I've tried to avoid posting on political issues, since they seem to be a huge hotbed of disagreement and fighting. However, one big issue for me that I simply must post on is tax rates.
Americans for Tax Reform is an independent, non-partisan group that monitors the tax situation in the US, and tries to push for lower taxes. The group has posted a chart of tax rates as proposed by the two Presidential candidates on their web site:
http://www.atr.org/content/html/2008/june/0616-obama_mccaintaxes.html
Most of Obama's numbers are pretty scary, but the number that is most alarming to me is the Self-Employment Rate... 54.9%. Can you believe this? MORE than half of my income would go to taxes if Sen. Obama had his way. It's already way too high as it is, but jumping to over 50% is just outrageous. This is the United States, not the USSR! It isn't even Europe!
Obama also has the worst possible record when it comes to taxes. He has voted FOR virtually every tax increase proposed since he was elected Senator:
http://www.atr.org/national/ratings/109th-1/109-1-senate-final.htm
http://www.atr.org/national/ratings/109th-2/2006Senatevotes-prelim.pdf
I'm not a huge fan of either current presidential candidate, but I've got speak out against Obama with his track record, and if he is proposing a 55% tax rate on self employed individuals. I simply couldn't afford to run my own business with the government taking more than half of it. And I don't think anyone else could either.
4 comments:
That's insanity! The heart of America is small business--I don't know how he thinks that is going to fly.
I am not a huge fan of either candidate, but he scares me more than McCain.
I'm not decided on either candidate yet, but this post bothered me enough (because Jim has to pay self employment tax on his freelance) to look it up. I found this:
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/mccains_small-business_bunk.html
Now I don't know just how unbiased this site is, but that's a relief to me. Thoughts?
I don't know if that particular site is trustworthy or not, but that particular article sure seems skewed in Obama's favor.
I'm not sure what to think at this point. I think one of the biggest problems is that Obama's position seems to keep changing as his policies shift toward the center for greater mass appeal, so one site will post information relevant at the time of the post, and someone else will post something else later that is entirely different, but also valid at the time it is written.
Personally I'm very rarely in favor of any sort of tax increase. The government doesn't tend to act responsibly with the funds they already collect, so why give them more? I'm also not a fan of the fact that self employed people like myself pay higher taxes than everyone else, such as double the social security rate that everyone else pays (15% vs 7.5%). Because the small business owner doesn't have any lobbyists in Congress, we're generally the ones who get the highest tax rates, and are the first ones to receive tax rate increases.
I'm still not a fan of either candidate, but as a general rule candidates at the left tend to favor tax increases more than those on the right. With both candidates being/moving more toward the center this time around it's hard to tell who's got a better plan for the small business owner. We're going to have to watch carefully to see which, if either, candidate really is watching out for small business, the backbone of America. But if their tax plans are more or less the same, I'd definitely favor McCain over Obama, just because he seems to be the lesser of two evils.
I hate that it's nearly impossible to find any unbiased information about political candidates. It's so hard to find anything trustworthy out there. Hence my aversion to politics in general. I can't have strong opinions about somethin/someone when I don't feel like I have all the facts. *sigh*
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