George Rebane

Should the Democrats win in 2020, the country will suffer a spate of confiscatory tax increases on virtually every aspect of our economic activities.  One of their recent additions to taking your earnings and belongings is the Millionaires Surtax sponsored by Sen Van Hollen and Rep Beyer of Maryland.  This would levy an additional 10% tax on all earnings above $1M for individuals and $2M for married couples.  The envy-driven of the land would approve with the snort that ‘what does anyone need with so much annual income?’

What the great unwashed miss is that such a tax on income hits a wide swath of middle-class earners when they have a rare or once-in-a-lifetime income event that they have been planning and working hard for over perhaps most of their lives.  Families that have risked, built, and worked a small business or saved and lived long in an appreciated home or investment real estate that they then finally sell to establish their retirement nest egg; it is these folks who will be hit hard when they receive their income spike in any one given year.  It is that nest egg which they have planned to prudently invest to provide for their not-so-spectacular subsequent annual income stream that no longer comes close to qualifying for such a ‘millionaires surtax’.  But during that payoff year, the federal government swoops in and treats them as if that windfall represents their regular income stream.

And that is just a bit of what our socialists on steroids will do. “Democrats these days are also proposing to raise the regular income-tax rate, the corporate-tax rate, the capital-gains-tax rate, the dividend-tax rate, the death-tax and payroll-tax rates, while creating a new wealth tax, a new financial-transactions tax, a new carbon tax and a new pharmaceutical tax, even as they would repeal 100% business expensing and the 20% income exclusion for so-called pass-through firms.”  And this is just the beginning, since we haven’t mentioned new taxes on already taxed assets.  Asset taxes on what you already own are meant to take down your private property to a value level that the government thinks is the most that people should own.  Think about that. (more here)

Van Hollen, Beyer, et al, and the phalanx of Democrat presidential candidates all parrot the eternal etude to envy – “fair share”.  Their message continues that it has been the country’s wealth-producers who have caused the poor to be poor, and through their “greed” – in earning what they earn, and having what they have – are denying them “a fair shot to succeed”.  Here in their own words, “The new revenues would finance investments needed to build a more dynamic economy where everyone has a fair shot to succeed, instead of a dynastic economy based on existing wealth. And it’s supported by patriotic millionaires who agree they should do more to give others a better chance to achieve similar success.”  From Lenin’s mouth to God’s ear.