AMT
 

Does one pay those w/r/t Roth IRAs now? I thought withdrawals were tax-free.

AMT
 

Same here. I thought that with the Roths, you pay taxes on the income going in, but the withdrawals weren't touched.

AMT
 

Oops, my mistake. You do pay before putting it in. The money you take out is untaxed. Same difference, mathematically, and for this policy purpose. Either way dividends and gains are untaxed (or taxed only once).

AMT
 

The whole "expanding Roths to everyone" is bullshit on two levels -- (a) they want the immediate revenue to offset other tax cuts/this will fuck future revenues and (2) huge, huge shelter for the wealthy. HUGE.

AMT
 

On (a) starve the beast
On (b) so? They're paying the taxes now, in full. In exchange, it won't be taxed upon withdrawal. So, what you're doing is taxing consumption and not savings. (and, mathematically, it's identical to allowing a deduction now and taxing later, on withdrawal).

AMT
 

You know where I stand. The Supremes declared back in 1916 that income was any accretion to wealth. Last time I checked, that included cap gains and dividends. It's like Warren Buffet said, it's absurd that some janitor pushing a broom should be taxed on the way he earns a living and a stock trader like Buffet should get away tax-free.


ETA the pun was intentional.

AMT
 

On (a), do you really think this works? Or are you setting out their rationale? Because they aren't starving the beast -- they are maximizing crop yields now at the expense of crop yields later. Or some metaphor like that.

On (b), how is it mathematically the same? The earnings never get taxed. Oh, wait, I guess if we were *saving* and *investing* the current tax revenues, then in theory the returns would be the same as the returns on the money in the Roth IRA.

I think that ignoring temporal issues in this context is unwise. It seems to me this is all about timing, and that the purely formulaic mathematical economic stuff is just being used to cloud the underlying timing issues.

It does sound nice, though.

I think *when* money comes in is not irrelevant.

AMT
 

on a, apparently not.

What's mathematically the same is:

A. Allowing a tax deduction for IRA contributions, with taxation on all withdrawals.

B. Allowing no tax deduction for IRA contributions (and thus requiring payment of tax on them, with no taxes later.

It's just a time shift of tax receipts, but properly discounted to present value (based on the actual earnings).

I concede that the budget shenanigans of allowing a 1-year unlimited roth conversion to create revenues is bogus, but I support it because I support the increased use of allowing savings to grow tax free (whether taxed at the outset or upon withdrawal).

AMT
 

That doesn't mean that it must include all such things, or all the current exemptions would be unconstitutional.

I'm pretty sure (although could be corrected), they were referring there to the outer limits of Congress' authority.

AMT
 

You're right on both points. As it happens, for the reasons stated earlier, I believe that it is inherently inequitable to tax wages but not tax dividends and capital gains. I also believe it is inherently inequitable to tax consumption rather than income, and for the same reason.

Both favor the wealthy at the expense of the working poor, the lower and the middle classes. People who need to live on the bulk of their income suffer more of the incindence of tax under either a flat tax that excludes dividends and capital gains or under a consumption tax.

AMT
 

On the former, I see your point (although I don't know if "suffering the incidence" accurately describes everyone paying the same percentage of their income in tax).

On the latter, there is no reason that one could not have a progressive consumption tax. Indeed, using IRAs/Roths/tax-sheltered savings accounts, in combination with progressive tax bracketing should resolve your concerns (assuming sufficient progressivity).

AMT
 

Let's just say that when the government draws the poverty line for a family of four with two kids under 18 at $19,206, I'm more than a little bit skeptical about their ability to provide sufficient progressivity.

Here we go again........
 

You know, I've been critical of Rep. Harris on this board, and I've come to the conclusion that at least some of this criticism was less than warranted. Sure, her claim to fame was as a Republican appointee centrally involved in one of the most contested elections in modern American history, and my initial opinion of her as a potential federal elected official was consequently pretty low.

Even after getting elected to the House of Reprsentatives, I remained skeptical.

But I understand now that my perception was too limited, based solely on news reports about her laughable campaign miscues, about dining with alleged felons, and of still photographs of tight clothing. Only when I saw a recent clip of her on TV did I understand how she's put it all together.

Watch for yourself (via Wonkette), and learn the secret to the first set of TITS! to be elected to the United States Senate.

Gattigap

Here we go again........
 

Until the tight clothing part, I thought for a minute you were talking about Al Gore

Here we go again........
 

Please. You've been posting "Run, Al, Run!" messages in the comments section of DailyKos and Atrios for weeks now. Don't even try to deny it.