Here is another example of what the Republicans would prefer – allow a certain group to make as much money as possible, while making all provisions for those people to game the system and get even more. Such is the story of Facebook and their 2012 taxes.
According to Citizens For Tax Justice, Facebook made $1 billion in profits in 2012, paid zero in taxes and received a $429 million tax refund.
Republicans must be happy!
Facebook is reporting a $429 million net tax refund from the federal and state treasuries. And it’s not because they weren’t profitable. Indeed, Mark Zuckerburg’s little company earned nearly $1.1 billion in profits.
Want to make Republicans even more happy? Take grandma’s social security and send it to Mark Zuckerburg. They wouldn’t be able to contain themselves!
Walter Slonopas, 52, resigned as a maintenance worker at Contech Casting LLC in Clarksville after his W-2 tax form was stamped with the number 666.
The Bible calls 666 the “number of the beast,” and it’s often used as a symbol of the devil. Slonopas said that after getting the W-2, he could either go to work or go to hell.
“If you accept that number, you sell your soul to the devil,” he said.
Wow. The Dow is approaching 14000 for the first time since 2007. This, in spite of the fact that taxes on the top 1% went up for the first time in over a decade.
Seems Republicans were wrong on this too.
Last week the broad Standard & Poor’s 500 index closed above 1,500 for the first time in five years. This week the Dow Jones industrial average has been flirting with 14,000, a level it hasn’t seen since October 2007.
In early trading Tuesday, the Dow added 22 points, or 0.2%, to 13,905.
Stocks are a bit pricey relative to their earnings, but are nowhere near the overheated levels they’ve seen before, said Robert Shiller, a famed Yale University economist who identified the stock market and housing bubbles of the last decade.
Shiller, who may be best known for a widely reported index tracking U.S. house prices bearing his name, also created an index to track whether stocks were cheap or overpriced.
His CAPE index — which stands for cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio — factors in 10 years’ worth of earnings. He has collected data stretching back to 1871.
In a statement released by the White House, Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer says President Obama would veto John Boehner’s “Plan B” proposal to extend Bush tax cuts for everyone making up to $1 million:
This approach does not meet the test of balance, and the President would veto the legislation in the unlikely event of its passage.
The president’s position has been that middle-class tax cuts on income up to $250,000 should be extended, although on Monday he offered a concession to Republicans, saying he would accept extending tax cuts on the first $400,000 of income. Republicans rejected that offer, however, responding with Boehner’s “Plan B” to set the threshold at $1 million.
Boehner first offered the $1 million proposal on Friday, so in countering with $400,000, the White House appeared to be saying that $1 million was too high a threshold, but that it was willing to negotiate on a threshold in order to get a deal on the fiscal cliff. But with Republicans rejecting that offer (which also included Social Security cuts), and the White House now rejecting “Plan B” the publicly-stated positions are far apart.
President Obama is crushing John Boehner in the fiscal cliff battle—at least in the polls.
An ABC/Washington Post survey out this morning finds 49 percent of those questioned approving of Obama’s handling of the budget negotiations, compared with 42 percent who disapprove.
Now look at the House speaker’s numbers: Some 49 percent disapprove of his performance, with only 25 percent giving a thumbs up.
So Obama is winning the public relations battle over the effort to avert automatic tax hikes and spending cuts by a whopping 2-1 margin.
Even among Republicans, according to the poll, Boehner barely breaks even: 39 percent approval, 37 percent disapproval.
Separately, a Bloomberg poll says Americans believe by a 2-to-1 majority that the election results were an endorsement of Obama’s promise to protest Medicare and Social Security benefits–and nearly half the Republicans surveyed say he has a mandate to raise taxes on the wealthy.
President Obama urges Congress to extend the middle class income tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small businesses without delay, making it clear that a balanced approach to deficit reduction means that Republicans in Congress must agree to ask the wealthiest Americans to pay higher tax rates.
Republicans have decided to release their list of demands.
After the president’s plan at a balanced approach to avoid the fiscal cliff was laughed at by Republican House Leader John Boehner, Americans waited with baited breath in anticipation of what Republicans would propose. Well the wait is over and to no one’s surprise, Republicans are still protecting the rich and asking the poor and middle class to pay more.
2. Spending cuts on services benefiting the middle class to the tune of $600 billion
3. More spending cuts on what is being called “Health Services” to the tune of another $600 billion
4. Revenues from “tax reform” equaling $800 billion over 10 years.
In total, Republicans are looking to bring in $2.2 trillion dollars by cutting services that benefit the needy, while at the same time, protecting the greedy. After releasing their offer, House Speaker Boehner told the press that the plan was “credible.” He said,“what we are putting forward is a credible plan that deserves serious consideration by the White House.” He also requested that the White House respond as soon as possible.
The president’s plan in comparison looked to raise $1.6 trillion in new taxes, while letting the tax rate for those making more than $250,000 go back to what it was under the Clinton administration. It called for tax reforms and closing loopholes and cuts $400 billion in services.
When I was growing up, I had a good friend named Cliff. He was smart and funny, OK, corny, and a bit nerdy, but he had a good heart and I’m sure he’s doing wonderful things with his life.
Meanwhile, his name is being dragged through the mud.
This Fiscal Cliff business is terrible for anyone named Cliff and it’s even worse that it’s hogging the headlines around the holidays with no end in sight. The media is absolutely breathless at the thought that on January 1…very little will happen. Yes, tax rates will go up and federal spending will go down, but it will take a few weeks or months for the real effect to take hold. Of course, the real impact will be on the stock market and on business spending because if there’s no deal then they’ll have to make serious decisions that could tilt us back into recession.
In the meantime, the political posturing is so bad a team of chiropractors is on 24-hour call on Pennsylvania Avenue. Maybe that stretch that has all of the homeless people sleeping under scaffolding. The president and John Boehner could do worse than to meet there just to remind themselves of what effects their actions have on the country.
What’s obvious is that the Republican Party has learned very little from last month’s election. It’s clear that the public will blame the GOP if there is no deal because, unlike the far right, most Americans have a sense of fairness that says that wealthy people need to pay more and some social programs need to be cut because that’s what we do when we have a problem in this country. We compromise. We talk to each other. We each contribute what we can to solve the issue.
The Republican establishment doesn’t understand this and it’s in President Obama’s best interest to remind people daily that the failure will fall squarely on one political party. Grover Norquist’s notorious no-tax pledge has always been a bad idea, and its effects on our system have resulted in a government that teeters between not being able to pay its bills and doing just enough with what it has to mess things up. Ronald Reagan famously said that government is the problem, then set us on a fiscal course that ensured a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Elections have consequences and fortunately, this year’s results shifted the debate away from obstructionism and towards practical solutions. Unfortunately, political change take time. The Democrats didn’t realize how much they had lost the message after 1984 and it took them at least 8 years to regroup and find the Clintonian third way. The Supreme Court robbed the country of a slow recovery from the excesses of the Gingrich revolution in 2000, and the hardened right was able to solidify its gains in 2010.
It could take until 2016 or even 2018 for the left to realize what this past election promised. Marriage equality, a path to citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants, a fairer tax code, universal health care and biting financial regulation will get pushed this term in the Congress, but real progress will be slow. The last clawing cuts of the Republican conservatives will draw blood for a while longer, to the detriment of society at large. Perhaps the next president, who will be a Democrat, can push these things over the finish line. History will remember and celebrate Barack Obama for setting the table.
So as another week dawns and we wonder what new twists the political debate will take, keep in mind that we are seeing the end of an era. It was an era of excess and stubbornness, with some necessary reforms, but ultimately as much a failed experiment of the right as the end of the 1970s was for the left. The fiscal cliff is but a symptom. The GOP will lose more than they gain because they have to if we are to move forward. My hope is with the future.
Alan Hicks divides long days between the insurance business he started in the late 1970s and the barbecue restaurant he opened with his sons three years ago. He earned more than $250,000 last year and said taxes took more than 40 percent. What’s worse, in his view, is that others — the wealthy, hiding in loopholes; the poor, living on government benefits — are not paying their fair share.
“It feels like the harder we work, the more they take from us,” said Mr. Hicks, 55, as he waited for a meat truck one recent afternoon. “And it seems like there’s an awful lot of people in the United States who don’t pay any taxes.”
These are common sentiments in the eastern suburbs of St. Louis, a region of fading factory towns fringed by new subdivisions. Here, as across the country, people like Mr. Hicks are pained by the conviction that they are paying ever more to finance the expansion of government.
But in fact, most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.
Households earning more than $200,000 benefited from the largest percentage declines in total taxation as a share of income. Middle-income households benefited, too. More than 85 percent of households with earnings above $25,000 paid less in total taxes than comparable households in 1980.
Two years ago, Republicans held the middle class American people hostage and demanded that the rich get a continuation of the Bush tax cuts. Those tax cuts were set to expire the last day of December 2010, but Republicans told the President that if the rich couldn’t get more tax cuts, then the middle class would suffer. To avoid more suffering by the middle class, the President went along with the Republicans’ demands.
And here we are again, except this time, the American people voted for President Obama knowing that he was going to end those tax cuts for the rich. That was what he campaigned on for almost two years and the American people approved. But Republicans are still turning a deaf ear to what the people want and again, two years later, Republicans are trying to use middle class America as a bargaining chip to get more tax cuts for the rich.
Their playbook worked in 2010, but something seems different this time around as cracks are developing within the Republican ranks. Republicans like Rep. Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.) signed the Grover Norquist pledge not to raise taxes, but he recently released a statement saying that he “doesn’t plan to [re-sign] it for the 19th Congressional District.” And another New York Republican Representative Peter King, has decided to leave Grover’s pledge, calling it a two-year deal.
Republican Lindsey Graham has also voiced his opinion against the pledge. “When you talk about eliminating deductions and tax credits for the few, at the expense of the many, I think over time the Republican party’s position is going to shift,” Graham said. “It needs to, quite frankly, because we are $16 trillion in debt.”
But even with these and other Republicans changing their minds on the no-tax hike pledge, the Republican House Leader John Boehner is still trying to hold the gun to the head of the middle class. Boehner recently held a press conference criticizing the President’s plan because he thinks the plan raises more revenue from taxing the rich, than from services he want wants to cut from the poor.
President Obama is hoping that there are enough Republicans willing to go against their desire to sink the middle class to protect rich people. In his recent weekly address, the President said;
So let’s begin by doing what we all agree on. Both parties say we should keep middle-class taxes low. The Senate has already passed a bill to keep income taxes from going up on middle-class families. Democrats in the House are ready to do the same thing. And if we can just get a few House Republicans on board, I’ll sign this bill as soon as Congress sends it my way.
The president’s plan would allow the tax cuts to continue for the middle class and those earning up to $250,000 a year. Those earning over $250,000 would see their rates on income above that amount go back to what those rates were under the Clinton administration. The Democratic controlled Senate has already passed this bill, but Boehner and the Republicans refuse to bring the bill to the House floor for a vote.
If Republicans and Democrats cannot agree on this issue over the next few weeks, all the Bush tax cuts would expire and automatic cuts will go into effect in January. The preferred method of course, would be working out a deal between the two parties, but that must be done with the rich and the middle class carrying the burdens of that deal, not just the middle class. And including the rich in such a deal is something Republicans are against.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking towards December 31st.
The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol was among the panelists on this week’s Fox News Sunday, where he again noted that a tax increase for the wealthy wouldn’t be the end of the world for Republicans — and that, honestly, many members of the Tea Party wouldn’t care.
“I just don’t think that the Republicans have the leverage — or that it’s worth using whatever leverage they have — to maintain rates at 35 percent instead of instead of 37 or 38,” Kristol said, “especially if you take it up to millionaires.”
There will be a deal, he said, and Republicans “will yield a bit on top rates.”
Bob Woodward quipped that “they are going to burn Bill Kristol’s Tea Party card, hearing him talk like this. You are off the reservation.”
“You know,” Kristol responded, “a lot of the Tea Party guys don’t care that much if a few millionaires pay a couple percent more in taxes, honestly.”
Picking up right where he left off before the election, President Obama continued his call for maintaining the middle class tax cut, while asking the rich to pay their fair share. He once again called on Republicans to get on board, instead of holding the middle class “hostage” in their effort to pander to the rich.
When it comes to taxes, for example, there are two pathways available.
One says, if Congress fails to act by the end of the year, then everybody’s taxes automatically go up – including the 98% of Americans who make less than $250,000 a year. Our economy can’t afford that right now. You can’t afford that right now. And nobody wants that to happen.
The other path is for Congress to pass a law right away to prevent a tax hike on the first $250,000 of anyone’s income. That means all Americans – including the wealthiest Americans – get a tax cut. And 98 percent of Americans, and 97 percent of all small business owners, won’t see their income taxes go up a single dime.
The Senate has already passed a bill like this. Democrats in the House are ready to pass one, too. All we need is for Republicans in the House to come on board.
We shouldn’t hold the middle class hostage while Congress debates tax cuts for the wealthy. Let’s begin our work by actually doing what we all agree on. Let’s keep taxes low for the middle class. And let’s get it done soon – so we can give families and businesses some good news going into the holiday season.
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