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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Heywood40 who wrote (6061)	1/13/2017 5:23:08 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 364311

while someone working for an employer would pay 6.2% on it. They would write the check (or pay electronically or whatever) for 6.2%, but the other 6.2% force their initial wage down. It doesn't make much difference whether you pay 6.2% of your income, or you just don't make it in the first place. The 12.4% is on the employment. Depending on the elasticities of supply and demand in the relevant employment market it might hit the employer more, or it might hit the employee more, but each portion hits each about the same amount. And if it does "hit the employer" more then it reduces demand for employment, reduces capital available for investment etc. which in the long run hits employees. You can't tax employment without it having a negative effect on employees. That's about a latte per day if you're working for someone else, or a latte and a mocha per day if you're self-employed. In your $150k scenario its $18,600/year (or almost $51/day, that's a pretty expensive couple of coffees) for just social security, or $22,950 if you include Medicare for the total tax. Of course your just focusing on the increase but then its still $3968/year or $10.87/day. And you would find that you didn't raise enough revenue (you would only get that $3968 from people earning $150k or more, less from those between $118k and $150, none at all from those $118k and under, all minus the probably relatively modest but still real hit to economic activity that can be taxed, and any extra tax avoidance or tax evasion encouraged by higher marginal rates) so then you would surely be calling for another increase Remove the cap (or increase it to $450k for a couple) and then your increasing the tax by $152.90 a day for those at the boundary) and exposing them to a confiscatory (and beyond revenue maximizing) marginal tax rate of possibly beyond 70 percent and certainly at minimum (federal only, no unemployment tax applied, don't consider taxes not calculated against income at all) marginal rate of over 56%.