Pirate's Cove

Soak the rich and trickle it down to the middle class and poor. Jake Tapper digs in to the Porkulus bill, and gives us these wonderful new taxes

1) On people making more than $250,000.

• $338 billion – Bush tax cuts expire
• $179 billlion – eliminate itemized deduction
• $118 billion – capital gains tax hike

Total: $636 billion/10 years

2) Businesses:

• $17 billion – Reinstate Superfund taxes
• $24 billion – tax carried-interest as income
• $5 billion – codify “economic substance doctrine”
• $61 billion – repeal LIFO
• $210 billion – international enforcement, reform deferral, other tax reform
• $4 billion – information reporting for rental payments
• $5.3 billion – excise tax on Gulf of Mexico oil and gas
• $3.4 billion – repeal expensing of tangible drilling costs
• $62 million – repeal deduction for tertiary injectants
• $49 million – repeal passive loss exception for working interests in oil and natural gas properties
• $13 billion – repeal manufacturing tax deduction for oil and natural gas companies
• $1 billion – increase to 7 years geological and geophysical amortization period for independent producers
• $882 million – eliminate advanced earned income tax credit

Total: $353 billion/10 years

How many of them will affect you? Any tax hike and/or repeal of tax breaks on gas and oil will immediately create a rise in your costs for all your energy needs. The taxes might not be on you directly, but, they’ll get you in the end.

But, the question that no one in the media seems to be asking, if they let the “Bush tax cuts” of 2001 and 2003 expire in order to soak the rich, will the Democrat congress and President Neophyte pass a new set of tax cuts for people making under $250,000 to match the 2003 cuts? Or, are we going back to the pre-tax cuts brackets?

And, as Ed Morrisseypoints out, when you raise capital gains taxes, you disincent people from investing and cashing out. Where this really hurts is the middle class investors. In fact, the lower the capital gains tax, the better. Tax revenue actually goes way up when the capital gains rate is reduced. They nearly doubled when the 2003 cut kicked in.

But, this is the hopeNchage people voted for. Those of us who picked the lesser of two bad choices told the rest of you that taxes would get jacked and costs would go up. Get ready for it. In the middle of a recession.