Getting with the program
"This tax was never meant to tax the middle class, so why should we count it as a revenue loss when we make sure they don't have to pay it?"
THis is one of my favorite non-concepts, teh "tax expenditure." THis is when the government doesn't tax something and decides to count it in faux, sorta, coulda been revenue figures. It's kind of like me saying I had a $10,000 revenue expenditure last year, consisting of money that I didn't earn and wasn't paid. Hell, why not make it $100,000? A million? I'd shave my head and sleep with Anna Nicole's corpse on Oprah for that kind of dough.
UPDATE: Here's a local story today: Gas-tax write off cost Ohio millions
Yeah, Ohio has an economy that's probably worth about a third of a trillion dollars. Leaving that in private hands has cost Ohio about a third of a trillion, less taxes.
posted by ColumbusGuy @ 3:18 AM
2 Comments:
Taxation is often a blunt tool whereby the government intentionally attempts to incent some economic behavior and limit others. Unintended consequences are the norm, as are incredibly fallacious arguments from all sides. "Lockboxes" and "lotteries for schools," anyone?
The hypocrisy of this line, though, bugged me: "Beware politicians who say they only want to tax the rich. Sooner or later their tax schemes will soak the middle class because that's where the real money is." Who wants to bet me that I can't find several editorials from the same paper --if not by the same author -- bemoaning the fact that the rich already pay the bulk of the taxes in this country?
I don't get it, el jefe. WHere's the hypocrisy? They seem part and parcel. The rich, of course, do pay most of the taxes, which you would expect because they collect most of the income. And how does that contradict the idea that taxes, so falsely justified by the "yeah, get that stinkin' rich guy" appeal, squarely hit the middle class every time?
SWMBCg, etc.
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