President Obama used his State of the Union address Tuesday to outline his idea of fairness. To put it simply, that means redistributing wealth by raising taxes on the most successful Americans. “If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes,” Obama declared. He added: “Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.” Heritage’s Curtis Dubay …
How many times should your money be taxed? One time? Two times? Three times? Four? Sounds like a ridiculous proposition, but that’s the true story of capital gains taxes in America, and it’s one that’s not being told in the continuing debate over Governor Mitt Romney’s taxes. For more than a week, the media has focused on the subject of just how much Romney pays in taxes. On Tuesday, the governor released his tax returns indicating that he paid about 15 percent in taxes last year. At first blush, that …
In this week’s Heritage in Focus, Heritage director of communications, Rory Cooper, discusses the president’s State of the Union address. Click here to listen. What’s Heritage’s take on the State of the Union? What’s something Americans should have heard in the speech, but didn’t? What’s the best way to put our country on the right track? Make sure to listen to hear answers to these questions and more!
Much has been made of Mitt Romney’s asserted 15 percent or so tax rate. There is both a material error and an irony to this story. The release of Romney’s tax returns for 2009 and 2010 and a preliminary assessment for 2011 shows a remarkably consistent picture. First, he makes a pretty penny, but we knew that. His income is about $20 million a year, and he consistently pays about 15 percent in federal income tax. Most of his income is either dividends or capital gains, which are each taxed …
The remarks of Alan Krueger, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, asserting that taxing the rich can spur economic growth demonstrate that he and the Administration are nothing if not consistent in their mistakes. Krueger says that there is growing income inequality in the United States, that this growing inequality contributes to slowing economic growth, and that raising taxes on the wealthy to offset some of this growing income inequality would actually stimulate the economy in the near term. While income inequality in the United States is growing, the …
Ready for a new year and another bout with the Internal Revenue Service, deductions, exemptions, pens and pencils, calculators, receipts, 1040s, W-2s, accountants, Quicken, TurboTax, and more? If you’re like most Americans, that laundry list of income tax jargon, paraphernalia, professionals and their fees is enough to set your head spinning — and even if it isn’t, the thought of paying Uncle Sam your annual dues will certainly do the trick. America’s tax code needs reform, plain and simple. The current tax system discourages saving, investment, and entrepreneurship. It’s a drag on …
Reports have surfaced that conservatives in Congress may propose further increasing income adjustment in Medicare to lessen the program’s insolvency. This is a great idea. While the left continues to argue for higher taxes for the likes of Warren Buffett to maintain the status quo of a costly, failing Medicare program, it makes more sense that Congress should simply stop subsidizing them. As Congress continues to pursue solutions to the entitlement spending crisis, one question that must be answered is whether the United States should even have universal federal entitlements …
Liberals stumping for tax cuts are as rare as three-dollar bills and hardcover digital books, and for good reason. Devoid of any other organizing principle, the only job of progressivism today is to grow government, and taxation is the blood stream of government. It is thus with the same healthy does of skepticism that we would greet a talking turtle that we should approach claims by the Obama White House that it really, really wants to cut taxes, dang it, but conservatives won’t let them. The issue at hand is, …
What’s a supercommittee to do? Total national debt just hit a new record at $15 trillion, an increase of approximately $700 billion since the Supercommittee’s August inception. Hard as its members try, they just do not seem to be able to deliver the required $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction measures. The situation has deteriorated so badly that even some Republicans are offering up tax hikes. While this is precisely the wrong solution, it has created another insidious problem. Squabbles over the size of tax hikes are overshadowing the more vital …
The Heritage Foundation has consistently urged, and continues to urge, that the congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, known as the Supercommittee, “go big” with its recommendations, to “drive federal spending down — including by fixing ever-expanding entitlement programs — toward a balanced budget, while preserving our capability to protect America, and without raising taxes.” Heritage provided a detailed plan by which the Supercommittee could accomplish that goal. Heritage President Edwin J. Feulner made clear that “[t]his battle is about both getting spending under control and limiting the size …
