Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Guess Who's Not Paying for Dinner?

A nonpartisan report by the Tax Policy Center says that both McCain and Obama's tax plans will massively increase the national debt over the next ten years.

But since increasing debt is the name of the game, later pages of the report also reveal a little more. Obama plans to squeeze the ultra-rich, raising their taxes by 1.5% (which is about $19,000, so don't feel too bad for these people.) Meanwhile, McCain plans to hand a whopping 9.5% back to the same demographic (about $125,000).

That's the key difference. McCain will cost the US about twice as much in debt as Obama (and Democrats are the big spenders?)

But in a sense, it's all a bit moot. Clearly McCain and Obama haven't heard of escrow, trust funds, and all the other things rich people do with their money instead of paying taxes on it.

The IRS estimates that individual noncompliance is the single greatest source of our $345 billion tax gap (the tax gap is really just a difference of opinion: the government thinks the patriotic public owes it about $345 billion more than the same public is willing to pay).

So who's squeezing whom?

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