Extending Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest would add $3.8 Trillion to deficit.

[JohnWxy]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/us/politics/11tax.html


The president has vowed to extend the tax cuts for individuals with less than $200,000 in annual taxable income and couples with less than $250,000 — about 98 percent of American households. About 315,000 households report adjusted gross income of $1 million or more.

Taxpayers with income of more than $1 million for 2011 would still receive on average a tax cut of about $6,300 compared with what they would have paid under rates in effect until 2001, according to the analysis, which was prepared by the Joint Committee on Taxation at the request of the Democratic majority on the House Ways and Means Committee.

That compares, however, with the roughly $100,000 average tax cut that households with more than $1 million in income would receive under current rates.


"Most of the tax cuts that were a signature domestic initiative of George W. Bush’s presidency carried an expiration date of Dec. 31, 2010, to limit the potential revenue losses..."


"Extending them for the next 10 years would add about $3.8 trillion to a growing national debt that is already the largest since World War II"

(more)

[indepat]

1. $3.8 trillion is such a small price to pay for paving the way for this relatively small group to

increase their percentage of the total US wealth owned, while admittedly already astronomical, is not quite high enough for God knows every little bit more helps. :P

[Dawson Leery]

2. 50% tax on all short term market trades.

Stock, Futures, Commodities, and Bonds. Buy it today, sell it in two months, shell out half of your profits.

[econoclast]

3. Actually, that is not correct

Allowing ALL the Bush tax cuts to remain in effect adds 3.8 trillion dollars to the deficit. The article never says straight out how much just the portion of over 250,000 group is in that number. You have to look elsewhere. There is a breakdown done by OMB that does. The OMB numbers are not exactly the same as the CBO numbers. OMB is usually a bit rosier view. But here is the breakdown from OMB:

OMB cites a figure of around $3 trillion as the cost of extending ALL the tax cuts. This comes from Table S-7 of the budget, which is a bridge between the BEA Baseline (assumes full expiration) and the OMB Baseline (assumes full extension with partial exception of estate tax). If Obama gets his way and the top rates return to their higher levels, along with higher capital gains and dividend rates for high-income returns (relative to 2010), etc., OMB estimates that such a plan would lower the $3 trillion cost figure by about $630 billion, taking it to around $2.3 trillion over 10 years, which is still a significant amount of money.

So, over 10 years, extending the tax cuts for EVERYBODY increases the deficit by 3trillion or so. The tax cuts for the wealthiest is only about 630 billion of that total.

[avaistheone1]

4. Extending the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest is a terrible, terrible idea.