Obama Gets the Numbers Wrong In His Tax Plan! --John Lott on Fox News site [View All]

[underpants]

ON EDIT - I am not posting this because it has any merit I am posting this because I saw it on Google news exactly at the time President Obama was making his speech. This is pre-packaged BS from a joke of a source - John Lott. The ! in the article title was so ridiculous that it actually added a comedic element to this running joke.






The justification for President Obama's new proposed tax on the wealthy is wrong on the numbers. Despite the president's claims, millionaires don't pay lower tax rates than middle class workers. His proposed surcharge on capital gains and dividend taxes will raise already high tax rates on high income individuals and force even more investment outside the United States. The so-called "Buffett rule" is based on Warren Buffett's claim:


The 400 of us pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”

It is true that the 15 percent capital gains and dividend tax rates are lower than the marginal income tax rate paid by a lot of workers. Of course, this ignores that because of deductions the average tax rate for the middle class is much lower than the marginal rate.


But much more importantly, Buffett's claim ignores why the capital gains and dividend tax rates are set at the level they are: corporate income has already been taxed once when the company earned it. In the United States the combined federal and state corporate tax rate is 40 percent, the highest rate in the world.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/19/obama-gets-numbers-wrong-in-his-tax-plan/#ixzz1YRbCB3fB