Ravenwood - 10/13/05 06:15 AM
The President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform may suggest tax increases, reports he Washington Post.
Meeting in Washington, the nine-member panel agreed that it would be wise to reduce the total amount of mortgage debt for which interest is deductible. The limit now for a couple filing jointly is $1 million. A better cap might be $350,000, the panel said.As of yet there has been no justification offered for these numbers, so presumably someone just pulled them out of their ass. And while they thresholds might be high enough to not impact you now, there is no promise that they won't slide down the slippery slope even further or go away completely in the future. Personally, I oppose any and all tax hikes, no matter whether they impact me or not. And while neither of these appear to impact me directly, they will have a chilling effect on the economy.The panel also said that it might recommend limiting tax deductions for employer-provided health insurance. It discussed putting a cap of about $11,000 a year per employee on the amount of premiums that employers could deduct.
And how much do you want to bet that when employers start dropping medical insurance for their employees, socialists in the federal government will be right there proposing a "Hillary-care" style national health care system.
Category: Left-wing Conspiracy
Comments (2) top link me
Hey wait a minute. One of those is good.
The pre-tax status of health benefits is the whole and entire cause of the health care crisis. The business can deduct it, but it's not income to you. That means that somebody else can buy your health care cheaper than you can.
That means you want health care from the somebody else.
That means that you don't pay for it per use.
That means it's in high demand with no price cutoff, hence the spiral taking in more and more people as the actual price of the service increases and more people need insurance to handle it.
But now, suddenly losing the deduction, you can buy health care as cheaply as anybody else; so you suddenly discover the price, and the price plummets as people opt out.
Perhaps medical service will drop to 1950 levels again, when it was about like haircuts.
No doctor can stay in business charging more than people are willing to pay.
So they won't.
Ron,
I see a different scenario developing. The .gov makes it more expensive for employers to provide health care, so they cut back on benefits or tell their employees to buy it themselves (ala Walmart).
Then with so many people going uninsured, the .gov swoops in to save the day by providing federalized health care to anyone that wants it, thus nationalizing it through the back door.
Posted by: Ravenwood at October 13, 2005 10:43 AM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
