Thanks. This is helpful.
That is pretty much my thinking. And to add to that, there’s very likely a certain segment of voters who will simply notice their larger paychecks and think “Yay! Trump lowered my taxes!” without realizing or caring that it’s a deferral, not a cut, and go vote for Trump.
I’ve seen that happen before. Under the Obama administration, when the temporary payroll tax cut expired, a Republican friend responded by complaining on social media that “Obama raised taxes!!!1!11” Of course Obama got no credit for cutting them (temporarily) in the first place.
My company’s owner declared the idea to be “Fucking stupid” which is fine by me because I agree and now don’t have to worry about opting out as an individual.
I work for a landscape company and, while my desk job is year round, we have a lot of seasonal employees. So they don’t pay into SS for four months, all go back to Mexico and are supposed to pay back the deferred money by April. Except many of them probably won’t be working for us again until May, assuming they come back at all and don’t decide to go elsewhere. That sounds like a real nightmare for the company.
I work in the development department of a company that writes accounting and payroll software, and somebody in support raised question of whether were going to do something to support this deferment.
We took one look at our release schedule and responded with a resounding “Hell no!” (Er, in business-speak.) If our customers care about this business they can update their tax tables, in theory. In practice they’re probably going to have to jump through a few extra hoops to calculate and track this boondoggle - since they’re going to have to keep track of what they would have paid if not for this scam somehow.
So yeah - “a real nightmare” is right, as least for people whose accounting programs aren’t overly shenanigan-compatible.
One of my employees did the exact same thing. I couldn’t explain to him that Obama actually gave him a bunch of extra money for the last two years.
This guy is also super broke all the time. When ACA first came out, there was money to be had for people that were paying more than X% of their wages to insurance premiums. I told him about it and he just blew it off and mumbled something about Obama. He’s so far right, he refused to look into the program. I’m assuming he didn’t send back the $1200 from Trump though.
On the one hand, it shouldn’t be terribly difficult to change the rate from 6.2% to 0, and during each payroll period just keep a running total of what it should have been with plans of taking it back out next year.
My fear would be the software not cooperating next year when it’s time to collect it. Without support from the developers, you could run into issues there.
Well, you can always just cut a check to anybody, that’s not hard. The part that strikes me as tricky is actually figuring out “what it should have been”, because once you tell the software that the tax rate is %0 it’s not going to calculate any differently. Of course this isn’t insurmountable, but it would be somewhat complicated and require a bit of extra work and bookkeeping. Which shouldn’t be a big deal, but it’s been impressed upon me that some of our customers aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. I expect a bunch of irate calls next year complaining that we let them get themselves into this mess.
If I were eligible, I would not want it.
It’s stupid to give people with jobs a little extra temporarily every week. If they want to stimulate demand, the money should go to people without jobs.
Also, isn’t it Republican economic dogma that rational actors won’t do anything with a temporary tax cut? In fact, isn’t it their dogma that decreasing taxes without cutting spending will do nothing, since rational actors know that taxes will have to increase in the future?
When there is a problem with demand and unemployment is fairly low, it is a good idea. Behavioral economics has shown that people put money into buckets. Give them a big check, and they put it in a savings bucket or a luxury item bucket. If lots of people save the money, it isn’t helping. Give them a bit more money and it goes into the salary bucket to be spent.
Doesn’t work if it is hard to spend money since the stores and restaurants are closed. And if a big problem is high unemployment, it doesn’t help that at all.
Even the Republicans thought it was a stupid idea in this situation. But it can be a good one.
Actually, it does matter to you.
Trump has already made noises about making this “deferral” permanent if he’s re-elected.
This tax is how social security is funded.
If this turns into a permanent change then social security disability runs out of money in 2021. Regular social security for retired people runs out in 2023.
This is a way to get the poor to vote against their own interests for the benefit of Trump, as well as a back-door to kill social security.
I’m always happy to get money earlier and pay it later. It’s similar to how I underwithhold and have a big tax bill in April.
That doesn’t mean it’s sound policy. But we weren’t asked about that.
No. Absolutely stupid plan that will not help. As a matter of fact, it will probably do more harm than any perceived good. People that are living paycheck to paycheck that might benefit from that slight increase in their paycheck will be doubly hurt when their paycheck shrinks down less than it started.
Giving them extra money from having no tax for three or four months will be a paltry benefit - and then following that up with double-tax for three to four months sounds like a great way to get people who were living paycheck to paycheck to fail to make rent payments and get evicted.
The more I think of it, it’s like this thing is specifically designed to hurt people. Either it’s never reinstated and social security gets cut off for millions, or millions of people will learn the hard way that if you weren’t budgeting well enough that the ‘bonus’ was unnecessary, you don’t budget well enough to endure the cruel twist afterwards.
It’s simply bait and switch. Which always works well for the baitee. Trump hopes to reel in another million Joe Lunchbuckets & Rita Hotelmaids.
The company I work for sent out an email today saying that they will continue withholding as normal, which is what I’d been hoping they’d do.
I don’t want it, but I am lucky enough not to be living from paycheck-to-paycheck right now.
But, I can understand why someone in a different situation (for example someone who pre-pandemic had a 2-income household and now has a 1-income household and is now looking at higher prices for everything as inflation is rising) thinking that maybe this increase now will help tide them over until January when maybe things might get better.
This is a horrible plan for getting some money to some people who really do need it - but I can’t ignore that some people really do need that money yesterday.
Trump loves his troops and federal employees so much, he is forcing them into his comboverhairbrained idea:
Sorry, I know is the WA Post and they have a paywall, but I cannot find this elsewhere.
To sum it up, no one wants this loan, but he is going to force it on federal workers. Better save that little bit of extra money so you can cover the payment when it comes due.
How does it benefit, trump, trumpers, the economy or Americans to end social security by drying up funding?
Why would any president want to do that? I don’t get it, who benefits by putting seniors into poverty?
As best I can tell, the wealthy conservative segment of the US population is of the opinion that every single penny that goes to somebody else comes out of their pocket. They’re confident that they won’t need social security themselves, so if they can save a few bucks by slaughtering the elderly via starvation and exposure, it’s totes worth it.
They justify this to themselves with the belief that anybody who’s having a hard time is in that situation due to their own personal failings (either sloth or they’re evil so God’s punishing them) and thus they deserve whatever they get.
I’m not trying to be slanderous here - this literally is my impression of their mindset.
“Hey folks, Trump just got me a $300/mo pay raise here in Sep. I’m so grateful I’ll vote for him.” Then Trump has more votes and is more likely to win the election. After that nothing matters to Trump.
That’s the thought process at work. By Trump & his scurvy crew of advisors.
And I think he’s accurately identified a segment of voters that would sell their vote for what they’ve been told is a permanent tax cut = pay raise. The rest is beyond their knowledge, their planning horizon, and hence their comprehension.
Even if Trump (or his minions) misread the tea leaves and this doesn’t actually garner more votes, it does tell us a lot about what they think of the typical American voter.