Reagan: Millionaires should pay their fare share

When President Obama released his plan for “the Buffett rule,” which involves closing tax loopholes and ensuring that millionaires pay their fair share in taxes, he explained that “middle-class families shouldn’t be paying higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires.” “Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett,” he said.

Ever since, many Republicans have been attacking Obama for inciting “class warfare.” “It looks like the President wants to move down the class warfare path,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). “I don’t think I would describe class warfare as leadership,” agreed Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH).

However, if calling for an end to millionaires having lower tax rates than their secretaries is class warfare, Obama is only the latest class warrior to occupy the Oval Office. In a June 6, 1985 speech at Northside High School in Atlanta, Georgia, then President Ronald Reagan explained that tax loopholes allowing a millionaire to pay lower taxes that a bus driver were “crazy,” because they allowed the “truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share."

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/1 ... les-crazy/

[youtube:8yjo17c3][/youtube:8yjo17c3]

flat tax...999

Loopholes are different than charging different tax rates for different incomes.

When Congress sets up loopholes for their favorite donors, they do need to be eliminated. (The loopholes, not the donors.)

Getting rid of loopholes was exactly what happened with Reagan's tax reforms. By removing loopholes, he was able to lower the top marginal rates.

Prior to that, the top rate was at 70% and 50%, but few really paid that. High income people had loopholes like limited partnerships back then. Reagan got rid of them.

The Buffett Rule isn't so much about loopholes, but rather it's about paying different rates for different types of taxes. The main question there is if it makes sense to tax capital gains the same as regular income. While I think Obama wants to raise capital gains, I haven't seen anything to suggest he wants to tax it the same as regular income.

Loopholes.

http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.c ... 51ed203375

"“These special interests are getting carve-outs from Congress, and both sides — Republicans and Democrats — are guilty of picking their favorite interests to support,” said Jason J. Fichtner, an economist who studies tax policy at George Mason University.

Tax breaks for industries both large and small add up to an estimated $123 billion a year — money that opponents see as lost revenue in austere times.

One of the few members of Congress willing to talk about specific breaks that could be abolished is Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma.

He released a 626-page report in June that included a section on what he considered to be dozens of needless tax breaks that were “little more than corporate welfare,” like vacation home deductions and special deals for the makers of fishing tackle boxes. He also ridiculed a bevy of loose guidelines that have allowed business deductions for cat food, toupees and breast implants for exotic dancers. "

What you have to love here is the blind use of rhetoric. Suppose that the special tax break for fishing tackle boxes, what Coburn is calling "little more than corporate welfare", is something done to keep the jobs making those boxes inside the United States. Is it still corporate welfare if it is something designed to save or create jobs here at home? Is every corporate tax break a "needless" one for today's partisans who are looking at the surface only for the purposes of instigating intrigue or in the hopes of improving their image such that they might hold onto the current positions of power?

Wayn-O sure likes that phrase about paying less than their secretaries, Talk about blind rhetoric.

Conservative Voice wrote: When President Obama released his plan for “the Buffett rule,” which involves closing tax loopholes and ensuring that millionaires pay their fair share in taxes, he explained that “middle-class families shouldn’t be paying higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires.” “Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett,” he said.

I just love the way Obama transitions between dollars of taxes paid versus rates at which taxes are levied. It's so seamless that you almost get the impression that they are the same thing. I'm betting that level of obfuscation takes lots and lots of speech revisions to get it just right.

And I'm still wondering why the answer to Buffet's secretary paying a higher rate than her employer isn't best answered by lowering her rate to match that of her employers instead of raising the employers rate? Isn't the existence of such a scenario a defacto indictment that the middle class tax rate is too high?