Obama Economy Hits Young People the Hardest
The days of wearing an Obama t-shirt to a frat party might be over. According to The Atlantic, people age 19-29 are supporting Obama less than they were in 2008. Now only 56-percent of this voter group says they support President Obama, a drop of 10-percent. Informal surveys point the same direction, even more dramatically. The Daily Caller reports that only 27-percent of likely voters ages 18-28 say they are committed to vote for Obama again, down from the 83-percent that say they did vote for him.
Why the shift? Obama wants to tax and spend, leaving this young generation to pick up the slack. This is certainly a plausible answer. Let’s take a look at some of the ways in which Obama is hurting these young people.
DEBT: Obama has asked for a clean debt increase, meaning that the U.S. would continue to spend by borrowing the money. He doesn’t want to cut spending and doesn’t even seem willing to compromise. Borrowing these large amounts of money will only place harder and more severe debts on these people under 30. It is them, not the current maturing generation that make up most of the legislature and Obama’s administration, who will foot the bill.
TAXES: Obama, through an increase in government spending and because of a belief in redistribution of wealth has sought to raise taxes. He swears that he will not raise any form of taxes on those making less than $250,000 a year. Even if we assume that this statement is true (though it definitely isn’t), we must conclude that he is willing to raise taxes on the “wealthy.” But these are the people hiring. If business and personal taxes go up for the biggest earners, they will have less money to hire employees. This will decimate the job market for the younger generation even more than it will hurt the wealthy and middle class. These are the people seeking the minimum wage and starter jobs which will be most likely to be cut first. Already, the job market for under 30 year olds looks bleak, how much more can they take?
MEDISCARE: The recent strategy for Democrats, including many in Obama’s administration, is to paint Republicans as trying to destroy Medicare. They argue that because Paul Ryan’s plan would put some of the funds into private accounts, that it will rob seniors of their money and needed support (of course this is also false). But most people in this younger age bracket would love reform. Most of them do not believe that the benefits of Social Security or Medicare will be viable for them anyway. They are willing to try anything to put the authority and responsibility for their futures back into their own hands. Michele Bachmann is even advocating that the Ryan Plan be renamed the ‘Under 55 Plan.’ They are willing and ready for real change.
These are just a few of the reasons why this younger generation may be turning on Obama. They were promised hope and change and received dreary and worse. Obama is losing support and some of this is because he has taxed and spent through his young voter political capital.
More from Americans for Tax Reform
Ohio Commuters Taxed by Cities Where They Used to Work
Ohio’s current local income tax structure allows municipalities to tax employees even if they do not physically work in the city that is taxing them.
This is a common rationale: employees can be taxed based upon where they work because they are using city resources like police, fire, and other public services while they are at work.
However, what happens when people stop actually working at that location? Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s statewide COVID-19 Stay-at-Home order earlier this year has forced many employees to work from home. This means Ohioans are paying taxes to cities whose services they no longer use.
At the beginning of the pandemic in March, lawmakers passed HB 197 which deemed all work performed at private homes during the public health emergency to have been performed at the employees’ principal place of work for the purposes of taxation. In other words, cities were permitted to collect income tax dollars as though businesses were operating under normal circumstances.
This was originally passed under the assumption that it would be a temporary law, only to stay in place until 30 days after Gov. Mike DeWine ended his state of emergency declaration. As the pandemic has carried on far longer than initially anticipated, the temporary nature of the law has been strained.
In July, The Buckeye Institute and three of its employees filed a lawsuit against the City of Columbus and the State of Ohio. The lawsuit asserts it is unconstitutional to allow cities to tax income of workers who do not live there, and were not permitted to work there during the Stay-at-Home order.
In order to comply with Ohio’s emergency orders, which required nonessential businesses to close, The Buckeye Institute required its employees to work from home. According to The Buckeye Institute, this is unlawful taxation and “a clear violation of due process rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and violates Article I, Section 1 of the Ohio Constitution.”
Robert Alt, President of The Buckeye Institute, cited the Hillenmeyer v. Cleveland Board of Review Supreme Court decision from 2015. In Hillenmeyer, the Court unanimously decided that local taxation of a non-resident's services must be based on the location of that person when the work was performed.
While the Ohio Supreme Court deliberates on the case, state legislators have said they plan to work on passing a new law before the end of the year. Two companion bills, inspired by The Buckeye Institute’s lawsuit, have been introduced in the Ohio Legislature.
Rep. Kris Jordan, R-Delaware, has sponsored HB 754 and Sen. Kristina Roegner, R-Hudson, has introduced its companion, SB 352. Both pieces of legislation would amend income tax withholding rules for work-from-home employees related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Employees in Ohio would be taxed where they live rather than where they work.
Sen. Roegner said, “I don’t believe it’s constitutional to be able to tax someone that doesn’t step foot in your city.”
However, while various lawmakers like Roegner have expressed their beliefs that the law is unfair, cities across Ohio say repealing the temporary law would hurt city budgets. Organizations, such as the Ohio Municipal League, have also come out against such legislation.
Ohio Municipal League Executive Director, Kent Scarrett, said that “any shift from how income taxes are collected with the coronavirus emergency measure needs extensive debate.” Membership to the Ohio Municipal League is given to any city or village in Ohio that pays annual dues. In other words, many people who are directly part of City Government are key members of the Ohio Municipal League.
If a new law is not passed before the end of the 133rd General Assembly, Sen. Roegner has promised to bring a new bill back to the Statehouse in January 2021.
The lawsuit and pending legislation of HB 754 and SB 352 could benefit taxpayers during the pandemic by simplifying how they pay taxes.
Photo Credit: Nicholas Eckhart
Study Shows Expanding Unemployment Keeps Americans Out Of Work
Democrats are fighting to expand several unemployment programs into 2021, including reviving the Pelosi $600-per-week increase in unemployment payments that subsidized welfare over work.
This could endanger the economic recovery, as past expansions of unemployment programs have resulted in more Americans out of work and decreased labor demand, according to a 2019 study from the New York Federal Reserve.
On the heels of the Great Recession, Congress extended unemployment benefits for 13 weeks on top of the normal 26 week duration in June 2008. After President Obama took office, Congress passed a number of additional expansions to unemployment, eventually topping out at 99 weeks of benefits.
Analysts from the New York Federal Reserve estimated that the unemployment rate would have been 2.2 percentage points lower in 2011 and 3 percentage points lower in 2010 if Obama’s benefit expansion did not exist. This means that the disincentive to work the benefit expansion created kept approximately 4 million Americans out of a job during the slowest economic recovery in modern history.
The report also found that extended durations of unemployment payments have a negative impact on labor demand, as “...firms would expect to bargain with workers entitled to high benefits at all future dates.”
Democrats are pushing to revive the CARES Act’s temporary $600-per-week federal pandemic unemployment compensation (FPUC) benefit. Before the FPUC expired in July, it created a situation in which 68 percent of Americans got paid more on unemployment than in the workplace.
The subsidy of welfare over work will have lasting impacts on the economy that will only worsen if brought back. A recent study conducted by the Heritage Foundation found that the FPUC will reduce GDP by between $955 billion and $1.49 trillion.
The economy is recovering strongly from the pandemic, and several promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates are on the horizon. Since the April pandemic-low, 12.1 million jobs have been recovered as businesses continue to reopen and Americans continue getting back to work. Since October, over half of the jobs lost to the Coronavirus pandemic have now been recovered, and unemployment has fallen from a record high 14.7 percent to 6.9 percent.
While workers who have been displaced by the pandemic through no fault of their own deserve a safety net, history tells us that extending these programs will do more harm than good. As our economy continues to rebound, lawmakers must keep these facts in mind and reject policies that would prolong high unemployment rates and discourage Americans from safely re-entering the workforce.
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore
Texas Needs a Fiscally Conservative Game Plan to Navigate Budget Hardships
As in other states, tax collections in Texas have taken a hit due to Covid-19 and subsequent shutdowns. Texas lawmakers will be faced with the challenge of reprioritizing state spending when they convene their biennial session in January. To assist Lone Star State lawmakers in this effort, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) has published a conservative budget plan that would limit spending growth to the rate of population plus inflation, setting a max threshold for appropriations in the next budget at $246.8 billion.
TPPF is also urging Texas lawmakers to provide property tax relief in the coming year, a goal the Americans for Tax Reform supports. Texas is one of nine no-income-tax states, yet high property tax burdens are a problem. 2021 is a great time for Texas legislators to fix that. TPPF economist Vance Ginn highlighted the excessive property tax burdens facing Texans in testimony presented to the Texas House Ways & Means Committee in September:
“Texas looks to have at least the 7th highest local property tax burden in the nation,” Ginn told lawmakers. “This is according to an effective property tax rate of 1.81% per WalletHub.com or the share of property taxes paid to owner-occupied housing value of 1.69% per the Tax Foundation. While some claim this high burden is because Texas does not have a personal income tax, the two sources above show other states with no income tax tend to have a more competitive property tax burden. Texas’s high burden is from excessive spending.”
Even though Texas has a relatively competitive state tax code (minus the state’s margins tax), local municipalities throughout Texas notoriously squeeze residents through high property taxes. The coming legislative session presents an opportunity for Governor Greg Abbott and Texas legislators to consider restructuring that relationship in order to ease property tax burdens.
TPPF’s Ginn proposes swapping the state’s patchwork of local property taxes for a uniform sales tax to fund schools.
“For the sales tax swap, we recommend replacing school M&O property taxes with final sales taxes by mostly broadening the sales tax base,” said Ginn. “In 2017, the last year for which data is available from the Texas Comptroller’s website, Texas provided an estimated $42 billion in exemptions, exclusions, and discounts to the final sales tax base, requiring a higher tax rate and higher burden on those taxed.”
The new year will be full of challenges for state lawmakers in Texas and elsewhere. But the new legislative session also presents many opportunities. In addition to balancing the budget without raising taxes in 2021, tax reform that reduces onerous property tax burdens should be a high priority for Texas legislators, as should phasing out the state margins tax.
Photo Credit: Michael Barera
Biden’s Treasury Pick Supports $2 Trillion Carbon Tax, Says Capitalism is “Beginning to Run Amok”
The Wall Street Journal reported today that Joe Biden plans to nominate former Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen to become the next Treasury Secretary.
Yellen is a founding member of the Climate Leadership Council (CLC), an “international policy institute” lobbying Congress to pass a carbon tax “starting at $40 a ton (2017$) and increasing every year at 5% above inflation.” Yellen is also the author of a recent study commissioned by CLC, Exceeding Paris, that recommends a $43/ton carbon tax.
According to an internal report conducted by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential Campaign, a near-identical model of CLC's carbon tax plan “would generate $219 billion a year, on average, between 2020 and 2030.” The same internal report also concluded a $42/ton carbon tax “increases gasoline prices by roughly 40 cents per gallon” and found “average household energy costs would increase by roughly $480 per year.”
Yellen: “Capitalism is beginning to run amok”
“There really is a new kind of recognition that you’ve got a society where capitalism is beginning to run amok and needs to be readjusted in order to make sure that what we’re doing is sustainable and the benefits of growth are widely shared in ways they haven’t been,” Yellen told Reuters in an October interview promoting CLC’s carbon tax plan.
Support for Carbon Adjustment Fee and Carbon Customs Unions
In the same Reuters report, Yellen expanded upon Biden’s support for a “carbon adjustment fee” on imports from countries that fail to cut emissions under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. “Our thinking is that countries with carbon pricing would form essentially clubs, or carbon customs unions, within which there would be frictionless trade,” Yellen said.
Further Support for Carbon Taxes
In an October 19 interview on Bloomberg television, Biden's Treasury pick Janet Yellen said:
"What I would recommend for the United States -- that hopefully we will in the years ahead, go in this direction -- is simply to put in place a carbon tax."
Biden's Own Support for a Carbon Tax
Biden endorsed a carbon tax during on CNN town hall on September 24, 2019:
CNN's Anderson Cooper asked Biden: "Would you support a carbon tax?"
Biden replied: "Yeah, no, I would."
Photo Credit: IMF
More from Americans for Tax Reform
Biden Treasury Pick Wants Carbon Tax
Joe Biden's Treasury Secretary pick wants to impose a carbon tax on the American people. Biden and Kamala Harris have also endorsed a carbon tax, an idea so radical that it was rejected by Hillary Clinton because it would devastate low income households.
In an October 19 interview on Bloomberg television, Biden's Treasury pick, Janet Yellen said:
"What I would recommend for the United States -- that hopefully we will in the years ahead, go in this direction -- is simply to put in place a carbon tax."
Biden endorsed a carbon tax during on CNN town hall on September 24, 2019:
CNN's Anderson Cooper asked Biden: "Would you support a carbon tax?"
Biden replied: "Yeah, no, I would."
Harris endorsed a carbon tax. "Under my plan there will also be a carbon fee," she said. CNN asked her, "How do you make sure that [companies] don't do what they will try to do, which is immediately pass that on to consumers?”
Harris replied: “That should never be the reason not to actually put a fee, in particular, a carbon fee."
Another key Biden adviser -- Jennifer Hillman -- said she expects Biden to impose a "very high" carbon tax. Hillman is reportedly in the mix for a job in the Biden administration.
A carbon tax would impose burdens on households due to higher costs of cooling and heating, transportation, and groceries.
Even Hillary Clinton in 2016 decided to oppose a carbon tax after she learned the following from an internal Clinton report prepared by policy staff:
The Hillary memo states that a carbon tax would devastate low-income households: “As with the increase in energy costs, the increase in the cost of nonenergy goods and services would disproportionately impact low-income households.”
The Hillary memo states that a carbon tax would cause gas prices to increase 40 cents a gallon and residential electricity prices to increase 12% - 21%: “In our analysis, for example, a $42/ton GHG fee increases gasoline prices by roughly 40 cents per gallon on average between 2020 and 2030 and residential electricity prices by 2.6 cents per kWh, 12% and 21% above levels projected in the EIA’s 2014 Annual Energy Outlook respectively.
The Hillary memo states a carbon tax would cause household energy bills to go up significantly: “Average household energy costs would increase by roughly $480 per year, or 10% relative to the levels projected in EIA’s 2014 Outlook.”
The Hillary memo states that a carbon tax would increase the cost of household goods and services: “The cost of other household goods and services would increase as well as companies pass forward the higher energy costs paid to produce those goods and services on to consumers.”
(Source: MEMORANDUM FOR HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON -- Jan. 20, 2015)
Carbon taxes are highly unpopular with voters. In fact, carbon tax advocates can’t even get a carbon tax passed in a single blue state, as this timeline shows.
Carbon taxes also saddle state and local governments with huge costs. For example, a school district in Canada was forced to kick 400 kids off the school bus program in order to pay a $3.3 million carbon tax bill.
It's no wonder conservative groups wrote a letter to Congress Stating: "We oppose any carbon tax." The official Republican Party platform also rejects "any carbon tax."
Biden's carbon tax will also shatter his pledge to each and every American making less than $400,000 that he will not raise a single penny of any tax.
IWF: Anti-Independent Contractor Law Puts Santa Clauses Out of Work
The Independent Women's Forum, in their Chasing Work series, has released a Santa AB5 video telling the story of Patrick Turnbull, a retired landscape contractor from Sunland, California, who has worked independently as Santa Claus for the past 20 years. Because of Assembly Bill 5 in California, his 20-year tradition will come to an end.
According to IWF:
"The law forces employers to hire Santa Clauses as formal employees, instead of as independent contractors, leaving Santa, Mrs. Claus, and their elves without work. Since AB5 took effect on Jan. 1, 2020, holiday performers have been devastated. The effects of AB5 were worsened by the coronavirus pandemic."
IWF then goes into detail about what AB5 and AB5-style laws entail:
"More and more Americans now work as freelancers, independent contractors, and gig workers, rather than solely as employees of one company or organization. The workplace and workforce are changing rapidly, as workers demand more flexibility and freedom...
Despite the growing needs and demands for flexible work arrangements, some policy leaders want to severely restrict when people can work as independent contractors, freelancers, and gig workers.
California imposed the most significant restrictions on independent contractors, with a law known as AB5, which forced millions of workers into having to make an all-or-nothing choice about whether to be a full-time worker or not to work at all. Thousands had no choice, as many businesses couldn’t afford to offer all independent contractors formal employment opportunities, so they had to let them go.
California is not alone. Several other states are considering similar restrictions, and the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would have imposed AB5-style restrictions on the entire country."
The referenced legislation is the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act). Unfortunately Joe Biden and Kamala Harris support this legislation which threatens the livelihood of freelancers and independent contractors. The Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed the earlier this year and it is expected Nancy Pelosi will bring the bill to the floor in the next congress.
Both Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, running for the U.S. Senate in the Georgia runoffs, have come out in support of the PRO Act as well. If both candidates were to win, it is likely that this legislation could be passed and implemented. In this way, it is important to tell stories about the lives that have been devastated, just in California, by AB5.
ATR Opposes Most Favored Nation Drug Pricing Proposal
The Trump administration has released its “most favored nation” (MFN) final rule to impose price controls on Medicare Part B.
ATR President Grover Norquist released the following statement in opposition to the proposal:
“Now is the worst possible time to impose price controls on American medicines. Thanks to American medical innovation, we have developed Coronavirus vaccines at the fastest rate in history.
The proposed ‘most favored nation’ rule would impose socialist price controls on America’s healthcare system by arbitrarily tying the prices we pay to the prices in foreign countries. This would cripple American innovation and delay access to new treatments and cures at a time when we need them most.
The MFN rule would also embolden the left by moving the U.S. closer to a system of government run healthcare that is being pushed by radical far-left politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”
See also:
80 Groups Oppose Most Favored Nation Drug Pricing Executive Order
ATR Releases New Video Against Foreign Price Controls on Medicare
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Will Raise Your Taxes
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will raise your taxes. They will impose income tax hikes, small business tax hikes, capital gains tax hikes, corporate tax hikes, a carbon tax, and will even bring back the much-hated Obamacare individual mandate tax.
BREAKING: November 22, 2020: Biden Treasury Prospect Wants to Impose a Carbon Tax
October 28, 2020: Biden to Impose $200 Gun Tax
October 23, 2020: Another Biden Middle Income Tax Hike: Elimination of Your Step Up in Basis
October 22, 2020: Biden's Individual Mandate Tax Shatters His $400,000 Pledge and Hits Swing State Households Hard
October 20, 2020: 50 Cent and Norquist Call Out Biden for 62% Marginal Income Tax Rate
October 12, 2020: Biden Likely to Impose a "Very High" Carbon Tax, Says Adviser
October 12, 2020: VIDEO: Biden and Harris Dodge "Pack the Court" Question 15 Times
October 9, 2020: VIDEO: 22 Times Biden-Harris Vowed to Eliminate Tax Cuts
October 7, 2020: Kamala Harris: "There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking."
September 30, 2020: Video: Nine Times Biden Vowed to Eliminate the Trump Tax Cuts
September 29, 2020: Biden Was Against the Individual Mandate Before He Was For It
September 24, 2020: Biden Tax Hikes Will Erode American Competitiveness
September 17, 2020: Video: Biden Will Destroy Pennsylvania Energy Jobs
September 16, 2020: Video: Meet the "Harris-Biden" Administration
September 15, 2020: Biden's Corporate Tax Rate Hike Will Hurt Small and Midsize Local Businesses
September 14, 2020: Biden Vows to Raise Taxes on "Day One"
September 9, 2020: Biden's Like-Kind Exchange Tax Hike Will Harm Jobs and Growth
September 9, 2020: Biden's Plan to End Pass-Through Deduction Will Raise Taxes on Small Businesses
September 8, 2020: Biden Cannot Be Trusted on Taxes -- His $400,000 Pledge is Bogus
September 1, 2020: Biden vs. JFK on Taxes: Video Shows Democrats Have Veered Hard Left on Taxes
September 1, 2020: Yes, Biden and Harris Will Ban Fracking
August 28, 2020: Video: Biden Will Raise Your Taxes, Trump Will Cut Your Taxes
August 26, 2020: Kamala Harris Campaign Headquarters Located in Opportunity Zone Created by Trump Tax Cuts -- Which Biden and Harris Want to Repeal
August 20, 2020: Biden and Harris Threaten Millions of Uber Drivers and Riders
August 19, 2020: Video: Nine Crazy Kamala Harris Quotes in 45 Seconds
August 19, 2020: Kamala Harris on Trump Tax Cuts: "Get Rid of the Whole Thing"
August 19, 2020: Kamala Harris Admits She Will Strip Everyone's Private Health Insurance
August 14, 2020: HYPOCRITES: Biden and Harris Slam Uber and Lyft But Have Used Them Over 1,400 Times
August 13, 2020: Kamala Harris and Joe Biden Vow to Abolish Your Right to Work
August 12, 2020: Video: Kamala and Joe Vow to Raise Your Taxes
August 11, 2020: Kamala Harris: "Get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal."
August 4, 2020: Video: Biden Vows to Raise Taxes Despite Obama Warning
July 28, 2020: Biden Threatens Freelancers and Independent Contractors Nationwide
July 27, 2020: Video: Biden Vows to Sacrifice "Hundreds of Thousands" of Jobs in Order to Impose Green New Deal
July 15, 2020: Biden Will Impose Highest Capital Gains Tax Rate Since Jimmy Carter in 1977
July 13, 2020: Biden Broke His Middle Class Tax Pledge
July 9, 2020: Even in a pandemic, Biden vows to impose higher corporate tax rate than communist China
May 27, 2020: Biden Vows to Bring Back the Individual Mandate Tax, A Violation of His Middle Class Tax Pledge
May 22, 2020: Joe Biden said: "Let's repeal the Trump tax cut."
May 22, 2020: Joe Biden said he wants to raise the corporate tax rate.
May 8, 2020: Joe Biden lies about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
April 5, 2020: Biden Endorses Another Tax Hike on Middle Class
March 11, 2020: Video compilation: How High Will Biden Raise Your Capital Gains Taxes?
March 6, 2020: Video Compilation: Joe Biden is Not a Moderate
Feb. 24, 2020: Video Compilation: Biden Will Raise Your Taxes By Eliminating Your Tax Cut
Feb. 7, 2020: Joe Biden said: "I'm going to raise the capital gains rate so that you pay capital gains at what your tax rate is."
Jan. 22, 2020: Joe Biden lied about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, claims it only benefited "top 2% of nation"
Jan. 9, 2020: Joe Biden lied about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Jan. 7, 2020: Joe Biden lied about his healthcare plan, says "no middle class tax" will occur.
Jan. 7, 2020: Joe Biden said: “Get rid of the Trump tax cut. No, not joking.”
Dec. 6, 2019: Joe Biden said: "We should charge people the same tax for their capital gains as their tax rate is. And I think we should raise the tax rate back to, for example, I take it back to where it was before it was reduced. It could go higher, but at 39.5%, 40% basically if you have that as the capital gains, that raises, I brought along, I’m not going to bore you with it, but you’ve seen it, I brought along a graph is how much money each of these things raise."
Dec. 9, 2019: Joe Biden said the capital gains tax rate "could go higher" than 40%
Oct. 28, 2019: Joe Biden said Trump’s $2,000 middle class tax cut is “negligible”
October 24, 2019: Joe Biden said: "So reduce the corporate tax cut, the tax payment to 20%? It needed to be reduced, but if we raise it back up to 28%, it was 39%, we can raise hundreds of billions of dollars."
October 23, 2019: Joe Biden said: “[Corporations] don’t need their tax cut reduced to 20 percent, it should be raised back to 28 percent."
October 23, 2019: Joe Biden said: “So every single solitary person, their capital gains are going to be treated like real income and they are going to pay 40 percent on their capital gains tax."
Oct. 15, 2020: Joe Biden said: "I would raise the capital gains tax to the highest rate of 39.5 percent, I would double it."
September 27, 2019: Joe Biden said: “I’m gonna double the capital gains rate to 40 percent."
September 20, 2019: Joe Biden said: “What I’d be focusing on is eliminating the $1.9 trillion tax cut that [Trump] passed."
September 4, 2019: Joe Biden endorses a carbon tax.
August 21, 2019: Joe Biden said: “I believe we should, in fact, the capital gains tax should be at what the highest minimum tax should be, we should raise the tax back to 39.6 percent instead of 20 percent."
August 9, 2019: Joe Biden said: “By eliminating just a few of the tax cuts,” Biden said, then added, “I’m going to eliminate most all of them. No, you think I'm joking? I'm not."
July 30, 2019: VIDEO: 2020 Democrats Will Raise Your Taxes
July 16, 2019: Joe Biden said: “I would raise the corporate tax. I think we should have lowered it from 36 to 28 percent, but it got lowered to 20 percent. If we just raised it back to 28 percent, we would raise about 600 billion dollars a year. Look at all of the needs we have and the opportunities we have. Ladies and gentlemen, it begins by reversing those cuts.”
July 5, 2020, Joe Biden said: "Yes. Yes, I'd bring back the individual mandate."
July 5, 2019: Joe Biden said: "Well, three things. One, I do raise the tax rate to 39.5 percent. I do, in fact, eliminate the ability for them to write off capital gains the way they do now. I would raise the -- and raise billions of dollars -- raise the corporate tax rate from 20 percent to 28 percent.”
July 3, 2019: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris agree on one thing: Raising taxes
July 2, 2019: Joe Biden is running ads to "Repeal Trump's Tax Cuts."
June 22, 2019: Joe Biden said: "And folks, on day one, I will move to eliminate Trump's tax cuts."
June 17, 2019: Joe Biden said: “First thing I would do as president is eliminate the president’s tax cut."
June 4, 2019: Joe Biden said: “You go out and you make a capital gain you make a little bit of money on an investment you made and you're about to go and cash it in. You cash it in, you pay - now it's down to 20% is too low - but you pay you used to pay them 28%,"
June 3, 2019: Joe Biden said: “If you make a gain, you buy something, you buy stock or anything else and that increases from $1 to $2 or $1 - $2 million, and you want to cash it in, get the cash, you got to pay a capital gains tax much lower than what you’d pay in your regular taxes. It’s much too low now in my view, but that’s a different issue.”
May 28, 2019: Joe Biden said: “You buy something, you buy stock at a dollar it goes to two dollars. You buy a Million, it goes to a million five. When you cash that in to make the gain you made, you have to pay a capital gains tax, which I believe is much too low.”
May 13, 2019: Joe Biden said: “When I’m president, if God Willing I am, we’re going to reverse those Trump tax cuts.”
May 4, 2019: Joe Biden said: “First thing I’d do is repeal those Trump tax cuts."
The Courts Are Cooked - EU Targets American Companies for Budget Shortfalls through Lawsuits
The European Commission is about to propose a “revolutionary” overhaul of digital regulation. They say it is to protect competition, and the little guy, but it is actually about using fines to fill budget shortfalls.
These so-called revolutionary digital regulations will specifically target American tech companies, and we can be sure these new rules will be a pathway to target all successful American companies. Today all business is in some part digital.
The EU through its Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, says it wants to make tech giants more responsible for the content on their platforms, and ensure that competitors have a fair chance to succeed against the big firms. This is supposedly being achieved by numerous antitrust proceedings against primarily American companies. This is in combination with an eminent December announcement of the new Digital Services Act, which is expected to overhaul the management of content on platforms like Google and Facebook.
The EU claims to have the interest of fair competition at heart. But we don’t have to look very hard to find the true motives. Money. American money.
In a deal between the European Parliament and the German Council of the EU presidency, instead of requiring EU leaders to reopen a €1.074 trillion budget agreement reached in July, they found a creative way to top-off some programs at a price tag of €15 billion rather than the roughly €110 billion that MEPs had initially demanded.
How did they get creative? Of the €15 billion, €12.5 billion will come from funding gained through competition fines imposed by the bloc on… American companies.
This means Vestager has been directed by the EU to fill a budget gap with fines and fees resulting from competition investigations. Any company targeted by an EU competition proceeding can be sure that the proceedings won’t be fair – they are already guilty – and the fines will be high.
Its no small coincidence that the same day of the agreement, Vestager announced two investigations on Amazon.
This isn’t the first time the EU looked to American companies to fund their budget shortfalls. Back in 2012 they planned to use nearly €3 billion in antitrust fines to fund part of their €11.7 billion budget shortage. Soon thereafter Microsoft lost their long-standing appeal on cases dating back to 1998 and 2008 with fines totaling out at €1.64 billion. At the time these were the largest fines the EU had ever issued, but they are on a serious upward trajectory.
In 2017 the EU began a three-year series of investigations into Google. The initial fine in 2017 of €2.4 billion is greater than what 18 other countries contributed to the EU’s budget that year. In fact, Google’s fine would contribute more to the EU’s budget than the bottom 9 contributing countries combined.
But it didn’t stop there. Google saw another record breaking fine of €4.3 billion in 2018 and another antitrust fine of €1.5 billion in 2019 for a total of €9.3 billion in fines over three years. All fines are being appealed.
The EU budget is unsurprisingly convoluted. Transfers from member states are one element of the budget. Fines, when collected, are used to offset transfers from member states. Overall, many states receive more back from Brussels than they contributed, making them net recipients.
The perverse incentive is clear, and the fairness of these proceedings is certainly in question. If these fines contribute more to the budget than most member states and fines are accounted for on the front end to fill budget gaps, no company can expect a fair hearing in the EU. They just want the money and will craft their laws however they need to fleece American companies.
It’s not new behavior either. The EU has been using its courts to fund its budget for decades. The EU levied 38 individual fines totaling €364 million on companies for breaching competition law in 2015. Uncontested fines from 2015 along with penalties collected from earlier cases that were upheld provided €1.4 billion in revenue in 2015, according to the European Commission.
With a total budget of around €165.8 billion in 2019, member states contributing meagerly, and in the wake of a global pandemic, we can be sure that rather than balance their budget or look to their own population and member states, the EU will be heaping on the competition fines for American companies.
Europe desperately crafts their laws for ill-gotten financial gains. They have been pushing a highly predatory digital tax structure that was written in such a way to only hit American companies after numerous European companies, including automotive manufacturers, pointed out that all companies are digital and that European “champions” would be swept up in the cull. This was confirmed when the OECD admitted that it would impossible to separate the digital economy from the rest of the economy for tax purposes. The digital tax structure, which in varying forms has passed in some countries but not EU wide, was revamped to specifically write out European companies.
We can be sure the “revolutionary” Digital Services Act expected in December will be just another crafty legal avenue for Europe to fill its budget holes.
It doesn’t matter how you feel about any company. What’s alarming is that Vestager has a budget gap she has been directed to fill, meaning fines and settlements with these companies is a forgone conclusion and few of the companies targeted will be European.
Photo Credit: European Parliament
More from Americans for Tax Reform
Norquist Discusses State Ballot Measures and Biden Tax Plan on Brad Polumbo's Breaking Boundaries Podcast
ATR president Grover Norquist recently joined Brad Polumbo on the Breaking Boundaries Podcast to discuss Joe Biden's tax plan and 2020 state ballot measures.
Referencing Illinois voters' rejection of a graduated income tax, Polumbo asks what exactly the argument is against a progressive income tax. Grover responds:
"People understand that if you divide the electorate into different groups like we do with the federal income tax, you can mug people one at a time. As both Clinton and Obama were elected promising, "I'm only going to mug the top one or two percent."... This is the Richard Speck theory of tax increases: if you can't take on everyone in the room at once, you take them out of the room one at a time to work them over... There was a conversation again in Illinois that said, "Yeah, they'll divide us and then over time we'll all see our taxes increase.""
Polumbo asks, "Biden has publically stated that he's only going to raise taxes on the rich. First, is that true? Second, what's your general assessment of that from a policy point of view?" Grover responded:
"Biden already lied his way into the Vice Presidency, along with Obama, promising to never tax anyone who earned less than $250,000 back in 2008. You may remember that they wanted energy taxes, that tax on Obamacare to force you to buy Obamacare and force you if you didn't—5 million Americans were hit by that tax, 75% of them earned less than $50,000 a year. That was directly aimed at punishing lower-income people. As Bloomberg says, the great thing about regressive taxation, taxing poor people, is that you can force them to do what you want them to do... One of the first things that Obama did was that he raised taxes on cigarette smokers. The average income of a cigarette smoker is $40,000 a year. So about a month into his presidency... [the pledge] was out the door... What we do know is that Biden has a history... of promising to only hit the rich, and then hitting everyone."
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