TheHill.com: Boehner: *Mr President, help stop automatic cuts to Defense Spending*

[Hubbs]

I think that we strongly disagree on your second point.

Far as I'm concerned, the only reason why capital gains income (or dividends, or any other form of income) is taxed any differently from any other income, is class warfare.

Ooookay... never mind that I've repeatedly gone out of my way to say that I'd raise income taxes on the top brackets. You're right, it's part of my clever scheme to support the rich at all costs. Somehow, my scheme involves super-low capital gains taxes, despite the fact that this was literally the thing I said directly before my second point:

The fairest way to determine who that "somebody" is is to focus all taxes on personal income (while taking into consideration capital gains).

Just observing that, as far as I'm aware, the argument about taxation on corporate jets is about whether the tax code should encourage them. What the D proposal would have done was to treat them like other corporate assets.

That might be an argument other people are having, but it has nothing to do with anything I've said.

[Madison Redskin]

Hubbs:

Two things.....

First, I wasn't thinking about corporate jets. I was thinking about executive compensation. I think it is quite reasonable to speculate that, if Congress scrapped corporate taxes, corporations would divert a healthy percentage of the "new" money to director and director and executive compensation.

Second, as Larry pointed out, corporations can avoid paying some of the taxes on their profits by spending some of those profits on capital expenditures.

[Hubbs]

Hubbs:

Two things.....

First, I wasn't thinking about corporate jets. I was thinking about executive compensation. I think it is quite reasonable to speculate that, if Congress scrapped corporate taxes, corporations would divert a healthy percentage of the "new" money to director and director and executive compensation.

Second, as Larry pointed out, corporations can avoid paying some of the taxes on their profits by spending some of those profits on capital expenditures.

Executive compensation falls under paying an employee, even if it's a large amount. And I don't even disagree with your assertion. I'm sure some of the money would go towards executive compensation. But remember, I'm saying that I would combine the elimination of business income taxes with higher income and capital gains taxes. So not only would the money that falls under your concern still be taxed, it would actually be taxed at a higher rate.

Second, yes, but if I understand the current tax code right (and it's thousands of pages long, so there's always a chance that I've missed something), I believe that companies like Apple are punished if they don't spend their money the same year. In other words, if Apple's cash-on-hand keeps growing, it has to pay taxes because of the fact that it won't spend all of its profits this year. While I'm sure that someone will try to make the argument that Spending is so super-important right now that it should be capitalized, when taking a long-term view, this is a bad policy that punishes Apple for being too successful to be able to spend all of its money at once.

[Prosperity]

Just pointing out that gridlock isn't necessarily a Bad Thing.

In fact, before 08, I seem to recall saying, myself, that I was voting for gridlock.

This is especially true when the choice is between "gridlock" and "doing our damnedest to make things worse, as quickly as possible".

gridlock is a pretty terrible thing when we are on an unsustainable path

we have one of the most inertiatic governments in the world, which has been a good thing more than not, division and separation of power has prevented tyranny... but all the friction inherent in the system makes it damn difficult to make corrective measures, especially when those corrective measures are painful (Tax hikes/spending cuts).

If our government makes it out of this mess with a budget that takes into account the future then I will have renewed faith in our system... but at the moment all I can see are weaknesses.

Executive compensation falls under paying an employee, even if it's a large amount. And I don't even disagree with your assertion. I'm sure some of the money would go towards executive compensation. But remember, I'm saying that I would combine the elimination of business income taxes with higher income and capital gains taxes. So not only would the money that falls under your concern still be taxed, it would actually be taxed at a higher rate.

.

I like this plan