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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe GOP is the reverse Robin Hood party
Conservatives have long accepted tiny cuts for low- and middle-income taxpayers as the political price that has to be paid to give a populist veneer to the upper-income cuts they desire.
In recent years, however, many conservatives have embraced a new conviction, that taxes are too low on some Americans the poor. As a result, some Republican presidential candidates are abandoning the idea of the across-the-board tax cut and proposing what mightve once seemed unthinkable for the ostensibly anti-tax GOP tax cuts for the rich combined with new or higher taxes on low-income Americans.
...
Its impossible to understand the rights singling out of tax benefits for the poor, rather than much more expensive ones that benefit the rich, as anything other than a continued attack on the 47 percent. As the Tax Policy Centers Howard Gleckman pointed out, a household making between $20,000 and $30,000 in 2011 gained $866 thanks to the EITC, whereas a household making more than $1 million gained more than $7,000 thanks to the deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes alone. The EITC may have moved a household from federal income taxpayer to non-taxpayer, Gleckman wrote. But who was really better off?
This election cycle, GOP presidential contenders Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Rand Paul, among others, have taken aim at the lucky duckies. Cruzs plan, for example, calls for turning todays graduated-rate federal income tax into a flat-rate 10 percent income tax and replacing the payroll tax and corporate income tax with a 16 percent Value Added Tax. Because Cruzs VAT would be administered by whats known as the tax-inclusive subtraction-method, Cruzs plan can be thought of as similar to either a 10 percent income tax and a 19 percent sales tax or a 10 percent income tax and a 16 percent payroll tax (for a combined 26 percent federal rate on wage income).
In both cases, its difficult to see how either the poor or the middle class would fare better under Cruzs plan than the current federal tax system, even with the retention of the Earned Income Tax Credit. In fact, its likely that most Americans would be much worse off. In addition to the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush administrations estimates, studies of the VAT both as it actually exists in European countries and in estimates of a potential U.S. implementation consistently find that its highly regressive. Even the most favorable analysis of Cruzs plan, put forward by the business-funded Tax Foundation, found that it would increase the after-tax incomes of the richest one percent by 30 percent, compared to less than two percent for the middle-class.
Cruzs fellow Republicans plans look little better. Like Cruzs, Pauls plan which Glenn Beck said was so good it was erotic combines a flat-rate income tax with a VAT, both at 14.5 percent, and eliminates both the corporate income tax and the payroll tax. It, too, would be a huge giveaway to the rich, according to the Tax Foundations estimate. Huckabee has proposed a whopping 30 percent consumption tax, which the former Arkansas governor has tried to portray as a blessing for the poor. This assertion didnt even fly with George H.W. Bushs former senior economist, William Gale, who brusquely dismissed claims like Huckabees that a consumption tax would benefit the poor. The notion that a tax on consumption will help the poor and hurt the rich is contrary to just about everything that is known about rich/poor spending and income habits, Gale explained.
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/13/the_gop_is_the_reverse_robin_hood_party_inside_their_long_war_against_the_lucky_ducky_poor/
In recent years, however, many conservatives have embraced a new conviction, that taxes are too low on some Americans the poor. As a result, some Republican presidential candidates are abandoning the idea of the across-the-board tax cut and proposing what mightve once seemed unthinkable for the ostensibly anti-tax GOP tax cuts for the rich combined with new or higher taxes on low-income Americans.
...
Its impossible to understand the rights singling out of tax benefits for the poor, rather than much more expensive ones that benefit the rich, as anything other than a continued attack on the 47 percent. As the Tax Policy Centers Howard Gleckman pointed out, a household making between $20,000 and $30,000 in 2011 gained $866 thanks to the EITC, whereas a household making more than $1 million gained more than $7,000 thanks to the deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes alone. The EITC may have moved a household from federal income taxpayer to non-taxpayer, Gleckman wrote. But who was really better off?
This election cycle, GOP presidential contenders Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Rand Paul, among others, have taken aim at the lucky duckies. Cruzs plan, for example, calls for turning todays graduated-rate federal income tax into a flat-rate 10 percent income tax and replacing the payroll tax and corporate income tax with a 16 percent Value Added Tax. Because Cruzs VAT would be administered by whats known as the tax-inclusive subtraction-method, Cruzs plan can be thought of as similar to either a 10 percent income tax and a 19 percent sales tax or a 10 percent income tax and a 16 percent payroll tax (for a combined 26 percent federal rate on wage income).
In both cases, its difficult to see how either the poor or the middle class would fare better under Cruzs plan than the current federal tax system, even with the retention of the Earned Income Tax Credit. In fact, its likely that most Americans would be much worse off. In addition to the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush administrations estimates, studies of the VAT both as it actually exists in European countries and in estimates of a potential U.S. implementation consistently find that its highly regressive. Even the most favorable analysis of Cruzs plan, put forward by the business-funded Tax Foundation, found that it would increase the after-tax incomes of the richest one percent by 30 percent, compared to less than two percent for the middle-class.
Cruzs fellow Republicans plans look little better. Like Cruzs, Pauls plan which Glenn Beck said was so good it was erotic combines a flat-rate income tax with a VAT, both at 14.5 percent, and eliminates both the corporate income tax and the payroll tax. It, too, would be a huge giveaway to the rich, according to the Tax Foundations estimate. Huckabee has proposed a whopping 30 percent consumption tax, which the former Arkansas governor has tried to portray as a blessing for the poor. This assertion didnt even fly with George H.W. Bushs former senior economist, William Gale, who brusquely dismissed claims like Huckabees that a consumption tax would benefit the poor. The notion that a tax on consumption will help the poor and hurt the rich is contrary to just about everything that is known about rich/poor spending and income habits, Gale explained.
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/13/the_gop_is_the_reverse_robin_hood_party_inside_their_long_war_against_the_lucky_ducky_poor/
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The GOP is the reverse Robin Hood party (Original Post)
phantom power
Nov 2015
OP
Octafish
(55,745 posts)1. Rob from the poor to give to the rich.
It's how the Haves turn into the Have-Mores and the middle class turns into the poor.