Hidden Tax Hikes

[Smuckatelli]

An interesting article; can anyone shoot it down? :


Why does all this tax talk matter? Take a look at the economy. America is experiencing a historically slow recovery, the likes of which haven't been seen since World War II. Private-sector employment is 4.5 percent below pre-recession levels, unemployment remains at 8.3 percent — the highest since the 1981-1982 recession — and only 63.7 percent of adult Americans are active in the labor force, the lowest since 1983. Meanwhile, small businesses say taxes are among their most important problems — they fear Washington will raise taxes in order to pay for even more spending, so they're sitting on the sidelines and not producing jobs. Now it appears that their worst fears are coming true.

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/03/02/morning-bell-obamas-hidden-tax-hikes/

[son_of_montfort]

You really need to stop getting your news from ultra-conservative op-ed blogs...  :P

Just saying...  ;)

I love the qualifiers:

America is experiencing a historically slow recovery, the likes of which haven't been seen since World War II.

Why pick WWII? That seems an artificial starting point. Why not WWI... oh... right... because the best analog to today's economy was worse and longer running (thus disproves the point). Also, how is this person defining "recovery?" By what measure? How does he gauge recovery speed.

the highest since the 1981-1982 recession

Again, why compare to this particular recession? Why not the 70s?

[Smuckatelli]

You really need to stop getting your news from ultra-conservative op-ed blogs...  :P

Just saying...  ;)

SoM, stop being silly......I'm asking for people to shoot holes in it. Where the news comes from isn't important, is it factual, a twist of the facts or an outright piece of garbage?

[LongBlade]

*Everybody* knows the Great Depression was the worst.

Since then every economic report seems to compare bad news to post-depression numbers. They did it under Carter, Reagan, Clinton.

So...back to Smuck's point. Who's got time for some fact checking?

[son_of_montfort]

Where the news comes from isn't important, is it factual, a twist of the facts or an outright piece of garbage?

Gunny... come on... Intel source is the first piece of intel reliability. You know that!

Here is one clue to reliability - all of the links in the article go to reports also housed on the same website. I'd love to do that in academia (cite only myself) but that isn't generally how I make a valid argument.

Then the article suggests, as way of solution, the website's own "Heritage: Flat Tax." Pretty clear case of vested interest. The article is too poorly cited to verify. Unless you have access to the actual documents, then you can't tell if the numbers are real. And the author is unclear whether putting the OMB listing the "Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee" as a separate thing is common practice with all presidents.

I did shoot holes in it. When you use a self-determined and unstated yardstick, you can argue anything.

One thing I know for certain, taxes are at the lowest levels they have been in five decades. If one wants to make any post-war argument, then one needs to be really convincing that any hike of the lower than 1950 percentage is the cause.

[LongBlade]

A flat tax would rid of us of the enormous bureaucracy surrounding tax accounting.

A national sales tax would save consumers from the headaches of tracking any taxes at all.

Exactly how someone like us, with nothing to sell (maybe advertising) would fit into that schema remains to be seen.

...

...

In any case, I wish when I was in high school debate I could have made an argument go away by simply saying the source is bad. But I couldn't. I had to do research to refute bad info.

In any case, this is from The Hill:

President Obama urged Congress Thursday to vote in the coming weeks to repeal billions in oil industry tax breaks in an attempt to parry growing Republican attacks on the White House over high gas prices.

Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/213651-obama-challenges-congress-to-nix-oil-industry-tax-breaks

Hmmm. Obama wants to increase taxes on oil companies for political reasons. I wonder what that will do to the price of fuel?

Yes, the article does reference another site in its family, Heritage, as the source of its data:

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/02/obamas-budget-undercounts-tax-increases

Why?

Because Heritage has done some...oh, what's the word?  Ummm.....

Oh, yeah.

Original research.

There's no one else who has looked into the tax changes this deeply. They have...what's it called?  Oh, right. Broken a news story.

[son_of_montfort]

In any case, I wish when I was in high school debate I could have made an argument go away by simply saying the source is bad.

I don't know what debate tactics you were taught, but questioning the validity of a source is absolutely a logical argument...

Besides, I was questioning source bias - another completely legitimate debate tactic.

And I was accusing them of circular reasoning - citing one's argument to proof one's own argument.

Because Heritage has done some...oh, what's the word?  Ummm.....

Oh, yeah.

Original research.

Please forward this to my mentors. I would be happy for them to know that, because I have done original research, I no longer need to actually demonstrate that my research is valid or cite any other research.  ;)

I'm sorry, that piece was pretty bogus. It was intellectually written, but still bogus. An arbitrary yardstick, an ignorance of context (lowest tax rate in 50 years), and obfuscating the details (where exactly were these hidden hikes, why did he spend a paragraph talking about Obama taking credit for cuts - when the piece was about hidden hikes, is it common practice for the OMB to report it that way, what is the real percentage hike to small-business).

Meh.

[LongBlade]

This is the piece that matters.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/02/obamas-budget-undercounts-tax-increases

[Steelgrave]

I found this to be an interesting (and short) side article which also addresses the way the left looks at the people they are taxing:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204653604577247800370322294.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

[son_of_montfort]

FWIW, my thought is that discrepancies are made due to the large scale of the numbers. $2 trillion is an easy rhetorical device. $2.006 trillion is not.

I still don't know the point of the "improperly credited tax cuts" argument.

Meh.

[Windigo]

When you see the value laden verbiage used by the author (look at that first line!!!) you know this is not going to be a factually based argument, but a political one based on subjective information.

This article screeches "I am incapable of acknowledging anything possibly positive about this president." Why does this article author think its rational to explain all his claims without actually putting forward supportive evidence... other than his own opinion that is." This is an opinion piece - especial where he ascribes motive to the President.

The financial bind that the US is in cannot be solved by just spending cuts... I think that's been shown clearly. The debt repayment needs taxes as well.

IMO a good budget plan to tackle the debt and deficit that is fair and equitable to all with spending cuts and new taxes will do more to stimulate growth than the constant bipartisan bickering and insanity seen to date. What happened to that call for collaboration from both sides to deal with this crisis????

Better find that spirit of cooperation .... and lose the authors of inflammatory op-ed  pieces like the one you linked to Smuck.

[Smuckatelli]

Better find that spirit of cooperation .... and lose the authors of inflammatory op-ed  pieces like the one you linked to Smuck.

The first step that many need to take is to realize that I am unbiased.

I am deeply troubled by what is happening to our Constitution but at the end of the day it is up to the people, not the government or I. If the Republic decides that we need to change our azimuth...I'll take point but it appears that a few individuals are pushing an agenda.

The link is inflammatory, I only ask that it be shot down.....instead the only answers so far is that it is either it so far left or right that it is beyond a learned response.

I haven't seen Bison responding for a while since the Catholic dohickey.....do we really want this forum to get to this point?

Left or right...throw the baby out with the bath water because we don't give a rat's rear end if it isn't forwarding what we believe in.....

Gosh dang it...this isn't the way to lead a platoon.

[LongBlade]

Smuck, this article, the one that really supports the one you posted (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/02/obamas-budget-undercounts-tax-increases)...

...is long and fairly complicated. You have to *want* to read it in order to understand it.

However, the last paragraph is the one that brings it all home even if folks didn't take the time to understand the article:

Congress should disregard the misleading tax hike figure from OMB's table and use the correct $2 trillion amount when referring to the total tax hikes in the President's budget. Members of Congress should question OMB as to why they chose to mislead readers about the total tax hike that President Obama has called for on American taxpayers.

Bottom line: there is some accounting legerdemain at work between OMB's numbers and the Dept of Treasury's, which attempt to befuddle the true increase in taxes in Obama's 2013 budget.

The article in your OP goes on to explain why such a huge increase in taxes would be bad for the economy.

The articles could have been written in simpler terms, but at the end of the day your question is still valid:

Is Obama's 2013 budget hiding huge tax hikes not recognized by OMB?

[son_of_montfort]

What the long article didn't address was if this was standard practice by the OMB or just this administration.

And the point about the "taking credit for tax cuts" was a major distraction.

As I said in my above point, I'm pretty confident this isn't trying to "hide" tax hikes but is a rhetorical tool for discussion (when you talk trillions, 158 billion "hidden" is not all that significant). Congress should have access to the exact same documents as the article's author (or is he saying he is more wily or "in the know" than Congress), so they should have the exact numbers and where those figures are placed. If a Conservative Think-Tank author has the info, the Congress does too.

I haven't seen Bison responding for a while since the Catholic dohickey.....do we really want this forum to get to this point?

Left or right...throw the baby out with the bath water because we don't give a rat's rear end if it isn't forwarding what we believe in.....

I'm not sure what you mean here. Windi stated it correctly, the article was clearly meant to be inflammatory (albeit in an intellectual way). The reason that I first question source bias of anything I read and watch is because I know that the clarity and accuracy of the content of any media will depend upon the reason for writing it. This group clearly has an agenda to implement a flat tax system, so I question they way in which they presented this tax hike as "hidden" from those who need to know.

Regarding Bison, I changed my avatar as he stated it offended him. I didn't actively try to run him off, if you were thinking that.

[son_of_montfort]

One hole in the argument - incomes rose this year. We may be in for recovery yet:

http://economy.money.cnn.com/2012/03/05/income-goes-up-especially-for-the-rich/?hpt=hp_t3

After two years of declines, Americans' income finally rose in 2010. The Internal Revenue Service provided a first peek at taxpayers' returns and it showed that adjusted gross income totaled $8 trillion, up 5.2% from 2009.

But a closer look at the data reveals that only the wealthiest Americans will be popping the Cristal.

Taxpayers earning more than $250,000 saw their total adjusted gross incomes rise by 13.8%, while those bringing home between $200K and $250K enjoyed at 6.7% increase, according to a CNNMoney analysis.

Middle-class Americans? Not so fortunate. Those making between $50K and $100K saw their incomes creep up only 1.5%.

Part of the imbalance comes from differences in the growth of wages, the largest component of adjusted gross income.

Overall, salaries and wages grew 2.1%. But the super-rich saw an 11.2% hike, and those just below them enjoyed a 4.6% increase.

But the middle class saw a drop of 0.7% in wages.

And while capital gains rose healthily for most income brackets, the wealthiest taxpayers benefited from a 37.6% hike, and those in the bracket below pocketed 32% more. Middle-income folks saw only a 19.8% increase.

Well, at least incomes are going up again. Americans are faring better than they did in 2009, when adjusted gross income fell 6.9% from the previous year.

In 2009, the rich saw their incomes plummet 20.7% and the tier below them dropped 5.9%. Middle-income Americans, meanwhile, didn't get hit nearly as hard. Their incomes slipped 2.5%