Thursday, January 26, 2012

Expect Congress to try to blow smoke into every orifice

Talk about taxes will be very big this year. Following up on the calls for changes by Warren Buffett, the lovely rates paid by Mittens will charge up the public. The Republican/Teabaggers, being the party of the free lunch for rich people, will fight everything proposed.
President Obama’s call for “tax fairness” and Mitt Romney’s tax returns have catapulted the debate over tax increases on the rich to the top of the political agenda. But with even some top Democrats hesitant, the prospects of a so-called Buffett tax on high-earning households remain uncertain, if not remote, for the immediate future. What is left may be only politics, at least until after the November elections.

Democrats promised Wednesday that this time their calls for serious tax changes for the rich were serious. For two years, when their party controlled both houses of Congress and the White House, Democratic leaders failed to change the rules on “carried interest” to ensure that private equity titans and venture capitalists pay more than a 15 percent tax rate on fees reaped from their investor clients. Democrats hardly mentioned raising the 15 percent tax rates on dividends and capital gains, the largest reason the super-rich pay less of their income in taxes than many middle-class families.

But that was before Mr. Romney released a 2010 tax return that showed income of $21.6 million, and an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent, a rate more typical of a household earning about $80,000. An Individual Retirement Account with significant investments in the Cayman Islands valued at $20 million to $100 million, along with investments scattered in tax havens from Switzerland to Luxembourg to Ireland, has also provoked scrutiny.

“All you need to do is look at the former governor of Massachusetts’ tax return to understand why this has become an emergency,” Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, said Wednesday, referring to Mr. Romney.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, seconded Mr. Reid’s call for fast action on tax changes for the rich. Mr. Schumer for years resisted efforts to change the provision that lets Wall Street private equity managers declare their fees as capital gains, before advocating a watered-down approach and now accepting full elimination of the carried-interest provision.
And in the end, despite covering the land in bullshit and filling the air with thick clouds of smoke, nothing will get done before the election and precious little after that. Still, the only possibility of change, small as it may be, is to run every possible Republican/Teabagger out of office.

Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]





<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]