Obama to Propose Capital Gains Tax Increase & Extending the Earned Income Credit

[All Along The Watchtower]

Nice gesture, even though it's DOA.

And the GOP is totally the party of the common man. Evidence:

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http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/01/18/378163942/republican-leaders-dismiss-obamas-tax-proposal-as-not-serious

[publicunofficial]

I really hope Obama's 2nd term isn't filled with "Look at this cool thing we could've had if you guys hadn't voted Republican"

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I really hope Obama's 2nd term isn't filled with "Look at this cool thing we could've had if you guys hadn't voted Republican"

Since there ain't much coolness in these proposals, I wouldn't worry.

[Mr.Phips]

How is Capital Gains double taxation? I get dividends, but why this too? Because they are a function of future dividends gains? Those are getting taxed for someone else (or the company) as they come in. I think 10% is a perfect rate of taxation for CG.

Because companies are already taxed for their earnings before they are given to shareholders as dividends and they are taxed again.   

And wages aren't taxed twice?  At some point, somebody purchased a good from the company I worked for.  They paid taxes on that salary.  The company that I work for now uses that sales income to pay me, and I get taxed on those wages.  Double taxation.

[Mr.Phips]

I really hope Obama's 2nd term isn't filled with "Look at this cool thing we could've had if you guys hadn't voted Republican"

I hope it is actually.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

How is Capital Gains double taxation? I get dividends, but why this too? Because they are a function of future dividends gains? Those are getting taxed for someone else (or the company) as they come in. I think 10% is a perfect rate of taxation for CG.

Because companies are already taxed for their earnings before they are given to shareholders as dividends and they are taxed again.   

And wages aren't taxed twice?  At some point, somebody purchased a good from the company I worked for.  They paid taxes on that salary.  The company that I work for now uses that sales income to pay me, and I get taxed on those wages.  Double taxation.

Taxes are not paid on revenue (assuming that is what you mean the first time you say salary). If that happened, no one would be able to afford to pay any. The wages and all other costs are deducted. Or am I misinterpreting the first tax?

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Does he honestly think he can get this passed?

[Mr.Phips]

How is Capital Gains double taxation? I get dividends, but why this too? Because they are a function of future dividends gains? Those are getting taxed for someone else (or the company) as they come in. I think 10% is a perfect rate of taxation for CG.

Because companies are already taxed for their earnings before they are given to shareholders as dividends and they are taxed again.   

And wages aren't taxed twice?  At some point, somebody purchased a good from the company I worked for.  They paid taxes on that salary.  The company that I work for now uses that sales income to pay me, and I get taxed on those wages.  Double taxation.

Taxes are not paid on revenue (assuming that is what you mean the first time you say salary). If that happened, no one would be able to afford to pay any. The wages and all other costs are deducted. Or am I misinterpreting the first tax?

The person who originally earned the salary to buy the good paid taxes on it.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

How is Capital Gains double taxation? I get dividends, but why this too? Because they are a function of future dividends gains? Those are getting taxed for someone else (or the company) as they come in. I think 10% is a perfect rate of taxation for CG.

Because companies are already taxed for their earnings before they are given to shareholders as dividends and they are taxed again.   

And wages aren't taxed twice?  At some point, somebody purchased a good from the company I worked for.  They paid taxes on that salary.  The company that I work for now uses that sales income to pay me, and I get taxed on those wages.  Double taxation.

Taxes are not paid on revenue (assuming that is what you mean the first time you say salary). If that happened, no one would be able to afford to pay any. The wages and all other costs are deducted. Or am I misinterpreting the first tax?

The person who originally earned the salary to buy the good paid taxes on it.

That's pretty silly. The whole purpose is to pay taxes on transactions. A new transaction occured that grows the economy. Taxes must be paid. There is nothing about taxing a physical dollar twice. It's each individual's income. You should be happy if dollars have higher turnover (so long as it doesn't create inflation). Otoh, A dividend is the owner receiving their share of the transaction. The same person's income is being taxed when it comes in to the corporation and then again as dividends without another economic transaction occurring. That is far from the same thing as what you are proposing - effectively no taxes.

The only aceptable counter argument for double taxation would be that the owners are not responsible for bankruptcy risks as was brought up early in the thread.

[Mr.Phips]

How is Capital Gains double taxation? I get dividends, but why this too? Because they are a function of future dividends gains? Those are getting taxed for someone else (or the company) as they come in. I think 10% is a perfect rate of taxation for CG.

Because companies are already taxed for their earnings before they are given to shareholders as dividends and they are taxed again.   

And wages aren't taxed twice?  At some point, somebody purchased a good from the company I worked for.  They paid taxes on that salary.  The company that I work for now uses that sales income to pay me, and I get taxed on those wages.  Double taxation.

Taxes are not paid on revenue (assuming that is what you mean the first time you say salary). If that happened, no one would be able to afford to pay any. The wages and all other costs are deducted. Or am I misinterpreting the first tax?

The person who originally earned the salary to buy the good paid taxes on it.

That's pretty silly. The whole purpose is to pay taxes on transactions. A new transaction occured that grows the economy. Taxes must be paid. There is nothing about taxing a physical dollar twice. It's each individual's income. You should be happy if dollars have higher turnover (so long as it doesn't create inflation). Otoh, A dividend is the owner receiving their share of the transaction. The same person's income is being taxed when it comes in to the corporation and then again as dividends without another economic transaction occurring. That is far from the same thing as what you are proposing - effectively no taxes.

The only aceptable counter argument for double taxation would be that the owners are not responsible for bankruptcy risks as was brought up early in the thread.

And dividends are a different transaction than the corporation receiving income and making a profit.  A corporation does not HAVE to pay dividends to their shareholders.  They can accumulate retained earnings.

The double taxation argument is a bogus one because everyone is taxed multiple times.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

How is Capital Gains double taxation? I get dividends, but why this too? Because they are a function of future dividends gains? Those are getting taxed for someone else (or the company) as they come in. I think 10% is a perfect rate of taxation for CG.

Because companies are already taxed for their earnings before they are given to shareholders as dividends and they are taxed again.   

And wages aren't taxed twice?  At some point, somebody purchased a good from the company I worked for.  They paid taxes on that salary.  The company that I work for now uses that sales income to pay me, and I get taxed on those wages.  Double taxation.

Taxes are not paid on revenue (assuming that is what you mean the first time you say salary). If that happened, no one would be able to afford to pay any. The wages and all other costs are deducted. Or am I misinterpreting the first tax?

The person who originally earned the salary to buy the good paid taxes on it.

That's pretty silly. The whole purpose is to pay taxes on transactions. A new transaction occured that grows the economy. Taxes must be paid. There is nothing about taxing a physical dollar twice. It's each individual's income. You should be happy if dollars have higher turnover (so long as it doesn't create inflation). Otoh, A dividend is the owner receiving their share of the transaction. The same person's income is being taxed when it comes in to the corporation and then again as dividends without another economic transaction occurring. That is far from the same thing as what you are proposing - effectively no taxes.

The only aceptable counter argument for double taxation would be that the owners are not responsible for bankruptcy risks as was brought up early in the thread.

And dividends are a different transaction than the corporation receiving income and making a profit.  A corporation does not HAVE to pay dividends to their shareholders.  They can accumulate retained earnings.

The double taxation argument is a bogus one because everyone is taxed multiple times.

It's a completely different argument than what you are trying to portray. There is room to support double taxation, but that isn't the way to do it. Not every transaction is taxed multiple times, and this is one income. And there is an expectation that dividends will be paid out. The owner will receive it eventually. I'll resort to preferred stock at this point because those really are barring failure.
The reason double taxation would be acceptable is if the government doesn't want to tax either entity too highly so they attempt to maximize investment for a given level of tax revenue and spread the percentages around. You don't want to destroy investment just to increase consumption a little. That's  not very easy to figure out but they can come close. It's not just because all transactions are double taxed.

[The_Doctor]

Same stuff, different day.

The President isn't interested in doing anything but ginning up the 2016 Democratic base to vote for Hillary and positioning himself for his legacy. Basically, this is to all position Obama as the great liberal that his supporters saw him as (but he never truly governed as, in policy, to some extent). Conveniently enough, the Republican Congress will stop his agenda, and Obama will try to gin up the voters in 2016 to elect Hillary. The hue and cry will be "These evil Republicans! They're stopping (x goodie) from being given to you!"

The President is just cynically trying to please his liberal base, to keep the ACA law past 2017 and to hopefully keep a Democrat in the White House, so his executive orders can become basically impossible to roll back. It's pretty much too late for a grand bargain on domestic issues, because the 2016 race is heating up. Republicans would rather wait for the outcome of 2016 and negotiate with a new President, if they lose. Democrats would rather hope to regain the Senate in 2016 while keeping the White House, and have a fresh bargaining hand with the GOP House in 2017. The President is too much of a lame duck at this point (lame ducks don't accomplish many compromises this late in their tenure. Basically the sixth to eighth year is mostly foreign policy, historically).

This is win-win for Obama. Either Hillary wins because of the White House's efforts and the recovering economy, or the Republican wins, allowing Obama to let his ardent supporters cast him as a hero in the public's eyes. Down the road, Obama's supporters will begin lionizing him and the Democratic base (historically disappointed with him during his tenure) will overlook his transgressions and hail him as a FF. All this posturing is basically to ensure that legacy view.

Also he will try to take credit for the recovery, in the (bipartisan) time honored tradition. So that's the gist and purpose of tomorrow's State of the Union.

[IceSpear]

Same stuff, different day.

The President isn't interested in doing anything but ginning up the 2016 Democratic base to vote for Hillary and positioning himself for his legacy. Basically, this is to all position Obama as the great liberal that his supporters saw him as (but he never truly governed as, in policy, to some extent). Conveniently enough, the Republican Congress will stop his agenda, and Obama will try to gin up the voters in 2016 to elect Hillary. The hue and cry will be "These evil Republicans! They're stopping (x goodie) from being given to you!"

The President is just cynically trying to please his liberal base, to keep the ACA law past 2017 and to hopefully keep a Democrat in the White House, so his executive orders can become basically impossible to roll back. It's pretty much too late for a grand bargain on domestic issues, because the 2016 race is heating up. Republicans would rather wait for the outcome of 2016 and negotiate with a new President, if they lose. Democrats would rather hope to regain the Senate in 2016 while keeping the White House, and have a fresh bargaining hand with the GOP House in 2017. The President is too much of a lame duck at this point (lame ducks don't accomplish many compromises this late in their tenure. Basically the sixth to eighth year is mostly foreign policy, historically).

This is win-win for Obama. Either Hillary wins because of the White House's efforts and the recovering economy, or the Republican wins, allowing Obama to let his ardent supporters cast him as a hero in the public's eyes. Down the road, Obama's supporters will begin lionizing him and the Democratic base (historically disappointed with him during his tenure) will overlook his transgressions and hail him as a FF. All this posturing is basically to ensure that legacy view.

Also he will try to take credit for the recovery, in the (bipartisan) time honored tradition. So that's the gist and purpose of tomorrow's State of the Union.

Sounds great to me.

[Ban my account ffs!]

This won't happen of course.

^^^^^^^
What else is there to say? The obstinent GOP has blocked everything possible by any means possible since Jan 2009. Obama talks a good game at the SotU but he didn't even campaign hard on these sorts of policies. It's hard to believe it's that much of a priority for him.

I agree.  He waited until after the election made it even more unlikely before giving the left wing of the party something to chew on.

He definitely seems less afraid of the right than the left.

[Adam Griffin]

So basically "create a new tax so that we can hand out benefits through a broad-based tax credit"? Way to go full neo-liberal and not address true components of our economic problems. In the event we're actually ever successful at levying more taxes on the uber-wealthy and financial services, those taxes need to obviously be funneled into things besides reinforcement of principles that encourage over-population and that are targeted at (largely) people who are relatively okay financially.

[The_Doctor]

[quote author=IceSpear link=topic=205968.msg4456438#msg4456438 date=14216
Sounds great to me.
[/quote]

This can backfire in the short term. Namely, a Republican wins in 2016 and is re-elected. That would decimate ObamaCare and leave Obama with a much weaker legacy. He still can have the rhetoric but not quite a full bodied legacy as he had hoped.

I can see a Republican government basically shredding key parts of the ACA and doing a tax cut. A Republican President would also be rolling back whatever Obama executive orders he could, left, right, and center. Especially on the EPA and environment.

The Democrats very much want to avoid this. But it's very plausible this will happen.

[pbrower2a]

I really hope Obama's 2nd term isn't filled with "Look at this cool thing we could've had if you guys hadn't voted Republican"

I hope it is actually.

It's all about 2016 -- whether America is to be a democracy or a plutocratic oligarchy.

[Sbane]

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I doubt the GOP could win the presidency if they actually ran on shredding the ACA. Sure, they will be against "Obamacare" but they really can't do sh**t about the ACA. It's too popular already, and will be even more popular in 2016 as people will have gotten insurance from the marketplace for years by that point.

This is not to say no changes will be made to the ACA, but the Republicans won't be able to limit access/subsidies without a huge outcry.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

It's kind of cute all the people running to protect people who earn $500k a year from capital gains ... like they're "Mom and Pop" investors.