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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sdgla who wrote (15452)	3/25/2010 7:49:05 PM
From: John Koligman	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

Facts prove me wrong on what? I said your 'financially fortunate' should pay more than lower income folks. You have a problem with that? Those at the top have pulled way ahead as the middle class struggles. TOP 400 Earners in U.S Averaged $345 Million in 2007, IRS Says Ryan J. Donmoyer Ryan J. Donmoyer – Thu Feb 18, 12:00 am ET Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The 400 highest-earning U.S. households reported an average of $345 million in income in 2007, up 31 percent from a year earlier, IRS statistics show. The average TAX rate for the households fell to the lowest in almost 20 years. The figures for 2007, the last year of an economic expansion, show that the average income reported by the TOP 400 earners more than doubled from $131.1 million in 2001. That year, Congress adopted TAX cuts urged by then-President George W. Bush that Democrats say disproportionately benefits the wealthy. Each household in the TOP 400 of earners paid an average TAX rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest since the agency began tracking the data in 1992, the Internal Revenue Service statistics show. Their average effective TAX rate was about half the 29.4 percent in 1993, the first year of President Bill Clinton’s administration, when taxes were increased. The statistics underscore “two long-term trends: that income at the very TOP has exploded and their taxes have been cut dramatically,” said Chuck Marr, director of federal TAX policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington research group that supports increasing taxes on high-income individuals. The TOP 400 earners received a total $138 billion in 2007, up from $105.3 billion a year earlier. On an inflation-adjusted basis, their average income grew almost fivefold since 1992, the data show. Political Ammunition The data may provide ammunition for President Barack Obama and Democrats led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California who say they intend to increase the capital gains TAX rate and let TAX rates for the highest earners increase in 2011. Almost three-quarters of the highest earners’ income was in capital gains and dividends taxed at a 15 percent rate set as part of Bush-backed TAX cuts in 2003, the statistics show. Of the 400 earners, 289 paid a total effective federal TAX rate of 20 percent or less in 2007, the last year for which figures were available, the data show. Bill Ahern, director of policy and communications for the TAX Foundation, a Washington research group that advocates lower taxes, said the 2007 data doesn’t reflect the current economic circumstances. “In a good year like 2007, it’s not surprising to see that the owners and managers of the nation’s largest firms made a fortune,” Ahern said. “Notice that two-thirds of their 2007 income was in capital gains, which have dropped like a rock since then.” The data were first reported by TAX.com, a blog run by Virginia publisher TAX Analysts.

To: Sdgla who wrote (15452)	3/29/2010 9:40:26 PM
From: Peter Dierks	2 Recommendations Respond to of 42652

The Tax Police and the Health-Care Mandate Americans of modest means may soon get a lesson in the power of the IRS. By WILLIAM MCGURN MARCH 30, 2010. Is there an IRS agent in your future? Shortly before Barack Obama signed the health-care bill, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee created a stir with a report suggesting our new law will lead the Internal Revenue Service to hire as many as 16,500 new agents. The Republicans came up with the figure by extrapolating from the IRS budget, the amount spent on employees, and the $10 billion in new funding that the Congressional Budget Office says the IRS will need to meet its new responsibilities under this legislation. It's made for some heated debate. In an entertaining segment on the Fox News Channel last week, host Bill O'Reilly tried to get Rep. Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.) to admit that the IRS would have to enforce the penalty tax for people who refused both to get the mandated coverage and to pay the penalty. Mr. Weiner accused Mr. O'Reilly of "making stuff up." The next day, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman seemed to settle the question in Mr. Weiner's favor when he testified to Congress that IRS agents are not going to be auditing taxpayers to verify that they've obtained acceptable health insurance. Or did he? The individual mandate remains one of the murkiest bits of this legislation. During the 2008 primaries, Mr. Obama criticized rival Hillary Clinton for favoring such a mandate. He later changed his mind, for one big reason: There's no way to afford expensive provisions such as forcing insurance companies to cover people with, say, pre-existing conditions unless millions of healthy people who won't need insurance are forced to pay into the system. With the mandate, the government gets more healthy people into the risk pool—and with the penalty it gets their money whether they buy coverage or not. In testimony before a House Ways and Means subcommittee last Thursday, the IRS commissioner deflected questions about the agency's precise role vis-à-vis health care. Mr. Shulman reassured citizens that this bill does not "fundamentally alter" their relationship with the IRS, and said the IRS would not be snooping into their health records. About the penalties associated with the mandate, he was less clear. Partly that's because the law is unclear. The original House bill opened the door for criminal sanctions against Americans who didn't buy health insurance and pay the penalty. The Senate bill did the same until Sen. John Ensign (R., Nev.) successfully pushed to amend the bill. Even so, the final language begs the question that Mr. Shulman and Mr. Weiner avoided: Who's going to enforce the mandate, and how? It's more than a theoretical proposition. Approximately one in six drivers goes without auto insurance, according to the Insurance Research Council, even though most states require it. As for health coverage, the U.S. Census says that Massachusetts' has the nation's lowest rate of uninsured at 5.4%, thanks in part to its own individual mandate. Even so, costs have exploded and fines for not carrying coverage are increasing. Almost by definition, those hit by the mandate will be either young people starting out, or those working for smaller businesses that do not provide employees with health coverage. Back in November, a report by the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that nearly half (46%) of the mandate penalties will be paid by Americans under 300% of the poverty line. In today's dollars, that works out to $32,500 for an individual. For a family of four, it's $66,150. Generally speaking, these are not the folks who have to worry about paying taxes on, say, a villa in the Dominican Republic or income from the International Monetary Fund. So we are left with one of two possibilities. The first is that the penalty for not having "minimal essential coverage" is fully enforced, in which case Americans of relatively modest means will get a lesson in how the government deals with people who don't pay up. Or the penalty for violating the individual mandate will become like the fines for not filling out your Census form. In other words, unenforced. In that case, the costs of this legislation will be even higher and more hidden than we have been led to believe. In his appearance before Congress, Mr. Shulman stated he was still working on "the proper resources" the IRS would need to handle the tax provisions of the health-care act. Maybe that won't mean 16,500 new agents. If the Republicans do manage to take back Congress come November, however, it should mean hearings in which Mr. Shulman provides the American people with specific answers about how much bigger the IRS is going to get because of this bill—and how exactly the IRS will deal with Americans who don't pay the penalty tax. Then again, that's something Congress might have done before passing the bill. Write to MainStreet@wsj.com online.wsj.com