Vice President Joe Biden harshly rejected House Minority Leader John Boehner’s assertion that the hikes would harm small businesses, saying that “he has created this myth that a tax cut for millionaires is actually a tax cut for small business. There aren’t 3% of small businesses in America that would qualify for that tax cut.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi flipped the number around, saying that the planned tax increases would exempt “98% of American families and about 97% of small businesses.” …The 3% figure, which is computed from IRS data, is based on simply counting the number of returns with any pass-through business income. So, if somebody makes a little money selling products on eBay and reports that income on Schedule C of their tax return, they are counted as a small business. The fact that there are millions of people in the lower tax brackets with small amounts of business income may be interesting for some purposes, but it is irrelevant for the assessment of the economic impact of the tax hikes. The numbers are clear. According to IRS data, fully 48% of the net income of sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S corporations reported on tax returns went to households with incomes above $200,000 in 2007. That’s the number to look at, not the 3%. …A pair of papers by economists Robert Carroll, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Harvey Rosen and Mark Rider that were published in 1998 and 2000 by the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed tax return data and uncovered high responsiveness of sole proprietors’ business activity to tax rates. Their estimates imply that increasing the top rate to 40.8% from 35% (an official rate of 39.6% plus another 1.2 percentage points from the restoration of a stealth provision that phases out deductions), as in Mr. Obama’s plan, would reduce gross receipts by more than 7% for sole proprietors subject to the higher rate. These results imply a similar effect on proprietors’ investment expenditures. A paper published by R. Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University and William M. Gentry of Williams College in the American Economic Review in 2000 also found that increasing progressivity of the tax code discourages entrepreneurs from starting new businesses.
Archive for September 3rd, 2010
Obama’s Class-Warfare Tax Policy Will Hit Small Business
Posted in Class warfare, Economics, Higher Taxes, Obama, Supply-side economics, Tax Increase, Taxation, tagged Class warfare, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Higher Taxes, Obama, Small Business, Supply-side economics, Tax Increase, Taxation on September 3, 2010| 11 Comments »
Will Entitlements, Handouts, and other Government Programs Turn America into a Nation of Sheep?
Posted in Big Government, Bush, Dependency, Entitlements, Fiscal Policy, Government Spending, News Appearance, Obama, tagged Big Government, Bush, Dependency, Entitlements, Government Spending, News Appearance, Obama, stimulus on September 3, 2010| 4 Comments »
If you saw the Wall-E movie, you may remember how people morphed into helpless blobs because all their needs were being fulfilled by something called BNL. I realize I’m a quirky libertarian, but the movie made me think about how excessive government is doing something similar to people who get seduced by dependency.
This was one of the topics covered in my recent interview on Fox News with Neil Cavuto. We began by talking about America’s unfortunate drift in the direction of being a nanny state, but also covered other fiscal and economic issues.