Bush Tax Cuts Set to Cease, Teetering Economy at Further Risk
Unless Americans usher a new Congress into office this fall, Obama’s redistribute-the-wealth-bankrupt-America agenda will likely smother our wheezing jobless economic recovery. The Bush tax cuts breathe their last at midnight on December 31, 2010:
The Tax Tsunami On The Horizon
Fiscal Policy: Many voters are looking forward to 2011, hoping a new Congress will put the country back on the right track. But unless something’s done soon, the new year will also come with a raft of tax hikes — including a return of the death tax — that will be real killers.
Through the end of this year, the federal estate tax rate is zero — thanks to the package of broad-based tax cuts that President Bush pushed through to get the economy going earlier in the decade.
But as of midnight Dec. 31, the death tax returns — at a rate of 55% on estates of $1 million or more. The effect this will have on hospital life-support systems is already a matter of conjecture.
Resurrection of the death tax, however, isn’t the only tax problem that will be ushered in Jan. 1. Many other cuts from the Bush administration are set to disappear and a new set of taxes will materialize. And it’s not just the rich who will pay.
The lowest bracket for the personal income tax, for instance, moves up 50% — to 15% from 10%. The next lowest bracket — 25% — will rise to 28%, and the old 28% bracket will be 31%. At the higher end, the 33% bracket is pushed to 36% and the 35% bracket becomes 39.6%.
But the damage doesn’t stop there.
The marriage penalty also makes a comeback, and the capital gains tax will jump 33% — to 20% from 15%. The tax on dividends will go all the way from 15% to 39.6% — a 164% increase.
Both the cap-gains and dividend taxes will go up further in 2013 as the health care reform adds a 3.8% Medicare levy for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and joint filers making more than $250,000. Other tax hikes include: halving the child tax credit to $500 from $1,000 and fixing the standard deduction for couples at the same level as it is for single filers.
Letting the Bush cuts expire will cost taxpayers $115 billion next year alone, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and $2.6 trillion through 2020.
A few other areas where tax changes will occur include: The Medicine Cabinet Tax, HSA Withdrawal Tax Hikes, Brand Name Drug Tax, Economic Substance Doctrine, and the widening net of Alternative Minimum Tax -- tax hikes on employers and the loss of deductions for tuition. Click here to read more on this tax nightmare. Read more here.
Behind Capitol Hill doors, some progressives have a gleam in their eyes for the Value Added Tax (VAT) which is especially common throughout the European Union. VAT would give Obama the boost to herald a solution for America’s deficit while allowing him to implement invisible capitalistic destruction.
A VAT is a sales tax imposed on every level of a product’s path from production to consumption. It already exists in Europe and many other struggling countries around the world. It’s a sneaky sucker, too, since it’s essentially built in ahead of time and doesn’t show up on a receipt like a sales tax would. If a VAT were in place that iPad you just bought would be $600 instead of $500.
A VAT would pull in massive revenues. Just think: a 10% VAT would produce 1 trillion in revenues. Cash register sounds go off in the minds of every leftist that hears it.
Obama and the Democrats are spending SO much that they’ll be forced to invoke a VAT. They are creating a crisis so that they can solve it with a mechanism that will serve as the catalyst for future spending on their massive government programs.And even though our president said he wouldn’t raise taxes on 95% of Americans while he was on the campaign trail, this move would raise taxes on everyone.
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What Obama will say is that he is putting together a commission to find a way to pay down our country’s maxed out credit card.Expect that commission to recommend the VAT tax after the 2010 midterm elections. By then, we’ll be on the verge of Greece-like catastrophe and we’ll have no choice but to impose a VAT. But only one that will, coincidentally, go into effect after the 2012 presidential election.
Just yesterday Timothy Geithner quashed hopes of a Bush tax cut extension:
Mr. Geithner said there is “still some uncertainty about how strong the recovery is going to be,” which may be impacting spending decisions by businesses and individuals. But he discounted that as a reason to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for top earners, saying most private forecasts show moderate economic growth and increasing public confidence in the recovery.
Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is warning of unusual economic uncertainty.
No wonder Poll numbers for Obama are slippery sliding into the rocks; 27% of the nation’s voters strongly approve of his presidential performance and 44% strongly disapprove. Obama has a Presidential Approval Index rating of -17. More and more of his supporters are beginning to feel like this (go full screen and crank up your speakers):
“The Democratic Party is obsessed with spending more, borrowing more, and taxing more, all of which sap our national strength. ~Mitt Romney
Keeping in mind that the real prize is what happens in 2012, we must not underestimate Obama. Let’s do all we can to help Americans find what they’re looking for!
In related news: 24-hour live webcam shows the nest of a bald eagle family with an egg (1 at least) that hatched just this morning. The little baby eagle is so cute (when you can see him). My wife watched the parents land in the nest with a fish and feed little pieces of it the the baby bird. Watch it any time of day here: 
Recent polling from Magellan Strategies indicates that both Governor Mitt Romney and Meg Whitman , former CEO of eBay.com, are in early pole position for their relative offices, or potential office I should say in the case of Governor Romney. California has a closed primary, meaning only registered Republicans can vote in the primary. As such the Magellan poll only included those who are registered GOP.
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