There they go again. The House of Representatives passed anotherhuge tax increase. Earlier in the year they passed a big,economically harmful tax hike attached to a bill expandingveterans' benefits. This time, they married a big tax hike to abill extending the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) patch for 2009.
Congress recently passed the fiscal year 2010 budget resolution,which includes several provisions that will significantly raisetaxes and hurt economic recovery.
it s due. he was helping in this process. let s talk about the deficit trigger. this is something that is getting a lot of attention as well. this idea that you would automatically raise taxes if these really optimistic growth targets aren t met and the deficit balloons. that sounds really hard to do. yeah, and it makes me think of things they ve done in the past that have sort of taken on lives of their own. things like the doc fix without getting into the details of that and the amt patch, they create the zombie legislation where they have to periodically change things over time and you can see that idea. that s sort of the end result if the if the economy doesn t grow the way they think it does they would have to sort of, you know, undo their own work in the future. republicans don t like to raise taxes. that could be a hard sell to say oh, yeah, here s this mechanism by which we will automatically raise your taxes if things don t go the way we want.
the bill would permanently adjust the income exemption levels for the alternative minimum tax, the amt and would adjust it for inflation. that is a big deal because every year congress would have to come back and do what is called an amt patch. they won t have to do that now. also, capital gains. capital gains and dividend tax rates for high income households would increase to 20% from 15%. for everyone else investment tax rates would remain at 15% or below. then you have extending long-term unemployment benefits through 2013. the estate tax would be 40% of inheritance and $10 million per couple you, $5 million individual. it extends business tax credits and stammels tax credits, including wind farm credits. the business tax credits are the tax extenders and also does
where we saw there the ohio clock. i want to go through some of the specifics of this deal as we know it. i will read them. we used to have fancy graphics but this is breaking news so we will put up some live shots as i do. ed has been talking about them. first of all, on the income taxes an increase to 39.6% for individuals making more than $400,000 a year. families making more than $450,000 a year. previously that was 35%. as ed mentioned that is up to the clinton rate of 39.6. payroll tax a small cut in the social security tax for all earners will be allowed to expire. the alternative minimum tax, the amt will become a permanent patch which means it will be adjusted to match inflation and that is a big deal. it will used to be every year congress had to do an amt patch. that won t happen in this deal. it will be dealt with. dividends and capital gains