It is amazing how little people know about taxes. I suppose ignorance is bliss, except when liberals start using that ignorance to promote bad policy.
Last week, I focused on tax cuts and speculation on the yet-unreleased Bush tax plan. Now that the stimulus plan has been seen, it is time for people to start standing up to liberal lies and holding the left to task for their deceptions.
Apparently, when it comes to taxes, some must have it spelled out for them in big bold letters.
According to the United States Census, the median income in Indiana is about $40,000. Perhaps to you that sounds like a lot of money, or perhaps to you that sounds like pocket change, but let us consider what that means to this average Hoosier taxpayer.
On the democrats.org website, the allegation is made that a median level Indiana taxpayer would save a mere $289. Of course that is an unmarried Indiana taxpayer with no children, no investments, and no retirement plan. The democrats oversimplify the numbers to make it look like the Bush tax plan cheats the middle class.
A married couple would benefit from the eliminated marriage penalty -- the tax that punishes double income households. If they have a child, they would save an additional $400 as the child credit is raised to $1000 from $600.
The tax cut does benefit the highest income earners in this country. It's true. Democrats have a very valid point that the top 10 percent of income earners will benefit the most from the tax cut. What they don't tell you is that 46 percent of American's fall into that definition, and to get there, you must only earn $92,000. Again, this is all based on IRS figures. All it takes is a dual income household of a firefighter and a nurse to push you into that top 10 percent "elite."
The remarkable thing about that 46 percent is they pay more than 67 percent of the taxes in this nation. Democrats would prefer to give tax cuts to the bottom 50 percent of Americans -- who pay only 4 percent of the taxes (again, IRS statistics).
Besides those "rich" who benefit, so does every person with a 401k or IRA. More than 50 percent of Americans are invested in the stock market through private investments, retirement plans or penchant funds. Cutting double taxation on dividends has great potential to spur economic growth, as reported by our own Daily News.
The other fact Democrats are keeping quiet about is that more than half of all dividend income that is being taxed twice goes to our nation's elderly on fixed incomes. Perhaps those elderly would be better off if Democrats hadn't levied taxes against their social security benefits in 1993.
In the end, this tax cut will not directly benefit me. I don't earn enough for any of these policies to make a difference. However, I am not so selfish, or jealous of those who have been successful, to say they should be denied fair treatment because they have achieved.
Write to Russell at rlg@temporalfront.com
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