Click on the link for the article.
I found out about this from TaxProf Blog who posted on it.
The Tax Foundation refutes all eight points of an anti-Obama tax screed that is circulating via the Internet and email:
28% capital gains tax rate on ALL home sales
39.6% tax rate on dividends
Restored inheritance tax under Obama (repealed under McCain)
New taxes on homes over 2,400 square feet
New gas taxes
New taxes on natural resource consumption (energy, natural gas, etc.)
New taxes on retirement accounts
New taxes to pay for socialized medicine
Here is what I replied
I agree with SmokeVanThorn. As a refutation it's weak and in some cases totally misleading.
The fact is, that Obama is very hard to pin down an anything except "Hope and Change" and those are pretty much anything you want them to be.
Even his “out of Iraq in 16 months” is subject to about 4 different interpretations. If Obama is elected he will be able to claim he is carrying out his campaign pledge no matter what he does, even if he sends in more troops.
What is totally misleading is their comment on the Obama social security tax increase. Here is what they said on 7/25:“…while Obama may have waffled on this issue a few months ago, details have emerged from the campaign indicating that he would only raise the payroll tax (combined employer/employee) by 4 percentage points, as we blogged on earlier this month. Again, this doesn't make it a good policy necessarily, but the facts need to be set straight.”
“Only 4 percentage points?” That’s what is so infuriating about people who advocate tax increases; the increase is only a percentage point here and a percentage point there … how can you object to so small a number? Pretty soon, all those percentage points add up to 100 percentage points. And an increase of 4 percentage points from a zero base (the current rate over $102,000) is a whopping increase. For someone earning $500,000 their combined payroll tax would increase from $12,648 to $22,648. By my math that’s a 79% increase.
3 comments:
4 percent is small relative to 12.4 percent.
In the tank? You should read the original post.
Direct quote: "This correction of the bogus content is not an endorsement of Obama's tax plans. In fact, in my opinion, Obama's tax plan is terrible."
Anon:
(1) 4 percent is huge next to 0%
(2) If you read my post all the way though you would see that someone earning $500,000 would see a 79% increase in his or her FICA tax. That's not a small number where I come from.
(3) Note that the "4%" comes after a bit of "waffling" (the Tax Foundation's words). I put as much credence in that number as I do in Obama's statement that he could no more disavow Rev. Wright as he could his "typical white" racist granny (remember the Philadelphia speech that sent a shiver up Matthews leg?)
To will luther:
If you read the Tax Foundation "corrections" you will find that they quibble with the details of the e-mail. The headline could just as easily be "e-mails exaggerate Obama tax increases." Instead, we have a headline which basically says that the entire thrust of the e-mail is bogus. In fact, if you read the text below the headline you will see that "The e-mail makes incorrect claims about Obama's tax proposals, as described in the table below"
The point is that many people read the headline and go on without reading further and finding out that Obama plans to increae taxes from current rates in many areas. To call this "bogus" is to lie about the thrust of the Obama tax proposals.
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