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February 19, 2012
Tax Foundation Rips Santorum Tax Plan Grade: D+
Tax Foundation Rips Santorum Tax Plan
An antitax advocacy group zinged Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s tax plan, giving him a grade of “D+” grade and the dubious honor of proposing what “may be the worst idea of any of the Republican candidates.”
The Tax Foundation, a Washington nonprofit that supports lower taxes, blasted Mr. Santorum’s tax proposal in a blog post, just days after the former Pennsylvania senator’s near-victory in the Iowa caucuses.
”The good news is Santorum has gotten more specific about his tax plan since last month when we gave him a D+,” economist William McBride wrote on Thursday. “The bad news is… he’s gotten more specific.”
Mr. McBride said the biggest problem with Mr. Santorum’s proposal is the sharply different corporate tax rates he would establish. Mr. Santorum would halve the corporate tax rate to 17.5% from its current top rate of 35%. Manufacturers, however, would not have to pay any corporate taxes.
Mr. McBride said the idea is “grossly unfair,” and unlikely to gain traction in Washington. If it did, he said, many businesses would “suddenly claim to be a manufacturer.”
The Santorum campaign did not return requests for comment.
The tax group also took aim at Santorum’s suggestion to triple the tax deduction families can take for each child. “This is obviously a big tax cut, and might spur growth, or it might just spur child making,” Mr. McBride wrote. The Tax Foundation echoed concerns expressed earlier this week by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that tripling the child tax deduction could push more low-income families off the tax rolls.
While the Santorum campaign has filled in some of the details in recent weeks, big ones remain missing, Mr. McBride wrote. The plan would collapse the current six rates to just two — 10% and 28% — but it doesn’t specify who would pay those rates, he said, adding: ”That’s kind of important.”
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Wild Thing's comment.........
This Santorum guy really turns my stomach. The 0 percent for manufacturers is most likely Rick’s way of paying back his union buddies, who will just support the libs anyway. It’s also playing favorites. It’s funny that I heard him call this a “flat tax”, even though it’s 17 percent and 0 percent, two different tax rates. I don’t understand why he doesn’t call for eradicating the Capital Gains Tax. Makes no sense to me at all.
And every tax deduction that favors one person is using government force to take those same tax dollars from somebody else. People should only have children if they can afford them on their own — not by forcing their childless neighbors to carry their tax burden. Santorum has a lot of kids so of course he wants this.
Rick Perry's plan was the best and it received A's and A+ on every write up I read about it.
Posted by Wild Thing at February 19, 2012 04:50 AM
Comments
Really it sounds like Santorum is just continuing the complicated tax code by aiming specific tax rates to specific audiences instead a going for a flat rate tax, a reduced corporate tax for all business and abolishine estate and capital gains taxes. Nothing new here. Just the usual juggling act.
Posted by: TomR,armed in Texas at February 19, 2012 12:46 PM
Whoa. We have been bashing manufacturers with punitive taxes, higher than even the high-tax Euros, and we wonder why they leave?
And sorry, manufacturing jobs *are* better than mere service jobs. Will there be Definition Games played on this? Sure. But as the Supreme Court said with respect to pornography, we will know it when we see it....
Raising the child tax credit for working families, as opposed to just giving them more welfare like the Obamunists, is not a bad idea either. Given the payroll tax and pension systems that exist---and fat chance anyone, even your favorite Rick Perry had he somehow survived his gaffes, will abolishe or would have abolished them overnight.
Rick Santorum is sadly too easy for the Demunist Commiecrats to caricature. But his "Reaganomics for the working class" approach is badly needed and will bring "Bitter Clinger" working class Joe Sixpacks firmly into the GOP. We can't just take those people for granted. They have a tendency to go off and vote for 3rd party traps like Ross Perot, as you may recall.
Posted by: Curmudgeon at February 19, 2012 02:29 PM
I might add that spurring USA child-making is a desirable thing. Contrary to what the eco-fiend leftists propagandized, we will have a problem of too few people, not too many people, in the future. As it stands, barring major life extension breakthroughs, Western Europe, Northeast Asia and even our hemisphere will see major "die-offs" by 2050.
Indeed, much of the world now has below Replacement Level birthrates of 2.1 per woman, and that is assuming 50/50 sex ratios (nice going, Red Chinese). There is one glaring exception to this: the enslaved women of Muslim savages, breeding like rats. I shudder to think of *that* kind of future.
Posted by: Curmudgeon at February 19, 2012 02:35 PM
Tom, I agree with you.
Posted by: Wild Thing at February 20, 2012 03:06 AM
