Posts Tagged: "taxes"

For goodness sake, innovation is the key to a better economy, not raising taxes! Simply stated, taxing more at a time when individuals and businesses are doing less well is not the same as taxing more when individuals and businesses are doing better year after year. In one scenario the tide is rising and will remain high, although slightly less so with increased payments to the government. In the second scenario the tide is already lower and becomes even lower still with additional financial burdens owed to the government. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize there is a fundamental difference between taxing a rising economy and taxing a falling, stagnant or sluggish economy.

Many people assume that there’s no way American manufacturers can compete with cheap Chinese labor. It’s just basic economics, right? Wrong. It’s the U.S. government’s myopic policy, not China’s lower payroll costs, that make our nation uncompetitive in the all-important solar and other high-tech manufacturing sectors. With manufacturing friendly tax policies and a permanent 20 percent R&D tax credit equal to what other nations offer China’s advantage drops to 1 to 2 percent, and that the U.S. can compete with.

Upon the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, among increases in the tax rate for all tax brackets, the dividends tax rate will increase. So even if Congress and the White House extend the Bush tax cuts for all but the top earning Americans, virtually all small business owners, regardless of their tax bracket, will see an increase in their effective tax rate as a result in the increased tax rate for dividends. Policies that make job creation more difficult and investment in innovation more unlikely are reckless, particularly at a time when our economy is so hurting. That is why the Bush tax cuts should be extended across the board at least temporarily.

Picking up on this theme and focusing on things that at first glance seem incredibly obvious but must not be at all obvious given that those who are exceptionally smart can’t figure them out, I thought with tax season right around the corner it might be worthwhile to explore method of stimulating the economy by cutting taxes. I am sure there are other pieces of prior art, even some pieces of enabling prior art, or come to think of it wildly successful and unimaginably enabling prior art, but I am going to hang my hopes on secondary considerations.