Republicans have quietly imposed a new tax on churches, synagogues and other nonprofits, a little-noticed and surprising change that could cost some groups tens of thousands of dollars.
Their recent tax-code rewrite requires churches, hospitals, colleges, orchestras and other historically tax-exempt organizations to begin paying a 21 percent tax on some types of fringe benefits they provide their employees.
That could force thousands of groups that have long had little contact with the IRS to suddenly begin filing returns and paying taxes for the first time.
Many organizations are stunned to learn of the tax — part of a broader Republican effort to strip the code of tax breaks for employee benefits like parking and meals — and say it will be a significant financial and administrative burden.
It also means political peril for lawmakers, many of whom were surely unaware of the provision when they approved the tax plan.
Tough to pick which one is the bigger lie:
“Tax cuts pay for themselves.”
“Conservatives believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility.”
“Republicans are the party of law and order.”
“Conservatives judges believe in judicial restraint.”
Debt at the level the U.S. is currently piling up could have serious consequences, the budget office warns. The high level of red ink increases the likelihood of a fiscal crisis, threatens to reduce the income of average Americans and gives lawmakers limited options to deal with big events that require a government response, such as another deep recession.
Rising debt also threatens to weaken the global power of the United States as it increasingly depends on foreign investors to lend money to the Treasury, the report noted.
What makes the rapidly increasing debt particularly striking is that it’s happening at a time when the U.S. is at peace and the economy is booming. The previous high point for the debt came when the nation was deep in the red from the effort to win the world war and the public works projects implemented in response to the Depression.
More recently, the U.S. plunged back into a high debt to combat the Great Recession, when Congress passed major spending increases to pull the nation out of it. But Washington not only failed to wipe out the red ink when the economy rebounded, after a few years of progress in President Barack Obama’s second term, the government under Trump has reversed course, moving toward even higher debt levels.
Fiscal ship won’t right itself, folks, and the fix won’t be to repeal those tax cuts because that would crush our amazing GDP and job growth, right? So sad you had to pay that FICA tax your entire life to end up with little to show for it, but tough times call for tough decisions and those billionaires weren’t going to accumulate more wealth and donate more $$ to Republicans on their own.
No, I don’t think so. Or at least, not to this extent. I would have no trouble voting for Eisenhower-era Republicans (mostly). Back in the 80’s they started the whole cut taxes, raise defense spending thing (and welfare queens were like the scourge of the country, those damnable single moms just ruinin’ everything) but to be fair Reagan worked with a Democratic congress and they did during various points in his administration raise taxes after the deficit started exploding (but it’s continued to grow at various rates ever since.)
The Heritage Foundation in the early 00’s began laying the ground work for ‘dynamic scoring’ and ‘tax cuts pay for themselves’ (I’ve linked their ‘analysis’ of the Bush tax cuts several times where they hilariously state the tax cuts would pay for themselves because of economic growth within three years, despite the CBO plainly showing otherwise. No surprise, the CBO was right.)
Although their ‘slide’ began in '64, Palin was the precursor, and 2010 is when they became what they are now IMO.
While Newt is certainly a terrible human being, the GOP in the 90’s did at least know how to govern effectively. They came into power, and implemented almost everything they said they would, I think only missing the term limits part.
Now, this also included the start of some really ugly partisanship with the personal demonization of Clinton, and probably started the ball rolling towards the entirely dysfunctional mess that the modern GOP is. But still, there is a stark contrast between what the GOP was able to accomplish in terms of just straight up making the government actually work when Gingrich was in charge of the house, compared to the absolute clusterfuck it is now under Ryan’s leadership.
If you don’t get the data you want, just make it up.
“As the economy gears up, more people working, better jobs and careers, those revenues come rolling in and the deficit, which was one of the other criticisms, is coming down,” Kudlow told host Maria Bartiromo. “It’s coming down rapidly. Growth solves a lot of problems.”
So I have seen a draft for the 2018 1040 tax return. It has massive changes in format. I think you can find pages 1-2 thru googling. There are now schedules 1-6 which (aside from all the alphabet schedules) now feed into the first two pages.
The corporations and wealthy still get richer though, right? Wouldn’t want anything to get in the way of that. And the uppity liberal middle class still loses their cuts in 9 years I hope. Gotta keep the job creators happy after all, and keep the worker bees working ever harder for less.
The top 1% will reap $111 billion in additional income this year alone due to the combined effects of the tax cuts enacted since 2000. Those tax cuts to date account for $5.7 trillion of the national debt. The tax cuts plus the disastrous war decisions since 2001 account for 2/3rds of the entire national debt.
