More on the Tax Cutting Religion
The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog's topic of the day was the Presidential candidates' tax policy.
Michael Landauer says, "I wish I understood when being conservative came to mean that you were opposed to all taxes." Frontburner's Wick Allison referred to that as the tax cutting religion. Search this blog for previous commentary on that article of faith.
Mike Hashimoto rose to the defense of conservatives. "Advocating lower tax rates across the board isn't the same as 'opposing all taxes,' as some would argue."
Hashimoto is confused. Conservatives are not even-handed in their concern for taxpayers at all.
Sure, conservatives want to cut income taxes across the board. But because the wealthy pay the biggest percentage, they get the biggest percentage benefit.
Conservatives want to eliminate the estate tax altogether, and George Bush succeeded, at least temporarily. But only a tiny percent of the wealthiest estates owe tax, so this benefit goes exclusively to the wealthy.
The payroll tax is the last tax on the conservatives' list to complain about. This is the tax that the minimum wage burger flippers pay on their first dollar of income, but the wealthy pay no payroll tax at all on most of their millions in earned income. The payroll tax is 15%, the same as the capital gains tax. Income tax is on top of that. So, secretaries end up paying a higher tax rate than the CEOs pulling in millions in capital gains.
Even that 15% is too much tax for conservatives. They want to shift more, or even all, of the tax burden to consumption taxes. Sales taxes keep rising as other taxes get cut. The poor and working class spend a much higher percentage of their income on spending that would get hit by sales tax.
The bottom line is that there is no bottom line for an acceptable tax rate for conservatives.
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