Kevin Drum: Is the GOP Getting Ready to Club the Baby Rich to Benefit the Uber-Rich?
This sounds just like something the Kochs & Adelson would try to leverage with all their good will from their massive campaign donations to the Tea Party wing of Congress.
I’ll make several observations here. First, it’s crazy. Under this plan, when you crossed the magic threshold from $399,000 to $401,000, you’d suddenly owe about $30,000 in extra taxes. You really would have an incentive not to make more money if you were near that cutoff point. The dumb urban legend would become fact.
Second, it’s a gift for the super rich at the expense of the merely ordinarily rich. It would have a big effect on someone making $400,000, but only a tiny effect on someone making, say, $10 million a year, since their effective tax rate would stay at 35%, instead of going up to 39.6% for the vast bulk of their earned income. This implies that Republicans are willing to throw the ordinarily rich under the bus in order to save the super rich.
Today’s Crazy Idea: Let’s Get Rid of Tax Brackets for the Rich!