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Obama's plan excludes anyone making less than 250k. The 250k refers to taxable income, not gross profit.
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According to the latest Internal Revenue Service data, $706 billion of pass-through business income was reported in 2006. Of this, two-thirds was earned in households making more than $250,000 -- households on which Obama has said he will raise taxes.
If raising the tax rate on two-thirds of small-business income isn't a tax hike on small business, what is?
The tax rate on two-thirds of small-business income would skyrocket under the Obama plan. The current tax rate on this income is 37.9 percent. The Obama plan, thanks to uncapping the Social Security tax base, would shoot this small-business rate all the way up to a Carter-level 54.9 percent.
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Under Obama’s plan to let the scheduled 2011 tax rate hikes occur, and his plan to raise the self-employment tax on those making more than $250,000, the S corporation rate would rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. The sole proprietor and partner rate would rise from 37.9 percent all the way up to a staggering 50.3 percent. Many Democrats in Congress have proposed making all small businesses (including S corporations) pay this 50-plus percent rate. A small business tax rate that high would be the highest marginal rate faced by them in nearly a quarter-century.
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What’s the alternative? One place to look is the optional alternate tax system originally proposed by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and now endorsed by McCain. It would give households (including those with small business income) a choice between the current tax code and one with a top rate of 25 percent on all income over $100,000. This would have the beneficial effect of lowering the tax rate on most small-business income by 10 percentage points. Small businesses haven’t faced a tax rate that low in quite some time and would be likely to respond with the creation of new businesses and more investment in existing businesses.
The McCain small business tax plan doesn’t end there. For those businesses that are organized as conventional corporations, the top tax rate would fall from 35 percent to 25 percent, the European average. For all businesses, technology and equipment — which now must be slowly “depreciated” over many years — would be immediately expensed in year one.
Stepping back, voters and policymakers should ask themselves whether they want two-thirds of small business income taxed at a 50 percent tax rate or if they want nearly all small-business income taxed at a 25 percent tax rate. They should ask themselves whether it’s healthier for small businesses to write off a computer over six calendar years or to simply write it off in year one. To America’s small business sector, the answer is obvious.
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I don't even get why this matters. Republicans like to bring up this "small business" thing so that they create the image of small mom and pop businesses being hurt by tax increases. The fact is, if you are making 250k--and we're talking profit here-
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$706 billion of pass-through business income was reported in 2006. Of this, two-thirds was earned in households making more than $250,000
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Under Obama’s plan to let the scheduled 2011 tax rate hikes occur, and his plan to raise the self-employment tax on those making more than $250,000, the S corporation rate would rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. The sole proprietor and partner rate would rise from 37.9 percent all the way up to a staggering 50.3 percent. Many Democrats in Congress have proposed making all small businesses (including S corporations) pay this 50-plus percent rate. A small business tax rate that high would be the highest marginal rate faced by them in nearly a quarter-century
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Though social policies sometimes governed the course of tax policy even in the early days of the Republic, the nature of these policies did not extend either to the collection of taxes so as to equalize incomes and wealth, or for the purpose of redistributing income or wealth. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote regarding the "general Welfare" clause:
"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
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The 1986 tax act also represented a temporary reversal in the evolution of the tax system. Though called an income tax, the Federal tax system had for many years actually been a hybrid income and consumption tax, with the balance shifting toward or away from a consumption tax with many of the major tax acts. The 1986 tax act shifted the balance once again toward the income tax. Of greatest importance in this regard was the return to references to economic depreciation in the formulation of the capital cost recovery system and the significant new restrictions on the use of Individual Retirement Accounts.
Between 1986 and 1990 the Federal tax burden rose as a share of GDP from 17.5 to 18 percent. Despite this increase in the overall tax burden, persistent budget deficits due to even higher levels of government spending created near constant pressure to increase taxes. Thus, in 1990 the Congress enacted a significant tax increase featuring an increase in the top tax rate to 31 percent. Shortly after his election, President Clinton insisted on and the Congress enacted a second major tax increase in 1993 in which the top tax rate was raised to 36 percent and a 10 percent surcharge was added, leaving the effective top tax rate at 39.6 percent. Clearly, the trend toward lower marginal tax rates had been reversed, but, as it turns out, only temporarily.
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Keynes new theory, on the other hand, conveyed a politically much more palatable solution to unemployment: according to Keynes, the solution to unemployment was a growth in government spending. The particular form of government spending advocated by Keynes was for the government to purposely adopt a policy of budget deficits; this he called "fiscal policy."
To arrive at this seemingly simple conclusion, however, Keynes developed a highly complex argumentation brimming with new economic terms and concepts of his own devising, such as multipliers, consumption and saving functions, the marginal efficiency of capital, liquidity preference, I-S curve, and many others.
The essence of Keynes' theory, however, involves a shift from classical economics' concern with the production of wealth to a concern with the consumption of wealth. According to Keynes, Say's Law is not true; that is, supply does not create its own demand. Rather, according to Keynes, supply is capable of outstripping demand, with the result that goods remain unsold, and production and employment are correspondingly cut back. As a result, the solution to unemployment, according to Keynes, is not to reduce wages and prices, as the Classicals advocated, but to increase consumption through the spending of money by the government.
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Thus, Keynes believed, in order to "get the economy moving again," the government must itself begin spending money, since the general population is unable to do so sufficiently. How, and where the government spends its money, and whether such spending fulfills any desirable public or private purpose beyond its economic function, Keynes held, is irrelevant. For the sole purpose of such spending is to buy goods that would otherwise remain unsold, so that the sellers of those goods can in turn "buy," i.e., employ, currently unemployed workers. Government spending, for Keynes, fills the gap that necessarily must exist in a free economy between savings and investment, a gap which, if not filled by the government's spending, would be filled with unemployed people and unsold goods.
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