On March 4, 2014, Froma Harrop writes on Nation Of Change:
A Republican leader is doing something right … and good. He is Rep. David Camp of Michigan. Camp has issued a detailed plan for simplifying the tax code. That’s his duty as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax law.
Reforming the 70,000-page abomination that is our tax laws — and making them fairer — has long been a stated goal of both parties. But it is a notoriously unpleasant job because it involves doing away with tax loopholes that have vocal and deep-pocketed supporters.
Many Republicans don’t want to touch tax reform now for the same reason they don’t want to do immigration reform now. The midterms are in November.
Rather than grapple with tough controversies, GOP political strategists prefer stirring up the voters with vile tales of Obamacare. Repealing the health reforms is not on the table these days, and public support for them continues to grow. But that does not seem to deter determined demagogues.
Shame on them. And shame on Democrats reportedly gleeful that Republicans may have to fight one another over a bunch of controversial tax proposals right before an election. Is it too much for our representatives in Washington to do some work in the next eight months?
“I’m for the concept of tax reform, but many of us have concerns about releasing a plan, considering the likelihood of enacting it this year,” Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., told Politico.
Right, like tax reform is going to be enacted next year, when the presidential candidates are scurrying around trying to please their bases. Remember the 2012 presidential election, when no Republican would name a single tax loophole he or she would close?
Meanwhile, Politico said, “House Democrats think they’ve been handed a gift.” I wish it quoted one so we’d have someone to bash.
Responsible conservatives have long endorsed cutting the top rates and making up for the resulting loss of revenues by doing away with special tax deals for those with friends in Washington.
That could work.
Camp’s plan would shrink the number of individual tax brackets from seven to two — 10 percent and 25 percent. Some liberals won’t cotton to the idea of lowering the tax bracket for the rich. (The top tax rate is now 39.6 percent.)
But there’s a lot in the proposal that courtiers for the “1 percent” won’t like at all. First off, it would add a 10 percent surtax on individual incomes over $450,000.
It would require big banks to pay new taxes on their assets. And it would subject private-equity magnates to the same tax rate on their wage-type income that the police guarding their estates pay. (Private-equity managers now get away with paying the lower investment-income tax rate.)
The proposal would cut the maximum deduction for home mortgages from $1 million to $500,000. Should the rest of us be subsidizing mortgages on mega-mansions? Most would say no, but the real estate industry will fight like tigers to keep this boondoggle going for its richest homebuyers.
Looking at all the numbers, the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation believes the streamlined tax code would “grow” the economy by $3.4 trillion over the next decade, creating almost 2 million new jobs. Importantly, it would increase federal revenues by $700 billion.
One doesn’t have to cheer every detail in the plan — or those missing from it. For example, an unwarranted special tax deal for oil and gas companies would remain in place.
But here is a serious proposal deserving a respectful look. The time for tax reform is now and now. Otherwise, it becomes never or never.
My colleagues and I at the Center For Economic and Social Justice (www.cesj.org) advocate new justice-committed leaders, especially those who want to end the corruption built into our exclusionary system of monopoly capitalism––the main source of corruption of any political system, democratic or otherwise. We advocate the need to radically overhaul the Federal tax system and monetary policies and institute proposals to get money power to the 99 percent of American citizens who now only rely on their labor worker earnings. Under The JUST Third Way (http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797) more just and simple tax system, access would by provided to ownership of the means of production in the future to every child, woman and man by requiring the government to lift all existing legal and institutional barriers to private property stakes as a fundamental human right. The system was made by people. Guided by the right principles of economic justice, “we the people” can organize and demand that the system be reorganized to make true economic democracy the new foundation for true political democracy.
The following is proposed:
• Eliminate all tax loopholes and subsidies,
• Provide an exemption of $100,000 for a family of four to meet their ordinary living needs,
• Encourage corporations to pay out all their profits as taxable personal incomes to avoid paying corporate income taxes and to finance their growth by issuing new full dividend payout shares for broad-based citizen ownership,
• Eliminate the payroll tax on workers and their employers, but
• Pay out of general revenues for all promises for Social Security, Medicare, Medicare, government pensions, health, education, rent and subsistence vouchers for the poor until their new jobs and ownership accumulations provide new incomes to substitute for the taxpayer dollars to fill these needs.
• The tax rate would be a single rate for all incomes from all sources above the personal exemption levels so that the budget could be balanced automatically and even allow the government to pay off the growing unsustainable long-term debt, but the poor would pay the first dollar over their exemption levels as would the hedge fund operator and others now earning billions of dollars from capital gains, dividends, rents and other property incomes which under some tax proposals would be exempted from any taxes.
• As a substitute for inheritance and gift taxes, a transfer tax would be imposed on the recipients whose holdings exceeded $1 million, thus encouraging the super-rich to spread out their monopoly-sized estates to all members of their family, friends, servants and workers who helped create their fortunes, teachers, health workers, police, other public servants, military veterans, artists, the poor and the disabled.
• The Federal Reserve would stop monetizing unproductive debt, including bailouts of banks “too big to fail” and Wall Street derivatives speculators, and
• Begin creating an asset-backed currency that could enable every man, woman and child to establish a Capital Homestead Account or “CHA” (a super-IRA or asset tax-shelter for citizens) at their local bank to acquire a growing dividend-bearing stock portfolio to supplement their incomes from work and all other sources of income.
• The CHA would process an equal allocation of productive credit to every citizen exclusively for purchasing full-dividend payout shares in companies needing funds for growing the economy and private sector jobs for local, national and global markets,
• The shares would be purchased on credit wholly backed by projected “future savings” in the form of new productive capital assets as well as the future marketable goods and services produced by the newly added technology, renewable energy systems, plant, rentable space and infrastructure added to the economy.
• Risk of default on each stock acquisition loan would be covered by private sector capital credit risk insurance and reinsurance, but
• Would not require citizens to reduce their funds for consumption to purchase shares.
The end result is that citizens would become empowered as owners to meet their own consumption needs and government would become more dependent on economically independent citizens, thus reversing current global trends where all citizens will eventually become dependent for their economic well-being on our only legitimate social monopoly –– the State –– and whatever elite controls the coercive powers of government.
http://www.nationofchange.org/hurray-gop-tax-plan-1393944100
