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Local News & Opinion
Ref. : Local Newsbriefs Travel
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Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable Health & Environment
06.29 Thinking about Climate 06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN 06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare 06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All 06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate 06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex 06.22 Thinking about Recoveries 06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo 06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform 06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers 06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care 06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations Media Watching
06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform 06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage 06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right 06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess US Politics, Policy & Culture
06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy 06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity 06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail 06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission? 06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership 06.25 America's "Bases of Empire" 06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town 06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins 06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program 06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black 06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix 06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran? 06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program? 06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory 06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed High Crimes?
07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement" 07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure 06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq 06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release 06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War 06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future 06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record 06.14 Fear Rules Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America 06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control 06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney International
07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean 06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New 06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise' 06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil 06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?” 06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran 06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections 06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters 06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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FISCAL ANALYSIS:The Spurious, Curious Case for Low Taxes on Capital GainsIt’s nonsense to claim that buyers of stocks deserve a tax break when they sell their shares at a profit. A tax break? For making money in the market?
These are heady times for backers of low taxes on capital gains. Presidents Clinton and Bush both cut the capital gains rate, bringing the current levy on long-term gains down to 15%. That’s the lowest in more than 70 years, “gloriously low” in the words of economist Ben Stein, and it means that profits on stock market transactions are now taxed at a lower rate than the wages of average Americans.There’s no good reason for this preferential treatment, and powerful reasons to end it. Leading the list is the simple fact that stock market “investors” are almost never real investors in the first place.
A potent blend of myth, propaganda and misimpressions. Let’s look instead at some truths. It’s routine on Wall Street these days for trading volume to run in the billions of shares. On any given day, only a tiny fraction of those billions has any valid claim to growing jobs or businesses or the economy. On many days not a single share qualifies as a bona fide investment. Almost all the time, all that’s happening is money changing hands as shares move from sellers to buyers. Not a cent goes to the companies whose shares are traded. No jobs are created (except in the financial community, which is not the point here). No businesses are expanded. Investments are really being made not in the economy but in personal portfolios.
The only genuine stock market "investments" are those in initial public offerings (IPOs) and secondary offerings. In those cases alone does the money move on to do the work it’s purported to do.
The only genuine stock market investments are those in initial public offerings (IPOs) and secondary offerings. In those cases alone does the money move on to do the work it’s purported to do. All the rest is aftermarket noise as the players place their bets at the tables down on Wall Street.Securities markets clearly play an energizing role in the American economy. All the same it’s nonsense to claim that buyers of stocks deserve a tax break when they sell their shares at a profit. A tax break? For making money in the market? Now for more reasons why this is poor policy.
Income is income and should be taxed at the same rates no matter where it comes from; what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
There’s a fairness issue that flows from taxing one kind of income differently from another. Income is income and should be taxed at the same rates no matter where it comes from; what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.There’s the issue of income inequality, which has soared in America lately. According to the David Cay Johnston book Perfectly Legal, the top one percent of taxpayers controls about half the nation’s financial assets. Two-thirds of the income of the 400 highest-income Americans comes from long-term capital gains. Undeniably, the benefits of tax breaks for capital gains flow overwhelmingly to the already-wealthy; undeniably, preferential rates on capital gains exacerbate income inequality. Finally there’s a tax equity issue which our forebears even considered a moral issue. In 1924 Congress first differentiated between earned income (wages and salaries) and unearned income (e.g., capital gains and dividends), and taxed the unearned income at higher rates. It was deemed the right thing to do; old-timers would have shuddered at the notion of taxing wages at higher rates than capital gains. Those were the days. Now it’s 2007.
Under the trumped-up cover of spurring economic growth, average American workers have to pay higher taxes on their wages than if they made the same amount of money in the stock market.
Under the trumped-up cover of spurring economic growth, average American workers have to pay higher taxes on their wages than if they made the same amount of money in the stock market. They’re getting stiffed by carrying a heavier relative tax burden, getting fewer services or some of both.The latest capital gains tax cut is set to expire in 2010, and the new Democratic Congress has indicated that it has no plans to visit the issue until after the 2008 elections. This gives them plenty of time to look beyond the propaganda, and to consider taxing capital gains at least as much as earned income. A political pipedream? It was the rule not long ago: from 1988 to 1992, long-term realized gains were essentially taxed at the same rate as other income. Then the K Street apostles went forth and preached, and the spurious, curious case became gospel. Copyright 2007 Gerald E. Scorse. The author holds an M.B.A. from Baruch College. His House testimony on capital gains tax reporting helped lead to a reform bill now before Congress.
SOURCES:
Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on March 16, 2007. |
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