Pirate's Cove

The NY Times is Very Concerned

Among the Tax Bill’s Biggest Losers: Blue State Taxpayers Who Earn More Than $200,000

While the Republican tax overhaul would add up to an overall tax cut for individual taxpayers, at least through 2025, millions could still immediately receive a tax increase. For many, particularly in Democratic areas, the increase would come from the repeal of the state and local tax deduction, known as SALT.

Highly-populated counties in Democratic-leaning states like Californiaand New York tend to claim much higher SALT deductions.

Because Democratic voters are more concentrated in high-tax states like New York and California, taxpayers in counties that voted for Hillary Clinton take much larger SALT deductions on average. Upper-class taxpayers are much more likely to claim more than the higher proposed standard deduction (roughly $24,000 for couples in both versions of the bill). (snip)

Taxpayers earning $200,000 or more, who make up 4.5 percent of all returns, are at the highest risk of a tax increase from the SALT repeal, because many currently deduct much more in state and local taxes than the bill’s new standard deduction.

Interesting. I thought that Democrats thought that paying more in taxes was patriotic? I thought they just liked the idea of higher taxes to fund Government? Remember all the times Mr. Obama proposed increasing taxes on those paying $200,000 individual/$250,000 joint? I guess Democrats have Someone Else syndrome when it comes to taxes. They’re A-OK with raising taxes on Someone Else.

Of course, and as usual, the Times is preaching doom and gloom from lowering taxes. Not as bad as Nancy Pelosi or those saying this means death, though. Or some Millenials.

Then there’s this

Debunking bogus attacks on the GOP tax-cut plans https://t.co/TqZqUuVtep pic.twitter.com/yCMW7ldDyr

— NY Post Opinion (@NYPostOpinion) December 4, 2017

A quick snippet from the piece, worth reading the whole thing, where they start out discussing advocacy journalism in terms of papers like the NY Times coming out against the tax bill(s) in what is supposed to be the non-opinion section, exactly as with the article I cited

“The Republican tax bill hurtling through Congress is increasingly tilting the United States tax code to benefit wealthy Americans.” That’s the beginning of a 37-word first sentence in a stage-setting front-page New York Times story on the Senate tax bill last week.

It’s a nice illustration of creatively phrased advocacy journalism. “Hurtling” suggests irrational, uncontrolled, threatening movement; “tilting” suggests abandoning upstanding fairness; spelling out “the United States tax code” suggests an ominous attack on a respected national institution. And all this “to benefit wealthy Americans.”

This is less reportage than it is advocacy journalism, written to advance the argument that GOP tax bills are harmful because they make federal taxation less progressive.

But it’s also an argument against any tax cut at any time. After all, if you start off with a progressive system that imposes higher rates on high earners and doesn’t tax low earners at all — as is the case with the current federal income tax — then every tax cut takes that shape.

It kinda does.

In fact, Republican tax writers this year have devoted much less attention to cutting income-tax rates for high earners than their predecessors did in 1981 and 2003 or their presidential nominees in 2008 and 2012. Instead, they want to increase the child tax credit and double the standard deduction.

That would reduce taxes for many modest earners and get the government out of the business of encouraging some behaviors and therefore discouraging others. This could reduce the scope of lobbyists larding up the tax code with special exemptions and favors.

Let’s also not forget, as the article notes, that Obama himself proposed lowering the corporate tax rate several times. He just never got around to discussing it with Congress, because he rarely ever tried to work with Congress.

Anyhow, one would think that the people who constantly call for The Rich paying their fair share would be will to pay their fair share, right?

Crossed at Right Wing News.