2012 Presidential election candidates
And why nothing will change.
It seems to me like most Americans want some stability in our government right now, and are tired of all the politics that don’t ever really accomplish anything in Washington DC. In my mind, one of the most important and easiest ways to fix a lot of things with the US Federal Government would be a simplified tax system. After listening to 3 republican debates and not hearing any of them talk about a firm plan, I thought I would look at their websites. To my dismay, I didn’t find anything good. It’s amazing to me, that even THIS YEAR, no republicans or Obama are willing to put out a simple tax plan to stabilize the US.
Here’s a summary of what I found:
Mitt Romney: Absolutely zero change to personal income tax rates. Lower the Corporate income tax (Which affects no personal tax returns,) to 25%.
87 pages!!?? And his tax plan will do absolutely nothing for us. It’s so stupid he can’t plainly say it; he has to hide it in 87 pages. This guy has obviously never worked in a real work environment, even though he says he gets business.
Rick Perry: Well, he doesn’t actually tell us a plan. He just refers to Texas. As an actual tax payer in Texas, I can tell you the Texas tax structure is awesome, but WAY overcomplicated. It’s a 1% gross income tax on business entities. BUT it’s FULL of loopholes, credits, and what I would assume are discounts that have been bought by lobbyists.
THE TAX RETURN IS 26 PAGES!!! WHY ON EARTH IS A 1% GROSS INCOME TAX RETURN 26 PAGES!! Even funnier than that is you can file a short form or a long form. The long form brings the opportunity to dodge some taxes if you dare.
Someone at Perry’s’ camp doesn’t have their head on straight though. During Perry’s reign, the small business credit was bumped from your first 422,000 of income being tax free to 1 million. This is a MONSTER help for small business, and something democrats would be all about. If you run a small business in Texas and kept your income under 1,000,000 you were totally tax free!! And Rick Perry doesn’t even talk about this? But what good would it be to lower our tax rates down to a simple 1% if we had to fill out a 26 page return? True stupidity at its finest there.
Michelle Bachman: Michelle also doesn’t provide any plan for corporate or personal income taxes. She just seems to not really be relevant here. She seems more interesting in ranting and raving about how bad the democrats are instead of providing firm solutions. She doesn’t seem like she actually wants to win the presidency… Just rant about it.
Herman Cain: Ohhhh man… don’t get me started on this one! The dreaded 9,9,9 plan. I give Herman props for at least putting a firm plan out there. Something Rick and Michelle aren’t doing. I would support a 9-9 plan… But a 9% federal sales tax? Obviously Herman hasn’t actually run a business in a while either… Maybe his jobs plan is that all of us will have to hire 1-2 more people to deal with collecting and remitting an additional national sales tax to the IRS. And then the IRS having to hire thousands more employees to deal with collecting sales tax. This plan would go down as the biggest and most oppressive tax overhaul in US history. He should make it the 4-4 plan, dump those deductions he has in there, and put it on one page.
Although I think this 999 plan would be one of the worst things to ever happen to small business, I at least give this guy props for putting SOMETHING on his website. He needs to clean it up though. No one could ever win the presidency supporting a national sales tax though… So Herman is not really relevant either.
Ron Paul: Wow! I’ve always seen this guy on debates and scratched my head. I’ve never heard him say that he actually wants to WIN the presidency. He seems more like he wants to raise awareness of his ideas and philosophy than he actually wants to be the president. After looking at his website, I can see why so many young people flock to this guy. I think the main reason is that he puts forth real ideas on his website, unlike any of the other websites I’ve looked at. Whether you like them or not, you can actually point at something. You can actually find real stuff on his site. No other candidate makes it easy to find anything on their website.
Ok, so I’m a less-taxes-are-better guy… It looks like Ron Paul basically wants to get rid of all taxes? I’m not sure how America would actually run if Ron Paul was president. We have to have some income right? I think if Mitt Romney grabbed Ron Paul as his vice president, they could actually win this thing. He could just let Ron Paul chisel away on his tax reforms, and Mitt could put the brakes on when Ron started to get rid of the federal government all together. But it doesn’t seem like Ron Paul could ever win with his ideas. They are all interesting and at least on the tax side, seem great… But they seem a little too radical for the mainstream actually voting this guy into presidency. It sure would be an interesting 4 years with this guy at the reigns. What a roller coaster! Does Ron Paul want a corporate tax? I don’t see him address this. Just zero income tax for individuals.
Barack Obama: I was hopeful that Barack Obama could make health insurance or health care affordable for the masses and we as small businesses wouldn’t be held with the burden of providing health care to our employees. Wouldn’t it be simple if every business owner didn’t even have to think about health care for employees? If no employee even expected it from a boss? I wish everyone could just pay into some massive universal plan (That worked) and we wouldn’t have to worry about our employees’ health. We could just pay them. Boy there’s a novel concept. Just focus on paying your employees all that you can. The simpler your expenses as a business are, the easier it’s going to be to pay your employees more. At the end of the day, employees NEED a good paycheck, and the business NEEDS to make enough money to pay them a good paycheck. Well… 2.5 years later, it sure doesn’t seem like anything close to that happened, but I do like the idea of people not being able to get denied for a pre-existing condition.
But we’re talking TAXES here and what Barack Obama will bring to the table. After searching a half hour on his site, I can’t find anything. And from what I hear from his speeches he wants to bump the income tax rate on small business owners to 37% instead of 35%. Another example of someone that just doesn’t get what it’s like to run and operate a business. He says it’s only for rich people, but any good, profitable small business should be in this tax bracket. So if he admits it or not, he is raising income tax on the blue collar small businesses of America.
I don’t think Barack has any chance of winning now that all the economy stuff, jobs, and the recent debacle of the budget almost not passing has gotten people so fired up. 6 months ago, I thought no republican had a chance to beat him. But it seems like as of this moment, he doesn’t have a chance anymore with how bad the economy and jobs are. And quite honestly I think the markets would tumble to new lows if he bumped the income tax to 37%.
So the summary?
-We’re all screwed! No one really seems smart enough to know what to do, or even present an option that would fix anything. None of these people are presenting something that would create confidence in the US again, that would open the doors to a flood of foreign investment in our country, or really accomplish much of anything with our taxes.
Why doesn’t someone look at our taxes as a competition with other countries? I think a 1% gross income tax on a 3 line, 1 page tax return, with zero deductions, credits, or any options would fix our system. But the reality is that nothing that drastic would probably ever happen, so we all waddle down the middle of each party’s entrenched philosophies, not really giving either party it’s chance to make its’ ideas work.
I guess at least we don’t have to worry about rebels kidnapping us in the grocery store, or getting gunned down at a rally.