Crush Liberalism

UPDATE: Obama’s newest tax proposal: the “Warren Buffett” tax

UPDATES BELOW.

Details:

President Barack Obama, in a populist step designed to appeal to voters, will propose a “Buffett Tax” on people making more than $1 million a year as part of his deficit recommendations to Congress on Monday.

Such a proposal, among suggestions to a congressional supercommittee expected to seek up to $3 trillion in deficit savings over 10 years, would appeal to his Democratic base ahead of the 2012 election but likely not raise much in revenues.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in a tweet on Saturday the tax would act as “a kind of AMT” (Alternative Minimum Tax) aimed at ensuring millionaires pay at least as much tax as middle-class families.

The “Buffett Tax” refers to billionaire U.S. investor Warren Buffett, who wrote earlier this year that rich people like him often pay less in tax than those who work for them due to loopholes in the tax code, and can afford to pay more.

As Ed points out, the AMT is so effective at keeping the rich from avoiding paying “their fair share” that…it needs to be patched and tweaked every year to keep from crushing the middle class.  So yeah, let’s implement another AMT, on account of how wildly successful the current AMT has been.

But if I read anything else alleging that Buffett pays less in taxes than his secretary, I’m going to barf.  Projectile, of the Linda Blair variety.

First of all, he does not.  He pays far more in taxes than his secretary does, about 201x as much.  It’s not even close.

Secondly, this is a man who has hired accountants to determine how to minimize the amount of taxes that he needs to pay…only to turn around and complain that these accountants have minimized the amount of taxes that he is paying?  Friggin’ hypocrite.

Thirdly, if Buffett feels like he is undertaxed (i.e. his accountants did too good of a job in minimizing his tax liability), he is more than free to cut a check to Uncle Sam in the amount he feels he was undertaxed.

Finally, I’d be content if Buffett would just pay the d#mn taxes he already owes the feds before complaining that he should be paying more.

I find it funny that liberals point to rates/percentages when it suits their needs, but then point to dollars when that number is more to their liking.  Remember when the Bush tax cuts went into effect?  “Tax breaks for the rich!” was the lie of the day.  The rate reduction of the upper income tax bracket was a much smaller rate reduction than that of the lower brackets, so the lower brackets got a bigger rate reduction.  In other words, the poor and middle class got to keep a bigger percentage (i.e. rate) of their money than the evil rich did.

So how did the left react?  Predictably (and emotionally), of course!  “Why, this rich guy was paying $1 million in taxes, and now he’s paying $970,000!  That’s a $30,000 tax cut!  The poor factory worker didn’t get a $30k tax cut, now did he?”  No, but the factory worker got a bigger percentage (i.e. rate) of his taxes cut, and probably feels it much bigger than the rich guy.  Yet the left howled like Barney Frank at a Chippendales show that the rich guy got a bigger dollars-based tax cut than the poor.

In other words, when it comes to tax cuts, it’s the dollars that are important and not the rate that is important.

But now, useful idiot Warren Buffett comes along and says he doesn’t pay enough in taxes (not that he actually intends to do so, as demonstrated above).  He pays far more in tax dollars than nearly everyone, but he and his leftist enablers complain that the rates are unfair.  In other words, now the feels that dollars are not important and the rates are important.  Geez, you emotional twits, pick a story and stick to it, will you?

As has been shown before, you could tax 100% of the income of every “rich” person in America, and assuming that they would be stupid enough to keep working for free, you still wouldn’t come close to paying down the deficit and debt that ObaMao has run up.  The best way…nay, the only way…is to grow the economy in such a way that more people are working, which means that more people are paying taxes.  But when you have an economic illiterate ideologue who is more interested in class warfare and socialist redistribution (“spread the wealth around”) than in reviving the economy, what we are seeing today is more than predictable.

UPDATE (09/20/2011 – 07:00 AM EST): The Wall Street Journal illustrates Buffett’s lie:

There’s one small problem: The entire Buffett Rule premise is false, as the nearby table shows. In 2008, the last year for which such data are available, the IRS reports that those who made more than $1 million in adjusted gross income paid an average income tax rate of 23.3%.

That’s slightly lower than the 24.1% rate paid by those making between $500,000 and $1 million, probably because the richest are like Mr. Buffett and earn more from capital gains and dividends. The rate for a relative handful of the rich—400 people—fell to 18%, the modern equivalent of Barr’s Gang of 21. But nearly all millionaires still paid a rate that is more than twice the 8.9% average rate paid by those earning between $50,000 and $100,000, and more than three times the 7.2% average rate paid by those earning less than $50,000. The larger point is that the claim that CEOs are routinely paying lower tax rates than their secretaries is Omaha hokum.

If Mr. Obama really wants all of these people to pay even more in taxes, there are only two ways to do so. One is to raise tax rates on capital gains, dividends and other investment income that is taxed at 15% and represents a great deal of income for the wealthy. This is probably Mr. Buffett’s tax secret, though to our knowledge he hasn’t released his returns to the public.

UPDATE (09/20/2011 – 09:40 AM EST): Even the AP gets off their duff to fact-check Obullsh#t’s and Buffett’s claims.  Conclusion: FAIL.  The great Vincent Gambini had something to say about that:

September 20, 2011 Posted by crushliberalism | economic ignorance, hypocrisy, Obama, taxes | 4 Comments