g5000
Diamond Member
- Nov 26, 2011
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Let's say we eliminate ALL tax expenditures. No more mortgage interest rate deduction, no more child tax credits, etc.
This would increase revenues, certainly.
Let's say we then cut everyone's tax rate by 20 percent. If you were paying 33%, you now pay 26.4%.
The question then becomes, will you be paying more or less of your income to the federal government than you do now?
That question can only be answered by asking if you currently get more tax expenditures than you would get from a 20 percent cut.
Independent analysis has shown that the middle and lower incomes currently get more tax expenditures than they would get from a 20 percent cut, while the reverse is true for the wealthiest Americans.
So the rich would end up better off, and everyone else would end up worse off, tax-wise.
However, if we eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction, the prices of houses would drop dramatically, thereby making them more accessible.
The mortgage interest tax deduction is an extremely regressive tax deduction.
There are lots of angles to consider. Not just looking only at the final tab on your tax bill. You also have to examine the consequences of tax reform, such as the drop in the prices of houses example.
But...the odds of Congress going along with eliminating the extremely popular mortgage interest rate deduction is a long shot to say the least. Americans just don't understand anything involving more than two moving parts.
So this means our collective stupidity would result in getting most of the downside and very little of the positive consequences.
Still, it should be done. We need some serious leadership on this. It must be done.
Too bad Mitt sucks at communication. He really, really, really sucks at it.
I think he sucks at math, too. More than he sucks at communication.
Do you have links to the data used in the independant studies? Maybe I've got it wrong, i'm willing to double check the facts and re-evaluate my position if you can provide me the sources.
Me personally, I make ~$40,000/year and the 20% cut will make it so I save 6,000 in taxes as I'm currently taxed at ~15% federally. My deductions are zero. So I'm not sure how you can say he is raising my middle class taxes but maybe he would raise other peoples this way. This is why I want the data used to come to that conclusion, I would like to see it myself so I know for a fact that what your saying is either right or wrong.
If you truly have zero deductions, you are not a typical middle class taxpayer. You have no mortgage interest rate deduction and no children.
The quote I provided a couple posts back clearly states that middle class people with kids will be hit hardest as their deductions exceed what a 20 percent tax cut would give back to them. "Thus a reform that imposed an across-the-board reduction in tax expenditures would increase taxes much more on families with children than on childless adults.”
That is a quote from the Tax Policy Center study which is the independent analysis to which I was referring, and which is the topic of this thread.
ETA: The Washington Post blog link I also provided explains how dodgy Romney has been with providing information to people trying to analyze his tax plan. And that suggests Romney is not being entirely forthright. He withholds information and then criticizes the methodology of analysts who are forced to make assumptions because of his secretiveness.
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