Concord Monitor drops their curtain: whose money is it really? - Granite Grok

Concord Monitor drops their curtain: whose money is it really?

Yes, yesterday was Tax Day – the day that Progressives celebrate as the epitome of their philosophy of “it’s ours, stupid” (and give thanks to its sub-holiday, the  Current Tax Payment Act of 1943 which allowed the Feds to automatically take your money).  Your money?  The Feds’ money?  So, the Concord Monitor; where do YOU think it stands on this.  Yeah, I know, you get 1 guess and it doesn’t count (full editorial after the jump).  A couple of quick snippets to help your guess:

  • The home mortgage interest deduction tops our list. It costs the Treasury about $75 billion per year...Most of this tax break goes to people who don’t need it
  • Those deductions cost the Treasury nearly $60 billion per year and their fairness is questionable
  • That tax break costs the feds about $150 million a year in lost revenue

See?  Now you know where the Concord Monitor stands on who should have first dibs on the money YOU earn.  By building the phrasing “costs the Treasury” in that fashion, the implication is Government should come first, should be placed first, before you and your family.  Not ONCE in its editorial is from WHOM is that money being taken.  No ONCE is there any outrage of how Government misspends that money.  Not once is there any compassion that perhaps, just perhaps, the people from whom that money is being taken just might actually need it more.

Nope, not a single mention.  The implication is always “the Government needs it more than you do”.  Not once is it mentioned that perhaps, just PERHAPS, that Government should maybe say “OK, we have less revenue – perhaps we should do less and spend less”.  But that would mean it would have to overcome its greedy tendencies and actually take less.

But as the Concord Monitor tells us by its absence, that should NEVER have to happen to Government.

To you and I?  That’s of no consequence at all…

Emphasis mine:

Editorial: On Tax Day, a few ideas for reform

Today is April 15, the last day to give Uncle his share without fear of penalty. Americans, thanks to the nation’s infernally complicated tax code, spent more than $200 billion to comply with the code. Tax reform of some sort has bipartisan support, and the public is clamoring for it.

Some reformers, and we’re leaning in that direction, want to scrap the code, now thousands of pages long, and start from scratch. Others want to simplify the existing code and eliminate many, if not most, of its tax breaks for individuals and corporations.

Republicans and Democrats usually disagree about which breaks go and which stay, but here are a few that should be changed or get the boot.

  • The home mortgage interest deduction tops our list. It costs the Treasury about $75 billion per year, money that must be made up by other taxpayers or by going deeper into debt. Only 25 percent of taxpayers itemize and can take the deduction. Most of this tax break goes to people who don’t need it – 77 percent to households with incomes over $100,000 per year, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

That’s right – the purpose of Government is to take from some and immediately give it to someone else (shhh….it’s not yours!)

Though the interest deduction was capped at $1 million, it applies to second homes as well as primary residences. Recreational vehicles and sleep-aboard boats and yachts count. So do home equity loans up to $100,000. Renters, if they earn enough, are helping to pay for this tax break. We say get rid of the deduction and use some of the additional tax revenue to make workforce housing more affordable.

That’s right – the purpose of Government is to take from some and immediately give it to someone else (shhh….it’s not yours!)

  • It’s also time to rethink the fairness of deducting money paid in state and local taxes from earnings subject to the federal income tax. Those deductions cost the Treasury nearly $60 billion per year and their fairness is questionable. They force taxpayers in low- tax states to subsidize residents in high-tax states who potentially enjoy more and better public services and infrastructure. Capping the deduction at a national average might be an option.

  • The loophole that allows private equity investors such as former presidential candidate Mitt Romney to classify what should be earnings as capital gains and similar breaks that allow high-income earners to defer compensation until a year when they have a lot of deductions or fall in a lower tax bracket should also be on the block.

What shouldn’t be eliminated, at least not until the United States joins the rest of the developed world and offers some form of a single-payer health insurance program, is the deduction for employer-sponsored coverage. That tax break costs the feds about $150 million a year in lost revenue, and it is a benefit not enjoyed by the growing number of workers whose employer no longer subsidizes coverage. Many of them, since they earn too little to pay income taxes, however, are not subsidizing those with insurance.

Make the value of employer-subsidized insurance taxable and more employees will find insurance unaffordable. And there’s no guarantee that Congress would use the extra revenue to make health insurance affordable.

The earned income tax credit, one of the most efficient ways to assist the working poor, as well as the child credit, now due to expire in 2017 if not renewed, should also stay. It does a lot more good than most tax breaks, especially the countless ones enjoyed by corporations.

In April, in some year, tax filers will calculate their obligation under a fairer, simpler tax code. But then again, someday pigs may fly.

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