Category Archives

Archive of posts published in the category: Taxes

Are The Rich Paying Their Fair Share?

Scott Grannis posts in his blog,  Calafia Beach Pundit, Tax Shares Update: In 2011, it took $389K or more of adjusted gross income to make it into the top 1% of income earners, and they paid 35% of all federal income

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Small Man’s Sin

Kevin Williamson writes in The National Review, The Age of Envy: Excerpts: Wrath and pride are the sins of great (but not good) men. Envy is the affliction of the insignificant. It is the small man’s sin. Which brings us

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Encouraging Conspicuous Consumption

I meet every couple of months with a couple of small groups of diversified small businesses in the Southeast. Here is what I am hearing. Few are making any significant capital expenses.  Taxes are too high and conditions are too

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The Other Taxes

While tax rates are often stated as the burden on individuals and businesses there are other “mandated expenses” that are much more insidious.  Federal agencies are often charged with funding themselves with fines and penalties. Much too often these fines

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Why The Middle Class Does Not Want to Soak the Rich

From The American Lee Harris writes Why Not Soak the Rich? 3/6/13 Lee raises the question of why so many middle class republicans are so reluctant to raise the taxes on the wealthiest.  This confounds liberals who voiced this question

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Everything is not Enough

Justin Hohn writes in American Thinker How Much Taxation Would Fund Current Spending?, 12/12/12 Excerpts: Using 2009 data, the IRS says that 8,274 tax returns were filed with incomes over $10 million.  The total amount of income on those returns was $240.1 billion.

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A Tax Increase Reader

There are a lot of sound bites and meaningless phrases used to cover the debate on fiscal reform.  “Fiscal Reform” means cutting expenses for some, increasing taxes for other.  I think I will scream if I hear the phrase ‘fiscal

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Regressive Marginal Tax Rates

In the current debate of how best to increase revenues it is important to distinguish between marginal taxes and effective taxes.  Marginal taxes are the taxes you pay on an incremental amount of income.  If the marginal tax rate is

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Kennedy Vs Krugman

 In The New York Times, Nobel prize winning fool (a growing breed) Paul Krugman writes the Twinkie Manifesto, 11/18/12. In the article Krugman suggests we return to the tax rates of the 1950 when the highest bracket was 91% and

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Becoming More Dependent on the Wealthy

Stephen Moore traces a history of tax RATE changes in the 20th Century in Why Lower Tax Rates Are Good for Everyone in The Wall Street Journal. Excerpt: The country needs an economy that will create more of the “millionaires and

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Raising Revenue vs Raising Tax Rates

  Scott Grannis writes in his blog,  Calafia Beach Pundit, Higher taxes on the rich would barely dent the deficit, 11/13/12. Excerpts:  … boosting taxes for the wealthiest 2 percent would bring in $58.1 billion in fiscal year 2013, according

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Capital Destruction

From the Wall Street Journal – A Capital Gains Primer. Excerpts: Far from being a loophole, the low tax rate applied to capital gains is beneficial and fair for several reasons. First, under current tax rules, all gains from investments

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The Highest Corporate Tax in The Developed World

from The Georgia Public Policy Foundation, Friday Facts Taxes and regulation But for Mississippi: About 1.95 million Georgians out of 4,589,611 Georgians (42.5 percent) who filed returns didn’t pay federal taxes in 2010, ranking the state second in the nation

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Stimulating Conspicuous Consumption

The chief effect of steeply progressive tax rates is to lower the price of luxury and leisure in relation to investment and work.  Paul Craig Roberts elucidated the point: Take the case of a person facing the 70 percent tax

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Tax Lessons Unlearned

Thomas Sowell writes ‘Bait and Switch’ Taxes in The American Spectator, 9/5/12 excerpt: The Constitution of the United States had to be amended in 1913 to permit the federal government to collect income taxes. Almost immediately, very high tax rates

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Dependent On Our Demons

The Facebook Deficit, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, is an example of the problem with depending on the wealthy to finance the redistributionist state. Who’s the biggest loser in the Facebook stock meltdown? Next to founder Mark Zuckerberg

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There is No Victory in a Class War

From Phil Gramm and Steve McMillan in their article in the Wall Street Journal, The Real Causes of Income Inequality, 4/6/12. Inequality is a natural result of the expansion of liberty and the development of new technology and new products. Henry

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Your Money is Not Yours

Yes, we all drive on roads built by government taxes and our property is valuable because the police and the courts protect it, and our freedoms are secure because soldiers died to defend our rights.  There are even products and

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The Tax Act of 1986 and Income Distribution

I have posted several times about the perception and the reality of growing income inequality.  To summarize several of the those entries:  the data can be very misleading depending on which time periods are considered, what is included in income

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A Very Inconvenient Truth About Taxes

Phil Gramm and Steve McMillan note the irony of the call for more “fairness”in their article in the Wall Street Journal, The Real Causes of Income Inequality, 4/6/12. Excerpt: Nowhere is the political debate over income inequality more detached from reality

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