“Will you please raise my taxes? It kills me to see Congress not supporting the expiration of the tax cuts that have been benefiting so many of us for so long."
We've heard this kind of thing before... most of you remember Warren Buffet's recent missive along the same lines.
The man who begged for higher taxes was later identified as a former Google employee named Doug Edwards.
Mr. Edwards, if you want to pay more taxes, there is nothing stopping you from doing so. You can draft a check today for any amount you deem appropriate and send it in to the IRS. They'll take it from you.
People like this use such self-sacrificing statements as "please raise MY taxes", but when it comes down to it they don't want to be alone in paying higher taxes, they'd rather have EVERYONE in their target group forced to pay higher taxes.
And that's the rub. They like to SOUND self-sacrificing, but in reality they want to force others WHO DON'T WANT HIGHER TAXES to pay them.
How do I know this?
Because Mr. Edwards actually belongs to a liberal-activist group called Patriotic Millionaires, which is a group of wealthy liberals lobbying for higher taxes on the wealthy. And what do they say about simply writing extra checks themselves?
The group has been pushing for tax hikes on the wealthy since Obama extended former President George W. Bush's high-income tax cuts in 2010. In April, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance, sent the group a letter suggesting that individual members of the group interested in “making voluntary contributions to pay down the national debt” go to the website pay.gov in order “to make a tax-deductible charitable contribution.”
Republicans have had a similar response to Buffett, suggesting he send in a check rather than advocate a higher tax policy.
The group responded with a letter arguing that the proposal of voluntary contributions meant “letting people opt out” of paying for government spending. "Some problems are too big to be solved except through collective effort and shared sacrifice, and this is one of them,” the group wrote back.
So you see, they don't like the "voluntary" model... they'd rather every "millionaire" be forced to pay higher taxes in order to pay for unsustainably high spending by an irresponsible Congress.
To be honest here...as a rich guy fills out his tax form...all he has to do...is fail to take tax credits, and thus, he will pay higher taxes.
ReplyDeleteI realize this may will earn me a Nobel Prize for Economics, which I naturally will refuse because I really don't care to travel off to Norway and sip expensive booze with Nordic folks.
The taxes have always been there, and simple to accept. You merely have to refuse the credits, and thus you save the nation as some dimwitted rich guy. For some reason, I just don't think any rich idiot would take advantage of that.
just for consideration, take a point at the Swedish press coverage of the Wallenberg family (who at one time owned 40% of the shares on traded on the Stockholm exchange). The W's are quoted as saying they decide how tax they want to pay then fiddle the paperwork until its done.
ReplyDeleteThen on my state return, I decided not to take the federal tax deduction because I did not want to lookup last years federal refund and was happy with a $80 refund. Well, the Revenue Service was not happy, they redid my return to show it and sent me a check for the difference.
You can't win for losing...