Tuesday, August 21, 2012

A platform over your grave

In addition to an abortion plank out of the 19th century (actually probably far worse) the GOP under Mitt's control has other nuggets to screw over the 99 percent:

Republican platform drafters refused to put their party on record for preserving the mortgage- interest deduction, giving Mitt Romney more flexibility to promote his plan to lower tax rates paid by corporations and the wealthiest Americans without increasing the federal debt.

3 comments:

Montag said...

Getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction would probably have a greater impact on the wealthy and the well-to-do than Average Joe taxpayer. They're the ones deriving the greatest benefit from it.

But, the notion that they're going to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate and individual, by screwing ordinary taxpayers out of one of the few deductions they can claim means that they have much more in mind--such as eliminating the EITC.

I've been saying for a couple of decades now that the long-term plan of the right wing and corporate types was to shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the working class, and that's exactly what this bunch of raggedy-assed motherfuckers intends to do.

DanF said...

Montag is right - most middle class working folk don't have enough deductions to exceed the standard deduction. But the optics are horrific as all homeowners with a mortgage get a 1098 and dutifully plug it into their tax software as a tax deduction. Some percentage of the people won't/don't realize that in the end, the deduction was not applied to their tax bill. Not that there aren't circumstances where it really does help (e.g. a family with a lot of medical bills that helps push them over the standard deduction), but it benefits the wealthy disproportionately. If you make over $100k per year, odds are you apply it, under, odds are you don't. And if you make under $100k, the benefit you get from the deduction is quite a bit less.

http://reason.org/files/mortgage_interest_deduction.pdf

But again, the optics are horrible. This plank is an attack on Mitt's suburban base and seems like yet-another self-inflicted wound.

pansypoo said...

meh, the rich can refinance. it's the less wekll off that will be HURT.