The root of all evil is not the love of money. The root of all evil is the willingness to lie and call it the truth. Representative Ryan of Wisconsin is calling his tax plan fair, but here are the highpoints:
- Provides individual income tax payers a choice of how to pay their taxes – through existing law, or through a highly simplified code that fits on a postcard with just two rates and virtually no special tax deductions, credits, or exclusions (except the health care tax credit).
- Simplifies tax rates to 10 percent on income up to $100,000 for joint filers, and $50,000 for single filers; and 25 percent on taxable income above these amounts. Also includes a generous standard deduction and personal exemption (totaling $39,000 for a family of four).
- Eliminates the alternative minimum tax [AMT].
- Promotes saving by eliminating taxes on interest, capital gains, and dividends; also eliminates the death tax.
- Replaces the corporate income tax – currently the second highest in the industrialized world – with a border-adjustable business consumption tax of 8.5 percent. This new rate is roughly half that of the rest of the industrialized world.
Note that there are no taxes on interest, capital gains, dividends or estates. He calls it the “death tax” to make it sound gruesome, but what is clear is that those people who earn income on investment and not labor would pay no tax. The people who make the most money on investment are rich already, and this tax plan would not tax them. The entire tax burden would be shifted down to those who earn income by labor. So the guy working as a greeter at Walmart would pay more tax than a billionaire.
Rep. Ryan is lying. He is an evil man.