If an individual is a net Federal Income Tax receiver, is a reduction in the amount of money he receives from the Federal Government a tax hike for him?
I suspect that the answer is “yes.” Exemptions that are removed seem to be treated as tax hikes.
For illustration, I own a home. If the mortgage interest deduction would go away I would pay more taxes. I can see me arguing that would be equal to a tax increase. And since there is no income level that carries a negative tax bracket, any change in tax policy that would diminish a payment or reduce a deduction would be seen as a tax hike.
I’m only thinking this through right now. I’m reading the report from the Tax Policy Center on how the plan offered by Romney would impact the tax picture for all of us.
I have two thoughts besides the one above:
- Why do we need to be revenue neutral? Why can’t we cut taxes and just quit spending so much money?
- This sentence from the same organization bothers me: “An estimated 42 percent of the 76 million nontaxable tax units will have negative liability in 2011.”
A tax is an amount of money that an individual PAYS to the government. Reducing the amount of money that someone GETS from the government might not be labelled a tax INCREASE. In fact, I happen to think that labeling government entitlement programs as “tax cuts” has been a method to get those programs passed. And this is long before Obama stepped into the White House [DUBYA!]
Serious. 42% of 76 million is a lot of people who are takers. And 76 million out of 300 million is a lot of non-payers!
1. We need to be revenue positive, in my opinion – otherwise we won’t have a chance against this debt. Yeah, we need to make cuts to, and reform entitlements. But the political reality is that we have to both cut spending and increase (or at the very least be neutral on) revenues.
2. Ditch the use of “takers.” A lot of these people are hard working folk who haven’t gotten breaks in life. To call them “takers” is offensive, especially when a lot of very wealthy people don’t work as hard and are where they are because of their station of birth. It creates an illusion – a delusion – that somehow the wealthy are superior and doing more than those who are poor. It is the rhetoric of class warfare – takers vs. makers – that is the kind of thing the GOP claims it doesn’t want.
I think a lot of middle class folk don’t get what it is to be poor – how hard work and effort doesn’t always yield material rewards. For many “being poor” is an image of white lower middle class poverty thirty or forty years ago. There is a real lack of empathy in this country, and that feeds to division.