These presidential wish-list items will be scoffed. 1. $1 Billion to Stop the Root Causes of Illegal Immigration 2. An Investment to Combat Climate Change 3. Ending Veteran Homelessness 4. Obama Assuming Funds From Immigration Reform 5. Increasing the Capital-Gains Tax 6. Free Community College 7. More Money for the IRS Read more details Well, we will see. What the document does do is serve as an opening negotiation point for the White House when Republicans in Congress reach deadlines on must pass legislation like the Medicare reimbursement rate Doc Fix, the insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund, and expiring tax provisions. The best way to reduce both the Deficit and the Debt is to grow the real Economy thereby increasing revenues. We also need to overhaul our tax systems to make sure everyone pays a fair share
This generation seems to be completely disinterested in maintaining the infrastructure and investments in each other that our parents generation readily accepted with pride. The sad truth is that the amount of discretionary spending available to any lawmaker is so insignificant that it prohibits us from investing in anything but war, seniors and the health care industry. Are these three things the most important things to us?
"Fair share" is a term that refers to a system under which employees who are represented by a collective bargaining agent pay a fee to help bear the cost of that representation and all related services provided
I don't think Obama believes any of those things are going to happen. He's setting up Republicans up as the party of "NO" for 2016. How do you tax off-shore accounts when they are not even declared?
Tariffs. I don't know the particulars but Obama proposed that corporations avoiding taxes abroad will pay tax to do business in our border, and if they want to repatriate their capital within our border then they will pay a higher tax. If they comply, then they get a tax exemption negating it as if they were doing business within the borders the whole time.
The GOP has two options here 1. Will not consider the proposed budget at all, or 2. Compromise on the budget that the President made. If #1 happens, then the GOP will simply pas a GOP version of a social engineering budget that will never be accepted by the President and the GOP does not have enough votes to override the veto. If #2 happens, then a raise on the capital gains tax and the free two years of college will not be accepted. The other points you made will, in varying degrees. For starters, the veterans that are homeless is appalling in this country. It is estimated that as many as one third of all homeless persons are veterans. The reason is that many of the veterans suffer from a variety of mental illness and disorders thathas made it difficult for them to hold a job, live in an apartment or other dwelling, and interact with others. There are some good programs out there to help them. I believe Philadelphia has one such program. Getting to the root casue of illegal immigration is a priorty and the least costly. A majority of illegals are simply coming here for a better life, just like all other mass immigration movements that this country has experienced. If we can solve the root cause, then we can reduce the amount of illegal immigration and only have to deal with the nefarious reasons for illegal immigration such as gun running, drug running, human trafficking, and so forth. But these crimes use illegal immigration to achieve their criminal goals, not the other way around. Investments for climate change has been part of the budget since the Jimmy Carter era. It has been in Reagan's Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr, and Obama. It is not going away and the research is not going to stop. Only an idiot would think that. The IRS will get more money, but I am thinking the increase will go to the IT area and not enforcement or support services. The goal would be to automate the basic funcitons of the IRS tax collecting while place more burden on businesses to collect the tax. This in turn will allow more tax cheats to be done with no one looking. Unfortunately, this is how the GOP thinks and none of them have a clue about accounting, taxation, or anything else. Finally, tax reform is coming, but it will not be a flat tax or a NRST, aka the "Fair Tax." However, what may happen is a hybrid with some inocmes eliminated and a sales tax based on the AGI. This is how Canada taxation is done BTW. What I prefer is a flatter progressive tax with the elimination of itemized deducitons and a reducitn of the credits for personal taxation. On the corportate side, a reduction of the top marginal tax rate from 35% to 25% would be acceptable if IRC 969 and other modifications on corporate taxation is done so that it is al little simplier. All corporate taxes would be done on a accrual method of accounting rather than have the hodgepodge of cash basis and accrual method for the smaller businesses. Eliminate the REIT's and REMIC's in the corporate tax structure.
"fair share" is a term used to state that no singular group will have an absolute tax advantage over another group. In tax policies and tax systems, there are always winners and losers of who pays more or less. Whether the system is progressive, regressive, ad volurum, or other method, the idea is that no singular group will have an absolute advantage over the other.
The point is that it has always been there and people generally make good faith effoerts to try to comply with the law. But the UBS scandal showed that their is an ever increasing presence of the number of people who will willingly and intentionally avoid taxation at all costs, both here and abroad. This is done with federal taxation rates the second lowest in the OEDC and some think that is still too high. Go figure.
