After watching the various politicians vying for Tea Party support in their quest for the Republican Presidential nomination, I was speechless, while the participants in the 'debate' certainly weren't. I would hope that you out there have some comments to make on Perry, Bachmann, Romney, etc. But I do have one observation to make. When the moderator, in regard to health care, asked the politicians what they would do about a 30 year healthy male with a good job who chose not to purchase health insurance because of his good health and who unexpectedly became very sick, needing lengthy and expensive health care, a voice from the entirely Tea Party audience was heard to shout out, "Let him die."
As always your poems, stories, essays, diatribes, rants, articles, photos, etc. are solicited. All will be published, but keep them clean, and under 3,000 words.
JL
As always your poems, stories, essays, diatribes, rants, articles, photos, etc. are solicited. All will be published, but keep them clean, and under 3,000 words.
JL
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Misinforming America - Unscrupulous Emails
I strongly feel that the half-truths and lies which are contained in usually anonymous Emails misinform millions of Americans. (This has effected a massive change in the nature of the Republican Party, and which I feel will be its ultimate downfall, in which it will go the way of the 19th century Whigs.)
Some of you may have received an Email recently, as I did, saying that as part of the Affordable Health Care Act, referred to by those who oppose it as ObamaCare, that you would have to pay a 3.8% sales tax if you sold your home after 2012. This is at best, by a wild stretch of the imagination, a half-truth at very best. But it is an example of the unscrupulous "scare tactic" Emails being circulated ... and believed by the gullible.
The fact is that at the last minute, in passing the Affordable Health Care Act, Democratic lawmakers decided on a new 3.8 percent tax on the net investment income of high-income persons, as part of the way of financing the Act.. (This tax was not just on real estate transactions but on most unearned income.) But the Email’s claim that this would amount to a $15,200 tax on the sale of a typical $400,000 home is utterly false.
Basically, this provision provides for a tax on the wealthy (who can afford it), a typical position of the Democrats and one opposed by most Republicans, rather than a sales tax on everyone who sells a house after 2012.
If you are among those who were taken in by this Email, I invite you to read on and learn the facts. (Most of the “facts” in this Email come from www.FactCheck.org.)
(If you are among those who eagerly pass on such Emails, in an effort to use it as another opportunity to object to the President’s programs and protect the tax-favored status of the wealthy, I also invite you to read on. You must learn, if you are trying to convince others of the merit of your position, that what you say must be truthful. If it is not, as is the case here, it only discredits anything else that you may be saying.)
Here are the facts: With very few exceptions, the first $250,000 in profit from the sale of a personal residence won’t be taxed, or the first $500,000 in the case of a married couple. The tax falls on relatively few — those with high incomes from other sources.
The truth is that only a tiny percentage of home sellers will pay the tax. First of all, only those with incomes over $200,000 a year ($250,000 for married couples filing jointly) will be subject to it. And even for those who have such high incomes, the tax still won’t apply to the first $250,000 on profits from the sale of a personal residence — or to the first $500,000 in the case of a married couple selling their home.
We can understand how this misconception got started. The law itself is couched in highly technical language that only a qualified tax expert can fully grasp. (This provision begins on page 33 of the reconciliation bill that was passed and signed into law.) And it does say the tax falls on "net gain … attributable to the disposition of property." That would include the sale of a home. But the bill also says the tax falls only on that portion of any gain that is "taken into account in computing taxable income" under the existing tax code. And the fact is, the first $250,000 in profit on the sale of a primary residence (or $500,000 in the case of a married couple) is excluded from taxable income already. (That exclusion doesn’t apply to vacation homes or rental properties.)
The Joint Committee on Taxation, the group of nonpartisan tax experts that Congress relies on to analyze tax proposals, underscores this in a footnote on page 135 of its report on the bill. The note states: "Gross income does not include … excluded gain from the sale of a principal residence."
And just to be sure, after checking with William Ahern, director of policy and communications for the nonprofit, pro-business Tax Foundation, FactCheck.org was told that "Some home sales would see a tax increase under this bill, but it would have to be a second home or a principal residence generating [a gain of] more than $250,000 ($500,000 for a couple)."
So there you have it. The sort of people who would have to pay the tax might include, for example:
- A single executive making $210,000 a year who sells his $300,000 ski condo for a $50,000 profit. His tax on the sale of that vacation home would amount to $1,900, in addition to the capital gains tax he would have paid anyway.
- An "empty nester" couple with combined income of over $250,000 a year who sell their $1 million primary residence to move to smaller quarters. If they cleared $600,000 on the sale, they would be taxed on $100,000 of the profit (the amount over the half-million-dollar exclusion). Their health care tax on the sale would amount to $3,800 over and above the usual capital gains levy.
However, a typical home sale would not incur any tax. In March, for example, half of all existing homes sold for $170,700 or less, according to the National Association of Realtors. Obviously, none of those sales could possibly generate a $250,000 profit, and so none would be subject to the tax.
Thus, for the vast majority, the 3.8 percent tax won’t apply. The Tax Foundation, in a report released April 15, said the new tax on investment income (including real estate) "will hit approximately the top-earning two percent of families" when it takes effect in 2013.
Some of the chain e-mails that claim ordinary home sales will be taxed include a copy of an article written by Paul Guppy, a policy analyst with the conservative Washington Policy Institute (that’s Washington state, not Washington, D.C.). The article appeared March 28 as an op-ed in the Spokane, Wash., Spokesman-Review, and Guppy claimed that "middle-income people must pay the full tax even if they are ‘rich’ for only one day." That brought a quick rebuttal from Sara Orrange, the government affairs director of the local Realtors association. She wrote a letter to the newspaper calling Guppy’s article "inaccurate" and saying, "Most people who sell their homes will not be impacted by these new regulations. This is not a new tax on every seller, and that correction needs to be made." In a news article the next day, business reporter Bert Caldwell confirmed that only "a very few" home sellers would pay the 3.8 percent tax.
The Internal Revenue Service says that to qualify for the $250,000/$500,000 exclusion, a seller must have owned the home and lived there as the seller’s "main home" for at least two years out of the five years prior to the sale.
Sources cited by www.FactCheck.org
Joint Committee on Taxation. "Technical Explanation of the Revenue Provisions of the ‘Reconciliation Act of 2010,’ As Amended, In Combination with the ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.’" 21 Mar 2010.
Ahern, William. E-mail to FactCheck.org, 22 Apr 2010.
National Association of Realtors. "Existing-Home Sales Rise on Home Buyer Tax Credit and Favorable Market Conditions." Press release. 22 Apr 2010.
Fleenor, Patrick and Gerald Prante. "Health Care Reform: How Much Does It Redistribute Income?" The Tax Foundation. 15 Apr 2010.
Guppy, Paul. "Health Law’s Heavy Impact." Spokesman-Review. 28 Mar 2010.
Orrange, Sara. "Home sales tax clarified." Letter. Spokesman-Review. 1 Apr 2010.
Caldwell, Bert. "Realtors take aim at health care tax claim." Spokesman-Review. 4 Apr 2010.
Jack Lippman
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Change is the Norm
New York City has changed. Or has it? This summer I was astounded on the number of people recognizable as Asians or Middle Easterners whom I saw in the Big Apple. I’m not talking about tourists, but about New Yorkers, the people who work in the stores, restaurants, hotels and offices throughout the city. When you get to talk to them, you realize that many of them were born and educated here and have no foreign accents whatsoever, unless you consider a Brooklyn or Bronx accent as foreign.
But is this a change? New York City has always been a mecca for immigrants. After the original Dutch, Scotch and English settlers, there came many waves of immigrants, each with its own language and appearance. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Germans came, to be followed by Irish, Poles, Jews, Italians, and others. And of course, many Afro-Americans from the South moved to New York early in the last century as did many Hispanics, primarily from Puerto Rico. The city has absorbed and accommodated all of these groups, not always immediately and not always smoothly, but it has done it. And the magnet attracting all of these groups has been the opportunity to lead a better and more prosperous life than was possible wherever they came from.
This is no different today. Ask the Afghan who will sell you a Sabrett frankfurter from his wagon on a Manhattan street corner or the Indian who will sell you a Hershey bar in his convenience store or from his newsstand. Or ask the Manager of your local Manhattan bank branch or the saleslady in Bergdorf, who might hail from Tokyo, Mumbai or Manila.
The latest immigrant groups are finding their place in the city. It has always been that way. It may take a generation or two but it always happens. They become Americans. The kind of changes they bring about have been going on ever since immigrants started coming to New York. In New York, I suppose change is the norm. Sometimes it appears that nowadays there are more Asian restaurants in Manhattan than pizzerias. Perhaps, but a hundred years ago, consider that there weren’t any pizzerias at all in the city!. And few people knew what a bagel was then, either, let alone a bialy.
And since New York City is the media capital of the nation, this change spreads throughout the nation. Just look at the racial and ethnic mixture of the actors used in commercials on TV. It wasn’t that way a few years back! They are evidence that change is not only the norm in New York City, but in America as a whole. Don’t fight it. You will not win. Come to think of it, unless you are a descendant of the original Native Americans (not the interloping immigrants who crossed over to Alaska from Siberia thousands of years ago), you are part of the process of change yourself.
JL
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