- Nov 26, 2011
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Since there has been a lot of talk lately about Obama won because he gave gifts to negroes, I am thinking this is the perfect opportunity to discuss the biggest government gift-giving of all: tax expenditures.
Tax expenditures are the government's way of spending money without appropriating it. They are called all sorts of other names. Loopholes, credits, boondoggles, deductions, etc.
Two people can earn the exact same pay, but one pays less taxes than the other because they bought a house or have kids.
The more wealthy you are, the bigger deduction you get for buying a bigger house. This means the mortgage interest rate deduction is a hugely regressive tax.
Last year in Congress, the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation determined that tax expenditures cost the government $1 trillion dollars a year.
That $1 trillion that some people are getting off the hook for has to come out of someone else's hide.
It's time to end this practice once and for all.
Tax expenditures are much easier to hide than, say, Obama's plan to raise the income tax margins for the top 2 percent.
A tax expenditure can be hidden by a bought off Congressman as a rider to just about any bill that is in the pipeline. The expenditure doesn't even have to do with anything that the bill it is riding on is about!
The right bitches about "gifts". The left bitches about "fair share". Eliminating tax expenditures kills both bitches with one stone.
If you earn $50,000 and your neighbor earns $50,000, you could both rest assured you are paying the same amount of taxes.
And for resource purposes, here are the figures for tax revenues, outlays, and the amount of surplus or deficit for each year:
Historical Federal Receipt and Outlay Summary
I have calculated the percentage of growth or reduction of federal revenues from the period one year after Clinton took office to the most current year.
1994: +9%
1995: +7.4%
1996: +7.4%
1997: +8.7%
1998: +9%
1999: +6.1%
2000: +10.8%
2001: -1.7%
2002: -7%
2003: -3.9%
2004: +5.5%
2005: +14.5%
2006: +11.8%
2007: +6.7%
2008: -1.8%
2009: -16.7%
2010: +2.7%
2011: +6.5%
There were two Bush tax cuts:
Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I think attributing the amount of federal receipts solely to tax rates is a Single Cause Fallacy. There were clearly other, greater economic factors affecting the amount of money the government took in.
When considering tax revenues, it should also be noted that the financial services sector ("Wall Street") at the peak of the derivatives bubble accounted for nearly 40 percent of all corporate profits in the United States.
That single sector has since returned to one third of all US corporate profits.
You can see below how their fortunes track very closely to the growth, reduction, and regrowth in federal revenues:
.
Tax expenditures are the government's way of spending money without appropriating it. They are called all sorts of other names. Loopholes, credits, boondoggles, deductions, etc.
Two people can earn the exact same pay, but one pays less taxes than the other because they bought a house or have kids.
The more wealthy you are, the bigger deduction you get for buying a bigger house. This means the mortgage interest rate deduction is a hugely regressive tax.
Last year in Congress, the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation determined that tax expenditures cost the government $1 trillion dollars a year.
That $1 trillion that some people are getting off the hook for has to come out of someone else's hide.
It's time to end this practice once and for all.
Tax expenditures are much easier to hide than, say, Obama's plan to raise the income tax margins for the top 2 percent.
A tax expenditure can be hidden by a bought off Congressman as a rider to just about any bill that is in the pipeline. The expenditure doesn't even have to do with anything that the bill it is riding on is about!
The right bitches about "gifts". The left bitches about "fair share". Eliminating tax expenditures kills both bitches with one stone.
If you earn $50,000 and your neighbor earns $50,000, you could both rest assured you are paying the same amount of taxes.
And for resource purposes, here are the figures for tax revenues, outlays, and the amount of surplus or deficit for each year:
Historical Federal Receipt and Outlay Summary
I have calculated the percentage of growth or reduction of federal revenues from the period one year after Clinton took office to the most current year.
1994: +9%
1995: +7.4%
1996: +7.4%
1997: +8.7%
1998: +9%
1999: +6.1%
2000: +10.8%
2001: -1.7%
2002: -7%
2003: -3.9%
2004: +5.5%
2005: +14.5%
2006: +11.8%
2007: +6.7%
2008: -1.8%
2009: -16.7%
2010: +2.7%
2011: +6.5%
There were two Bush tax cuts:
Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I think attributing the amount of federal receipts solely to tax rates is a Single Cause Fallacy. There were clearly other, greater economic factors affecting the amount of money the government took in.
When considering tax revenues, it should also be noted that the financial services sector ("Wall Street") at the peak of the derivatives bubble accounted for nearly 40 percent of all corporate profits in the United States.
That single sector has since returned to one third of all US corporate profits.
You can see below how their fortunes track very closely to the growth, reduction, and regrowth in federal revenues:
.
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