NY Times latest outlet to repeat McCain campaign misinformation about impact of Obama's tax plan on small businesses
SUMMARY: The New York Times quoted McCain spokesman Jeff Sadosky saying: "Barack Obama's plans to raise taxes on small businesses and his attacks on Midwestern family farmers have turned off rural voters." But the Times did not point out that less than 2 percent of taxpayers declaring small business income would see a tax increase in 2009 under Obama's plan, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center.
In a November 1 New York Times article, reporter Jeff Zeleny quoted McCain spokesman Jeff Sadosky saying: "[Sen.] Barack Obama's plans to raise taxes on small businesses and his attacks on Midwestern family farmers have turned off rural voters at the same time that John McCain's independent record has earned the votes of Republicans, independents and conservative Democrats." But while Zeleny wrote that Obama "dismissed that argument" and "derided what he called a negative campaign being waged by Mr. [John] McCain," Zeleny did not point out that less than 2 percent of taxpayers declaring small business income would see a tax increase in 2009 under Obama's plan, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center (TPC).
As Media Matters for America has noted, Obama has proposed raising taxes only on individuals earning more than $200,000 per year and families earning more than $250,000 per year. According to estimates by the TPC, 1.9 percent of tax filers declaring small business income in 2009 will be in the top-two income-tax brackets -- which currently include all individuals earning more than $160,850 and all families earning more than $195,850. Obama has also proposed tax cuts for small businesses, including the "Obama Small Business Health Tax Credit," a "refundable credit of up to 50 percent on premiums paid by small businesses on behalf of their employees."
Media Matters has recently noted other media outlets, including McClatchy Newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, and the Chicago Tribune, that have similarly reported the McCain campaign's assertion that Obama intends to raise taxes on small businesses without reporting that the vast majority of small business owners would not see a tax increase under Obama's proposal, according to TPC estimates.
From Zeleny's November 1 article:
Jeff Sadosky, a spokesman for Mr. McCain, said the campaign had recruited a significantly larger set of volunteers than Republicans had in 2004. In anticipation of Mr. Obama's efforts in a state bordering Illinois, his home state, Mr. Sadosky said the get-out-the-vote operation was also more extensive than four years ago.
"Barack Obama's plans to raise taxes on small businesses and his attacks on Midwestern family farmers have turned off rural voters at the same time that John McCain's independent record has earned the votes of Republicans, independents and conservative Democrats," Mr. Sadosky said.
Mr. Obama dismissed that argument as he made a quick visit to a neighboring state, Iowa, on Friday afternoon, returning to the place that jumpstarted his candidacy nearly 10 months ago in the Iowa caucuses. To a crowd of thousands, he derided what he called a negative campaign being waged by Mr. McCain, overlooking his own aggressive tactics on the air and on the ground.
"A couple of elections ago, there was a presidential candidate who decried this kind of politics and condemned these kinds of tactics. And I admired him for it -- we all did," Mr. Obama said. "He said, 'I will not take the low road to the highest office in this land.' Those words were spoken eight years ago by my opponent, John McCain, but the high road didn't lead him to the White House then, so this time, he decided to take a different route."
This comment went over well with farmers:
Obama told Time: “As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector … and are partly responsible for the explosion in our health care costs because they’re contributing to Type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in health care costs.”
The 2% is a canard. Nobody cares about Avon ladies or lemonade stands.
. Two-thirds of small business profits are earned in households making more
than $250,000 per year -- the very households Obama is shouting from the
rooftops that he will raise taxes on (Source: IRS Statistics of Income
Bulletin*). Small business profits are used to create jobs and invest in
America. This is the answer to the Obama campaign's irrelevant
claim that the number of small businesses affected will be small -- the
fact is that the bulk of profits will face a tax hike.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/five-things-you-might-not/story.aspx?guid=%7B6488D5F9-1F6B-4CF2-B2BF-1D7E9A51C077%7D&dist=hppr
You're exactly right. Taxes are an expense and to keep overall expenses where there were prior to higher taxes jobs will be cut.
>>Taxes are an expense and to keep overall expenses where there were prior to higher taxes jobs will be cut.
That's probably false. If cutting taxes always leads to job creation, then we should have no taxes at all! Likewise, the rich were taxed at a 90% rate in the 60s, a time of huge job creation.
I didn't say that cutting taxes would lead to job creation. I said that increasing taxes would cause jobs to be cut. They are two different things.
But that didn't happen in '92, despite all the dire predictions. In fact, more jobs were created.
Mary, you are off a year or two (much like Biden and his FDR on TV quote) GHWB was President thoughtout the year of 1992. Well, he did raise taxes and it cost some unemployment (primarily his own.)
it was during clinton's first term. but the point is still correct. those tax increases on the wealthy were supposed to send us into a recession, even depression, according to the republicans. and the republicans, and their little helpers like limbaugh, used it against the democrats in 94, even though it was the responsible thing to do.
>>I didn't say that cutting taxes would lead to job creation. I said that increasing taxes would cause jobs to be cut. They are two different things.
That makes no sense. If increasing taxes leads to job losses (because there are more overall expenses), then cutting them has to lead to job creation. Otherwise, by your logic, if the current tax rate creates at x amount of jobs, and then Obama increases taxes to y, then jobs should be lost (according to what you said). If another president comes in and decreases taxes to x again, then jobs will not be created, they will not return to where they were originally when the taxes were at x. That is a direct contraditction in which x no longer equal x.
Sorry, let me try that again:
Otherwise, by your logic, if the current tax rate creates at b amount of jobs when the tax rate is x, and then Obama increases taxes to y, then jobs should be lost (according to what you said), to where there are only c jobs.
If another president comes in and decreases taxes to x again, then jobs will not be created, they will not return to where they were originally when the taxes were at x. That is a direct contraditction in which x in one scenario leads to b jobs, but in another scenario leads to c jobs.
You're right. But my point is that I was not talking about creating jobs. I was talking about people losing jobs. There is probably a diminishing rate of returns with regards to cutting taxes and creating jobs. Obviously cutting taxes only works to a certain extent for creating jobs.
There are a whole bunch of theories but here is the reality. My family is in the metal distribution business. While it is not highly labor intensive and thus not too many jobs can be eliminated payroll still remains the highest fixed expense. If taxes increased by say $50,000 or $100,000 it becomes more motivating to cut jobs and restructure. In a sense I guess that is a good thing. We become more efficient. Yeah for less jobs!
you would have to be making way over a quarter million for your taxes to increase by that amount.
Right, what they're saying is that if I can't make $300,000 a year rather than $295,000, I'm gonna fire someone. That extra $5,000 is a killer!
But they never ask themselves, then who's gonna do the work in their place!
Name one business that's fired someone just because their taxes went up. The repubs never can.
Layoffs occur when businesses cannot maintain their profitability. Tax increases can be offset by increased profitability in good economic times. Tax increases in down economic times such as we have now will be more difficult to offset against the bottom line.
Failure to maintain the bottom line from year to year will generally result in a workforce correction.
but if a business is not profitable, there are no taxes. and if the rate goes from 25 to 28 percent, are you going to say i don't want any profits over a quarter million because i have to pay an extra three percent? no, you still want those profits.
Of course you still want profits. I'm saying that businesses that show lower profits from one year to the next regardless of the factor will address that issue. Raising taxes is one factor that could result in lower profitability.
how do they address the issue?
If you understood what bruce meant, can you please explain it to me.
I think an employer is cutting off his nose to spite his face if he's going to layoff workers because of tax increases. When I use to be a construction inspector I made about $21 an hour. My employer would charge anywhere from $40 to $60 an hour depending on the inspection. Now conservatives are saying that my former employer is going to forgo profits of $19 to $39 an hour because he had to pay at most $5 an hour in additional taxes. I just don't see that happening.
I didn't say that employers will layoff workers because of tax increases. I said that employers will layoff workers because of reduced profits, and tax increases are one factor that can result in reduced profits.
I'm still having trouble following you. Can you give me a scenario?
Tax increases won't cause an employer to layoff workers. Employers layoff workers when they don't have work for them.
Let me try it again:
If an employee is generating a profit that can be taxed, that employee will not be laid off. If an employee is not generating profit then that employee has to be let go. After an employer pays all of his expenses including wages for himself and his employees what's leftover is the company's profit. The company has to pay taxes on that.
I don't think company profits can generally be traced back to specific employees.
That wasn't the point. If a company is generating enough profit to keep x amount of employees than they'll keep x amount of employees. Taxes don't enter the equation.
As someone that has had many, many people work for me, taxes were never a consideration. It was: is there work to be done to get the orders out. If my taxes went up I would do everything possible to get more orders to compensate for a loss in net profit. Aggressive marketing- more orders. It is impossible for me to imagine my orders would deminish as a result of higher taxes on a select few when the vast majority is actually going to get a tax cut which would give them more discretionary income to buy my products. The repukelican model is basic BS and is designed for the very wealthy that only hire when there is work to be done and not because they have saved money on their taxes. Here is a senario: I am making more money because my taxes were not raised so I think I will hire someone to sit around and do nothing because I already had enough employees.
Thanx, Loonz and DJasper, you put it as clearly and concisely as possible. I think I tried a few weeks ago to boil it down to this; If you consider employees a net expense, you probably shouldn't be running a business.
I'm still waiting for the real world example of somebody firing an employee to avoid a tax increase. I know that my company puts an ad out for more employees as son as there's more work available. We don't check the tax codes first.
It's a ridiculous argument, that employees are an expense to be cut , but it seems to be working on quite a few people.
Speaking of ridiculous.. Republicans are so ignorant of the history of their own Party that they just take the opposite position of a liberal because they've been told to do so. Case in point, the progressive tax rate at the core of this discussion was created by a fine Republican, Teddy Roosevelt.
Then it was Reagan who continued the redistribution of all that hard earned money from the rich and gave it ti the poor in 1986 with the expansion of the earned income tax credit.
Republicans used to despise consumerism and materialism, too. Now, to be filthy rich and live in opulence is the conservative end game.
The modern Republican: fake and ignorant.
The most likely scenarios are raising prices and/or cutting expenses.
Seems to me that the great driver of job creation in the 60s was that "little" adventure in SE Asia.
Not so. Want simple proof?
It's easy-- if you cut employees, who's gonna do your work?
The real canard is that employers have so many excess employees around these days that-- poof-- we're just gonna fire people if our taxes go up.
In the old days that might have been true-- remember 40 years ago when every Sears store had dozens of floor employees and cash registers everywhere you turned?
But not now-- employers get by with subsistence level staffs. If they cut, nobody does the work. And besides, Obama's tax proposals on the rich-- and sorry, $250,000 is a great income-- only restores Clinton's tax levels.
Gosh I don't remember that whol Sears thing. You're kind of dating yourself. Or perhaps you have a flux capacitor. You see da ting is... taxes are an expense. Cut expenses and you make more money. Wow! Not complicated. People have been fired in the past from companies and those companies have managed to keep there doors open and get all the work done. Amazing! And usually their stock goes if they're a public company. :)
you are going to fire the employee because you might pay an extra small amount of taxes, and you no longer have any of the profit the employee has produced? your plumbing business charges 100 dollars an hour for a call, and the plumber [not joe, he's otherwise occupied] gets 25. your're going to fire the plumber and have no one to go on the call, and get no money at all because you might pay an extra dollar in tax? doesn't sound like a good business plan. the british have an expression, penny wise and pound foolish. companies do downsize, but it's because they think they can get the same amount of work done. it's has little to do with taxes. they are not going to have one extra employee they don't think they need.
If you keep theorizing like this, you're never going to stop being a republican.
How about taking a quick glance at reality for a change of pace? Can you name an actual real-life tax hike that has resulted in actual real-life job loss?
When the top tax was 90% (50s), we had plenty of jobs. When the top tax was 70% (60s), we had plenty of jobs. When the top tax was 40% (90s), we had plenty of jobs. When Bush cut taxes, job creation sunk like a stone.
"Taxes are an expense and to keep overall expenses where there were prior to higher taxes jobs will be cut."
Nonsense. Payroll is an expense that is deducted from the taxable income. Firing productive employees will reduce their profits more than the additional taxes will.
Now, I have no doubt that some hardcore Limbaugh dittobots will fire people just for spite if their taxes are raised. They will not, however, be able to present a business-related justification.... just assholishness.
Leatherhelmet wrote:
>>Two-thirds of small business profits are earned in households making more
than $250,000 per year -- the very households Obama is shouting from the
rooftops that he will raise taxes on
This statement implies that 2/3 of small businesses would have their taxes increased under Obama's plan. According to real fact checking sources, such as factcheck.org, that statement is outright false. Only a small fraction of small business owners would see their taxes go up.
link
Have you researched the statement you quoted concerning Type II diabetes, obesity, stroke and heart disease? Or are you just ridiculing scientific studies like McCain's proposed "Child With Disabilities Tsar" did when she sneered at money spent for fruit fly genetic research?
It's time that your side opened an eighth grade biology book.
From the article:
* "Small business profits" is equal to the net profits less net losses of sole proprietors, S-corporation shareholders, and partners. According to the IRS, two-thirds of these small business profits are earned in households with adjusted gross income (AGI) equal to or greater than $200,000. In 2006, $473 billion of the $706 billion (two-thirds) of small business profits was earned in households Obama has said he would raise tax rates on.
THis definition includes any partnerships--which includes many big law firms.
And of course S-corporations pay no corporate income tax, so the company is not hit at all by Obama's tax increase--just the owners if they're taking out more than $250,000 a year.And an S-corporation cas have as many as 100 stockholders--and not all of thse have to be people.
An S-corporation doesn't get taxed at all. There's no tax increase on S-Corporations at all in Obama's plan--unless the owners aredoing so well that they're taking $250,000 a year out of the market. And we're supposed to cry crocdile tears for a sole proprietor who's making $250,000 profit?
All this means is that the rich are making 70% of the money in this group arbitrarily called 'small businesses.' It also means that a huge percentage of the small businesses in this country (and that isn't including businesses that re incorporated in the ordinary way) are making just 30% of the money.
People who are making over $250,000 a year are going to pay again what they paid during the Clinton years. Whether they're sole proprietors, S-Corporation owners, or partners, or not. They should not be magically immune if they're technically 'small businessmen' because of the way they file their taxes.
I've never tried breathing through a douchebag. Sounds nice.
Geez. You even have to explain insults to the dense Cons. You see, you are a douchebag and breath through your mouth. Based on your posts, you are also mentally retarded.
When you say geez is that to express mild surprise, delight, dissatisfaction, or annoyance?
Exasperation at the lack of intelligence of folks on the other side. I'd much rather have opponents that acutally put up a fight.
I'm not sure LH even knows what he's trying to say, except that he's either been fooled by the spin you've identified, or he thinks he can fool other people with that spin. A very small percentage of small businesses are making large profits, and nobody's contesting that. It actually reinforces the opposite of what Leather probably intended to say.
If anybody has any idea what gg was trying to say, you're decoder ring is working much better than mine.
I confess my Captain Chrusader Secret Decoder Ring came though, after a proper rap to a spacific part of the casing. Like concrete lamp posts, they must be beaten on occasion, just so they remember who's in charge here.
But I ain't gonna tell. Assuming he (?) survives breathing though a douchbag and all the philisophical baggage that it would entail. Why would I want to help him to be clearer?
Right now he's like a bad/old land line with a federal tap every five feet. What ever the original thought, its been wrapped in wool, saturated in bean fat, shreded, blackened, mixed with grits, and returned to water before your ready.
An unatural national treasure! Which could only be deminished if recognizable rhetoric were to somehow blow the whole thing.
And will he be able to pass up that straight line?
!~>
EW,Straight line or alternative lifestyle line, it's a matter of choice, and one can pass or play depending on the day of the week.
OT, but the annual list of my county's scariest people is out.Some local stuff, but I thought the horror movie posters were a nice touch. Nixonstein made the cover!
We need to find out the brand of cereal he/she is eating and maybe we can get the right ring. Oh, decoder rings in cereal went out in the 50s or 60s, so we are out of luck.
You just need to get in touch with, communicate with, or get a good ninja move on your inner decoder ring.
Ain't none on ebay, I checked.
I'm old enough to remember when Shredded Wheat had little toys in the box. My favorites were the little plastic spacemen who sat on your spoon. Their heads were shaped like the Nabisco logo. Now, THOSE were the olden days.
I heard Mccain drum up the crowd again on this tax issue yesterday. he probably forgot he is running for president and needs to explain his own plan, if he has one, rather than continually mention sen Obama. What is sen McCain going to do for his country ? I heard " winning in Iraq, nothing about Afghanistan, very little about Pakistan, nothing about the Patriot Act and spying on citizen's, actual differences between a McCain governance and the last eight years, the conttent of his cabinet and who he listen's to, and a few others ( my hand is tired of typing away.
The McBush crowd has really been making factcheck.org work overtime to debunk all their smears and bogus statistics.
The link above explains why all the little mom & pop business stories that McBush dream up are ridiculous.
This is OT but pretty important.
Our dark overlord, Dick Cheney, braving the rays of the sun, just announced his support for Gramps.
Wait for the Cheney Bump!
He was at the peak of his powers last night (Halloween) but should return to the top of Bald Mountain at the sound of church bells.
Chenybog trying to summon the spirits of rotten trickledown economics:
Dr. Nixonstein: You know, I could do something about that bump.
Cheney: Wot bump?
he is looking for a war and a job in the Mccain governance
At least we know who got Abby's brain?
no picture
Not only no picture, but it was a response to the Colonel's paraphrasing of the line from "Young Frankenstein".
But there's a name next to the non-picture, so I got who Abby-Someone was.
I could be confused, but on a higher level than EYE-gor. This is how I think the family tree runs:
Dr. Nixonstein....begat Cheneybog........who combined Abbe-normal and Milton Friedman which = AlanGreenspan/BushCo/Geezer-Dingbat.
This whole line of argument is specious, anyway. Since taxable income is figured after payroll is deducted, raising taxes on what's left will have a minimal impact on job retention.
It is also important to note that the additional tax on $300,000 profit would be $1500 under Obama's plan. That's hardly enough to hire another employee.