Obama Tax Plan Affects Everyone

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 5:07 PM

By: Dan Mangru

“I can make a firm pledge,” Obama told a crowd in Dover, N.H. last September.

“Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

Famous last words: Not any of your taxes.

Apparently Obama and his administration believe that the American public only listen to rhetoric and read the headlines.

Just this week, I couldn’t get on the Web or pickup a newspaper without reading The New York Times headline, “House Health Plan Outlines Higher Taxes on Rich,” or some version of taxing the rich.

All of which point to Obama as Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor in the name of healthcare

While that may sound nice to the middle class, seniors, small business owners, and the poor, sometimes you have to look beyond the rhetoric and beyond the headlines.

Laced into Obama’s government healthcare bill are tax increases that no one is talking about that will actually pay for the massive healthcare expansion.

First off is the new tax on soda. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel has introduced a 10-cent per can tax on sugary sodas onto Obama’s healthcare bill. Estimates indicate that this tax could generate over $112 billion.

I wonder if anyone in the Obama administration stopped to ponder if people who make less than $200,000 a year drink soda. I wonder if they thought that a soda tax only affected the rich.

News flash to Obama and Congress: People who make less than $200,000 a year drink soda.

What’s so appalling about the soda tax is not that Obama is going to hurt millions of American families by raising their cost of living. It is that Obama is doing so without anyone realizing it.

The middle class and the poor have been duped by Obama and his $600 stimulus checks and his tax rebates (which have really been increases in welfare spending and not direct tax rebates). Obama wants to go on the PR tour and talk about how he’s putting money back in the pockets of American families.

Well, as Obama giveth, Obama taketh away.

What the middle class and the poor don’t see is that Obama is taking back that money and then some with his hidden tax hikes. For instance, Obama is taking an extra 62 cents for every pack of cigarettes that you smoke.

Insignificant you might say.

The National Taxpayers Union notes that tobacco taxes take a 50 times larger share of income from households making less than $20,000 in annual income than those earning more than $200,000 in annual income.

In addition, families making less than $30,000 a year shell out more than 50 percent of all taxes levied on cigarettes, and households earning over than $60,000, let alone those making over $200,000, pay only 14 percent.

After taking away your money by taxing sodas and cigarettes, Obama also wants to hit you where it really hurts, your energy bill.

By limiting tax breaks for domestic production of energy and a host of other energy tax hikes, Obama’s new budget is expected to raise U.S. energy bills by $105 billion over the next 10 years. All of that is without even mentioning cap and trade, which is projected to cost American families billions more.

But to repeat the Obama mantra, we’re only going to raise taxes on the rich.

Let’s take a further look at that. If Obama raises taxes on all individuals making more than $200,000 a year, will that affect working families?

According to a recent Joint Committee on Taxation analysis of President Obama’s budget proposal, almost half (47 percent) of the income that would be exposed to Obama’s tax hikes would be income produced by small business men and women who file as individuals.

If small businesses are being taxed more, they are just going to swallow it up and pay more money, and chalk it up to bad luck. As Vice President Joe Biden would say about paying more taxes, it’s the patriotic thing to do.

However, as British poet John Donne once said, “No man is an island.”

We are all interconnected. When small businesses and businesses in general see higher taxes, they respond by raising the prices of their goods and services to pay for those taxes. So when your local plumber, whose business brings in over $200,000 a year, decides to raise the rates, just thank Obama for that. When the price of getting your car fixed at your local mechanic shop goes up, just thank Obama for that. And when it comes time to send your kids to school and you can’t afford to put gas in your car, just thank Obama for that.

What the administration doesn’t understand is that when you go to buy a gallon of gas, they don’t ask you whether you earn over $200,000 a year or not. They tax you just the same as everyone else.

Taxes have a way of trickling down our economy, and when you tax one of us, you tax all of us because we are all interconnected. So when Obama speaks of just taxing the rich, remember that you just can’t tax the rich, because eventually, in some way or another, you’ll end up bearing the burden for at least some of those taxes.

Whether it is higher food costs, higher energy costs, or just a higher cost of living, in the end, everyone has to pay for tax hikes. Obama and his PR team don’t want you to know that. They just want you to collect your $600 stimulus check and be happy.

http://moneynews.newsmax.com/dan_mangru/taxes/2009/07/15/236029.html

Scare tactics, old arguments, and lots of insensitivity for the people who are paying with their lives under this pay or die health care system that you keep trying in vain to defend.

Just goes to show you, anybody will say whatever they need to get into office. I work for UPS and would have had to pay 1800-2200 dollars a year in medical coverage tax, and I make way under 250K, but that right there is almost a months pay. So because I chose to get a job with good benefits, I almost had to work a whole month for free to get free healthcare for everyone.

First the cigarette tax, tax on the poor.
Soda tax, tax on the poor.
Higher end corporate taxes, trickles down to a tax on the poor.


You know what we need is Gov't spending money according to what they have on hand, no what they "THINK" they'll have.

Pay or die? Oy, you do know you can get medical care at almost all hospitals, regardless if you can pay or not.

So I am told, but did you know that 18,000 people die in the USA every year as a result of not being able to afford health care?

Scare tactics, old arguments, and lots of insensitivity for the people who are paying with their livelihood under this tax and spend health care system that they keep trying to shove down our necks.

Trickle down economics but applied the wrong way...

I mentioned once on here that the pyrimid was upside down.

Guess none of you caught the reference.

This is a reverse economic model.

and such is bound to fall and with it all those dreams of glory.

The foundation has to be wider then the peak. You can't build the top with bricks from the foundation...

The simple answers are a flat tax, less social programs, fiscal responsibility, and line item veto.

A percentage tax is fair

Oh and either doing away with social security or making the money in the social security slush fund is used for what its supposed to be for, not whatever new social program comes up.

Even with the spend happy politicians in congress, a flat tax of 8% on everyone, with no deductions whatsoever would pull us outta the Obama record high deficit in no time. But then they'd realize that and spend more and more on useless things.

I care about the lower class(The Majority). The rich have folks they pay to speak for them. And I'm not one of them.

I am not much for politics however, reading this sparked an interest. And well this maybe off topic however, how may of you think that the economy is actually turning around? We just keep losing money and getting further into debt. Most of us barely keep up with our bills. Single americans struggle to pay for healthcare and bills and food. If we have to go to the doctor and we dont have insurance then we either pay up or go on living with the pain or illness. Or we end up in the er with a bill that we can pay and we end up with terrible credit and cant get the loans for cars or houses due to our poor credit. Its am endless vicious cycle. Taxing sodas and cigarettes might encourage us to put them down. They tend to be more of a leading cause to our health problems. Obesity, lung cancer, heart disease, etc. An average american who drinks soda at least 3 times a day are drinking the caloric intake for half a day of nutrition. And people who smoke at least a pack a day take several years off their lives. So i mean when you think about it is Obama really hindering the poor by his taxes?

excellent post

the tax increase on tobacco was an outright violation of his campaign promise not to raise taxes on those making less than 250k

so he is a liar is anyone really surprised

As silly as it may seem, there's a luxury tax on yachts, high end luxury cars, lear jets, but the rich will fork over whatever they can to have these luxuries. Same with the poor. So if they tax cigarettes and soda, it'll make people put them down? What if they start taxing food higher and taxing water outta the tap? Do we put those down too? So what's next? Taxing air? Oh wait, that's what the carbon tax is gonna be! So lets see, we have to put down smokes, soda, food, water, and air, ummm, do you see the problem now?

This is why I hate posting in the political section. People just spout of what they hear and don't think about it logically at all. Yea, just tax smokers and it'll be ok. Just tax people that like soda, it'll be okay. Just tax free air, it'll be ok. When is it not gonna be ok? You know what the answer is? When you either realize what's going on, or when they tax something you do/use. One of these days, you're all gonna wake up and be in the movie "1984" and you won't even have some place like this to cry about why you can't have this or do that. Once a freedom is gone, its gone forever.

Just tax whatever, it'll be ok, should be Why tax whatever and WHY will it be ok.

Have you noticed...

Our Government has gotton so big... We can't afford it anymore.

The only way it can survive at this point is to squeeze us...

Yet if it squeezs to much harder...

We will abolish it once again.

Because no matter which side of the right/left coin you stand...

You will get squeezed equally.