A Few Years From Now You’re Going To Wake Up With A Bunch Of New Taxes

article by: Bruce Krasting

 

 

 

A Trillion dollars of revenue is on the plate.

 

We’re coming down to the wire on the debt limit. “Hard” deals are now being put on the table. The Republicans have said all along they don’t want any new taxes. But only a fool could think this can be done without a significant amount of revenue increase. So if we’re to get a deal what has to give? Easy. Rather than increase taxes the government can phase out deductions.

This data looks at individual deductions. This come to a whopping $950 billion. You tell me, are you on this list? Have a mortgage? Pay state or property taxes? School debt? Health care costs? Charity? Kids? Veterans? At one point or another every American is on this hit list.

Consider the deductions at the corporate level in America. It’s only $65b. Peanuts compared to the tax breaks of individuals.

Now think of yourself in a room trying to negotiate this big deal. It’s all well and good to say that the end result will be more taxes for corporations. But at a ratio of 15 to 1 you have to hit individuals pretty hard in order to raise any serious money. At this point everyone understands that. Cutting personal deductions in a very big way is the only possible outcome where all sides can save some face.

The way that these cuts in deductions will be phased out will hit high incomes the hardest. But don’t kid yourself; this will end up in three to four years as a very middle class tax increase. Should something like this come about you have to look askance at owning real estate. You’ll get hit with a tax from employer 401 contributions. You might think twice about having a child. Those charitable deductions are just that, charity.

I guess this is what has to happen when you need to raise a trillion in revenue to sell a deal. We’re going to hate it a few years from now when all this kicks in.

 

Geithner: Taxes on ‘Small Business’ Must Rise So Government Doesn’t ‘Shrink’

article by: Terence P. Jeffrey


(CNSNews.com) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Small Business Committee on Wednesday that the Obama administration believes taxes on small business must increase so the administration does not have to “shrink the overall size of government programs.”
The administration’s plan to raise the tax rate on small businesses is part of its plan to raise taxes on all Americans who make more than $250,000 per year—including businesses that file taxes the same way individuals and families do.




Geithner’s explanation of the administration's small-business tax plan came in an exchange with first-term Rep. Renee Ellmers (R.-N.C.). Ellmers, a nurse, decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 after she became active in the grass-roots opposition to President Barack Obama’s proposed health-care reform plan in 2009.

“Overwhelmingly, the businesses back home and across the country continue to tell us that regulation, lack of access to capital, taxation, fear of taxation, and just the overwhelming uncertainties that our businesses face is keeping them from hiring,” Ellmers told Geithner. “They just simply cannot.”

She then challenged Geithner on the administration’s tax plan.

“Looking into the future, you are supporting the idea of taxation, increasing taxes on those who make $250,000 or more. Those are our business owners,” said Ellmers.

Geithner initially responded by saying that the administration’s planned tax increase would hit “three percent of your small businesses.”

Ellmers then said: “Sixty-four percent of jobs that are created in this country are for small business.”
Geithner conceded the point, but then suggested the administration’s planned tax increase on small businesses would be “good for growth.”

“No, that's right. I agree with that,” said Geithner. “But just to put it in perspective, it's important to recognize why are we doing this. You know, our deficits are 10 percent of GDP, higher than they've been since any time in the postwar period really. We have a big hole to dig out of, and we have to figure out how to do that in a way that's balanced, good for growth, fair to people as a whole.”

Geithner, continuing, argued that if the administration did not extract a trillion dollars in new revenue from its plan to increase taxes on people earning more than $250,000, including small businesses, the government would in effect “finance” what he called a “tax benefit” for those people.

“We're not doing it because we want to do it, we're doing it because if we don't do it, then, again, I have to go out and borrow a trillion dollars over the next 10 years to finance those tax benefits for the top 2 percent, and I don't think I can justify doing that,” said Geithner.

Not only that, he argued, but cutting spending by as much as the “modest change in revenue” (i.e. $1 trillion) the administration expects from raising taxes on small business would likely have more of a “negative economic impact” than the tax increases themselves would.

“And if we were to cut spending by that magnitude to do it, you'd be putting a huge additional burden on the economy, probably greater negative economic impact than that modest change in revenue,” said Geithner.

When Ellmers finally told Geithner that “the point is we need jobs,” he responded that the administration felt it had “no alternative” but to raise taxes on small businesses because otherwise “you have to shrink the overall size of government programs”—including federal education spending.

“We're not doing it because we want to do it, we're doing it because we see no alternative to a balanced approach to reduce our fiscal deficits,” said Geithner.

“If you don't touch revenues and you leave in place the tax cuts for the top 2 percent that were put in place by President Bush, if you leave those in place and you're trying to bring our deficits down over time, then you have to do exceptionally deep cuts in benefits for middle-class Americans and you have to shrink the overall size of government programs, things like education, to levels that we could not accept as a country,” said Geithner.

“So to do a balanced approach to reduce our deficits you have to make modest changes in revenues,” he said. “There's no realistic opportunity to do alternatives to doing that.”

According to historical budget tables published by the White House Office of Management and Budget, federal spending has climbed from $2.89 trillion in 2008—the year President Obama took office—to $3.82 trillion this year, an increase of approximately $930 billion.

Meanwhile, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, although federal education spending in inflation-adjusted dollars has jumped from $71.64  billion in 1995—when Bill Clinton was president--to $163.07 billion in 2009—when Barack Obama was president—federal spending still accounted for only 8.2 percent of spending for public primary and secondary education in America in the 2007-2008 school year. Historically and presently in the United States, local and state governments have  funded the cost of public education.

Go Ahead, Make Our Day

by: J. Kowalski

 

 

The Obama Administration has resurrected the notion of a per-mile tax on driving our cars. An attempt of this nature would be a 21^st century Intolerable Act. Installing a federal tracking device of any sort on our cars and then using it to tax the miles we drive would probably produce an outrage and backlash unlike anything we've seen yet, and I eagerly welcome the Federal Government to try it. It could truly be "a bridge too far" for the forces of the statists.

Naturally, the bill has only been "floated" in order to gauge reaction and shield the President from inevitable negative backlash to such an endeavor, but the attempt offers further proof of the lengths our government will go to tax and control our lives and habits. Motivation for this idea could range from simply "raising highway revenue" to yet another attempt by our betters in Washington D.C. to shape our behavior to their liking. All are unacceptable.

A mileage tracking device could function in two ways that I as a non-technical layman could envisage though I don't doubt the resourcefulness of Big Brother to come up with many more methods.  The first way would be similar to the radio frequency identification technology used by major shipping companies and the United States Military to track and locate trucks and consigned shipments.  In brief, a tag on a vehicle or package passes an interrogator, which feeds the information to a network and a central database allowing people to see where a given object is.  An active system on a given vehicle could communicate to the network and tally mileage each time a vehicle passed an interrogator.

The second, and more likely, would be some sort of event recorder on each vehicle that would add miles to a balance taxed at the end of the year or added to the bill each time you gassed the vehicle.

Either way, it would represent a massive intrusion into the lives of our citizens.  While it seems most of the population is tragically medicated into uncaring stupors by garbage television and the fact that relatively speaking, our lives are still good and lost liberties aren't noticed yet, perhaps the time, cost, and general distastefulness of being forced to add any kind of federally mandated tracking device would wake more people up to the evolving evil of Washington D.C.

You could argue that most people do already carry tracking devices, and that this isn't a very big deal.  Cell phones, PDAs, On Star and other navigation systems all allow tracking of some sort, but all are privately owned devices and systems, and personal data is protected by the 4^th Amendment.  A device that would probably be owned by the government, providing tracking data to the government, for potentially unknown uses by the government, is an entirely different story. This should send any real civil libertarian into convulsions, and just might help some of us hitherto sheep-like Americans find their inner colonial revolutionary.

The Intolerable Acts of 1774 were so onerous, and so odious that the colonies were galvanized and the first Continental Congress was called.  The increasingly hostile attitude of the king and his increasingly egregious acts turned more people to the patriot cause, loyalists and moderates of the time found it increasingly difficult to justify support of the Crown or Parliament, and the nation came together before tyranny to bring us the American Revolution.

The implementation of a Federal mileage tax would be identified as a 21^st century Intolerable Act, and would meet similar resistance among the population just like the Boston Port Act, or the earlier Stamp Act or tea tax.  For a more recent example, consider prohibition.  While prohibition wasn't a tax issue, it was unpopular, unenforceable, and ended.  The mileage tax would be blessedly foolish for the progressives to attempt.  Their strategy always revolves around class warfare, pitting the "haves"" against the "have nots."  A uniform mileage tax would hit everyone in their pocketbooks and let the dependent and protected classes feel the pinch of their statist saviors equally.

A mileage tax could incite a peaceable tax revolt and help add to the already lengthy list of reasons to be rid of progressives and statists. The proposal would expose the Federal tyranny for what it is to Americans who never noticed before as few things affect us as universally as when someone messes with our cars.

Imagine the resourcefulness Americans would employ to dodge this tax.  Go ahead, try to place some sort of device in every vehicle in America; see how fast they all accidentally get hit with electromagnets, high voltage, or other unfortunate accidents.  Watch speedometer cables disconnect themselves, watch the young and typically liberal computer geeks of America turn their attention to the destruction of whatever network the government builds to enforce their tax.  Watch auxiliary gas tanks get installed on one vehicle in order to fill others, watch gas cans get filled for lawnmowers every single time a vehicle goes in for a fill.  Watch resourceful red state country boys pull the old pickups from behind their outbuildings and drive them unregistered across the great expanses of flyover country.  The less resourceful and more effete urbanites on the coasts and in Illinois who insist on forcing this sort of tyranny upon the rest of us would have none of these options and be most affected, forcing them to either pay, or stop voting for big brother.  Watch how much more time, money, and effort the program would end up costing the government than it would make. Imagine how much time and money would be spent attempting to deal with scofflaws, and how difficult it would be to prove that each destroyed tracking device wasn't really an accident.

The automobile, the freedom of the open road, and the anonymity of our nation's vast expanse of highways may just be the one thing that most if not all Americans have in common. A mileage tax might finally be an intrusion that might awake enough of us from our stupors to stand up and fight.

To our betters in D.C, please, implement the mileage tax. Continue to expose yourselves for the collectivists and totalitarians you aspire to be. Please give us another reason to demand our states regain their power and protect us from the central tyranny. Please, give us another reason to fight you in court. Please, get the loyalists off the fence, pass the Intolerable Act. You've already awoken the productive, tax-paying, flag waving silent majority, "the sleeping giant" -do this and you'll rally the indecisive villagers to his side and help bring your own house down.

Go ahead, make our day.

J. Kowalski is the pen name of a United States Military officer

 

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/go_ahead_make_our_day.html

Obama Administration Floats Draft Plan To Tax Cars By The Mile

by: Pete Kasperowicz


The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.

The plan is a part of the administration's Transportation Opportunities Act, an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.

The White House, however, said the bill is only an early draft that was not formally circulated within the administration.

“This is not an administration proposal," White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said. "This is not a bill supported by the administration. This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the administration, does not taken into account the advice of the president’s senior advisers, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the president.”

News of the draft follows a March Congressional Budget Office report that supported the idea of taxing drivers based on miles driven.


Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations.

The CBO report was requested by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who has proposed taxing cars by the mile as a way to increase federal highway revenues.

Obama's proposal seems to follow up on that idea in section 2218 of the draft bill. That section would create, within the Federal Highway Administration, a Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office. It would be tasked with creating a "study framework that defines the functionality of a mileage-based user fee system and other systems."

The administration seems to be aware of the need to prepare the public for what would likely be a controversial change to the way highway funds are collected. For example, the office is called on to serve a public-relations function, as the draft says it should "increase public awareness regarding the need for an alternative funding source for surface transportation programs and provide information on possible approaches."

The draft bill says the "study framework" for the project and a public awareness communications plan should be established within two years of creating the office, and that field tests should begin within four years.

The office would be required to consider four factors in field trials: the capability of states to enforce payment, the reliability of technology, administrative costs and "user acceptance." The draft does not specify where field trials should begin.

The new office would be funded a total of $300 million through fiscal 2017 for the project.

read this and more at thehill.com