Tax cuts

Wednesday
September
22
2010


San Mateo Daily Journal


}

  Home
  Local News
  State / National / World
  Sports
  Opinion / Letters
  Business
  Arts / Entertainment



Follow us on Twitter!




Tax cuts
September 22, 2010,
Letter
Editor,       
The cuts enacted by President Bush are set to expire at the end of this year. Republicans, led by House Minority Leader John Boehner, have called for extending the $700 billion in tax breaks for the rich. There are two crucial issues which are not being discussed, one of which is how much thoes tax cuts costs us. Basically, all the income taxes that everyone in America paid in January and February of this year only went to cover interest on the money borrowed for the Bush tax cuts over the last decade. Just interest on those tax cuts.       


The second issue not being discussed is that this top tax rate, the two President Obama wants to have go back to the Clinton-era level, they cut in at a quarter-million dollars and about $400,000 of taxable income. In fact, we have a large number of people in this country now who are making multimillion-dollar annual incomes, and we are not talking about a higher tax rate on them. We are actually starting at a very low level.      


The highest-paid workers in the history of the world, hedge fund managers, at least 25 of whom made a billion dollars last year, pay a current tax rate of zero, but the news media keeps saying 15 percent. They pay the 15 percent, when they cash out, which could be decades from now. None of that is on the table.





Ted Rudow III,MA


Menlo Park