[boriscleto]

Romney Tax Plan Would Choke Off Charitable Giving | Crooks and Liars

On the eve of last week's presidential debate, Republican Mitt Romney floated a trial balloon to deflect public attention from his detail-free tax plan certain to give a massive windfall for the wealthy, burden middle class taxpayers and balloon the national debt. But largely overlooked in his murky and still-to-be defined proposal to put a dollar cap on individual tax deductions is the devastating impact it would have on charitable giving. Combined with his demand to end the estate tax, Romney's plan would choke off donations to America's non-profits, churches and charities.

In addition to destroying the social safety net.

[Nesster]

No, of course it won't, because he said so.

[gokenin]

80 percent of tax savings from itemization goes to the top 20 percent of Americans households, and 25 percent of the savings goes to the 1 percent."
Romney Tax Plan Would Choke Off Charitable Giving | Crooks and Liars


Ok so let me get this right you are telling me that you want to leave a tax loophole that clearly benefits those darn 1% people because Individual contributions accounted for $227 billion of the $304 billion raised by charities in 2009 and you want their money for charities. But that means they may end up paying less taxes than their secretaries in violation of that much talked about "Buffett Rule" can't have it both ways you know that right?

[mikemike]

A huge simplification of the tax code could be achieved by phasing in an increased standard deduction to the point where most of the people who do itemize now wouldn't need to, phase out all itemization, and adjusting the marginal rates so that each percentile of earners still contributes about the same amount. Just do this under the banner of tax code simplification without the goals of changing the progressiveness, raising, or lowering total revenue and hand over the implementation details of how much/quickly to tweak those three elements to some actuaries to accomplish over a 5-10 year timeframe.

CCH INCORPORATED

The other thing that could be done with regards to speeding up elimination of deductibility of mortgage interest (and probably help the economy while we are at it) is to "buyout" anyone currently itemizing with a special refinance offer to an interest rate that will put them under the standard deduction. At 2.5% for a 15 year on the $417,000 max conforming loan, you are below the standard deduction and at 3.25% of a 30 year loan you are barely above it. At that point, the only people being left out in the cold without itemization are those with jumbo loans and presumably jumbo financial resources.

[jeffkrol]

A huge simplification of the tax code could be achieved by phasing in an increased standard deduction to the point where most of the people who do itemize now wouldn't need to, phase out all itemization, and adjusting the marginal rates so that each percentile of earners still contributes about the same amount. Just do this under the banner of tax code simplification without the goals of changing the progressiveness, raising, or lowering total revenue and hand over the implementation details of how much/quickly to tweak those three elements to some actuaries to accomplish over a 5-10 year timeframe.

CCH INCORPORATED

The other thing that could be done with regards to speeding up elimination of deductibility of mortgage interest (and probably help the economy while we are at it) is to "buyout" anyone currently itemizing with a special refinance offer to an interest rate that will put them under the standard deduction. At 2.5% for a 15 year on the $417,000 max conforming loan, you are below the standard deduction and at 3.25% of a 30 year loan you are barely above it. At that point, the only people being left out in the cold without itemization are those with jumbo loans and presumably jumbo financial resources.

OR you could just END the INCOME TAX.............

How will ending the income tax help the poor? | Libertarian Answers

Ultimately, the poor are hurt most by income taxes.............

of course then we diverge.........

and government spending of any kind.

but I did like the question...........

I was unable to persuade a liberal friend that the income tax is evil because it is essentially forced labor through coercion, or that we could largely pay for the elimination of the income tax simply by halting our overseas empire (it seemed best to use a liberal priority in this instance). He maintained that eliminating the income tax would benefit only the wealthy. Could you help me show that eliminating the income tax is in everyone’s best interest?

Personally just START w/ payroll taxes............... Progressive personal income taxes have their place........... for now..........

[Nesster]

The other thing that could be done with regards to speeding up elimination of deductibility of mortgage interest (and probably help the economy while we are at it) is to "buyout" anyone currently itemizing with a special refinance offer to an interest rate that will put them under the standard deduction. At 2.5% for a 15 year on the $417,000 max conforming loan, you are below the standard deduction and at 3.25% of a 30 year loan you are barely above it. At that point, the only people being left out in the cold without itemization are those with jumbo loans and presumably jumbo financial resources.

Of course this assumes there are no other itemizable deductions - e.g. real estate taxes.

[mikemike]

Of course this assumes there are no other itemizable deductions - e.g. real estate taxes.

Not treating some taxes as deductible while others being non-deductible gives states more flexibility of structuring their taxes in a more resilient way instead of loading everything into property taxes and having low/no income or sales tax then getting slammed by a housing crash. If they have a nice balance of those three they are better able to weather a downturn in housing, property values, or consumption without raising ire as they never decrease assessments or match decreased assessments with increased millages.

Property taxes also gives a way to kind of game the system like what we are doing this year. We are refinancing our mortgage to 2.5% so next year our interest will be too low to itemize deductions and it is only barely worth it to itemize with our current property taxes so we are prepaying our 2013 property taxes to juice our 2012 deductions since it won't matter next year.