Taxes
November 12, 2012 — John Hinderaker
The Bush-era income tax rates will expire at the end of the year. That is only one of a number of financially significant–some say cataclysmic–deadlines that occur around year end: the payroll tax holiday ends, the alternative minimum tax patch will expire, $36 billion in Obamacare taxes will take effect, tax extenders will expire, the (minimal) 2009 “stimulus” tax cuts will run out, the inheritance tax will increase, and 100%
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October 30, 2012 — John Hinderaker
This video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity does an excellent job of exposing the folly of Barack Obama’s punitive tax policies. Obama’s approach, which is grounded in “fairness” rather than economic logic, hurts the economy while actually magnifying existing injustices in the federal tax code: Economist John Taylor, meanwhile, explains why Romney’s policies are exactly what the U.S. needs to get its economy moving again. Read it all;
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October 19, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
President Obama said yesterday that he’ll veto any bill designed to avoid the “financial cliff” America faces unless that bill raises taxes on the top 2 percent. Bill Otis had this reaction: This by itself should cost him the election. The guy is perfectly willing to kick off a new recession (not that we’re truly out of the last one) because the Republican House will only give him 98% of
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October 15, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Stephen Moore is the invaluable editorial board member and senior economics writer at the Wall Street Journal. He is also the author of one of the books of the season: Who’s The Fairest of Them All: The Truth About Opportunity, Taxes and Wealth in America, just published by Encounter Books. The book addresses a a subject close to our heart; John and I took a whack at it in the
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October 10, 2012 — Steven Hayward
So the so-called “Law of Averages” would suggest that if you have to make three airplane connections in one day, one of them is going to misfire, and so sure enough I’m cooling my heels right now for several extra hours in an airport, overheating my Kindle and my patience in equal measure, etc. Nevertheless, your intrepid roving Power Line bureau remains on the job. Our pal Charles C. Johnson
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October 8, 2012 — Steven Hayward
More consequences of sending the Oval Office Churchill bust back to the Brits (not to mention the style of elite education Obama absorbed at Columbia and Harvard): Obama is vindicating one of Churchill’s great lines about the futility of trade protectionism. Since I’m on the road I can’t lay my hands on the exact quote, but it goes something like: Thinking you can achieve prosperity through protection is like thinking
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October 8, 2012 — John Hinderaker
The Democrats are trying to rebound from last week’s disastrous Colorado debate by portraying Mitt Romney as a liar. The problem is that it is Barack Obama, not Romney, who plays fast and loose with the facts. Obama’s favorite attack on Romney is his claim that Romney’s tax plan involves a $5 trillion tax cut. As Romney pointed out during the debate, this simply ignores the fact that Romney advocates
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October 2, 2012 — John Hinderaker
That’s the theme of this new Romney ad, which went live on television today. One of the Obama campaign’s big lies is that Romney will raise taxes on the middle class–to “pay for” tax cuts to billionaires, of course. Unfortunately, some people are ill-informed enough to believe this. So the new Romney ad points out that it is Barack Obama who already has raised taxes on middle-income Americans, while Romney
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September 21, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post (print edition) breathlessly announces: “Republicans say they’ll retreat on taxes if Obama wins.” Actually, the Post’s accompanying story doesn’t quite support the headline. Reporters Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane quote only one Republican legislator who is talking about retreat, per se. That Republican is Tom Cole (Okla.), a senior member of the budget committee. He told the Post: This [election] is a referendum on taxes. It the
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August 1, 2012 — John Hinderaker
We have been writing for quite a while about the desperate tone of the Obama campaign’s fundraising emails. Lately, it has gotten to the point where even the New York Times has tut-tutted a bit. The latest came today from Nancy Pelosi. It is understated as usual: From: Nancy Pelosi [mailto:dccc@dccc.org] Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2012 3:38 PM To: Hinderaker, John H. Subject: biggest day ever! [Ed.: It is interesting
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July 19, 2012 — John Hinderaker
That’s a tough question to answer, but at a minimum, Reid must be a contender. Paul has been reviewing the history of the Senate lately, and may have an opinion to offer. But in contemporary terms, Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader is much like Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, and then Minority Leader: a head-scratcher. Is this really the best the Democrats can do? Do they not
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July 17, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
A new poll by McClatchy/Marist finds that most Americans — including those on the low end of the income spectrum — favor keeping the Bush tax cuts in place for all Americans. According to the poll, 52 percent of registered voters say they want all of these tax cuts extended, including those for incomes above $250,000. 43 percent want the cuts extended just for incomes below that threshhold. The results
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July 10, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
What do Bill Nelson, Claire McCaskill, Bob Kerrey, Tim Kaine, Heidi Heitkamp, and Shelley Barkley have in common? To start with, they are all Democrats running for the Senate this year. But that’s not all. Each disagrees with President Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on people who make more than $250,000, preferring a higher limit. Nelson, McCaskill, Heitkamp, and Barkley favor $1 million; Kaine favors $500,000; and Kerrey hasn’t provided
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July 9, 2012 — John Hinderaker
President Obama surprised no one today when he called for a tax increase on households earning more than $250,000 annually, while keeping everyone else’s taxes the same. Obama has been urging such policies for years, even though he undoubtedly knows that it is precisely those earning high incomes who already pay far more than their fair share of income taxes–around double their fair share, on the average. But Obama’s calculation
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July 4, 2012 — Steven Hayward
What is liberalism’s current equivalent of “Of course I’ll still respect you in the morning!,” or, “The [welfare] check is in the mail”?* Without question it is that they only want the “rich” to pay their “fair share.” You can waterboard a liberal, but you’ll never get a specific definition of what constitutes the “fair” tax rate for “the rich” that isn’t always “more than the rate they’re paying now.”
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May 21, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Last week in a post about “punitive liberalism” I offered the view that “it is possible that [Eduardo] Severin [the Facebook co-founder who renounced his citizenship] will actually pay more in taxes to the U.S. by leaving the country than if he’d stayed for a simple reason. If he’d stayed, he’d only owe taxes on his Facebook wealth if he sold his Facebook stock. If he never sold much of
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April 17, 2012 — John Hinderaker
The Buffett Rule went down to defeat in the Senate yesterday, 51-45 (60 votes were needed for passage). No surprise there; the vote was understood by everyone to be nothing but political theater. Of course, there is nothing wrong with bringing proposals up for a vote even though you know they won’t pass. On the contrary, this can be a valuable means of identifying differences between the parties and the
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