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and here's why!To the shrill left, he's a pariah because his famous anti-tax pledge prevents new revenues from flooding into the U.S. Treasury.
To most on the right, he's a hero for fighting for smaller government.
The truth about Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform, is that he is neither of these things.
Norquist’s Network & Iran: Another Heads-Up for the GOP?
On Oct. 22, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed into law a widely praised and sweeping bipartisan tax reform. It curbed special deductions, exclusions and breaks (tax expenditures, in tax speak) and chopped the top individual income tax rate from 50% to 28% and the top corporate rate from 46% to 34%. Twenty-five years later, the country is in a deep fiscal hole, the tax code has suffered through years of tax “deform” and a ticking time bomb left in the 1986 Act (the alternative minimum tax) has yet to be defused. So there’s wide agreement that another overhaul is in order. But there’s no consensus on what a rebuilt tax system should look like, how much revenue it should raise, or whether the tax burden should be left as it is, shifted up to millionaires and billionaires or pushed down to middle and working class folks, as in Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan.
In this special report, noted academics, front-line tax practitioners and journalists look back and forward. Among the many must-reads: Michael Graetz details his proposal to free 150 million Americans from the IRS; Laurence Kotlikoff describes his 15-15-15 plan; Len Burman looks at the need and prospects for tax reform; Howard Gleckman distills five lessons from 1986 that could help policy makers today; and Kelly Phillips Erb suggests that all of us, unwilling to give up our tax goodies, are a roadblock to tax reform. Finally, several contributors conclude that no matter what happens, there will still be lots of work for the tax accountants and lawyers. What a relief.
FORBES: SPECIAL REPORT
From
AMERICANS FOR TAX REFORM:Tax hike lowlights include:
- Raising the top marginal income tax rate (at which a majority of small business profits face taxation) from 35% to 39.6%. This is a $709 billion/10 year tax hike
- Raising the capital gains and dividends rate from 15% to 20%
- Raising the death tax rate from 35% to 45% and lowering the death tax exemption amount from $5 million ($10 million for couples) to $3.5 million. This is a $98 billion/ten year tax hike
- Capping the value of itemized deductions at the 28% bracket rate. This will effectively cut tax deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, property taxes, state and local income or sales taxes, out-of-pocket medical expenses, and unreimbursed employee business expenses. A new means-tested phaseout of itemized deductions limits them even more. This is a $321 billion/ten year tax hike
- New bank taxes totaling $33 billion over ten years
- New international corporate tax hikes totaling $129 billion over ten years
- New life insurance company taxes totaling $14 billion over ten years
- Massive new taxes on energy, including LIFO repeal, Superfund, domestic energy manufacturing, and many others totaling $120 billion over ten years
- Increasing unemployment payroll taxes by $15 billion over ten years
- Taxing management capital gains in an investment partnership (“carried interest”) as ordinary income. This is a tax hike of $15 billion over ten years
- A giveaway to the trial lawyers—not letting companies deduct the cost of punitive damages from a lawsuit settlement. This is a tax hike of $300 million over ten years
- Increasing tax penalties, information reporting, and IRS information sharing. This is a ten-year tax hike of $20 billion.
Alias Barack Obama: a lie is born: The greatest identity fraud in history Paperback – July 10, 2012
