Poggemiller - Tax the Rich, Did You Expect Anything Else?
Posted by Andy on March 31st, 2006
Another Minnesota Legislative session, another attempt at raising taxes by the DFL. What else did you expect? Sen. Larry Poggemiller is the DFL charged this year with trying to raise taxes on Minnesota’s successful people.
This year’s version would establish an 8.15 percent tax rate on income above $270,000 for couples and $180,000 for single filers. Currently, the top rate is 7.85 percent. The change would cost an estimated 41,900 taxpayers an average of $1,162 next year.
Congratulations are in order to these 41,000 Minnesotans. You’re filthy rich according to the DFL. Oh, and they all hate you.
Poggemiller’s profitability tax is being leveraged by linking it to a provision that fixes a marriage penalty tax.
But 10 times as many married taxpayers — 419,300 — would benefit from the simultaneous fix of a tax code flaw that now causes them to pay more than if they were single. Their average savings would be $74. The fix would be retroactive to the 2005 tax year.
Why not fix just fix the tax penalty? Don’t the DFLers think that it is just plain wrong to penalize married couples? If they are so caring, why not just take up the issue?
“Someone has to pay for it. You can’t just say you’re for those things and not pay for it,” Poggemiller said of the need to raise upper-level income taxes.
There you go. Someone has to pay for cutting taxes. The DFL is convinced that the money is theirs, and that they are entitled to however much they want. The DFL has no leg to stand on when it comes to reducing the burden of Government and this bill by Poggemiller is just further proof that they think Government comes before all else.
They cannot reduce the amount of revenue (IE Taxes collected). If they give back to one, they have to take away from some one else. I believe that your income is your own first, and that the Government doesn’t have the right to just take it away as it sees fit.
They should have to work on the basis that they can only spend what they know is coming in. They shouldn’t be allowed to raise taxes just because they don’t have as much money as they want. Plus by raising the taxes on the tax bracket suggested, all that economic growth that has been happening in Minnesota will be strangled. You cannot siphon money out of the economy, and expect it to keep growing.
Raising taxes is simply adding a deduction line to the economy. Let the people have money, and they will spend it. Take it away, and all you get is recession.
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April 1st, 2006 at 8:58 am
This is straight off of Page 1 of the DFL playbook — class warfare. Don’t fall for the notion that the Dems are defending the “little guy” because over the past four years they have proposed raising just about every tax in order to avoid making spending cuts. In fact, they’re concern about property taxes are crocodile tears — last year they introduced bills that would have raised property tax levies by $3.3 billion each year. It’s simply an election-year gambit to gain more favor with the middle class.
April 1st, 2006 at 7:36 pm
I caught this hearing on the legislative cable channel. I recommend checking it out on the state legislature site, especially when Sen. Ortman proposes an amendment that would allow people that shoot up into a higher bracket for a single year pay at a lowr rate (near the end). These senators, the ones tweaking the tax system, had no idea whether or not Minnesota had income averaging, no idea how captial gains taxes were handled in Minnesota. They threw around comparisons to other states with no context to their tax structures. The point is, the system is so damn complex now that no one understands it, especially those tweaking it. The easy answer is tax the rich, and as DFLer Thomasini (sp) said, “I don’t feel sorry for someone making over $500,000 a year — throwing out anumber with no relevance to the discussion, but that sounded good (or bad, which was his intent). This hearing was a dismal display of what passes for governance.