Buffet Rule and Its Negative Implications

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Buffett Rule and its Negative Implications Embry-Riddle University The Buffet Rule and its Implications Acceptance of President Obama’s Buffett Rule will be at the detriment of all Americans, not just investors. Raising the capital gains tax, and lessening incentives to invest in businesses will be a further setback to an economy currently in a recession. During the State of the Union Speech, President Obama highlighted that billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett pays less of a tax rate than his secretary pays, Debbie Bosanek. Coincidentally, both Buffett and Bosanek were invited to sit next to First Lady Obama throughout the speech Sunday night. Buffett is reportedly to be taxed at a 17 percent rate, but Ms. Bosanek’s income and tax rate information was withheld. The Buffett Rule targets the wealthiest of Americans like Warren Buffett who earn more than one million dollars a year, but pay less than 30 percent in taxes through so-called tax shelters and loopholes. The rule is to tax the wealthiest one tenth of the top one percent of tax payers who are paying less of a tax rate than middle-class families. "To call our tax system fair, I believe the highest-income Americans should pay a higher rate, not a lower one, than middle-income taxpayers," said Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island (Wellna, D. 2012, para. 9). The strategy behind the Buffett Rule is to raise tax rates on millionaire investors’ capital gains in order to be more comparable to a middle-class income tax. Not being mentioned is actual tax rates and proposed revenues in real numbers, but it is estimated that the new capital gains tax rate should at least be 30 percent (Boak, 2012 para. 2). The problem with this argument is that we are talking about two types of taxation and applying the same rules to both. The Buffett Rule targets investment

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