For all you tax and spend guys

[domtoni]

Couple of points:
- the BBC noted that France will start taxing the rich (I think the amount is $720K) a further 3%. This is reasonable and I think most big earners would not object to paying 3% more for a defined period of time while the country gets its finances in order.
- Tax avoidance (per my accountant) is your duty and obligation.
- Tax evasion is a crime.

As proposed in the good old US of A, simplify the tax code, reduce the tax rates, and cut out the loop holes. That way you don't need a ton of tax lawyers on your payroll.

Newt Gingrich said in a speech to the Heritage Foundation that if the corporate tax rate was lowered to 12%, the US would get more in revenue from GE than it currently does. GE has something like 350 tax lawyers on its staff. And Jeff Immelt (GE's CEO) runs the president's council on job creation. And it was mentioned yesterday that GE is moving its medical division to China and has done a JV with China to produce aircraft engines in China.

 

[domtoni]

Just found this from NCPA. Note a 1% increase in tax revenue reduces GDP by 3%.


The Obama administration wants to raise taxes on the rich. Given that the United States is experiencing record deficits, raising taxes on the rich is a terrible idea, say Tino Sanandaji, an affiliated researcher at the Institute of Industrial Economics, and Arvid Malm, chief economist of the Swedish Taxpayers' Association.

The economic strategy founded on raising taxes on the rich is based on two false premises.

The first is that tax increases on the rich are a solution to current budget deficits.
The second is the argument often put forward that there is "no evidence" that tax increases on the rich hurt the economy.
The Obama administration and other proponents of raising taxes on the rich have argued that not taxing the rich is the main cause of the deficit and thus the main obstacle to solving the fiscal crisis.
Estimates show that taxing the rich at the administration's proposed levels would not bring in enough money to fund the president's preferred level of spending. Not only will the proposed tax increases hardly reduce the deficit, raising the top tax rates is likely to harm economic output. Additionally, there exists robust empirical evidence that taxes impede economic activity.

A study conducted by former Obama advisors Christina Romer and her husband David Romer investigated all historical periods where taxes increased or decreased.
They took into account the causes of tax increases and found that tax increases tend to reduce economic growth, stating that "tax increases appear to have a very large, sustained and highly significant negative impact on output," as "an exogenous tax increase of 1 percent of GDP [gross domestic product] lowers real GDP by almost 3 percent."
The proposed tax increases will not balance the budget; rather, it is merely political resentment toward the rich and a reaction to excessively ideological supply-siders. Rather than raising taxes, we should close tax loopholes and broaden the tax base so as to raise revenue to its historic average, while controlling federal spending, say Sanandaji and Malm.

Source: Tino Sanandaji and Arvid Malm, "Obama's Folly: Why Taxing the Rich Is No Solution," The American, August 16, 2011.

For text:

Obama

 

[Ian Anderson]

Due to the economy, Profiteroles will now be called Deficiteroles

 

[domtoni]

Like that one Ian !!