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  1. SiriuslyLong is offline
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    08-21-2011, 12:46 PM #1

    GOP may OK tax increase that Obama hopes to block

    WASHINGTON (AP) — News flash: Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes.

    Impossible, right? GOP lawmakers are so virulently anti-tax, surely they will fight to prevent a payroll tax increase on virtually every wage-earner starting Jan. 1, right?

    Apparently not.

    Many of the same Republicans who fought hammer-and-tong to keep the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts from expiring on schedule are now saying a different "temporary" tax cut should end as planned. By their own definition, that amounts to a tax increase.

    The tax break extension they oppose is sought by President Barack Obama. Unlike proposed changes in the income tax, this policy helps the 46 percent of all Americans who owe no federal income taxes but who pay a "payroll tax" on practically every dime they earn.

    There are other differences as well, and Republicans say their stand is consistent with their goal of long-term tax policies that will spur employment and lend greater certainty to the economy.

    "It's always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn," says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, "but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again." The Texas lawmaker is on the House GOP leadership team.

    The debate is likely to boil up in coming weeks as a special bipartisan committee seeks big deficit reductions and weighs which tax cuts are sacrosanct.

    At issue is a tax that the vast majority of workers pay, but many don't recognize because they don't read, or don't understand their pay stubs. Workers normally pay 6.2 percent of their wages toward a tax designated for Social Security. Their employer pays an equal amount, for a total of 12.4 percent per worker.

    As part of a bipartisan spending deal last December, Congress approved Obama's request to reduce the workers' share to 4.2 percent for one year; employers' rate did not change. Obama wants Congress to extend the reduction for an additional year. If not, the rate will return to 6.2 percent on Jan. 1.

    Obama cited the payroll tax in his weekend radio and Internet address Saturday, when he urged Congress to work together on measures that help the economy and create jobs. "There are things we can do right now that will mean more customers for businesses and more jobs across the country. We can cut payroll taxes again, so families have an extra $1,000 to spend," he said.

    Social Security payroll taxes apply only to the first $106,800 of a worker's wages. Therefore, $2,136 is the biggest benefit anyone can gain from the one-year reduction.

    The great majority of Americans make less than $106,800 a year. Millions of workers pay more in payroll taxes than in federal income taxes.

    The 12-month tax reduction will cost the government about $120 billion this year, and a similar amount next year if it's renewed.

    That worries Rep. David Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, and a member of the House-Senate supercommittee tasked with finding new deficit cuts. Tax reductions, "no matter how well-intended," will push the deficit higher, making the panel's task that much harder, Camp's office said.

    But Republican lawmakers haven't always worried about tax cuts increasing the deficit. They led the fight to extend the life of a much bigger tax break: the major 2001 income tax reduction enacted under Bush. It was scheduled to expire at the start of this year. Obama campaigned on a pledge to end the tax break only for the richest Americans, but solid GOP opposition forced him to back down.

    Read the rest here: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...66437dd437299d

  2. Havakasha is offline
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    08-21-2011, 11:05 PM #2
    Several days ago i asked you if favored the continuation of the payroll tax. i dont believe you answered me.
    So, again do you or dont favor its continuation? Thanks

  3. Havakasha is offline
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    08-23-2011, 09:42 AM #3
    It was Ok for the Republicans to oppose the removal of tax subsidies for oil companies but ask them to continue a tax cut for the middle class (payroll tax) and all of a sudden they find all kinds of reasons to oppose it. Hypocrites as usual

  4. SiriuslyLong is offline
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    08-23-2011, 11:08 AM #4
    Why remove deductions for one industry that all other industries get to enjoy. That's simply not fair. Why "multiple" sets of rules that are made up as we go? Why do people like you always look for "targets"? You know the answer - demogoguery. That's how you (second person plural = liberals) roll.

    They're deductions Lloyd. The word "subsidies" is used to dope the masses into believing that our government actually gives them money whilst they make profit from operations. yes Lloyd, there are people out there who believe this. Don't make me post You Tube clips of really stupid people - they're out there, and they vote democratic because they are used and lied to.

    Your tax accountant looks for as many deductions as he can find. Enough with "big oil".

    You and I both agree that reducing our social security payroll tax was dumb, and we both agree that it shouldn't be capped.

  5. Havakasha is offline
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    08-23-2011, 01:22 PM #5
    Your answer doesnt surprise me. Glad to get it on the record. Thanks

  6. SiriuslyLong is offline
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    08-23-2011, 01:35 PM #6
    Do you think the reduction of social security tax was a good move? It is not on a sustainable path, and you want to reduce its funding?

  7. Havakasha is offline
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    08-23-2011, 08:34 PM #7
    Tell me more about the reduction of the social security tax. I am not up on it.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...y.html?hpid=z3



    The GOP will raise taxes — on the middle class and working poor
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    By Harold Meyerson, Tuesday, August 23, 8:06 PM

    America’s presumably anti-tax party wants to raise your taxes. Come January, the Republicans plan to raise the taxes of anyone who earns $50,000 a year by $1,000, and anyone who makes $100,000 by $2,000.

    Their tax hike doesn’t apply to income from investments. It doesn’t apply to any wage income in excess of $106,800 a year. It’s the payroll tax that they want to raise — to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent of your paycheck, a level established for one year in December’s budget deal at Democrats’ insistence. Unlike the capital gains tax, or the low tax rates for the rich included in the Bush tax cuts, or the carried interest tax for hedge fund operators (which is just 15 percent), the payroll tax chiefly hits the middle class and the working poor.


    In both debt plans, the wealthy win.

    And when taxes come chiefly from the middle class and the poor, all those anti-tax right-wingers have no problem raising them. In an editorial this weekend, the Wall Street Journal termed the payroll tax reduction “an inferior tax cut,” arguing that tax cuts should be “broad-based, immediate and permanent.” Broad-based? The payroll tax cut, which the Journal dismisses so contemptuously, benefits every employed American, while the tax cuts the paper champions — on capital gains and millionaires’ income — accrue to a far smaller group. Immediate? Unlike taxes paid annually or quarterly, the payroll tax is drawn from each paycheck from the moment the law takes effect. Permanent? The payroll tax is the tax that funds Social Security, so reducing it really can’t be a permanent policy. But the impermanence of the Bush tax cuts, which had been set to expire this year but were extended, presented no obstacle to the Journal’s fervent support for them.

    This tax-Joe-Six-Pack mania doesn’t end with the Journal. While President Obama has made clear that he supports extending the lower 4.2 percent payroll tax rate for another year, to keep the economy from contracting further, congressional Republicans have made their opposition equally clear. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. Camp complained that it would push the deficit higher. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the man who’d have us scrap Medicare, concurred. “It would simply exacerbate our debt problems,” he said on Fox News Sunday this month.

    This concern for the debt, touching though it may be, didn’t keep Republicans from enacting two waves of tax cuts under George W. Bush. It hasn’t kept them from opposing our current president’s proposal to restore the Clinton-era tax rates on the wealthy. But when we’re talking about taxes on the majority of Americans, those who work for a living and don’t make six-figure incomes, the Republican brain lobe devoted to debt reduction through tax increases goes abuzz with synaptic frenzy.

    The most telling Republican reaction to the president’s proposal to extend the lower rate has been one man’s equivocation. The man is Grover Norquist, author of the anti-tax-increase pledge that the vast majority of House Republicans have signed. On Tuesday, pressed by a number of journalists (most prominently, The Post’s Greg Sargent) to state his position on raising the payroll tax, Norquist sought to quietly steal away. “One would have to see the final legislation,” his spokesman, John Kartch, told Sargent, to determine “what is the net effect on total taxes.”


    To read more click on link at top.

  8. SiriuslyLong is offline
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    08-23-2011, 08:52 PM #8
    Dear Lord are you a dumbass. You and your ilk. To spin this into some moral crusade is ludicrous.

    The social security tax break is going to get restored one way or another. I've mentioned that before as an example that my taxes will increase from where they are today. Are you here to tell us that it is permanent? Is that the intent? If it is permanent, then fine. I enjoy the extra 2% just as the working poor do. We all will.

    I love it how you thought it was such an aweful compromise when it happened in December 2010, and now it is a "cherished program". You are a partisan hypocrite.

  9. Havakasha is offline
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    08-23-2011, 09:02 PM #9
    I asked you to elaborate. Didnt comment at all. Im a dumbass? lol. i tend to think followers of Peter Schiff are dumbasses. Lmfao

    Werent you the guy who said Liberals were the kind of people that sling insults. i have kind of noticed that you sling them quite freely. hypocrite. :O
    Last edited by Havakasha; 08-23-2011 at 09:09 PM.

  10. SiriuslyLong is offline
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    08-23-2011, 09:15 PM #10
    Schiff doesn't talk about aliens stimulating the economy lol.

    Face it, you now think a 2% reduction in social security tax is a good idea. Admit it. You didn't then. We both agreed that it wasn't. Hello?

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