(snip)"In the early years of the Great Depression, the U.S. government spent extravagantly without anyone paying the bill - just like today. Naturally, this situation could not last forever then, and it will not last forever now. Someone will have to pay the piper, and it won't be the bottom 50 percent of the population.
With the Bush tax cuts expiring this year, income taxes will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent for the top bracket. Though less likely, the expiration also threatens to raise capital gains taxes to 20 percent, with increased dividend taxes following suit. Next there are the new health care bill taxes, which will require an additional 16,000 IRS agents to enforce. Further, cap-and-trade won't make life any easier.
On the horizon, the outlook is even darker with the proposition of value-added taxes (VAT). VAT works like a backdoor sales tax. Essentially, every time a producer of goods purchases raw materials, he must pay a percentage tax. When the producer sells his goods to a wholesaler, the wholesaler pays another percentage.
It sounds bad already, but here's the worst part. Each company down the supply chain gets a tax discount based on the next company's tax payment. Through this method, every firm in the chain has an incentive to make sure that the next one pays the full amount. If they don't, then your company is left holding the bag.
In other words, the VAT makes every businessman an agent of the IRS. In the end, the higher cost of goods is passed down to consumers. However, unlike sales taxes, consumers will never see the bill directly on their receipts. This makes VAT far more politically efficient and insidious.
At this point, high taxes are the only way out of the long-term debt crisis - unless the Federal Reserve wants to see double-digit inflation. Mild Clinton-era taxes expected by most won't solve the problem. A 4 percent income tax hike is not going to repay trillions of dollars in debt. Betting on the bull market isn't a good plan either. America would need decades of unprecedented growth to escape unharmed. The U.S. needs more than a bull market - it needs a miracle.
If taxes are hiked to the stratosphere, a market recovery will do little for the wealthy. The fruits of a bull market will be difficult to enjoy with exorbitant taxes. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and be taxed on 80 percent of it? Even if market conditions become more favorable, the tax environment will drastically change soon."(snip)
from
US Senate Climate Bill To be Unveiled April 26th
(snip)"Kerry, Lieberman and Graham have been working for months on a global warming compromise significantly different from a measure passed last year by the House of Representatives and a bill approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. It also takes many elements from those bills.
Like the House-passed bill and Obama administration policy, it would set a target of 17 percent reductions in smokestack emissions of carbon dioxide by 2020, from 2005 levels.
Point Carbon, an energy markets consulting service, estimated the anticipated Senate bill would result in U.S. gasoline prices rising an average of 27 cents a gallon from 2013 to 2020. The bill is expected to contain a fee on motor fuels."(snip)
As pointed out in both snippets, raising taxes that people 'don't see' is becoming far more expedient than raising taxes that people can see directly.



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