Payroll Taxes

Senator McCain has a unique opportunity to defuse Obama’s tax policy by trading retention of the Bush tax cuts for an expansion of the payroll tax to all employers, subject to the caveat that all payroll tax revenues are trusteed and invested in BAA or better publicly traded bonds. No monies available for government spending. The public would see these monies for Social Security as a miracle.
If passed, a raft of options open up to reform the tax code. Note that Obama talks only about income taxes. Fairness versus inequity. Tax the rich, reward the middle class, spare the poor by tinkering with tax rates! In reality, the rich can avoid taxes, the poor are untaxed and the middle class exploits welfare intended for the poor. Confusing? Yes. Without separating income taxes, payroll taxes, and capital gains, tax avoidance plus offsets of mortgage interest deductions, special deductions for capital investments, corporate taxes and inheritance taxes—state and local taxes—combine to make talk about income taxes meaningless.
Senator McCain can trump all of Senator Obama’s tax proposals by:
1. Extending the Bush tax cuts
2. Expanding the payroll tax to include all income
3. All payroll taxes invested in non-government bonds, BAA rated or higher.
4. Eliminate the inheritance tax as double taxation
5. Eliminate business taxes passed through as a cost of goods (a sales tax).
The increase in payroll taxes on the so-called rich will be accepted if the monies cannot be grabbed and abused by the government.
Our Social Security system with this new funding will gain respectability. Stock options should have a mandatory holding period after which shareholders vote to affirm or deny execution based on the company’s performance.
Transparency should extend from Wall Street, to union elections, to funding of education, even charities. Colleges demonstrating an imbalance of 65% or more domination by any school of political thought should be grounds for re-examination of the institution’s status as a charity.
The tax code should liberate, not enslave.