Tax Tsunami Coming to you!!!!

[SubGod22]

Tax Cuts Package Heads for High-Stakes Vote in House

"Let's find out if Republicans really want to jeopardize income tax, payroll tax and estate tax relief for every American in order to provide a budget-busting bonanza to the country's richest estates," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a leader within the Democratic Party, wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece on Wednesday. "House Democrats think this trade-off should be debated and voted on in the light of day."

Even so, said Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., "We can jump up and down all we want about the higher-end estate taxes, and I don't think anything's going to change because the Senate isn't going to change it."

Thirty-one members of the conservative Blue Dog Democrats sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging quick passage of the bill.

"It is time for us to put aside the partisan talking points and accomplish what the American people sent us here to do," said the letter.

[SubGod22]

Obama to Sign Tax Bill Friday Afternoon

[SubGod22]

Taxes and the Top Percentile Myth

When President Obama announced a two-year stay of execution for taxpayers on Dec. 7, he made it clear that he intends to spend those two years campaigning for higher marginal tax rates on dividends, capital gains and salaries for couples earning more than $250,000. "I don't see how the Republicans win that argument," said the president.

Despite the deficit commission's call for tax reform with fewer tax credits and lower marginal tax rates, the left wing of the Democratic Party remains passionate about making the U.S. tax system more and more progressive. They claim this is all about payback—that raising the highest tax rates is the fair thing to do because top income groups supposedly received huge windfalls from the Bush tax cuts. As the headline of a Robert Creamer column in the Huffington Post put it: "The Crowd that Had the Party Should Pick up the Tab."

Arguments for these retaliatory tax penalties invariably begin with estimates by economists Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and Emmanuel Saez of U.C. Berkeley that the wealthiest 1% of U.S. households now take home more than 20% of all household income.

This estimate suffers two obvious and fatal flaws. The first is that the "more than 20%" figure does not refer to "take home" income at all. It refers to income before taxes (including capital gains) as a share of income before transfers. Such figures tell us nothing about whether the top percentile pays too much or too little in income taxes.