One Trillion Dollars of Additional Taxes, And They’re Not Even Warmed Up Yet. 

Jessica Holzer over at The Hill

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) unveiled a sweeping tax overhaul on Thursday that he hailed as a fairer way to spread tax relief, but Republicans attacked the move as a blunder that could cost Democrats in the next election.

The legislation would rearrange the tax code, granting tax relief to 90 million Americans and cutting the corporate tax rate while shifting the burden onto higher earners, including managers of private equity and hedge funds. It would also permanently shield taxpayers from the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

Heh.  Tax relief, he says.

It’s true; the alternative minimum tax is a completely outdated law which should been struck from the books a long time ago.  But to give us a line about how this is to give people a break who were getting nailed by the AMT, is as disingenuous as Charlie Rangel has ever been.  Make no mistake about this; what he’s proposing is going to hit everybody in the wallet, and I mean everybody.

He’s going to tell you that this is for the “little guy”.  Alternately, he’s going to tell you it’s for the “middle class”.  Well, there’s a small problem with that; there’s a lot less rich, then there are middle class.  Thereby, the middle class ends up paying for just about everything, regardless of what kind of tax rates you put up on the so called “rich”.  So, while this is true :

To pay for the tax relief, Rangel has proposed more than $1.3 trillion in tax increases, including a 4 percent surcharge on individuals and families on income above $150,000 and $200,000, respectively. That surcharge rises to 4.6 percent on individual and family income above $200,000 and $500,000.

Here’s where the line share of the money is coming from:

It also assumes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.

Those were tax cuts that directly affected the middle class; meeting you, and I.  Losing those will cost us all real money.

It also kills off American business; you remember… your job?

Even though it would slash the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 30.5 percent, the plan would do away with some widely-used business provisions that reduce companies’ tax bills, such as the lease-in, sale-out accounting method. “Very few” corporations pay the 35 percent rate, Josten said.

Which in the end, will also affect people working on contract.  That’s right; the middle class, again.  I know I have a number of readers who work in the IT industry.  I do myself. This will basically kill off the contract business, if it ever sees the light of day.  And what about manufacturing?  Where’s that going to go?  China?  India?  Mexico?  What little we have will disappear.

And what of small business?  That’s 50% of our business might, right now, is small business.  This increase will hit them, too.  Hard.

Rangel plans to wait until next year to push his tax overhaul.

After, presumably, he figures Hillary Clinton will be in the White House.

Let me be clear about this; we’re talking about the largest single tax increase in the history of this country; it comes out to around a trillion dollars .

Go back and read that again.  Got it?  Good.

Here’s what’s really happening; Charlie Rangel is floating this as a trial balloon.  He knows damned well that this is not going to pass in the current environment.  at the same time he’s what 75.. err… 77 years old. he wants to be around to see this one go through.  He knows the only chance he’s got to get any kind of a tax increase through is if Hillary Clinton gets in the White House.  So here comes Charlie, proposing a tax increase of around a trillion dollars.  Then along comes Hillary Clinton who will propose something less than a trillion, and will say how she’s saving middle class America money and jobs. We used to call this routine, the good cop/bad cop routine. In short, Charlie Rangel is paving the way for Hillary Clinton.

In short, and in majority, then, this tax hike belongs to Bill and Hillary Clinton.  She’s putting their cards on the table; this kind of job destroying, income destroying, nation destroying tax increase is what Hillary Clinton is all about.

The frightening thing is, we’re still a year away from the election; that means she’s not even warmed up yet.