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Post by the Scribe on May 8, 2020 10:35:56 GMT
Blast from the past. Things haven't changed much for the money hoarder butt kissing conservatives.
Thom Hartmann: President Obama finally puts Reagan in the grave - Thank you!
The Big Picture RT 148K subscribers On Wednesday President Obama delivered his budget proposal speech. Thom explains how President Obama's debt plan differs from the Tea Party favored "Reaganomics"
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Post by the Scribe on May 10, 2020 19:00:50 GMT
Donald Trump's Trickle Down Economy Won't Work
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Post by the Scribe on Jun 8, 2020 8:12:53 GMT
The IRS is failing to collect billions in back taxes owed by super rich Americansmoney.yahoo.com/report-rich-americans-owe-billions-of-dollars-in-back-taxes-to-irs-125447531.html Janna Herron Editor Yahoo MoneyJune 5, 2020
The federal government is failing to go after rich Americans who’ve skipped paying their taxes for years, according to a new oversight report.
“In the past, the IRS has focused on the tax compliance of high-income individuals because their noncompliance can have a significant corrosive effect on tax administration,” the report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration stated. “Intentional non-filing of tax returns by those with significant financial resources and sophistication is a brazen form of noncompliance.” www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2020reports/202030015fr.pdf
Read more: Here’s why the IRS would want to audit your taxes www.cashay.com/heres-why-the-irs-would-want-to-audit-your-taxes-123343907.html
Almost 880,000 high-income Americans owe $45.7 billion in overdue taxes from 2014 to 2016, the report found. The top 100 high-income non-filers during that time had estimated tax due totaling $9.9 billion.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) didn’t investigate 42% of those cases, representing $20.8 billion in lost tax revenue, because of lack of oversight and dwindling resources.
High-income non-filers owe $45.7 billion in back taxes from 2014 to 2016, according to a report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. (Screenshot from TIGTA report)
Of the outstanding 879,415 high-income tax cases, the IRS never investigated 369,180 of them, according to the report. The IRS never placed 326,579 cases in line to be further investigated after non-filers ignored a second delinquency notice. Another 42,601 cases were closed out without ever being investigated.
Read more: Tax deadline postponed: Why you should still file as soon as you can www.cashay.com/tax-deadline-extended-172125183.html
The remaining 510,235 cases, or an estimated $24.9 billion in taxes, are still waiting to be investigated but likely won’t because of a lack of resources at the agency, according to the report.
A woman enjoys a mint julep before the 142nd running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in 2016. (Photo: Kramer Caswell/Louisville Courier-Journal via USA TODAY)
Additionally, the agency shelved 37,217 cases totaling $3.2 billion in estimated tax dollars. These will not likely be worked by the IRS, the report found.
Intentional failure to file federal tax returns is a crime and can also result in civil fraud penalties.
The non-filing of tax returns also makes up part of the tax gap, or the difference between the amount taxpayers are estimated to pay and the amount paid voluntarily on time. The report estimated that non-filers make up 9% of that gap.
Janna is an editor for Yahoo Money and Cashay. Follow her on Twitter @jannaherron.
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Post by the Scribe on Jul 6, 2020 10:48:08 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Jul 8, 2020 22:32:02 GMT
Liberal Schools Fox News on Taxing the Rich | NowThis
NowThis News 970K subscribers
Fox News confronts the truth about taxes: a supercut.
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Post by the Scribe on Jul 15, 2020 13:22:35 GMT
Never let an opportunity to cut taxes on the wealthy go unanswered. Conservatives have no shame.
Let this sink in:White House pushes ‘pure giveaway’ to rich investors — while urging cut to pandemic unemployment aidwww.alternet.org/2020/07/white-house-pushes-pure-giveaway-to-rich-investors-while-urging-cut-to-pandemic-unemployment-aid/
Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams July 15, 2020
The Trump White House is publicly advocating a massive tax cut for wealthy U.S. investors while simultaneously urging Congress to pare back the expanded unemployment benefits currently serving as a financial lifeline for more than 30 million—and counting—jobless Americans.
In an interview on Fox Business Monday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said President Donald Trump wants included in the next Covid-19 stimulus package “a payroll tax holiday”—which critics warn is a stealth attack on Social Security—and a reduction in the capital gains tax.
A levy on profits from the sale of assets, the capital gains tax disproportionately affects the wealthy and most of the benefits of any cut would largely be enjoyed by rich investors.
Slashing the capital gains tax is a longtime goal of congressional Republicans and Trump, who last year considered but ultimately abandoned a legally dubious plan to lower the tax with an executive order.
While stressing that formal talks with Congress on the next stimulus package have not yet begun, Kudlow said the administration is also pushing for “reforms” to the $600-per-week boost in unemployment insurance (UI) payments, which he characterized as excessively generous “disincentives” to work.
The benefits are set to expire at the end of the month without action from Congress.
“So the White House position is that we have to cut the incomes of 30 million people who lost their jobs or who lost hours, while also giving a giant tax cut to the biggest corporations and the richest people in the world,” tweeted Michael Linden, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank.
“Regarding the ‘capital gains holiday,’ remember this key stat: 82% of all capital gains tax is paid by the richest 1%,” Linden added. “A capital gains tax holiday is a pure giveaway to the rich.”
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that after previously urging complete expiration of the enhanced unemployment benefits, “Trump administration officials have begun opening the door to accepting a narrower version of what Congress previously approved.”
“One potential compromise discussed by Republican lawmakers would involve cutting the unemployment benefit from $600 per week to between $200 and $400 per week and making up at least part of the difference by sending another round of $1,200 stimulus payments,” the Post reported.
Trump spokesman Judd Deere told the Post that the White House is open to approving a reduction in the current weekly UI payments but remains opposed to extending the full $600-per-week.
“UI reform is a priority for this White House in any phase four package and we are in ongoing discussions with the Hill,” said Deere.
Julia Wolfe, state economic analyst with the Economic Policy Institute, warned in a blog post last week that if Congress fails to extend the enhanced unemployment benefits through next year, “it could cost us more than five million jobs and $500 million in personal income.”
“We should despair for the millions who have lost their jobs and for their families,” Wolfe wrote, “and our top priority as a country should be protecting the health and safety of workers and our broader communities by paying workers to stay home when possible, whether that means working from home some or all of the time, using paid leave, or claiming UI benefits.”
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Post by the Scribe on Sept 8, 2020 0:07:23 GMT
Keep in mind Trump didn't rewrite it himself. It is CONServative WET DREAM ECONOMICS. RepubliCONServatives hatched this tax reform bill. My guess it was written and just waiting to be sprung when the political conditions were right to get it passed.The ugly numbers are finally in on the 2017 Trump tax rewritewww.yahoo.com/news/ugly-numbers-finally-2017-trump-160001068.html David Cay Johnston Salon September 7, 2020, 9:00 AM MST
Donald Trump; Tax Forms Getty/Salon
The first data showing how all Americans are faring under Donald Trump reveal the poor and working classes sinking slightly, the middle class treading water, the upper-middle class growing and the richest, well, luxuriating in rising rivers of greenbacks.
More than half of Americans had to make ends meet in 2018 on less money than in 2016, my analysis of new income and tax data shows.
The nearly 87 million taxpayers making less than $50,000 had to get by in 2018 on $307 less per household than in 2016, the year before Trump took office, I find.
That 57% of American households were better off under Obama contradicts Trump's often-repeated claim he created the best economy ever until the pandemic.
The worsened economic situation for more than half of Americans contradicts Trump's frequent claims that he is the champion of the "forgotten man" and his vow that "every decision" on taxes "will be made to benefit American workers and American families." www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/the-inaugural-address/
The figures in this story come from my annual analysis of IRS data known as Table 1.4. The income figures are pre-tax money that must be reported on tax returns. I adjusted the 2016 data to reflect inflation of 4.1% between 2016 and 2018 (slightly more than 2% a year). www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-statistical-tables-by-size-of-adjusted-gross-income data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
This is the first data on the first full year when Trump was president. It also is the first year of the Radical Republican tax system overhaul, passed in December 2017. The Trump tax law, the most significant tax policy change since 1986, was passed without a single public hearing or a single Democratic vote.
High income households multiply
Trump policies overwhelmingly favor the top 7% of Americans. And, oh, do they benefit!
Prosperous and rich people, the data reveal, include half a million who are not even filing tax returns. Yet they are not being pursued as tax cheats, a separate report shows. www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2020reports/202030015fr.pdf
The number of households enjoying incomes of $200,000 or more soared by more than 20%. The number of taxpayers making $10 million or more soared 37% to a record 22,112 households.
Who saves on taxes
The Trump/Republican tax savings were highly concentrated up the income ladder with hardly any tax savings going to the working poor and only a smidgen to the middle class.
Those making $50,000 to $100,000 for example, paid just three-fourths of 1 percentage point less of their incomes to our federal government. People making $2 million to $2.5 million saw their effective tax rate fall by about three times that much.
Now let's compare two groups, those making $50,000 to $100,000 and those declaring $500,000 to $1 million. The second group averaged nine times as much income as the first group in 2018.
Under the Trump tax law, the first group's annual income taxes declined on average by $143, while the second group's tax reduction averaged $17,800.
Put another way, a group that made nine times as much money enjoyed about 125 times as much in income tax savings.
This disparity helps explain Trump's support among money-conscious high-income Americans. But given the tiny tax benefits for most Americans, along with cuts in government services, it is surprising Trump enjoys significant support among people making less than $200,000.
But realize none of the biggest news organizations do the kind of analysis you are reading, at least not since I left The New York Times a dozen years ago. Instead, the major news organizations quote Trump's claims and others' challenges without citing details.
Understating incomes
The figures I cite here understate actual incomes at the top for two reasons. One is that loopholes and Congressional favors allow many rich and superrich Americans to report much less income than they actually enjoy. Often they get to defer for years or decades reporting income earned today.
Second, with Trump's support Congress has cut IRS staffing so deeply that the service cannot even pursue growing armies of rich people who have stopped filing tax returns. The sharp decline in IRS auditing means tax cheating—always a low-risk crime—has become much less risky. trac.syr.edu/tracirs/latest/549/
Trump ignores rich tax cheats
In the three years ending in 2016, the IRS identified 879,415 high-income Americans who did not even bother to file. These tax cheats owed an estimated $45.7 billion in taxes, the treasury inspector general for Tax Administration reported May 29. www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2020reports/202030015fr.pdf
Under Trump more than half a million cases of high-income Americans who didn't file a tax return "will likely not be pursued," the inspector general wrote.
One of the Koch brothers was under IRS criminal investigation until Trump assumed office and the service abruptly dropped the case. DCReport's five-part series last year showed, from a thousand pages of documents, that William Ingraham Koch, who lives one door away from Mar-a-Lago, is collecting more than $100 million a year without paying income taxes. www.dcreport.org/tag/koch-papers/
Borrowing to help the rich
Trump's tax law will require at least $1.5 trillion in added federal debt because it falls far short of paying for itself through increased economic growth even without the pandemic. Most of the tax savings were showered on rich Americans and the corporations they control. Most of the negative effects will fall on the middle class and poor Americans in the form of Trump's efforts to reduce government services.
The 2017 income tax law caused only a slight decline in the share of adjusted gross income that Americans paid to Uncle Sam, known as the effective tax rate. Adjusted gross income is the last line on the front page of your tax return and is in the measure used in my analysis.
The overall effective tax rate slipped from 14.7% under Obama to 14.2% under Trump.
Curious anomaly
In what might seem at first blush a curious development, Americans making more than $10 million received a below-average cut in their effective tax rate. The effective tax rate for these 22,000 households declined by less than half a percent.
The reason for that smaller-than-average decline is that these super-rich Americans depend less on paychecks and much more on capital gains and dividends that have long been taxed at lower rates than paycheck earnings.
The new tax data also show a sharp shift away from income from work and toward income from investments, a trend which bodes poorly for working people but very nicely for those who control businesses, invest in stocks and have other sources of income from capital.
Overall the share of American income from wages and salaries fell significantly, from almost 71% in 2016 to less than 68% in 2018.
Meanwhile, if you look just at the slice of the American income pie derived from business ownership and investments, it expanded by nearly one-tenth in two years. Income from such investments is highly concentrated among the richest Americans.
Infuriating fact
There's one more enlightening and perhaps infuriating detail I sussed from the IRS data.
The number of households making $1 million or more but paying no income taxes soared 41% under the new Trump tax law. Under Obama, there were just 394 such households. With Trump, this grew to 556 households making on average $3.5 million without contributing one cent to our government.
Again, Trump seems to have forgotten all about the Forgotten Man. But he's busy doing all he can to help the rich, then stick you with their tax bills.
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Post by the Scribe on Sept 8, 2020 2:19:44 GMT
Millionaires and Corporate Giants Escaped IRS Audits in FY 2018trac.syr.edu/tracirs/latest/549/
The latest data from the IRS show an alarming and continued downward spiral in government audits of the wealthiest taxpayers and America's corporate giants. Despite growing income inequality—where the top 1 percent of Americans control much of the wealth in the United States—less and less attention is being given by federal agents and investigators to determine whether these same individuals and businesses properly report their true incomes and pay taxes on these dollars. Billions of dollars are arguably at stake, as is American faith in the fairness of our federal tax system.
Here is what the latest IRS internal management data covering FY 2018 obtained under court order by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University show:
Audits of Millionaires: The current situation here is the most alarming because the latest data reveal that 97 out of every 100 taxpayers reporting over a million dollars of income were not audited last year. And for these millionaires the puny number of IRS audits has been cut in half since 2010[1]. See Figure 1.
In FY 2010, such audits turned up $5.1 billion in unreported taxes. Even then 92 out of every 100 millionaires were not audited. Now with just half the audits, the government uncovered only $1.9 billion in unreported taxes in FY 2018. Few audits means many millionaires escape paying billions of dollars owed the U.S. Treasury.
Figure 1. Few IRS Audits of Taxpayers Reporting > $1 Million in Income* (Click for larger image trac.syr.edu/tracirs/latest/549/include/figure1_white_standalone.svg )
Audits of Corporate Giants: More than half of the 633 largest corporations in the country - those with over $20 billion in assets - were not even audited last year. This is the first year that the audit rate has slipped below 50 percent. As recently as 2010, nearly all such returns (96%) were being examined by IRS[2]. See Figure 2.
Audits in 2010 of large corporations (>$250 million in assets) turned up $23.7 billion dollars in unreported taxes. This had dropped in half to just $12.5 billion during FY 2018.
Figure 2. IRS Audits Less Than Half of Corporations with $20 Billion or More Assets (Click for larger image trac.syr.edu/tracirs/latest/549/include/figure2.svg )
Criminal Prosecutions: IRS referrals of taxpayers for criminal prosecution relative to population size have plummeted by 75 percent in the last twenty-five years, dropping by 63 percent in just the last five years. See Figure 3.
The number of taxpayers convicted as a result of IRS investigations reached an all-time low in FY 2018 - just 928. And only 530 of these convictions were for tax fraud rather than for other types of offenses such as identity theft, financial institution and investment frauds, money laundering, drug trafficking and organized crime. IRS of course has major responsibility for not only going after tax cheats who don't pay their taxes on legal sources of income, but also for tax evaders that fail to report and pay taxes on illegally gotten gains. See here for more details.
Figure 3. Odds of IRS Referral for Criminal Prosecution Has Plummeted (Click for larger image trac.syr.edu/tracirs/latest/549/include/figure3.svg )
Why Has This Occurred?
For years, Congress has imposed severe funding and staffing cuts on the agency. Then, in December of 2017, Congress enacted sweeping changes to the tax laws through passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) which imposed many new demands on the IRS. Without adequate resources to meet its tax administration and enforcement needs, IRS's efforts to meet these new demands only exacerbated existing problems.
Back in June of 2010 IRS had just over 100,000 employees on the payroll. By June 2018, staffing had fallen by 22 percent to just 79,071[3]. And despite the additional responsibilities IRS was assigned to implement the 2017 tax changes, IRS had 3,000 fewer employees than it had in June 2017 before this act was passed. See Table 1.
Even larger reductions occurred among IRS revenue agents and criminal investigators. Revenue agents dropped by 35 percent between 2010 and 2018, while criminal investigators fell by 27 percent. Experienced revenue agents are of course those required for the examination of millionaires and corporate giants because they have the most knowledge and skills needed to examine these complex returns.
Tax examiners are responsible for the audits of less complex returns filed by individuals, the self-employed and by smaller corporations. While these also dropped, they now outnumber revenue agents because they only declined by 17 percent.
Footnotes
[1] For earlier TRAC report on audits of millionaires by special IRS Global High Wealth (GHW) group, see "Few Millionaires Audited by IRS Global High Wealth Group". Since then the organizational role of the GHW group has been sharply curtailed. It is no longer one of six "industry groups" with its own executive level director. In the recent reorganization of IRS's Large Business & International Division, it now appears only as part of a nonexecutive level lower unit concerned with strategy that also includes "pass through" exam strategies.
[2] For earlier trends see TRAC's 2017 report, "Nearly Half of Corporate Giants Escape IRS Audit in 2017".
[3] The latest available staffing data is through June of 2018. Staffing generally is lower at the end of each fiscal year in September than in June each year because IRS hires additional staff to help out during tax season and its aftermath. To take care of these seasonal effects, June employment figures are used for comparison purposes for prior years as well.
TRAC is a nonpartisan, nonprofit data research center affiliated with the Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Whitman School of Management, both at Syracuse University. For more information, to subscribe, or to donate, contact trac@syr.edu or call 315-443-3563.
Report date: March 7, 2019
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Post by the Scribe on Sept 8, 2020 2:22:32 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Sept 8, 2020 2:29:40 GMT
When A Tax Cut Isn’t A Cut At Allwww.dcreport.org/2020/09/03/when-a-tax-cut-isnt-a-cut-at-all/
Trump’s Payroll Tax Ploy Endangers Social Security, and It Will Have to be Paid Back Next Year By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport Opinion Editor
A passing news item about taxes caught my attention as an example of why people can find government so annoying at times.
Perhaps it’s even more so with this particular White House that promises, but then falters on delivery, spreading distrust for the role of government more generally.
About 1.3 million federal workers, 60% of the total, are about to see an increase in pay as the result of that promised payroll tax deferral – but they will have to repay that tax next year since the deferral is temporary. Only those earning less than $100,000 are affected.
If you’re going to do it, Mr. President, shouldn’t we expect that it will be done completely and not be half-baked?
Donald Trump signed an executive order for this deferral and said he had plans to eliminate the tax altogether. But then, he and Congress are not talking. And, so, any deferred taxes now will have to be repaid later.
Meanwhile, businesses across the country basically are gnoring this order since they don’t want to spend extra money to retool payrolls for deductions that will have to be repaid later.
In other words, this particular proposal – apparently offered both as part of economic stimulus of a seriously weakened economy and election ploy – will do nothing except annoy federal workers.
Now, having looked at it, I’m not a fan of cutting the payroll tax. But if you’re going to do it, Mr. President, shouldn’t we expect that it will be done completely and not be half-baked?
Forget Politics
With all the political division in the country, this one seems pretty simple. This is not pro-Democrat or anti-Trump – or the opposite. It’s a simple plea that we do what we say.
The basics here: The payroll tax is a big support for Social Security and Medicare. It takes 12.4% contribution from tiered portions of salary split evenly between employer and employee to a cap. The deferral applies only to people who earn up to $4,000 on a biweekly basis, and less than $104,000 annually.
When Trump announced that we should have a deferral from September to December payrolls, he said he would seek permanent elimination of this particular tax upon his reelection, which, of course, is not assured. Further, he said he was both for and against cutting funds for Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.
Unions, business, retirees and a wide bipartisan crowd voiced collective unhappiness with his executive order, and few companies have said they would actually do so for such a temporary situation. What it means is that any gain now will result in lower paychecks in 2021.
Moreover, the payroll tax obviously only affects a tax cut for working employees and does nothing to put people back to work. And, it is a back-handed way to undercut Social Security and health services for seniors and low-income people. If Trump wants to do that, he needs to act more broadly and as a major policy debate, all sides agree.
A statement from the Office of Management and Budget said “The president put forward this action to give relief to all Americans during this pandemic,” adding that the executive branch as an employer is “implementing the deferral to give our employees relief as quickly as possible, in line with the presidential memo.”
Now Comes Politics
At base, the move on payroll taxes seems aimed at snubbing Congress, with which the administration is at an impasse over coronavirus aid, and coming up with something that might appeal to voters who just hear the words “tax cut,” and start clapping and voting.
So far, this tax cut is not a tax cut. It is a deferral. Trump’s insistence on using executive orders rather than legislation to accomplish his goals too often ends up with policies that fall short of whatever he wanted in the first place.
Does he mean to short Social Security? Is he accounting for employees who leave the job before repaying the tax? Can he make the cut permanent?
The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service apparently only issued how-to information four days before the order is to take effect, meaning even businesses wanting to comply won’t possibly know exactly how to change their payment systems. One federal employee union said its members might not be able to support paying a double tax next year.
It does make you wonder whether Trump the politician actually knows Trump the president.
I can understand that Trump wants to act, but not that he does not follow through. Even the smaller government that conservatives want should be effective in what it does.
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Post by the Scribe on Sept 27, 2020 23:21:12 GMT
Same thing happened to me. My income, deductions and refund for years was almost the same UNTIL the TrumpCONServative Tax Reform Act that basically raised my taxes by thousands. That is NOT something I can afford but am glad to know that corporations alone had their taxes cut by 91 billion.
Trump Voters Freak Out About Trump Tax Hike 412,479 views•Premiered Feb 7, 2019
Trump Voters Freak Out About Trump Tax Hike - Part 2
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Post by the Scribe on Oct 2, 2020 20:30:53 GMT
This is the REAL reason RepubliCONServatives want to kill Obamacare. It is all about money. They have absolutely NO intention of replacing it.Obamacare repeal would bring a huge tax cut for the rich, research showsfinance.yahoo.com/news/obamacare-repeal-tax-cut-for-the-rich-135115979.html Adriana Belmonte·Senior Editor Thu, October 1, 2020, 6:51 AM MST
The fate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare, lies with the Supreme Court: The nation’s highest court will begin to hear arguments on Nov. 10 about the health care law’s constitutionality. finance.yahoo.com/news/how-the-supreme-court-could-reshape-obamacare-after-rbg-death-152933865.html
A ruling on the ACA’s “individual mandate” provision, and potentially the entire law, is expected in the spring of 2021. finance.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-obamacares-constitutionality-223148053.html
And beyond forcing millions of Americans off their health insurance, a repeal of the ACA would bring a major tax cut for the richest Americans. According to research from the Tax Policy Center (TPC), the top 0.1% would receive a tax cut of $198,250 per year while the top 1% of Americans would see a tax cut of $32,370. (The Center for American Progress (CAP) came to a similar conclusion, citing the TPC data.) finance.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-obamacares-constitutionality-223148053.html www.taxpolicycenter.org/model-estimates/repeal-taxes-enacted-affordable-care-act-aca-may-2020/t20-0170-distributional www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/news/2020/09/29/490881/repealing-aca-put-millions-risk-giving-big-tax-cuts-wealthy/
“We knew that repealing ACA would be a windfall for the wealthy,” Seth Hanlon, a senior fellow at CAP, told Yahoo Finance. “But the magnitude of the tax cut for the top 0.1% — people making $3.8 million and upwards — is still stunning.”
A breakdown of the tax cuts. (Chart: Tax Policy Center)
‘Repealing it would unwind all that’
The ACA is funded by taxpayer dollars, which is part of the reason why the GOP has spent years attempting to dismantle the landmark law. www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/the-next-attack-on-obamacare/440772/
Individuals who make more than $200,000 a year are required to pay a 3.8% net investment income tax (NIIT), which applies to investment, income dividends, capital gains, royalties, etc. Some Americans in that income bracket are also subject to the additional 0.9% Medicare tax. www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/questions-and-answers-for-the-additional-medicare-tax
“The ACA expanded health care for low- and middle-income people and financed it largely with a tax increase on the rich,” Hanlon explained. “Repealing it would unwind all that. And specifically, the biggest tax provision was a new 3.8% tax on the investment income of high-income people. Since investment income like capital gains and dividends is extremely skewed toward the very wealthy, that is who would benefit the most from eliminating the tax.”
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with Mark Meadows (L) and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R) behind him after the House of Representatives approved the American Healthcare Act, to repeal major parts of Obamacare, May 4, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Many components of the ACA are tied to taxes. Obamacare’s initial individual mandate, before it was repealed by the GOP tax law in 2018, included a tax penalty for not having some kind of health insurance that was included as a way to protect those with pre-existing conditions. fortune.com/2017/12/20/tax-bill-individual-mandate-obamacare/
“The way Congress did it made this trade-off,” Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center, told Yahoo Finance. “It said that insurance companies are required to sell insurance. I cannot prevent you from buying insurance because you have pre-existing conditions. That was the first piece of it.”
Gleckman stressed that this potential tax cut has been clear since the ACA’s inception back in 2010.
“Nobody made any secret of it,” he explained. “When the Obama administration and Congress proposed this, they said that these new taxes are ones on individuals, ‘We’re only going to apply to people who make more than $200,000 a year.’ It was really clear that was the target of this and that if the ACA was replaced either by Congress or declared unconstitutional by the court, the people who would benefit from it were the people who paid the tax in the first place, starting in 2010.”
US President Barack Obama speaks about the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, with Vice President Joe Biden in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington on April 1, 2014. (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Add insult to injury’
CAP’s Hanlon was critical about the fact that a repeal of the ACA would benefit higher-income Americans in addition to taking away health insurance from those who need it most. finance.yahoo.com/news/nearly-2-out-of-3-americans-are-more-concerned-about-access-to-health-care-since-the-start-of-coronavirus-poll-174549286.html
“One striking thing about the pandemic is that the wealth of billionaires has continued to swell, even as millions of people have lost their jobs and livelihoods,” Hanlon said. “Cutting those billionaires’ taxes at this moment in time would add insult to injury.”
Data has shown that American billionaires saw their wealth increase by $406 billion, which is roughly 14% of their net worth, in the first six weeks of the coronavirus pandemic. It has continued to grow since then. finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-americans-raking-in-billions-from-coronavirus-pandemic-report-182111832.html
Cathey Park wears a cast for her broken wrist with "I Love Obamacare" written upon it prior to U.S. President Barack Obama's arrival to speak about health insurance in Boston October 30, 2013. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
And while many of the taxes tied to the ACA have been repealed, there is still a fee paid by prescription drug companies: the excise tax known as the Branded Prescription Drug Fee. If that were eliminated, pharmaceutical companies would pay $2.8 billion less in taxes each year. taxfoundation.org/five-years-later-aca-s-branded-prescription-drug-fee-may-have-contributed-rising-drug-prices/ www.cbpp.org/research/health/aca-lawsuit-would-cut-taxes-for-the-most-well-off-while-ending-health-coverage-for
At the same time, taxes on the lower and middle classes would increase.
“The ACA established tax credits that help people afford health insurance purchased in the marketplaces, Hanlon said. “Those tax credits go to low- and middle-income households, to lower their premiums. The average premium tax credit is about $500 per month. If ACA is repealed, those premium tax credits would be repealed as well. In other words, it would raise taxes on low- and middle-income households while cutting taxes on the very wealthy.” urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.kff.org/health-reform/state-indicator/average-monthly-advance-premium-tax-credit-aptc/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=*7B*22colId*22:*22Location*22,*22sort*22:*22asc*22*7D__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJQ!!Op6eflyXZCqGR5I!S7wr0oNSYDs7g0kK6uQTkzvjB72GursCzOf285hZg5rR0rocAW8NU4bRH1fIbznz3g$
Adriana Belmonte is a reporter and editor covering politics and health care policy for Yahoo Finance. You can follow her on Twitter @adrianambells.
READ MORE:
How the Supreme Court could reshape Obamacare after RBG's death finance.yahoo.com/news/how-the-supreme-court-could-reshape-obamacare-after-rbg-death-152933865.html Supreme Court to hear arguments on Obamacare, now crucial amid coronavirus pandemic, right after election finance.yahoo.com/news/obamacare-supreme-court-arguments-amid-the-coronavirus-pandemic-202146671.html Nearly 2 out of 3 Americans are more concerned about access to health care since the start of coronavirus: poll finance.yahoo.com/news/nearly-2-out-of-3-americans-are-more-concerned-about-access-to-health-care-since-the-start-of-coronavirus-poll-174549286.html
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Post by the Scribe on Oct 28, 2020 2:08:31 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 16, 2020 10:37:44 GMT
As hard as they will the RepubliCONservatives will try to blame this on President Biden and the Democrats. Don't fall for it when it happens. Workers will see smaller paychecks next year under Trump's payroll tax deferralmoney.yahoo.com/workers-will-see-smaller-paychecks-next-year-under-trumps-payroll-tax-deferral-191346351.html Janna Herron·Editor August 31, 2020·3 min read
The goal of President Donald Trump’s executive memorandum on payroll tax deferral is to get more money into the pockets of Americans this year. But the move also means those same workers will get smaller paychecks for the first four months in 2021, according to new guidance on how to implement the deferral. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/memorandum-deferring-payroll-tax-obligations-light-ongoing-covid-19-disaster/ www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-20-65.pdf
On Friday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Treasury Department told employers that they would be liable to pay back what they defer from their employees’ paychecks under the executive memo, so workers won’t face a huge tax bill when they file their 2020 federal returns.
Read more: Everything you need to know about Trump’s payroll tax deferral www.cashay.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-trumps-payroll-tax-deferral-175550120.html
To accomplish this, employers would take double the Social Security tax out of employees’ paychecks in the first four months of 2021 to pay Uncle Sam for the amount deferred at the end of 2020, according to Pete Isberg, vice president of government affairs at the payroll company ADP.
“Essentially, employees are going to notice that their net pay is going to be reduced next year in roughly equal amounts to what was increased in September through December,” Isberg told Yahoo Money. “For that reason, we thought employees were going to have an opinion about this.”
‘Gave us exactly one business day to respond’
U.S. President Donald Trump signs executive orders for economic relief during a news conference amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, U.S., August 8, 2020. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
The guidance also puts pressure on employers. The deferral was supposed to begin on Sept. 1 and run through the end of the year, according to Trump’s action. But because the guidance came out so late, employers won’t be able to implement the deferral immediately, Isberg said. money.yahoo.com/trumps-payroll-tax-deferral-is-supposed-to-start-today-but-wont-for-many-workers-162855361.html
“That notice coming out five o’clock on Friday gave us exactly one business day to respond,” he said. “Keep in mind, employers run their payrolls well in advance of payday. So some September payroll was being run early last week.”
Read more: Payroll taxes, explained www.cashay.com/payroll-taxes-taken-out-of-your-paycheck-182308808.html
ADP plans to roll out its implementation of the deferral in early September for its clients, but most other employers won’t have theirs ready until late September or even into October, Isberg said.
The guidance requires employers to figure out the total amount that would be deferred for each employee who wants to opt in, so that enough is withheld in next year’s paychecks before tax time.
Employers will also need to educate their workers on what will happen to their paycheck this year and next if they choose a deferral, so there are no unwanted surprises.
“It’s a pretty big workload to succinctly tell each employee their options,” Isberg said. “So that question applies to like 100 million people.”
Then there is the reporting of the deferred wages that employers will have to do as well, so they don’t get assessed for any taxes not paid next year. Ultimately, some employers may not think the legwork involved is even worth it and can opt out, which is an option they have under the memorandum, Isberg said.
“It’s a lot of paperwork to do over the next few days,” Isberg said. “Jury is out on how popular this is going to be.”
Janna is an editor for Yahoo Money and Cashay. Follow her on Twitter @jannaherron.
Read more:
President Trump's payroll executive order could leave Americans with 'substantial tax liability' money.yahoo.com/trump-payroll-tax-deferral-tax-bill-143820141.html The IRS is failing to collect billions in back taxes owed by super rich Americans money.yahoo.com/report-rich-americans-owe-billions-of-dollars-in-back-taxes-to-irs-125447531.html How the extended tax deadline affects payments, retirement contributions, and more money.yahoo.com/extended-tax-deadline-203038313.html Tax expert: Americans who don't file leave ‘billions of dollars’ on the table money.yahoo.com/tax-expert-nonfilers-leave-billions-of-dollars-on-the-table-141738552.html
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Post by the Scribe on Dec 22, 2020 7:29:02 GMT
Democrats wanted a tax credit for low income families. Republicans wanted a tax break for '3 martini lunches.'www.yahoo.com/news/democrats-wanted-tax-credit-low-144600306.html Tim O'Donnell Mon, December 21, 2020, 7:46 AM MST
To secure a compromise on a COVID-19 relief bill, both parties in Congress had to trade some proverbial "horses," even if one side viewed the other's as "unconscionable."
That's the word Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) used to describe the GOP's White House-backed tax break for corporate meal expenses, per The Washington Post. Proponents of the tax break, including President Trump, argue it will help boost activity for restaurants, but critics have derisively labeled it the "three-martini lunch" deduction, claiming it will really benefit business executives rather than the dining industry. But despite staunch Democratic opposition, it worked its way into the draft relief bill that Congress is hoping to pass soon.
The reason? Democratic leaders caved on the controversial tax break because their Republican counterparts agreed to expand tax credits for low-income families and the working poor in exchange for its inclusion, a Democratic aide told The Washington Post on condition of anonymity. Read more at The Washington Post.
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