Zip Up Your Pocketbook

Sometime back, I did a column on the overwhelming plethora of taxes that will jump up and smack us right between the eyes come the first of this next year.

A portion of these taxes are cuts the previous administration had enacted and that our present administration refuses to renew. That means we pay more taxes. Pure and simple. Yet Obama promised time and again, no tax increase.

Given the all-people-being-equal-even-if-they-don’t-work obsession of the ruling party in Washington these days, even a dummy like me can understand why the cuts haven’t been renewed. By not renewing them, the government is forcing more of the middle class to assimilate with those who constantly seek entitlements. One way or another, Obama is going to make us all equal, except for him and his elite clique of untouchables.

The decision is simply another cog in the current socialist-inclined wheel making everyone equal, everyone except the ruling party and its pals.

Such idealistic pie-in-the-the-sky nonsense has been around since the beginning of time. This current version might have had its genesis years back up in Harvard when Obama and some his classmates sat around in their BMWs on the beach at Bar Harbor posturing idealistic philosophies and theories that would save the world. Each probably swore that one day, he would be the one to right all injustices, to make sure no one did without, and to save the American way of life—you know, like Superman.

The major fallacy in such a scenario begins with those who initiate it. I figure it unlikely any of those young prima donnas had any concept of the middle class life, a life, according to Henry David Thoreau, ‘of quiet desperation’, whose owners went ‘to the grave with the song still in them.”

Like most Utopian concepts, when romantic theory meets harsh reality, theory crumples under scrutiny.

Of course, all of you, especially those who jumped on the ‘change the world’ bandwagon Mister Obama was driving, remember how he time and again proclaimed anyone making less than $250,000.00 would not see a tax increase?

You want to know how many he lied to? He lied to every last one of us who pay taxes. That’s right.

Just for a beginning, if you pay taxes in the lowest bracket, yours will increase from 10 to 15 percent; the next bracket increases from 25 to 28 percent, and the old 28 percent bracket jumps up to 31 percent. For those of you on the higher end, 33 percent jumps to 36, and 35 percent up to 39.5 percent.

Those of you with over a million dollar estate and who want to leave it to your heirs, well, I hate say it, but you best go to the grave before 2011.

Why? Under the previous administration’s cuts, your estate tax would be zero, zilch. Next year, because the man who wants to save the nation insists, your taxes will be 55 percent. That’s right. At the stroke of midnight, December 31, you can raise a glass of champagne to celebrate a jump in taxes on your estate from zero dollars to 550 thousand dollars. That sure makes for a Happy New Year, huh?

That isn’t all.

Not only will the marriage penalty return (where a couple pays a higher tax on the same income than a single filer), but also deductions for youngsters will drop from one thousand to five hundred.

And capital gains taxes increase from 15 percent to 20. Dividend taxes jump from fifteen to 39.6, and both will increase in 2013 when the healthcare reform bill ads a 3.8 percent Medicare tax for those making $200,000 and joint filers $250,000.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, by Obama permitting the previous administration’s tax credits to expire will increase taxes $115 billion next year, and $2.6 trillion through 2020.

How is that for ‘no tax increase?’

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, folks.

Unless you’ve been in a cave the last year or so, you know the staggering debt the government has run up. We’ve got to stop this madness. I’m not talking party, but individuals who support such wasteful ideas. Starting in November, we have to throw those wastrels out and then keep a close eye on those we put in.


rconwell@gt.rr.com
www.kentconwell.blogspot.com