6 thoughts on “Lies, Damned Lies, And Tax Cuts”

  1. I’ve started doing my taxes. Do you think if I wrote “registered Democrat” on the front, they’ll ignore that I’m making up most of the expenses and donations, not including any interest or rental income and forgetting to pay my self-employment taxes?

    Or are those deductions only available to Dem Congresscritters and ex-Congresscritters?

  3. In addition to “tax cuts” being a misnomer, giving a tax credit for some action is not a “tax cut”, it is a subsidy. A tax cut is where I get to decide how to spend my money. If the government is deciding that – regardless of whether they take possession of the money or not – they have taxed me.

  4. Comment about “community service” is interesting. From Obama’s website

    Obama and Biden will make college affordable for all Americans by creating a new American Opportunity Tax Credit. This universal and fully refundable credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans, and will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university and make community college tuition completely free for most students. Recipients of the credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of community service.

    I have a great idea. How about I create a non-profit whose sole (unwritten, of course) purpose is to sign off undergrads on their community service requirements? It’d be a straightforward transaction. You donate $500 to the noble cause and in turn I say that you worked 100 hours. Win-win for everyone. Taxpayers get their money spent, economy keeps moving, schools get their squeeze, bureaucrats are happy, students don’t have to work, and I get $500 per student. I think we ought to go forward with this.

    At my school (UC Davis) there are somewhere around 25,000 students. If they paid me $500 each, I could save them 2.5 million man-hours, that’s around 1.25 man-millennia. That’s a big boost for the economy, saving students from that much extra work. I get a bit over 12 million dollars before taxes. And taxpayers get to spend another 100 million on students.

    Maybe I should pass this by some venture capitalists. I’m pretty sure with sufficient funding we could cover the entire state of California within two years. Then the entire US within four. Hell, with the right website, a small group of entrepreneurs could probably automate the paperwork for the entire student population of the US. I’m not sure how many billions that would be, but it’s pretty good return on investment.

  5. Mr. S, I understand your argument when you say that a President isn’t “cutting taxes” if we decide to work less (to stay out of the outright-confiscatory brackets)… but that line of reasoning sparked a new question. Does Obama count that reduced prosperity and output as his “95% get a tax cut?” I ask because he sure has been quiet about the matter since getting elected (nevermind taking the Oaths).

  6. Rand, that was a really inspired article, and a brilliant point to make. If I had a hat, I’d take it off to you.

Comments are closed.