Taxes, Tax Cuts For The Rich | featured news

While Republican leaders in the House of Representatives insist that raising tax rates on the rich is an impossibility, some Republican lawmakers now see it as inevitable to avoiding the "fiscal cliff" of severe tax hikes and spending cuts set to start January 1.

Which is the more redistributionist of our two parties? In recent decades, as Republicans have devoted themselves with laser-like intensity to redistributing America’s wealth and income upward, the evidence suggests the answer is the GOP.

Now, at least, there can be no doubt about who is waging class warfare in this presidential campaign. Mitt Romney would pit the winners against the “victims,” the smug-and-rich against the down-on-their-luck, the wealthy tax avoiders against those too poor to owe income tax. He sees nearly half of all Americans as chumps who sit around waiting for a handout.

Ronald Reagan wearing cowboy hat at Rancho del Cielo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Since the arrival of President Ronald Wilson Reagan, it has become a matter of conservative orthodoxy that tax cuts for the rich will, inevitably, lead to economic prosperity.

As the income gap between rich and poor widens, a majority of Americans say the growing divide is bad for the country and believe that wealthy people are not paying enough in taxes, according to a new survey. The poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center points to a particular challenge for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, whose party's policies are viewed by a wide majority as favoring the rich over the middle class and poor.

Paul Ryan, the Republican candidate for vice president, says he wants to scuttle the tax breaks of America's rich, but he also proposes expanding one of the biggest breaks enjoyed by the wealthiest - the low tax rate on investment income.

Bill Clinton said Thursday that he's "very sorry" for comments he made days earlier that appeared to undermine President Obama's position on extending certain tax rates, chalking it up to a misunderstanding over when lawmakers needed to act ahead of a looming "fiscal cliff."

A long-running war between Democrats and Republicans over Bush-era tax cuts doomed the debt supercommittee's chances of reaching a deal. Efforts to overhaul the tax code may await the same fate as both parties gear up to make taxes a central issue in 2012 elections....

Occupy Wall Street is going on the road – a two-week walk to Washington. A small group of activists plans to leave Manhattan's Zuccotti Park at noon Wednesday and arrive by the Nov. 23 deadline for a congressional committee to decide whether to keep President Barack Obama's extension of Bush-era tax cuts. Protesters say the cuts benefit only rich Americans.

The IRS says 1,470 millionaires paid no federal income taxes in 2009.