Leading surrogate: McCain ‘absolutely’ wants to continue Bush domestic policies

[mawilson 2,133]

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on what's a good idea and what's not.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on what's a good idea and what's not.

Yep. FWIW...I just read that under Bill Clinton's Administration, it was at 28 percent, so Hillary wasn't exactly honest in that interview you posted.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Stop Taxing Work More than Wealth

One extremely good idea proposed by John Edwards is to end the tax subsidy for people who have capital gains. One signature tax cut enacted by President Bush reduced the tax rate on capital gains from 20 percent to 15 percent and made dividends, which had been taxed as ordinary income, also taxed at 15 percent. At the end of 2010, that break will expire if Congress doesn't extend it and dividends will be taxed as ordinary income and capital gains will be taxed at 20 percent again.

But even the 20 percent tax rate is a break for the wealthy investors whose other income is mostly taxed at the highest ordinary income rate (currently 35 percent). CTJ recently found that the cost of the current tax treatment of capital gains and dividends was about $92 billion in 2005 alone and three fourths of that went to the richest 0.6 percent. Edwards has proposed taxing capital gains at 28 percent, which is certainly a huge step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, the Republican candidates would like to make permanent the tax breaks for capital gains and dividends and those who support a flat tax or national sales tax generally assume capital gains and dividends won't be taxed at all. Mitt Romney has the strange idea of making interest, capital gains and dividends tax-free for "middle-income" people. It's unclear how he defines middle-income given the CTJ data showing that capital gains and dividends mostly benefit the wealthy.

http://www.ctj.org/html/tjd83.htm

To tax earned income more than passive income and then try to peddle that as tax justice is one of the greatest absurdities to me.