Millionaire job creators are like unicorns. They’re impossible to find, and they don’t exist… Only a tiny fraction of people making more than a million dollars, probably less than 1 percent, are small business owners. And only a tiny fraction of that tiny fraction are traditional job creators…Most of these businesses are hedge fund managers or wealthy lawyers. They don’t do much hiring and they don’t need tax breaks.”
Thankfully, the good people at Forbes have the sense and sensibility to actually read IRS data and they swiftly came to the unsurprising conclusion that Senator Reid’s assertions are blatantly and patently false:
Millionaire tax filers earn almost a quarter trillion dollars from their businesses. They must hire hundreds of thousands of employees to do so.
and
A 1.9 percent surcharge on millionaires would raise at most eleven billion dollars. By today’s standards, this is chump change, within the federal budget’s rounding error. The millionaire’s tax is not about balancing the budget. It is about gaining political advantage through the use of envy and greed (two of the seven deadly sins).Why would Harry Reid tell such whoppers, which are so easily disproved?
While Congress debated the merits of the two-month extension of the payroll tax holiday, no one mentioned the devasting economic impact this legislation will have on our small and large businesses, nor the tens of millions of dollars wasted by the Senate to come up with this hiccup.
Our Senate did a disengenous job at compromise merely to enable them to go home on vacation. There is absolutely no consideration of the havoc being wreaked on our economy and our businesses due to the instability that comes with not knowing what the tax rate will be in the long run. A one year extension is bad enough – does anyone seriously think that businesses will hire or that individuals will spend just because of another even a one year 2% reduction? But extending for only two months is far worse.
Even now, these companies with payroll will have to make changes and adjustments. They have been waiting with uncertainty as to how to proceed in the coming year – and we are mere days away from 2012. Forms cannot be printed, and when they are printed, around-the-clock overtime will result. The same is true with respect to accounting software. And how can a business institute any new changes to the tax schedule in a proper and timely matter? It’s ludicrous, not only regarding the nightmare of compliance and calculation, but also the inefficiency from all the extra man hours spent.
As a lifelong CPA, I can assure you that such a short-lived extension in the middle of tax season creates the absolute certainty that mistakes will be made– lots of them. Mistakes mean IRS penalties. The financial and wasted cost from our government sending out notices, following up, making corrections, and dealing with taxpayers fighting the penalties is a gross misuse of time and resources, all because Congress is incompetent and short-sighted. And then Congress and the IRS will spend more time writing regulations explaining the extent to which these penalties are to be abated.
More money will be spent than saved, with higher costs endured by our businesses; this extension is a sham.
A fresh perspective on the myth and the reality of income inequality in the United States.
Ronald Schmidt, professor of business administration at the Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester, says analysis of IRS data shows a “movement toward less inequality.” Schmidt talks with Bloomberg’s Ken Prewitt and Tom Keene on Bloomberg Radio’s “Bloomberg Surveillance.” Listen here to Ron Schmidt’s interview this morning.
Dick Durbin has a love affair with Social Security. How else can one man continuously defend Social Security and mislead the country about its insolvency? He incessantly claims that Social Security does not add to the deficit. What he doesn’t tell you is that is he specifically and purposefully excludes accounting for the billions in promised future payments to workers.
And consider this: A company or organization earns $100.00 but spends $200.00. It only has to pay $100.00 now, while the other $100.00 is due for payment in the future. The question then becomes – to what extent is there an obligation to account for a method of repayment, should you have no money to do so? This is the very situation that Social Security is in. In contrast, the SEC is very explicit in saying that any company which tries to avoid accounting for obligation repayment will be considered to have issued a dishonest financial report.
Yet this is exactly what Durbin has been saying for years – when will he be brought to justice and held accountable for his outright lies?
Other pundits are writing about tax cuts and wondering how aloud how the Republicans vote against a tax cut. The answer is simple: the temporary payroll Social Security tax reduction is not, never was, and never will be a tax cut.
There are many ways to look at the 2% reduction in the Social Security tax that is being collected. But effectively, it is no more than a spending increase all dressed up to look like a tax cut. The cost to taxpayers was $120 billion dollars. Congress simply decided to put more money into the hands of the lower and middle class. Rather than write a check, they made the 2% payroll decrease on the Social Security tax collection rate so workers could see a tangible benefit in their paychecks. But because it is temporary, and because it is limited, it has none of the effects of a true tax cut. As it’s been shown in history, most recently with the Making Work Pay tax credit for example, such temporary items have none of the stimulative effects on the economy. It served no purpose other than to create political turmoil among voters, party lines, and taxpayers.
What’s worse, no one is talking about the fact that the Democrats plan to pay for this holiday and its proposed extension ($265 billion), by levying a surtax on successful Americans earning over $1 million. This is legal plunder. It is redistribution of wealth at its core. Our government borrowed money directly intended for the Social Security Fund, and now wants someone else to pay for it. The so-called tax cut is really a net tax increase on the very Americans who are most responsible for job creation in this country. Just the effect of debating this nonsense in Washington continues to stifle businesses and harm our economy.
The late Dr. Milton Friedman cogently expels one of the most persistent economic fallacies regarding the government, spending, and producing. Take 3 minutes and be enlightened and entertained.
While pushing for a Social Security payroll tax extension, Obama wants a 3.25% surtax on millionaires to pay for it. This is wealth redistribution under the guise of “fairness”.
Are you going to cut taxes for the middle class and those who are trying to get into the middle class, or are you going to protect massive tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires?” he said. “Are you going to ask a few hundred thousand people who have done very, very well to do their fair share or are you going to raise taxes for hundreds of millions of people across the country?”
