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

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (538338)	2/10/2004 5:15:35 PM
From: Peter O'Brien	Respond to of 769670

>Constitutional amendment allowing a progressive income tax. There is definitely an amendment allowing an income tax. Progressivity has never been challenged at the Supreme Court level under "equal treatment under the law" provisions (as far as I know). I think it would be an interesting challenge! There are quirks in the tax code where a person's marginal rate can actually exceed 100%. This is mainly due to "phase outs" of things like personal exemptions or tax credits (like the child tax credit). You could construct a test case where someone with a large family has a salary in the "phase out" range. If they got a raise, they could actually be WORSE off, i.e., their incremental tax bill would more than consume their raise. I wonder what the Supreme Court would have to say about that? By the way, I agree with you that SS is regressive. On the other hand, it is not SUPPOSED to be a normal tax. It is SUPPOSED to be dedicated to the taxpayer's retirement. Although, we all know that is not true in reality.