Morality Tax

“Because Sweden is well-governed, it treats its tax regime as a question of revenue rather than a question of so-called social justice…”

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The Middle Class Finally Wins

The data counters the false refrain of the Trump cuts only benefiting the rich.  While I have repeated this refrain for years, the actual tax rates matter more than the statutory rates. The difference is the Special Interest Spread- SIS- a term I coined in this article: Save the Swamp.

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Taxes and Inequality

If you prioritize economic growth over social spending, you will have a great measure of both: if you prioritize social spending over growth you will have less of both.

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Are Property Taxes Regressive?

The contest between the sales tax and the property tax obscures the true problem: a government that spends too much and tries to hide from its responsibilities with these shell games.

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Internet Sales Tax Ruling

Many small businesses that ship online will be hurt by this ruling. Complying with the tax codes for 48 states that charge sales tax will be crippling for many of them.  There will be a need for a third party to manage the sales tax issue for thousands of small online businesses. This will likely serve to make Amazon and other large online retailers bigger and more powerful in the internet sales arena. 

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Trade Factions

What DT is risking is not just some political points in the rust belt and trade promises. When this trade war ends like all the rest do, and the economy takes a hit- it will not be his stupid trade polices that are blamed, it will be his ‘stupid’ tax cuts.

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The Counterproductive Estate Tax

by Henry Oliner
The estate tax is less of a transfer from the rich to the poor than it is a transfer from one group of wealthy to other wealthy special interests.  The great beneficiaries of estate taxes are tax lawyers and accountants, insurance companies, and wealthier businesses who use the pressure of the estate taxes to acquire other firms and grow larger.

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Rebel Yid Tax Proposal 2017 11 29

A flat 5% rate ON ALL INCOME. Earned, unearned, dividends, capital gain, muni bond, treasuries. THEN A $10,000 personal exemption. $20,000 per couple. A 10% tax on all earned income above that. The first $100,000 of dividends and investment income

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Tax Thoughts 2017 11 29

by Henry Oliner Corporate tax cuts are opposed because the company will not spend it as the political brokers wish.  There is no guarantee they will use it to create jobs.  But having a more competitive tax rate may make

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Neutered Tax Cuts

The drive for tax cuts obscures the greater benefit of tax reform and simplification.  Taxes, however, are only a single component of friction costs. If the purpose of tax reform or tax cuts is to stimulate investment and productive activity

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The Real Loser from Tax Reform

From my article in American Thinker, Save the Swamp: I call the difference between the statutory rate and the actual rate the ‘special interest spread’.  It is the difference between the official stated rate and the actual rate paid after

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The Social Engineering Trap

From Kevin Williamson at National Review, A Conservative Tax Hike The federal government uses the tax code for all sorts of social-engineering purposes: to encourage and subsidize investment in manufacturing or green-energy businesses, to reward charitable giving, to encourage home-ownership. The

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Let California Be California

From Kevin Williamson at National Review, A Conservative Tax Hike Eliminating deductibility for state and local income taxes is of course politically satisfying for mean-spirited conservatives such as myself — it constitutes a very substantial tax increase on the sort of

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True Tax Reform

from An Anti-Growth Tax Cut by Kevin Williamson in The National Review In economic terms, there are two things going on with those revenue and deficit numbers. One is the structural issue, i.e., tax policy, spending, etc. The other is

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