Yet More Bad Arguments Against Taxes

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16 Jul 2009 06:27 pm

By Conor Clarke

This New York Post piece on the proposed health-care surtax by Charles Hurt, David Seifman and Jennifer Fermino is really a piece of garbage. (It's ostenibly a news piece, although it comes with the slightly Dadaesque headline "DEM HEALTH RX A POI$ON PILL IN NY.") When I read propaganda about how Obama will bring us tax rates of 60% during a recession I try to remember that: (1) There is a difference between marginal and effective tax rates; and (2) None of these proposals takes effect for the next couple of years (so it is not "a scary prospect in the midst of a recession"). And let me say it again: The effective federal rate for top earners -- the rate we should care about -- will still, with this surtax, be lower than it was in the mid-90s.