Posts Tagged ‘Taxes’
What ELSE Is Mitt Romney Hiding? (VIDEO)
Posted in 2012, 2012 campaign, 2012 Election, Mitt Romney, Tax Returns, Taxes, Video, tagged 2012, 2012 election, Election 2012, Mitt Romney, Politics News, tax returns, Taxes, Video on April 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »
What Does Romney Have To Hide?
Posted in 2012, 2012 Election, Mitt Romney, Swiss Banks, tagged 2012, Buffett Rule, Democrats, Dick Durbin, Jim Messina, Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney's Swiss bank account, Romney, Tammy Baldwin, Taxes on April 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »
The American Prospect
April 9, 2012
Senator Dick Durbin goes after the potential presidential candidate’s Swiss bank account while Obama campaign manager demands further tax return disclosures.
The Democrats are putting all their emphasis on touting the Buffett Rule ahead of a Senate vote for next week to coincide with Tax Day. The push is ostensibly an effort to twist the arm of a few of the more moderate Republicans—say the two Maine Senators or running for reelection in Democratic territory Scott Brown—under the hope that they’ll fear public backlash if they vote down the measure, a policy favored by over half of the country. However even if they peel off a few Republicans there is little hope that the bill would make any progress in the GOP-controlled House. Instead, as a conference call hosted by the Obama campaign Monday afternoon made clear, the push is an effort to focus attention on Mitt Romney’s wealth as a viability as the Republican nomination contest begins to come to a conclusion.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and Wisconsin Representative Tammy Baldwin joined Obama campaign manager Jim Messina on the call. Messina used most of his time talking with the reporters to attack Romney’s refusal to release his tax returns beyond the past two years. “Why is it ok to give John McCain 23 years and the American public only two? It doesn’t make sense, he can’t justify it, and he should release it,” Messina said, referring to the records Romney provided to McCain in 2008 while he was being vetted as a possible VP candidate.
“Romney is the beneficiary of a broken tax system and he wants to keep it that way,” Messina said, hinting at Romney’s 13.9 percent rate for his 2010 taxes. “He wants a system in which firefighters, cops, teachers and middle class Americans all pay a higher tax rate than he does. We think that’s wrong.”
SuperPAC Super Payday: How Rich Donors Could Get Billions from Taxpayers
Posted in 2012, 2012 Election, SuperPac, tagged 2012, America Crossroads, capital gains tax, Charles Koch, David Koch, Election 2012, Estate Tax, Income Tax, Karl Rove, Koch brothers, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, SuperPAC, Taxes, walmart, Walton Family on February 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Crooks and Liars
February 05, 2012 07:00 AM
By- Jon Perr
Federal Election Commission filings released this week showed that conservatives groups are amassing an ocean of cash for the 2012 presidential campaign. Thanks to the likes of the Koch brothers, the Walton clan and other of the usual suspects on the right, in 2011 conservative SuperPAC’s outraised their liberal counterparts by more than seven to one. But if they win, rich Republican donors could more than get back the millions they invested. As it turns, just one law they are trying to buy – the elimination of the estate tax – could put billions of dollars back into their families’ bank accounts. Of course, that gaping hole would have to be filled by all other American taxpayers.
As Mother Jones reported, as of December 31, 2011 conservative SuperPAC’s reaped $60 million of now-unlimited contributions, compared to just $8 million for liberal groups. That tidal wave of corporate cash and play money from the wealthy has filled the coffers of Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, Mitt Romney’s Restore the Future, Newt Gingrich’s Winning the Future and a litany of other right-wing SuperPACs. And as Amanda Terkel detailed, at a secret conclave last week, the Koch brothers pledged to raise much more to defeat President Obama:
At a private three-day retreat in California last weekend, conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch and about 250 to 300 other individuals pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections.
A source who was in the room when the pledges were made told The Huffington Post that, specifically, Charles Koch pledged $40 million and David pledged $20 million.
But that figure is chump change compared to the eye-popping return on investment the Kochs can expect if their side wins in November. Ending the estate tax, a policy endorsed by Mitt Romney and every other Republican presidential candidate, would literally be worth billions of dollars to the heirs of Charles and David Koch. As ThinkProgress explained last year:
According to a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, the Koch brothers’ heirs’ would save a combined $17.4 billion in estate taxes thanks to Romney’s plan.
Each of the Koch brothers — Charles and David — is worth about $25 billion. They are each married, so they would receive an exemption on the first $10 million that they pass down, and then theirs heirs would pay a 35 percent tax, or $8.7 billion, on the rest of their vast fortunes.
Now, this is an exceedingly rough calculation, as it’s almost certain that the Koch’s have engaged in extensive estate planning and would pay nowhere near that amount. But 35 percent is the rate on the books, and Romney’s plan to eliminate the estate tax entirely would undeniably save the Kochs a boatload of money.
Here’s why. Despite Republican mythology about family farms and businesses being lost to the so-called “death tax,” by 2009 only 0.24 percent of estates even paid the levy. And that was before the December 2010 compromise President Obama inked with Congressional Republicans extending the Bush tax cuts further slashed the estate tax. The reduced 35 percent tax is now applied only to couples with estates greater than $10 million, a change which will cost Uncle Sam roughly $15 billion a year. Now, the Tax Policy Center calculated, only 0.1 percent of estates are impacted. Only 50 family farms and small businesses will be affected, and they contribute “less than one tenth of 1 percent point of the total revenue the tax will collect.” Who pays the estate tax?
TPC estimates that 8,600 individuals dying in 2011 will leave estates large enough to require filing an estate tax return (estates with a gross value under $5 million need not file a return in 2011). After allowing for deductions and credits, an estimated 3,270 estates will owe tax. Roughly 90 percent of these taxable estates will come from the top ten percent of income earners and nearly half will come from the top one percent alone./em>
Estate tax liability will total an estimated $10.6 billion in 2011. The top ten percent of income earners will pay 98 percent of this total. The richest 1 in 1,000 will pay $5.4 billion or 51 percent of the total.
Among that richest 1 in 1,000 are the Koch brothers and the family behind Walmart, the Walton clan.
Capitalism, A Love Story: Dead Peasant Insurance (VIDEO)
Posted in Capitalism: A Love Story, Dead Peasant Insurance, Healthcare Reform, Michael Moore, Universal Health Care, tagged ABC, Capitalism: A Love Story, COLI, Corporate-Owned Life Insurance, Dead Peasant Insurance, Health Care Reform, Michael Moore, Taxes, Universal Health Care on October 5, 2009| Leave a Comment »
ABC News ‘Stunned’ To Discover Dead Peasant Insurance
Daily Kos- by Alien Abductee
Sat Oct 03, 2009 at 02:02:46 AM PDT
Michael Moore’s Capitalism, A Love Story has revealed a deep dark secret to the intrepid reporters of ABC News – so-called Dead Peasant Insurance, the practice of companies taking out secret life insurance policies on their low-level employees, with the benefits paid out to the company upon the employee’s death, even if they no longer work at the company.
(Of course, if they’d been reading dailykos, they would have learned all about it many years ago 🙂 )