Regressive Taxation Quotes
At the time there were tax breaks for large yachts but not for small boats that a middle class person might own. It was another example of the tax laws at the time where the poor paid only Social Security taxes, and the rich lobbied for an got very large tax breaks and subsidies and hence the burden was carried by an increasingly stressed middle class and by cuts in services to the needy. The companies that made the yachts also supported the tax breaks as did the unions and workers in the industry. See {624985}. .
At the time, he, th richest man in America was paying a lower ta rate than his secretary, his employees and the waiter who served him lunch. The “Buffet Rule” was developed and named for him that said that wealthy people should pay a minimum rate of taxation regardless of tax credits, deductions and other means of tax avoidance.
She was one of the leaders fighting the proposal to allow casino gambling in the state. Months later, the legislature passed a bill allowing 3 casinos in the state and the Governor signed it. No one disagreed with Ms. Tucker, but with the Great Recession diminishing state tax revenue, most legislators and the governor felt that the benefits outweighed the problems.
The nation rejected the flat tax that was favored by conservatives in the 1930s. However, in the Republican Presidential Primary Campaign of 2000, candidate Steve Forbes made the flat tax a centerpoint of his campaign. He lost badly, but the idea caught on amongst some conservative Republicans, and has had some support since.
An income tax had been instituted during the Civil War but had lapsed. Existing taxes were all excise or head taxes—very regressive. Later there was a political movement to bring back the income tax with the intention of taxing all income equally. There was a titanic struggle which culminated in a Constitutional Amendment allowing the income tax. None of the original politicians, for or against, the income tax could never imagine an income tax that would charge lower rates for investment income. That was the entire purpose of the income tax at the beginning—to tax investment (unearned) income. The “capital gains tax” was the creative way of the rich getting back some of what they thought the lost when the income tax was instituted.
While the majority of the country approve of a financial transaction tax on the stock market, the financial industry has always fought it tooth and nail. It was a long tradition that the Barons and leading aristocrats lands were exempt from the taxes of the king, the most powerful forces in a democracy have lobbied to avoid taxation on their enterprises and finance is one of the very few business areas that have avoided taxation in America. Other than not liking taxes in general, Wall Street and the Banks argue that many financial transactions involve buying and selling securities in huge volume and making a tiny percentage on each share. If there were a tax of even a fraction of one percent, all these profitable trades would become unprofitable. Critics argue that that kind of speculating does not help the economy at all, and is what makes the discriminatory, unfair, computer trading possible and it would be a good reform to make that kind of trading unprofitable as more than 99 percent of the people cannot participate in it nor profit from it.
