Wikimedia Commons | Text altered by Dan

Wednesday Column Reprise

Note from Dan: While I’m on vacation, I’m treating you to some oldie-but-goodie columns from the past. This one originally ran Jan. 5. It looks at why the Republican-controlled Virginia state government doesn’t follow its own dogma regarding tax cuts, and concludes that’s because even they don’t believe it.

Welcome to 2012. In this new year, we have a new Virginia General Assembly, controlled by Republicans. And they have an exciting opportunity to boldly go where no legislature has gone before.

For decades, conservatives have told us the only surefire way to both grow jobs and boost government revenue is to cut taxes.

Their argument works like this: The fewer taxes a government imposes, the more of their own money consumers keep. They spend it at businesses, which grow at a faster rate. Thus, lower taxation results in more government revenue because of all that new consumer spending and business expansion.

The 2012 Virginia General Assembly can once and for all prove that dogma true. Our GOP-controlled legislature can slash state taxes, and our Republican governor can sign those bills. Unlike past years, there are few if any ways Democrats could stymie this grand experiment.

Take for example the state sales tax — it’s 5 percent. It produced $3.01 billion in revenue during fiscal 2011. Slash the rate in half, and how much would revenue increase?

That’s hard to say, but such a dramatic cut such ought to produce dramatic results, according to tax-cut dogma. If the conservatives are correct, the tax cut would cause Virginians to launch a consumer-spending spree.

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

(From upper left) Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina; Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona; Rep. Peter King, R-New York; Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Georgia

Don’t look now, but there’s a sanity virus quickly spreading among Republicans on Capital Hill. Some of them are talking about ditching their pledge to Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquists’s outfit.

Sen. John McCain, meanwhile, is saying the GOP ought to quit talking about abortion rights during their campaigns, because that only gets them in trouble (Rep. Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, anyone?).

Here are the highlights:

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Georgia: “I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge. . . If we do it [Grover Norquist's] way, then we’ll continue in debt, and I just have a disagreement with him about that . . . But I don’t worry about that because I care too much about my country. I care a lot more about it than I do Grover Norquist.”

Rep. Peter King, R-New York: “I agree entirely with Saxby Chambliss. A pledge you signed 20 years ago, 18 years ago, is for that Congress. For instance, if I were in Congress in 1941, I would have signed a declaration of war against Japan. I’m not going to attack Japan today. The world has changed, and the economic situation is different.” Read more »

Is GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney one of the 47 percent who pays no federal income taxes?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants to know.

Doubling down on his earlier criticism of Romney for refusing to release more than 2 years of tax returns, this is what Reid said on the Senate floor this morning:

“Thousands of families making more than $1 million pay nothing in federal income taxes each year.

Is Mitt Romney among them? Read more »

By Dan

Note from Dan: This policy-oriented and nonpartisan post comes form Ron May. He posted it to Thursday’s OPEN thread.

“I promised that I would continue to comment about tax reform in the days ahead. Previously I made suggestions about how to make changes to Social Security in order to make it more financially stable. Today I want to begin my comments regarding taxes and how to reform them in an equitable way.

If I was to ask you what the largest “expenditure” is in the federal budget I’m sure I would get some interesting answers. The Office of Management and Budget has recently said that our projected deficit for this year’s federal budget is going to be in the neighborhood of $1.4 Trillion. There are all sorts of proposals floating around to reduce that number. Some are actually worth looking at. Some, in my view, should be cast aside without much thought.

The Office of Management and Budget outlines the following major expenditures in the 2012 Budget. Defense & Security ($800+ Billion); Medicare & Medicaid (Approx. $700 billion); Social Security (Slightly less than $700 Billion); Other Mandatory Programs (Approx. $610 Billion); Domestic Discretionary Programs (Approx. $475 Billion); Interest on the Debt ($200 Billion) and last but not least Tax Expenditures ($1.1 Trillion). Read more »

Mitt Romney continues to get asked about his federal income taxes, and he still refuses to answer the question as to how much he paid.

Now, he claims he never paid less than 13.6 percent, but his answer carefully referred to taxes generally, not income taxes specifically. That seemingly keeps the door open for Romney having paid zero federal income taxes during 2000-2009, which is what Sen. Harry Reid says he was told.

You’d think if Romney REALLY wanted to move onto those topics like the poverty rate in the U.S. or nukes in Iran, like he says, he’d just release his returns, and get back to food stamps or mullahs-with-nukes. But no. Watch:

Bonus: Check out this grafic charting the Mittster’s 5-day evolution on Medicare. He moved from gutting the program  by more than $1 trillion, to promising to restore $716 billion future savings under the Affordable Care Act.

That’s a $1.7 trillion swing in 5 days! It’s a faster flip than the one he did on the individual mandate!

Daniel Case | Wikimedia Commons | Altered by Dan

Note from Dan: While on vacation with the family, I’m treating you to some columns that ran in the past year. The on appeared Nov. 22, 2011. Since the, the 2-cent surtax on meals in Roanoke has expired and the tax is back to 5 percent. Salem’s remains in effect for the forseeable future.

The wise solons of the small city to our west — Salem — are poised to enact a 2 cents per dollar increase in the meals tax later this month.

This will boost the cost of the best burger in the Roanoke Valley (my opinion) by a whopping 18 cents. That’s the “Black and Blue burger” at Mac and Bob’s Restaurant on Main Street.

Today, we should take note of the hue and cry that’s not occurring.

Salem’s restaurateurs are not appearing at tea party rallies, threatening to move their operations to Roanoke County, or otherwise slamming Salem City Council. There are a couple of reasons why. Read more »

AP Photo

Today, Mitt Romney replied to Harry Reid’s charge that a Bain insider told him Mitt Romney had paid no federal income taxes for 10 years.

Watch the Mittster’s carefully parsed reply and note what he DOESN’T say. He doesn’t deny he paid no federal income taxes for the past 10 years. He says he’s paid “a lot of taxes.”

Of course he has. Romney’s a rich guy. He has a bunch of houses, including one with an elevator for his cars. He paid sales taxes during that time. And he paid gasoline taxes. And utilities taxes. And surely some others. We know that he paid federal income taxes in 2010 and 2011.

What we DON’T know, however, is if he paid any federal income taxes from 2000 through 2009. Because Mitt won’t release those returns. And in the video below, he doesn’t say that he paid ANY federal income taxes in that period, either. He merely makes the question grow in prominence.

It’s simply amazing. And he’s on the defensive, which means he’s losing.

Is it too late for the GOP to look for a new nominee? Seriously. Can they draft anyone besides Ron Paul?

Grafic by Dan

(Note from Dan: Richard J. Beason, who knows more about taxes than most, weighs in with a fine little rant on why Mitt Romney’s tax returns matter in the context of presidential politics.)

Mitt Romney could have easily avoided paying any U.S. income tax with his offshore companies. That is the loophole Congress continues to allow the wealthy investment bankers. The fact that it is legal to take advantage of this loophole does not make a whole lot of difference to me.

Mitt is running for the leader of our Nation and has been for more than eight years. If he did not have the sense, patriotism, and lack of greed to put his faith in our Nation and stop avoiding paying taxes by using aggressive loopholes then he obviously is a poor politician, leader, and cares nothing about public perception of our tax system.

He simply believes he is above paying taxes and as such tells us all that we too should not pay taxes. Yet we know that does not work and in fact his economic plan will make the middle class pay more taxes while he and his investment bankers pay less. He wants to take away college tuition credits, he wants to take away the mortgage deduction, he wants to take away the medical deduction so seniors in nursing homes pay more taxes. Read more »

Mitt Romney | AP

There’s been plenty of speculation as to why Mitt Romney has refused to release his back tax returns.

• Do they state he was CEO of Bain Capital after 1999, like Romney claims he was not?

• Do they show Romney participated in IRS amnesty for Swiss bank account tax evaders in 2009?

• Do they show Romney paid less, as a percentage of his income, than the average American bus driver going back years?

Romney has remained steadfast in his refusal to release the returns despite all of these questions.

He says he has released 2010′s return, and an incomplete return for 2011, and that is “more than the law requires.” (The law requires no income tax disclosure). Still, it’s far short of the standard set by his dad (12 years) when George Romney ran for president in 1968.

Now, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid has turned up the heat a few notches. He claims a Bain Capital insider has told him that Romney won’t release the returns because they show he paid NO federal income taxes for 10 years. But Reid won’t reveal the insider’s name, and he also says he’s not sure if the guy is right.

From Huffington Post:

Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office.

“Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying. Read more »

Corning, Inc.'s headquarters in Corning, N.Y. | Stilfehler | Wikimedia Commons

Has the anti-tax crowd lost its mind? Have they totally overplayed their hand? The evidence is growing that the answer is a resounding “YES!”

The latest proof of that occurred in sworn testimony before Congress this week.

It was delivered by Susan Ford, a senior executive at Corning, Inc., which earned almost $3 billion betwen 2008 and 2011.

That’s their headquarters in New York on the left. Nice digs, huh?

With a straight face, she told the House Ways and Means Committee that the United State’s stiff corporate tax rate was putting her company at a competitive disadvantage.

That would be a shame if there was a shred of truth to it.

What suggests it’s a big fat lie is the amount of taxes Corning has paid for those years.

Take a wild guess what that amount is. The answer is below the jump.

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. Read more »