Tax

The Wall Street Journal editors are unhappy about the present correlation of political forces. Who isn't? They're also, I gather, unhappy about "Beltway sages" who, facing the fact that the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year, have suggested Republicans accept a modest increase in tax rates for the wealthy while leading the charge to keep taxes from rising for 98 percent of the American people.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, says he “burst into laughter” Thursday when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner outlined the administration proposal for averting the fiscal cliff.  He wasn’t trying to embarrass Geithner, McConnell says, only responding candidly to his one-sided plan, explicit on tax increases, vague on spending cuts.

In an interview on CNN, Grover Norquist likened his no-tax pledge to marriage.

"The pledge is not for life, but everybody who signed the pledge including Peter King, and tried to weasel out of it, shame on him," said Norquist, according to Politico. "I hope his wife understands that commitments last a little longer than two years or something."

Warren Buffett is by now no stranger to the national debate over federal tax policy. In 2009, he penned a New York Times op-ed calling for "truly major changes in both taxes and outlays." Two years later, he returned to the Times with a widely publicized call for large tax increases on the "super-rich," noting that his own effective federal tax rate (17 percent) was far less than his employees' rates (ranging from 33 to 41 percent). President Obama liked the idea so much, he called for Congress to pass "the Buffett Rule" in his 2012 state of the union address.

The boss made the case over the weekend that the payroll tax should not be forgotten. Likewise, Ross Douthat writes:

A study by the Tax Policy Center, a project of the center-left Brookings Institution and Urban Institute, claims that Mitt Romney's tax plan is mathematically impossible.

A new study by Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum finds that President Barack Obama's spending plan would raise taxes on the middle class.  "[T]axpayers making as little as $30,000 will carry $1,500 more in taxes annually over the next 10 years," the study finds.

According to a statement released by the Romney campaign that summarizes the rate of taxes the Republican presidential nominee paid between 1990 and 2009, the rate at which Mitt Romney paid taxes is approximately equal to what President Barack Obama paid last year.

At a campaign speech this evening in Roanoke, Virginia, President Obama seemed to concede that his signature legislation, Obamacare, is in fact a "tax."

Regardless of whether the Obama administration and campaign insist on calling Obamacare a penalty, most Americans now believe the president's signature legislation is a tax, according to a new poll by Quinnipiac. Sixty percent of Hispanics believe Obamacare is a tax, and 59 percent of independent voters believe the same thing.

Why would the president oppose raising taxes when economic growth was 5.6 percent but propose raising taxes when it’s at 1.9 percent? When it’s politically advantageous to be seen as raising taxes on the rich.

President Obama just announced from the White House a plan to maintain current tax rates for the middle class, while hiking the tax rates for those earning above $250,000 per year. And while Republicans have already voiced opposition to the president's plan, Democrats are now beginning to express their dissatisfaction.