In the Left’s ongoing war against anyone who makes any money – the tax code is probably their best and most vicious weapon. It is a multi-thousand page combination shot and machine gun – firing clouds of buckshot in fully automatic fashion. Pummeling the private sector with endless rounds of lethal legalese.
A chief component of its anti-private sector effectiveness – is its complexity. Nowhere therein is one page written – where fifteen will do. This density serves (at least) two purposes. It obfuscates what is actually required of its victims – and allows for all sorts of additional, stealthy assaults to be included in the overall attack.
The Left wants to extract as much private sector money as possible for (at least) two reasons. Because they want to drain the capitalist system of as much capital as possible, because they loathe the capitalist system – and because they want to spend the coin themselves.
There are all sorts of lies told in this pursuit. To defend their tax code ridiculousness – and call for even more tax code ridiculousness. You are eminently familiar with many of them. “The rich need to pay their fair share” – is an all-time favorite.
What you aren’t supposed to know – is that the top 1% of earners pay just about half of all taxes. So the rich are actually paying their fair share – and the faire share of 49% of all other taxpayers.
As we’ve repeatedly discussed this week – this is a gross violation of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment and its Equal Protection Clause. The government can’t pass one law that imposes different tax rates on different people – and be within a thousand miles of Constitutionality. Not that that has ever stopped the Left.
And since the Left rigidly adheres to the maxim “Too much is never enough” – they are always looking to bleed We the Taxpayers even more. To that end, they are looking to increase further still the Capital Gains tax rate – by changing the way we treat Carried Interest.
Let us begin with the fact that the Capital Gains tax – is double taxation. You earn money – you pay income taxes on it. You then take some of what the government has graciously allowed you to keep – and invest it. Thereby providing operational capital for other people looking to be productive members of society – by starting businesses, providing us goods and services and creating jobs.
Should your investment in the broader capitalist system work out, it is a huge boon for We the People – and the government. It means your coin went towards businesses that succeeded. They created all sorts of economic activity and jobs – and thus a whole new cadre of taxpayers for government to bleed.
But government is never sated. They’ll take all those new taxes – and they also want to tax you on your investment’s Capital Gains. You know – the investments without which none of this new economic growth would have been possible.
Get that? You already paid taxes when you earned the coin. And now you’re paying taxes again on money you used to help create new jobs for people – and new taxpayers for government. It is obscene.
And government is never sated. So they are looking to up their titanic take – by hiking the Carried Interest tax rate on the Capital Gains taxes we pay. What is Carried Interest, you ask?:
“Carried interest capital gains income is earned through a net gain within a partnership formed between individuals with capital and an expert investor. They are indistinguishable from any other type of capital and so they are paid at the same capital gains tax rates.
“While supporters of higher taxes on carried interest capital gains say it takes aim at ‘hedge fund guys,’ it would also hurt pension funds, charities, and colleges that depend on these investment partnerships as part of their savings goals. In addition, small businesses, innovators, and inventors would find themselves increasingly shut out from investment money available to them from these partnerships.”
The Left may not know they’d be pilfering even more from senior citizens and their retirement cash. Or their uber-Left college comrades. Or the charities doing the good work the Left claims to love.
Or perhaps they just doesn’t care – and they just want to corral all the coin they can.
Regardless, the Left never allows the facts to get in the way of a good beating. They are pushing hard for this new, ridiculous tax assault on old people and charities.
Here’s Slate whining about then-President Barack Obama not hiking these taxes unilaterally. Here’s a Washington Post Leftist counseling Obama-era DC Republicans to hike these taxes via legislation.
Now that there is a Republican President Donald Trump joined with a Republican-majority House and Senate – the Left is demanding this Elephant cadre raise these rates.
Because Republicans hiking taxes always works out so well – eh, one-term-President George H.W. Bush?
This is a dumb idea. For all sorts of economic reasons – and just on principle.
The federal government – every year now, it seems – sets a new record for amount of tax coin taken from We the People. Our $20 trillion national debt isn’t a revenue problem – it’s a spending problem.
Government should stop looking for new taxpayer veins in which to tap – and ease up on the check-cutting.
You would think – you would hope – Republicans already know and understand this.
They can demonstrate that they do – by ignoring, amongst so many other things, the Left’s demand for a Carried Interest Capital Gains tax hike.
They should instead be eliminating the double-dipping Capital Gains tax.
For all sorts of economic reasons – and just on principle.
This first appeared in Red State.