Charity and Tax Deductions

So the big argument coming out of the Obama administration is that wealthy people are getting an unfair advantage with their charitable tax deductions. The argument goes like this: someone making $50,000 and giving a $1000 donation gets to deduct $150 (or their 15% tax rate) on their tax return, while someone making $1,000,000 giving that same $1000 donation gets to deduct $350 (or their 35% tax rate). So instead of reducing the 35% tax rate, they just want to reduce the deduction rate. Obama seems to think that charitable organizations will not suffer any decreases in giving. Of course Obama says a lot of things that are just simply not true. Still, his followers believe him, and in this environment where anyone with any money (unless they are from Hollywood) is demonized and targets of class warfare, the wealthy are easy targets for any money the government can force out of them. The thing I don't understand is that the person earning $50,000 is paying $7,500 (15%) in taxes on his $50,000 while the wealthy person is paying $17,500 (35%) on that same $50,000. In fact, since the wealthy person is actually making $1,000,000, he is paying $350,000 in taxes. $7,500 vs. $350,000 . . and they're complaining that the wealthy are not paying their "fair share" in taxes. I'm not an apologist for the wealthy, but I do understand what our country and our economy would be like if we did not have a lot of people making a lot of money. I think it is pretty disgusting when our federal government makes the wealthy out to be the bad guys.

While on this subject, over the weekend "community organizers" put together a tour of AIG employee homes. It is all part of the class warfare agenda. The idea here was to make these people appear to be freaks for living in nice homes. This has been done before in Hollywood . . maps of the star's homes. The difference in Hollywood though is that the general public look at Hollywood stars as royalty. There is a curiosity about where they live, and there is a sense of some day I will have a home like that. With the AIG homes the interest comes from a different perspective. If the people on the tour had a match, they would have very likely set the homes on fire. "That will teach them for being so greedy". What I would love to see is a tour of congressional houses. It could be done online: Pelosi's house . . Biden's home . . Ted Kennedy's . . and on and on. Certainly many of these government employees live in a luxury that defies a government paycheck. They are certainly deserving of the same contempt that people seem to want to give the AIG employees.