Taxes, Tax Hikes | featured news

President Francois Hollande's Socialist government unveiled sharp tax hikes on business and the rich on Friday in a 2013 budget aimed at showing France has the fiscal rigour to remain at the core of the euro zone.

Americans support raising taxes on the rich by a two-to-one margin, with many believing an increase would both help the economy and make the tax system fairer, according to a Pew poll released Monday afternoon. Forty-four percent of adults surveyed said that raising taxes on incomes above $250,000 would help the economy and increase fairness, while 22 percent said it would hurt the economy and 21 percent that it would make the system less fair.

President Obama's aides are seeking to pressure House Republicans in the hours leading up to a vote tonight on a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut, saying an adverse decision will subject nearly 160 million Americans to a tax hike next year.

Less than a quarter of wealthy Americans support raising taxes on households making $250,000 or more a year, the level being targeted by President Barack Obama, though tax increases further up the income scale have broader support, said a poll released on Tuesday.

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) appeared on MSNBC with Chris Jansing this morning to attack President Obama’s new deficit reduction plan, which includes some tax increases on the wealthy. Taking up the typical GOP talking point, Fleming said raising taxes on wealthy “job creators” is a terrible idea that kills jobs because many of these people ...

America’s presumably anti-tax party wants to raise your taxes. Come January, the Republicans plan to raise the taxes of anyone who earns $50,000 a year by $1,000, and anyone who makes $100,000 by $2,000. Their tax hike doesn’t apply to income from investments. It doesn’t apply to any wage income in excess of $106,800 a year. It’s the payroll tax that they want to raise — to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent of your paycheck, a level established for one year in December’s budget deal at Democrats’ insistence. Unlike the capital gains tax, or the low tax rates for the rich included in the Bush tax cuts, or the carried interest tax for hedge fund operators (which is just 15 percent), the payroll tax chiefly hits the middle class and the working poor.

News flash: Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes. Impossible, right? GOP lawmakers are so virulently anti-tax, surely they will fight to prevent a payroll tax increase on virtually every wage-earner starting Jan. 1, right?

President Barack Obama offered strong praise Tuesday for a deficit reduction plan put together by a bipartisan group of senators, calling the measure's mix of tax hikes and spending reforms "broadly consistent" with his own approach to the current debt ceiling crisis.

Republicans planned sharp cuts to foreign aid and education on Wednesday, while Democrats weighed a tax hike on millionaires, highlighting the yawning divide between the two parties in the budget debate.

The battle over whether tax increases can be used to cut the nation's debt flared Tuesday as the Senate's Democratic budget writer floated a possible millionaire's surtax to help cut projected deficits over the next decade. But Republican leaders flatly said no to tax increases....