Wrong. There is a capital gains rate, and the only interest expense a family may deduct is mortgage interest, which BTW, has been deductible as long as we have had an income tax.
There is indeed a capital gains rate. There is also a corporate rate on the same money. If you pay 35% and then you pay 15%, what have you paid? This is why
both men agree that we desperately need to reduce our corporate tax rates - precisely because our current code
discourages savings and investment. If you want to save your money, you face a tax rate of up to 50%, but if you spend your money instantly, your tax rate is 0%, and depending on what you spend it on, it might go into the negatives.
No, there's a hefty penalty on remaining single and childless. However, IMO, "encouraging stable families" is no more the proper goal of a tax that "discouraging smoking". Taxes should raise revenue, period.
There is no hefty penalty for remaining single and childless - your tax rate remains as it is. There
are significant incentives to remain single
after you have had children.
I ran the numbers for just three programs and found out that a low-income family with two kids stood to lose
thousands. And that is why over the past few decades we have seen our lower-income families
respond to those incentives, and raise children in broken homes, with disastrous consequences for the kids.
How so? Yes, there are limits on deductions for the expenses associated with passive income and hobbies, but these are necessary to curb tax avoidance.
it reduces the available capital supply to start businesses
with, and reduces the return on investment that incentivizes business formation.
I dunno whether I agree with this or not.
well how about you go ahead and decide to agree because I'm Just So Cute :mrgreen:
Kitty says Please
:lol:
Seriously, however, the deduction available for interest encourages investing on the margin, which does indeed inflate bubbles and cause periodic bursts that harm the rest of our economy, on top of general corporate indebtedness, which makes our economy less nimble at adjusting to and fixing new realities.
Not sure about your numbers, but yes, the cost of compliance is too high. I'd support a flat tax partially for this reason -- however, the costs associated with third party reporting are offset by their efficiencies and the tax avoidance they inhibit.
I'm not quite sure what you are addressing there.
What complexity? The IRS Code's? Unless you can explain which loophole you are closing, I cannot agree.
Which specific ones? There are thousands. The Tax Code of the United State of America runs to over 73
thousand pages long, and is an undecipherable smouldering mess so complex and convoluted that even the
IRS does not fully understand it. Romney has alot to close, but complexity reduction conjoined with lowering nominal rates to retain revenue is the key to
any successful tax reform, and so the question really is simply how far in the right direction we move.
I have argued that we should impose a flat tax of 25% on any income above 200% of the poverty line, and a negative tax of -50% on any income
not earned below that amount (which would replace our conglomerate of mixed and matched and counteractive and contradicting social programs with a single stream of government aid which would ensure that not a single man, woman, or child in America would live in poverty). But we were talking about Romney, not cpwill.
This is my "don't kid a kidder" face, cpwill. No way will Romney do any such thing.
actually that is the centerpiece of the economic platform he is running on. If he fails to do such a thing A) he looks like an idiot and B) he probably doesn't want to get reelected.
Look, I don't trust Romney any further than I can throw him to do what I think is the right thing. But I
do trust him to look out for his political self-interest, and fortunately in this case his political self interest aligns with the countries. I
do trust Obama, but unfortunately I trust him to do alot of
wrong things because he does not fully understand their impacts.
First, no one can predict that any closed loophole will generate more revenue. There'll be pushback from the sector who had been enjoying it, and the tax bar is VERY creative. Second, only a naive person could believe Romney will "end corporate welfare", as he'd be defeating the interests of his core constituency as well as betraying the "promise" of trickle down.
Firstly, Romney has never promised trickle down - that is a straw man. Conservatives do not believe in trickle-down any more than liberals believe in communism and death panels. We believe that people left to their own freedom typically allocate their resources better than government does on their behalf.
Secondly, there are two ways to predict the effects of closed loopholes - statically and dynamically. Static methodology tends to wildly overestimate projected revenues from rate increases, but Dynamic methodology tends to depend more upon assumptions about how people will behave under altered incentive structures (ie: that people tend to do what they perceive to be in their financial best interest).
What "loss of uncertainty"? There's an unavoidable efficiency cost associated with every change to the IRS Code.
Currently no one even knows what their tax rates will be in three months. No one knows what the full cost of Obamacare will be, what he full cost of Frank-Dodd will be, or what next giant porker is working it's way down the regulatory framework. When you cannot predict with any certainty your future costs, when you cannot operate on the assumption of general stability, the incentive to invest in new capital, new plants, and new employees is
sharply reduced.
My uncle, for example, currently runs a small construction business with around 50 employees, which he built from the ground up through blood, sweat, and 16 hour days, with no college degree. He has no idea what his tax rates will be on January 3 (though he is still responsible for preparing to pay them), but he
does know that if they go up significantly, he will have to lose someone in order to keep the business in the black. Why in the world would he hire someone now, when he would just have to turn around and fire them (and others) tomorrow, with a loss of resources that makes it more likely that more of his
current workers would lose their jobs?
BP Oil Spill? Ring any bells?
Yup. Two things.
1. More oil is spilled from tankers bringing oil to our shores than from rigs off our shores - the greater threat for pollution isn't oil that we produce domestically, its oil that we import. If you want to decrease the pollution impact of fossil fuels, then we need to shift a greater share of our consumption to home-grown production and away from foreign production.
2. The BP Oil Spill largely occurred
because of our drilling restrictions - we pushed production miles out away and forced them to drill miles further down, which increases the complexity, difficulty, and possibility of fault exponentially. Allowing them to drill closer in would
reduce the threat, again, exponentially.
Romney was a fund manager who did a lot of mergers and acquisitions, cpwill. I know these guys and their henchmen -- they might possibly have lower morals than your average politician.
OTOH, I do not know any corrupt college or law school professors.
Romney was a turn-around artist who specialized in taking failing enterprises and making them successful. That is what companies like Bain do, it's how they make their money. As for corruption, Romney is a friggin boy scout - it's almost annoying.