29 November 2007
Fair Burden Sharing
In his aggravating OpEd article, “The Truth About the Top 1%,” in the October 25, 2007, Wall Street Journal, Alan Reynolds badly defines the “fairness” that Democratic Party leaders seek through their tax proposals as “reducing the top 1%’s share of income.” No matter how you define the top 1% or how you calculate the distribution of the country’s income, wealth, tax payments, etc., the issue here is not equalization of incomes but fairness in allotting the burden of supporting the cost of governing our nation.
Mr. Reynolds concludes that behavioral responses to tax changes (i.e. tax avoidance schemes) will always result in shifting tax burdens down the income scale anyway. So his argument challenging the statistical basis of Democratic tax proposals turns out to be academic. On the other hand, he makes clear why the Alternative Minimum Tax needs to be drastically rewritten in order to achieve its original objective of effective burden sharing in our progressive democracy.
In his aggravating OpEd article, “The Truth About the Top 1%,” in the October 25, 2007, Wall Street Journal, Alan Reynolds badly defines the “fairness” that Democratic Party leaders seek through their tax proposals as “reducing the top 1%’s share of income.” No matter how you define the top 1% or how you calculate the distribution of the country’s income, wealth, tax payments, etc., the issue here is not equalization of incomes but fairness in allotting the burden of supporting the cost of governing our nation.
Mr. Reynolds concludes that behavioral responses to tax changes (i.e. tax avoidance schemes) will always result in shifting tax burdens down the income scale anyway. So his argument challenging the statistical basis of Democratic tax proposals turns out to be academic. On the other hand, he makes clear why the Alternative Minimum Tax needs to be drastically rewritten in order to achieve its original objective of effective burden sharing in our progressive democracy.
Comments:
Post a Comment
