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21 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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TAXES: How high is too high?
Johnston: |
-I think Arthur Laffer has it exactly backwards.
-a higher tax rate encourages people to work harder so that they can maintain the same standard of living |
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TAXES: How high is too high? Diamond:
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need to lower taxes on people having the most trouble acquiring financing. ie the poor. keep rates high for the rich. agrees with general idea of the laffer curve. believes the top marginal rate could be up into the low 60s before discouraging work. highest marginal rate of 49% would be optimal
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TAXES: How high is too high?Laffer:
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at this point, with our economy as it is, it would not be wise to raise taxes on the wealthy
-maybe in the future, but the key is understanding where additional revenue would be spent in the government |
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Planet Money (Are the Social Security Trust Funds a Mirage?) EXPLAIN
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-government is lending presents SS surplus to other parts of the government in the form of buying treasury bills.
-we’re fine now, but it’s when we need that surplus money to pay out checks to the baby boomers that there will be a problem -SS trust fund will run a yearly deficit by 2017 |
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Bernie Sanders Top Ten Income Tax Avoiders #1
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-Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.
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Bernie Sanders Top Ten Income Tax Avoiders #2
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-Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
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Bernie Sanders Top Ten Income Tax Avoiders #3
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-Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
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Cleaning up the tax mess: Characterize Spitzer, Bartlett, Mitchell, Brown
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Spitzer (left), Brown (centrist), Bartlett (right centrist), Mitchell (right)
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Cleaning up the tax mess. How about a flat tax rate?
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Mitchell - means getting rid of all loopholes, deductions, exemptions, etc. No need to worry about loopholes (etc.) if rate is lower, like 20%.
Bartlett - lower classes would suffer massively under large tax increases Brown - would exclude capital gains and corporate dividends |
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Cleaning up the tax mess. Reactions to expiration of Bush tax breaks at the end of the year?
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Brown - fine, but ideally we need to cut spending, raise revenues, and implement the Buffett rule. Tax wage income at same rate as capital gains income.
Bartlett - if the Bush tax cuts didn’t do any good in the 2000s, then they probably won’t do that much harm if we get rid of them |
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Cleaning up the tax mess. From historical point of view, wouldn’t an increase of top marginal rates make sense at least temporarily?
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Brown - NO. Answer isn’t raising taxes, but eliminating loopholes and exclusions. 35% is already too high
Spitzer - yes, close all tax loopholes first. However, if we had to go from 35% to 39.6%, it’s okay, because need to reach that top level. You can tax people up to 40-45%, maybe into 60%, without dissuasion of work because people always want to get wealthier. Mitchell - in 1980s when tax rates at 70%, revenue = $19 billion; Reagan brought it down to 28%, which brought in $99 billion. When tax rates are too high, people decide not to work or invest as much. |
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Cleaning up the tax mess. Obama’s suggests lowering corporate tax rate and ↓ loopholes?
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Bartlett - move in the right direction. However, he offered an even lower rate just for manufacturing, which is a step backwards.
Brown - effective corporate tax rate is nowhere near 35% right now Spitzer - the wrong people are paying the 35% rate. Small companies that don’t have the capacity to understand tax loopholes are bearing the burden |
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Cleaning up the tax mess. Simplifying the tax code?
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Mitchell - get rid of loopholes and bring rates down, and then we will finally have a system that’s less corrupt and less complex
Spitzer - yes, we need to wipe the slate clean, especially in the housing market (mortgages) Brown - mortgage interest deduction is rewarding people for doing what they’d already do |
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Cleaning up the tax mess. paradox of fiscal policy might be today for demand-side policymakers
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Expansionary policy helps alleviate a recession, while contractionary policy helps the debt. However, today we are both in a recession and have a huge debt. The solution is to first tackle the short term, the recession, then worry about the long term, the debt.
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9 Things The Rich Don't Want You To Know About Taxes. Poor Americans do pay taxes.
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Some conservatives state that approx. half of america doesn’t pay taxes
The poor DO pay taxes, just not too many federal income taxes Average income of bottom half of tax payers is 15,300. (damn) Alabama: the 20% that make 13k a year pay 11% of their income to state & local taxes but the 229k makers pay less than 4% in state and local taxes. AKA: the poor have the burden |
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9 Things The Rich Don't Want You To Know About Taxes. The wealthiest Americans don’t carry the burden
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Top 1% has paid 38% of the federal income taxes in 2008
Buut, federal income taxes is less than .5 of federal taxes and only one fifth taxes at all levels of government Social Security, Medicare and unemp. insurance taxes are paid by bottom 90% Rate of taxation for Social Security is the same for earners of 100k and up |
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9 Things The Rich Don't Want You To Know About Taxes. Some corporate tax breaks destroy jobs
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US’s second highest corporate tax rate is lowering corporate tax revenue cuz we are making corps. want to use loopholes and locate their headquarters to tax havens like the Cayman Islands or Switz.
This effectively low corp. tax rate kills jobs because corporations aren’t motivated to reinvest in their businesses (high effective tax rates do that) 2004 American Jobs Creation Act; allowed 800 companies to bring profits taxed at 5.25% back to the States. hopefully sprouting 660k jobs (backfire, 100k jobs were lost. and Pfizer the biggest beneficiary let go 40k) Now Reps. and some Dems. want to make another Jobs creation act affecting 10x as much money |
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9 Things The Rich Don't Want You To Know About Taxes. Republicans like taxes too
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Regan signed 11 tax increases for people with less income called “revenue enhancers” (raised SS tax too)
Bush raised taxes for teenagers to pay their parents’ tax rate if they have a job (against his promise to never raise taxes) Obama pushed the “Making Work Pay tax Credit” tax break in 2009 to working class, but Reps. killed it, extended Bush tax cuts for 2 more years, and raised taxes on a third of Americans (mostly poor) 51 million households will pay $129 more in taxes |
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How Oil Taxes Will Make A Mark On Campaigning.
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Should we end tax breaks for Big Oil? Dems. couldn’t do it before but they’re trying now
New budget proposed by Paul Ryan would cut the same $ in education for disabled children as they would give to the oil companies “5 biggest oil companies made 137 billion (total) and our tax breaks give them 24B a year” Bob Mendez Senator Repub.. McConnell “Americans only care about gas prices, which have doubled in Obama’s term” |
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The Countdown is Over. We’re #1: How the U.S. Has Fallen Behind by Standing Still on Corporate Taxes”
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USA now has the highest Corporate tax rate (39.2%)
We passed up Japan recently after their tax cut on April 1st 2012. Japan’s used to be 39.5% now is 38.1% UK dropped from 26% to 24% and plans to cut it to 23% in 2013 Canada’s is 26% (combined (don’t know what that means)) dropped from 16.5% to 15% There have been 133 major corporate tax cuts globally since 2006, and 75 countries dropped it more than once between 2006 and 2010 We have been over the OECD average corp. tax rate for 21 years now |
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The new tax havens.
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-Many companies have moved their corporate HQ to Zug, Switzerland
-home to a 15% corporate tax rate versus 36% here -over 30.000 companies based out of Zug -1.2T dollars in profits are trapped outside of US because of tax laws -Ireland has ⅓ the tax rate of US and is home to 100,000 “US” jobs -A certain Democratic senator wants to pass a law that would tax companies based on the location of their executives |
