78-08-A1

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Taxes Again

Transcript By the time you hear this Congress and the Administration may have reached some agreement about taxes but I doubt that will be good news. Congressmen such as Jack Kemp of New York and William Steiger of Wisconsin (with a lot of bipartisan help) have been trying to give all of us a real tax break, but the White House is arm-twisting the leadership in the House and Senate to block them. Congressman Steiger wants to encourage more capital investment by rolling the capital gains tax back from 50 percent to the 25 percent it was before 1969. Secretary of the Treasury Blumenthal, fresh from addressing business leaders in Florida where he promised to encourage more investment capital, says "no" to Steiger's proposal. He claims it will reduce government revenues from that tax by $2 billion. That's funny. In the year before the increase the government collected $7.2 billion from a 25 percent capital gains tax. In the first year at 50 percent the government only collected $4.7 billion. As for general tax relief, the White House wants to increase the progressivity of the income tax so there will be little of no relief for anyone making $20,000 or more. This is known as getting the most feathers possible from the fewest geese in order to minimize the quacking. Take a family of four with $20,000 earnings. The President's plan would give them a $270 income tax cut - offset by a $261 increase in social security - net tax reduction $9 maybe. The same family at $25,000 would have a tax increase of $119 and again, maybe. Incidentally, at $25,000 they are in the top 10 percent of taxpayers. The "maybes" are because the tax reform they are talking in the White House would involve a little "loophole" closing. I doubt you'd call them "loopholes" the deductions you take for local and state taxes including property and special gasoline taxes; your deduction for medical expenses and casualty losses not covered by insurance - those are hardly loopholes. But about that progressivity - can we steepen the tax brackets any more than they are without being totally unfair to those who work and earn and make this country go? Right now the bottom one-fourth of all earners pay less than one tenth of one percent of the total tax. Indeed the bottom 50 percent only pay six percent of the total. At $10,000 you become part of the top 50 percent who are paying 94 percent of the tax. 48.6 of that 50 percent earn between $10,000 and $50,000 a year. Closing of those so called loopholes would really hurt because you pay 71 percent of the tax. The 1.4 percent who earn $50,000 and up pay almost one-fourth of the total tax - 23 percent. When the President told his party's platform committee our "tax structure is a disgrace - it must be made more progressive" - he was only right about one thing - it is a disgrace. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 78-08-A1 Production Date 06/05/1978 Book/Page RihoH-277 Audio Youtube? No
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