This seems like a strangely specific definition of the term “tax reform”. I personally would consider any significant change in the tax system intended to improve, correct, or simplify it “tax reform”, including a reform explicitly intended to eliminate the rich escaping taxation via various methods. I do not believe you have to toss the middle class on the altar to call something tax reform, and that it’s disingenuous to claim that tax reform is impossible without doing more harm than good.
Seriously? Haven’t seen that claim.
eta. Oh Limbaugh.
Those are the biggest deductions, and if you raise the standard deduction and lower rates, most middle class taxpayers pay less. The upper middle class would pay more and the rich a lot more. Anything else is just moving stuff around in the tax system in order to pay off one group and harm another, which is what the GOP tax reform is really all about.
But upper middle class taxpayers really need to get over their entitlement mentality that they should pay less than people making half their income because they have a mortgage and college expenses and high local taxes. It’s their privilege that creates such expenses. You are supposed to pay about 15% of your income in income taxes above the $60K level or so. If you aren’t, you’re privileged by the tax system and that should probably change.
I take all the usual deductions, including a pretty big mortgage interest deduction, and I pay a hell of a lot more than 15% of my income in taxes. Where can I sign up for some of that privilege stuff?
They certainly exist. About 25% of households making six figures but less than $500K end up having to pay the AMT, and politicians think that’s a hardship and want to shield these taxpayers from it.
Are there any figures on how much in deductions are taken on second homes? Is there any good reason to include second homes in the mortgage deduction?
Also, are there gaping loopholes that can be closed? For instance, I know if you rent the place, you can deduct interest as a business expense. Can you rent out a room in a mansion and then claim the interest as a business expense, and further, as a loss since revenue aren’t meeting costs?
Yeah? How about this nice robocall
Hi, this is Bernie Bernstein, I’m a reporter for the Washington Post calling to find out if anyone at this address is a female between the ages of 54 to 57 years old willing to make damaging remarks about candidate Roy Moore for a reward of between $5000 and $7000 dollars. We will not be fully investigating these claims however we will make a written report. I can be reached by email at albernstein@washingtonpost.com, thank you.
Robocall already outed as a hoax
Who would believe such crap?
So long as the voting public keeps bending over and begging for more, they’ll keep fucking them over.
No tax reform plan can be called “reform” if it still allows “carried interest” and such. Bring back the 91% bracket!
I like how they picked a Jewish-sounding name for the reporter. I’m sure that was just a coincidence.
They probably did not actually steal it
Bernie Bernstein: A criminal posing as a film director with yellow-tinted eyeglasses, thin mustache and black beret who tries to fool everyone in Townsville that he is filming a movie starring the Powerpuff Girls, so he can steal money from the Bank while shooting a robbery scene. Appears in the episode “Film Flam.” Voiced by Tom Kenny.
from the PowerPuff Girls, but …
Well see, he was a Democrat back then and thus a bad person. Now he’s a good person, he’s changed, he’s a Republican! He has upstanding moral values, just Donald Trump!
They don’t want to stimulate growth, economic or intellectual. They want an uneducated populace because an educated populace is harder to control and to fool.
This is a catastrophically wrong-headed “definition.” Also, are you high?
You had better believe that even lower-income voters take deductions like that where they can.
I would say that overall low baseline taxes without deductions are more injurious to industry and to working people than high marginal taxes with generous deductions for (for example) research and development. I think your Reaganite definition of “tax reform” is deadly silly, just as it was in 1981 when Ronnie was pushing it.
This chart(?) was used by a real republican Rep yesterday during the Sessions questioning-
I’m at a loss for words.
One *might *consider tax reform to be an improvement in the fairness of the distribution of the tax burden, combined with movement toward balancing the budget and paying down the debt.
This bill, in whatever form it may plausibly emerge, does the opposites of all those things and could not claim the mantle.
I can’t wrap my head around where this plan is going to end up. Republicans want to eventually concentrate ALL the power and wealth in the .1%…so that they…rule over a nation of the stupid, fooled, sick, and uneducated? Reintroduce slavery? Close off the borders and recreate Fortress America, screw the rest of the world?
What comes afterward? They spend all day diving into swimming pools filled with gold coins? There’s only so much ice cream you can eat before you get sick.
It isn’t a Stupid Republican idea, but I have to quote this exchange. It’s from a HuffPost piece on the hypocrisy of the GOP believing Moore’s accusers but not TRump’s:
Fake chart - doesn’t show any of the people Clinton murdered and left in the woods. Nor does it mention Obama killing Scalia in his sleep. SAD
More or less, although I don’t think they’d get away with reintroducing slavery.
You said so yourself: screw the rest of the world. Your president won’t even talk to democratic world leaders, praises dictators and mass murderers, constantly cries “Lugenpresse!”, is a Nazi sympathizer and racist who is opposed to freedom of expression, has said outright that he doesn’t need to staff the state department because he’s the only one that matters, wants to use your government’s judicial branch to imprison his political opponents, and laments that you don’t drop enough nuclear weapons on people. I expect that next he’ll be arguing that what America needs to be Great Again is a little breathing room.
I hope I’m wrong. Or, I hope I’m right but you guys manage to stop him first, which is a decent second prize.