Wisconsin Republicans Vote to Increase Tax Burden on Poor, Lower it for Corporations
2011 June 2
Wisconsin's modern Republican Party:
Stopping tax credits for the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations will kill jobs and hurt the economy!
Stopping tax credits for the lowest income workers will create jobs and help the economy!
"Republican lawmakers voted Tuesday to trim taxes for corporations and investors while further cutting tax credit programs for the working poor." – jsonline.com
Rep. Grigsby's "Robin Hood in reverse" comment is right on the money. It looks like the working poor will continued to be asked to "share the burden" of fixing Wisconsin's budget mess.
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Once again, congrats on walking the rhetorical tightrope. You could have accidentally said Republicans raised income taxes on these individuals, but of course that would be wrong since they don’t pay any income tax. Even though we call these “tax credits”, they are actually welfare payments.
And, yes, of course it does create jobs and help the economy. But I won’t bother explaining, because I’m sure we both are getting tired of me sounding like a broken record. Instead, I’ll just leave you with this: if welfare payments could fix the economy, then we had our solution from the very beginning — just hand out money! In fact, we could be the wealthiest nation in the world if we quadrupled all welfare programs.
So tax credits to poor people are “welfare payments”, but tax credits to the wealthy aren’t. Are tax credits to corporations that don’t pay income taxes also “welfare payments” by that logic?
There is no income tax credit because there are no income taxes being paid in the first place. Do you understand the difference between that and someone or some company who has their tax burden reduced via a real tax credit? You leftists found out long ago that if you hand out welfare payments via the IRS and call them “refundable tax credits”, it’s much more politically palatable. But not everyone is fooled.
Just to be clear, because I realize there is a slight chance you really don’t know about this… what I am talking about is a situation where I file an income tax return and “pay” NEGATIVE $2000 in taxes due to “refundable tax credits”. In other words, I owe negative tax, therefore Uncle Sam cuts me a check. This is not due to too much withholding. I am talking about TOTAL TAX PAID being negative. That is a welfare payment.
These tax credits for the poor have been supported on a bipartisan basis to encourage the work ethic. When extremists claim that poor people are lazy, we can point to the obvious fact of the success of tax credits for the poor. The tax credits for corporations are supposed to encourage them to hire more workers. But doesn’t it make more sense to give the credits directly to the workers?