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McCain's tax plan

McCain's tax plan would cost more than $2 trillion over the next decade, delivering 58% of its benefits to the top 1% of taxpayers and just 4% to the bottom 60% of taxpayers.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-t...k_project.html

Re: McCain's tax plan

Any idea where they're getting that number from? The CAP is a pretty notorious left wing group aren't they? It would be like me asking you to believe some study that came out of a right wing think tank.

I'm not saying it has to be wrong, just that if you can find it I'd love to see where the numbers are coming from. Thanks!

Re: McCain's tax plan

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Originally Posted by Stokes (Post 843099)

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During a breakfast with reporters a quartet of CAP fellows -- Robert Gordon, Peter Harbage, James Kvaal, Jeanne Lambrew -- provided a detailed analysis of McCain's tax and health care proposals. They didn't like them.

Don't worry as soon as the MSM catch with this topic, the story will develop with more informations.

Re: McCain's tax plan

You realize the bottom 50% now only pays 3% of the income tax, right ? You can't cut taxes without helping the top 1% as they pay 40%. The top 10% pays 70%.

Most people are living here just about for free.

Re: McCain's tax plan

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Originally Posted by BelichickFan (Post 843107)

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Re: McCain's tax plan

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Originally Posted by weswelker#83 (Post 843105)

Don't worry as soon as the MSM catch with this topic, the story will develop with more informations.

OK, if they come out with some data let us know!

Re: McCain's tax plan

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Originally Posted by weswelker#83 (Post 843093)

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Re: McCain's tax plan

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stokes (Post 843152)

OK, if they come out with some data let us know!

Here you go my friend stokes :

Five Easy Pieces and Two Trillion Dollars
The Bush-McCain-Norquist Tax Agenda
http://www.americanprogressaction.or...ax_agenda.html

One of McCain’s economic advisers, former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, responded to the report yesterday, as well as CAPAF criticism of McCain’s health plan. Holtz-Eakin concedes that McCain’s tax plan “will make deficits expand up front,” but argues that “voters should wait” before “passing judgment” on McCain’s plan.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/22/...ficits-expand/

Re: McCain's tax plan

Here is what McCain's website says about taxes:

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Pro-Growth Tax Agenda
John McCain believes taxes should be low, simple, and fair and has a track record of commitment to these principles.

Cut Taxes On The Middle Class

Cut Taxes For Middle Class Families: Hard-working American families need lower taxes. John McCain will permanently repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) -- a tax that will be paid nearly exclusively by 25 million middle class families. John McCain will repeal this onerous tax, saving middle class families nearly $60 billion in a single year. Under McCain's plan, a middle class family with children set to pay the AMT will save an average of over $2,700 -- a real tax cut for working families.
Pro-Growth Tax Policy

Keep Tax Rates Low: Entrepreneurs are at the heart of American innovation, growth and prosperity. Entrepreneurs create the ultimate job security -- a new, better opportunity if your current job goes away. Entrepreneurs should not be taxed into submission. John McCain will fight the Democrats' crippling plans for a tax increase in 2011. Left to their devices, Democrats will impose a massive $100 billion tax hike, almost $700 per taxpayer every year.

Make It Harder To Raise Taxes: John McCain believes it should require a 3/5 majority vote in Congress to raise taxes.

Cut The Corporate Tax Rate From 35 To 25 Percent. A lower corporate tax rate is essential to U.S. competitiveness. America was once a low-tax business environment, but as our trade partners lowered their rates, America failed to keep pace, leaving us with the second-highest rate among the world’s advanced economies.

Reward Saving, Investment and Risk-Taking: Low taxes on dividends and capital gains promote saving, channel investment dollars to innovative, high-value uses and not wasteful financial planning. John McCain will keep the current rates on dividends and capital gains and fight anti-growth efforts by Democrats.

Allow First-Year Deduction, Or “Expensing”, Of Equipment And Technology Investments. Expensing of equipment and technology will provide an immediate boost to capital expenditures and reward investments in cutting-edge technologies.

Pro-Innovation Tax Cuts

Ban Internet Taxes: John McCain believes we must make a farsighted, robust, and fervent commitment to innovation and new technologies to sustain our global competitiveness, meet our national security challenges, achieve less costly and more effective health care, reduce dangerous dependence on foreign sources of oil, and raise the quality of education in the United States. John McCain has been a leader in keeping the Internet free of taxes. As President, he will seek a permanent ban on taxes that threaten this engine of economic growth and prosperity.

Ban New Cell Phone Taxes: John McCain understands that the same people that would tax e-mail will tax every text message -- and even 911 calls. John McCain will prohibit new cellular telephone taxes.

Establish Permanent Tax Credit Equal To 10 Percent Of Wages Spent On R&D. This reform will simplify the tax code, reward activity in the United States, and make us more competitive with other countries. A permanent credit will provide an incentive to innovate and remove uncertainty. At a time when our companies need to be more competitive, we need to provide a permanent incentive to innovate, and remove the uncertainty now hanging over businesses as they make R&D investment decisions.

Retirement Tax Cut

Lower Medicare Premiums: Seniors face a growing threat from higher Medicare premiums that tax away their Social Security and retirement savings. John McCain has proposed comprehensive, pro-market health care and Medicare reforms to reduce health care costs and control increases in premiums -- while delivering high-quality health care.

REFORMING WASHINGTON TO REGAIN THE TRUST OF TAXPAYERS
Wasteful spending in Washington has gone from irresponsible to indefensible. Right now, even the government reports that one-fifth of programs are receiving failing marks. John McCain will restore the trust that Americans have lost in their government spending their hard earned money wisely. (John McCain's detailed government reform plan may be found here.)

Eliminating Wasteful Spending

Stop Earmarks, Pork-Barrel Spending, And Waste: John McCain will veto every pork-laden spending bill and make their authors famous. As President, he will seek the line-item veto to reduce waste and eliminate earmarks that have led to corruption. Earmarks restrict America's ability to address genuine national priorities and interfere with fair, competitive markets.

Leadership, Courage And Choices: Reduced spending means making choices. John McCain will provide the courageous leadership necessary to control spending, including:
Eliminate broken government programs. The federal government itself admits that 1 in 5 programs do not perform.

Reform our civil service system to promote accountability and good performance in our federal workforce.

Eliminate earmarks, wasteful subsidies, and pork-barrel spending.

Reform procurement programs and cut wasteful spending in defense and non-defense programs.

Budgetary Reform To Give Tax Cuts A Fair Chance

Congress Has Unfairly Stacked The Deck To Spend More And Raise Taxes.
If a spending program is on the books, budgets assume that it is on the books forever -- and continues to grow -- even if the law says it expires.

If low taxes are on the books, budgets don't assume that they last forever. When they expire, those taxes are automatically raised.

John McCain will reform budgeting to treat equally spending and taxes and to stop damaging tax hikes.

Which part of these proposals do you disagree with and why?

Re: McCain's tax plan

Quote:

Originally Posted by weswelker#83 (Post 843866)

Thanks for the link! So I have to disagree TOTALLY with that $2 trillion number. What they did, reading the report, was just assume the tax cuts would have no positive impact on businesses or the economy in general. We know this to be way off base looking at tax revenue collected before and after the Bush tax cuts. I went to the IRS website and found tables for revenue collected by year (for some reason 2003 was missing, but the others are all there). According to the claims by the American Progress Action report, there should have been a $2 trillion shortfall in tax revenue from the Bush tax cuts (well, $2 trillion by 2010, so I guess about $1 trillion from 2002-2006). Here are the numbers by year, gross federal tax revenue collected (in trillions of dollars). The years after the first of the Bush tax cuts (enacted mid-2001) are shown in bold:

1998 - 1.769
1999 - 1.904
2000 - 2.096
2001 - 2.128
2002 - 2.016
2004 - 2.018
2005 - 2.268
2006 - 2.518

So revenues didn't go down at all after the tax cuts, they stayed steady because losses in revenue from lowering tax rates were made up for by increases in revenue from raising profitability of companies and stimulating the economy. So to say Bush's cuts will cost $2 trillion by 2010, or that McCain's cuts will cost $2 trillion by 2018 to me seems at a minimum to be specious reasoning, more appropriately I think it is downright deceitful.

The problem Bush had that McCain needs NOT to repeat is they gave overly rosy forecasts of how much the cuts would stimulate the economy, spent based on those unrealistic projections, and thus ended up with big deficits. If McCain does as he's promised and reins in spending, these cuts may work even better than the Bush cuts.

Also it is true that his cuts with benefit the top 1% the most, but there are 2 vital points there. First, they pay the highest % of taxes, and second the fact that they pay less does NOT mean lower income people pay more, it is a cut across the board. To get an idea of exactly what the burden was on high income taxpayers I checked the % of tax paid in 2005 by income level (also from the IRS, http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxst...=96981,00.html), and those over $200,000, representing 3.9% of taxpayers, paid 51.3% of the taxes, those over $1 million, representing 0.3% of taxpayers, paid 25.2% of the taxes. Again, the top 3.9% paid over half of the taxes, the top 0.3% paid one quarter. From that perspective it doesn't seem so bad to me that they will benefit the most from the cuts, they benefit the most because they pay the most!