Thursday, April 19, 2012

Steve Benen — 'Skin in the game'

Welcome to class warfare, Republican style.
In case anyone's forgotten, the relevant details matter here: millions of Americans may be exempt from income taxes, but they still pay sales taxes, state taxes, local taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare/Medicaid taxes, and in many instances, property taxes. It's not as if these folks are getting away with something -- the existing tax structure leaves them out of the income tax system because they don't make enough money to qualify. Indeed, many are retirees who can't earn an income because they're no longer in the workforce.
But for many Republicans, including the party's presidential candidate, it's "a real problem" that these folks aren't also paying federal income taxes -- and the only way to correct this problem is by increasing the tax burdens of those least able to afford it.
Read it at The MaddowBlog
'Skin in the game'
By Steve Benen
(h/t Mark Thoma)

2 comments:

paul meli said...

Why would we want to tax consumers income?

Consumption puts the motion in the machine.

Greg said...

The insane thing about this is that NOBODY ELSE pays tax on that income either. You want to remove the tax exemption on the first 40,000 of income(or whatever it is)? You want to tax that at say 10% or whatever? Well that means everyone making over 40,000 will pay 4000 more a year in taxes too. What morons.