President Joe Biden returns again to the only idea he has: Soaking the rich via punitive tax hikes.
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The prez wants a new “billionaires tax,” forcing high earners to pay a minimum in taxes to ensure they “pay their fair share.” The White House claims: “In a typical year, billionaires pay an average tax rate of just 8%.”
Dead wrong: That figure includes unrealized capital gains not taxable under federal law (for good reason: the gains are just theoretical; you can’t spend them until you cash out, and then they’re taxable).
Instead of 8%, economists put the actual hit on the rich at at least 23%. Per the IRS, the average top-percentile earner pays over 25.6% of income.
Oh, and the top 1% actually paid 42.3% of federal income taxes in 2020, per the Tax Foundation; the bottom half of taxpayers chipped in just 2.3%.
Biden’s also calling for more corporate taxes — specifically, quadrupling the surcharge on stock buybacks. All this after he hit corporations with a buyback tax last year, plus forced large ones to pay a minimum 15% tax on profits. He also OK’d 87,000 IRS agents to harass taxpayers, in a bid to squeeze Americans even more. When is enough enough?
The national debt has soared to dangerous levels; it hit 121% of GDP in 2021. But the problem isn’t insufficient tax revenue; it’s too much spending. Outlays are up from 20% of GDP in 2015 to 25% last year.
Biden pretends he’s cut the deficit; in fact, he’s added roughly $5 trillion to federal spending over the baseline.
He and fellow Dems have no intention of cutting spending. Nor even of lowering the deficit with new tax revenue; they’ll spend anything they collect (and then some) — inflation be damned.
This is just a deranged AOC-Bernie Sanders dream of milk-the-rich-and-spend that would only undermine the already-shaky US economy. Be thankful Republicans control the House and can stop the madness in its tracks.