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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SecularBull who wrote (358594)	2/13/2003 9:27:40 AM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

What will the alternative minimum tax do to the beneficiaries of those Bush tax cuts, assuming they are enacted? Think about it. The benefits of those tax cuts are largely illusory if the alternative minimum tax remains the same so then expect political pressure to change the alternative minimum tax.

To: SecularBull who wrote (358594)	2/13/2003 3:40:17 PM
From: Steve Dietrich	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

<<when you collect 65% of the tax from only 20% of the population, it is not hard to see how government gets into revenue shortfalls at times>> I think the argument goes: When the top 20% of your population is earning nearly 60% of the nation's income, it's bound to lead to problems. That same top 20% owns 84% of the nation's wealth. But they pay only 65% of the taxes. << Also, your figures do not take into account the cost of FICA and Medicare to the top 20% as the "employers", generally speaking, of the Nation.>> They're not my figures, they're the CBO's. And here's what the report says about business income and taxes: Taxes Paid by Businesses Another component of household income consists of taxes paid by businesses, both corporate income taxes and payroll taxes. A firm's income tax liability ultimately falls not on the firm but on individuals--on stockholders in the form of lower dividend payments or smaller capital gains, on workers in the form of lower compensation, or on customers in the form of higher prices. Although economists disagree about the actual incidence of corporate income taxes, the general consensus holds that the entire burden falls on the owners of capital as a group.(6) Following that consensus requires assigning corporate taxes--as both a tax liability and income--to the owners of capital in proportion to their capital income. Economists are in greater agreement that workers bear the full incidence of payroll taxes, the taxes that pay for Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance.(7) Employers pass on their share of those taxes to workers in the form of wages or benefits that are lower than those employers would pay in the absence of the tax. Accurate measures of income and taxes should consequently include payroll tax payments made by employers, allotted to workers in proportion to the payroll taxes they pay themselves.(8) Steve