The socialism vs. the taxes is true because Obama made the comment to spread the wealth around not me not met. Shooting the messenger again.

3% is not the crux of this issue. We wrote all about the payroll tax, which many are ignoring. If you can’t see the truth and you blame me then please, like many others, don’t call yourself a Republican your a RINO. Re-register with the rest of the hypocrites who are calling themselves members of the GOP and vote for an extreme Liberal.

You said an extra 3% may help the troops out as one criteria but I don’t see how someone that voted multiple times against funding the troops will help with that.

I suppose I’m wrong about that too. Yes, Barack Hussein Obama is dangerous and his running mate confirms it. The Wall Street Journal backs me up, I’ll go with that endorsement anytime.

Nevertheless, I am not so blinded by partisanship that I believe that a return to the Reagan tax rate is Socialism and it certainly is not going to put me and my family co-business owners out of business. We watch EBIT and pay attention to our margins, not tax rates. That isn’t to say I am not concerned about taxes, but a 3% increase is not going to make me start laying off — the delta for me (at just south of $330K net), including the increase in SET, is about the same as what I pay my 19-year-old daughter for two weeks of summer employment doing my word processing. That’s not going to drive my business decisions. And if that small amount outfits a soldier in body armor during his tour in Iraq or it comes back to my city as a highway subsidy, then I figure I am getting a pretty good deal and I don’t consider it welfare.

Crunch the numbers, and the bottom line is not as dire as you predict.

You clearly have multiple issues with Obama, and that’s fine. You’re entitled. Your allusion to Ayres says it all.

The key question, which you are ignoring and anyone defending Obama”, the answer not the question, –. “Spreading the wealth around.” That is the Socialism/Marxism portion of the equation. Obama defenders are shooting the questioner and allowing the person answering the question, while running for President, to give his views.

What about the payroll tax portion of the Obama tax plan? Raising the cap on Social Security would further cost business owners and pay raises would not be forth coming because the additional cost of SS tax would hurt the business.

What about unknown costs out of the control of a business? Let me give you a current and real example of my small business.

A portion of my business is to restore antique trunks. I shipped one yesterday to Ventura CA. This was a 1/2 trunk compared to a full trunk that I shipped a couple of weeks ago. I use UPS. The first trunk weighed twice as much as the second trunk also shipped to CA. The first trunk cost $78.00 to ship. The second, smaller trunk cost $97.00 to ship. Quite a difference and I asked them to double check the calculation. My costs to ship went up and nobody told me.

How do I recover those costs while have the government is also taxing my gross receipts further and adding to my burden of higher payroll tax? Who owns the business, me or Obama? What does Obama know about running a business? NOTHING! He only knows what his entire background tells him, that businesses and wealthy people by his tepid definition are evil and must support people who don’t even pay taxes.

Now we have a problem. How do I grow my business? Is growing the business worth the effort, the sweat, wearing all the hats when the government wants to control my business because they think it’s “fair”. It’s redistribution of wealth but even more it’s redistribution of my gross income, before wages, before health insurance, before all cost necessary to operate a business.

Poor planning and rising costs drive business out of business. Barack Obama has absolutely no right to raise my taxes because he has no education or knowledge of economics and real world business. Like California, he will drive business out of the country because some people can find tax incentives elsewhere and higher other people.

Americans will lose jobs, businesses will close, inflation will rise, consumer costs will rise and they will continue to blame GWB or anyone else except themselves. It’s Joe the Plumbers fault for Obama telling him his Marxist intentions. Will Bill Ayers be the next Secretary of Commerce?

Taking money from individuals and businesses and writing checks to people who don’t pay taxes is welfare and is Socialism. Clinton had welfare reform shoved down his throat and America and people were better off for it. Obama wishes to return to welfare but exponentially. Indeed!

The starting point — and something I think that Joe and all the riled-up supporters at the rallies don’t understand or want to ignore — is that progressive taxation is redistribution. And you can agree with it or disagree with it, but you have accept as a fact that it has been our nation’s tax policy for 95 years. McCain and Palin have been out on the campaign trail promoting the idea that Obama’s economic plan will “spread the wealth” and this “sounds like socialism.” They are being very disingenuous, because already this country uses tax policy to further social ends, and McCain’s plan is no different in that respect. Their supporters have their undies in a twist because of the not-so-subtle intimation that Obama willl engage in social engineering by taxing some people (the highest earners in our society) and giving tax credits to others (the lowest earners). But that is precisely how the tax structure already works, and McCain’s plan is no different. Some filers have zero liability (and IRS data shows it is closer to 32% than 40%) because the EITC and CTC more than zero them out and the Treasury sends them checks. And I suspect that Joe the Plumber, as a single father, wage earner, filing as head of household with a child under age 14, has been the beneficiary of the very largesse he thinks “sounds like socialism” — he has been on the receiving end of the tax credits. McCain proposes nothing less. He plans to continue the CTC; that works a redistribution from childless taxpayers (especially seniors) to taxpayers with young children, and with the phase out it redistributes from families with higher incomes to families in the lower range; McCain proposes to raise the dependency exemption for families with children; that, too, results in a shift in the effective rate, and discriminates against singles and couples without dependents. Cutting the rate on cap gains and allowing a larger offset of cap losses also favors some taxpayers over others. So I fail to see how Obama is a socialist and McCain is not.

BTW, for your modeling, Obama is defining small business in accord with the SBA’s criteria; McCain assumes that any filer with a Schedule C, E or F is a small business (a definition I quibble with, as it counts hobby income as a small business but ignores that many actuallY businesses report on K-1s).

It’s not a simple math lesson. Taxes are complicated but taxing small business especially, who work on tight margins with little financial backup, need to reinvest portions of their income to grow. Amazon.com and Jeff Bezo is a perfect example to study how a business grows through reinvestment. People have complained to Bezo for years because he doesn’t show a profit because he had constantly reinvested to grow. Amazon wasn’t always big.

You can saddle a business with lines of credit and too much leverage or you can pour positive cash flow back into the business and grow it if your business model is successful.

Spreading the wealth and Marxism go hand in hand. The average individual looks at $250K and says WOW, I don’t make that. He’s rich! No, the money for an individual operating a small business isn’t just the owners but must be spread over operating costs and taxes are a part that effects what money is available for operations, new equipment, inventory and in the end little is left especially in the early years.

Typical of politicians and especially Obama’s extreme liberal record he isn’t looking at the particulars of operating a business. They blame Wall Street on the one hand and want to tax small business on the other. Obama’s numbers are wrong on what constitutes a small business. Look at the Small Business Administration standards and study their information on what really constitutes a small business by industry. The $250K goes out the window, it’s not black and white.

I hope this helps, and I’ll attempt to provide more as the week goes on. Thanks.

I’m wondering if, since you are a CPA, you could perhaps show us, through a model such as the one developed by the Tax Policy Center, the real tax impact that Joe the Plumber and other entrepreneurs (such as myself) would experience. The TPC’s modeling on Joe’s hypothetical $280,000 AGI shows less than a $650 incremental tax bill. Given that economic decisions are made at the margin, I cannot imagine that Joe would lay off employees who bring in far more revenues for that small increase. If $650 would be the tipping pint, then it seems that Joe has an operating margin problem, not a tax problem.