Hypocrite liberals dodge tax reform
Seek to game new rules by prepaying property levy
But … but … but … “tax cuts for the rich!”
That’s what liberals call loopholes that let the wealthy keep more of their own money, right? That’s why the “Trump Tax Attack On The Middle Class” is evil, isn’t it?
So why is it also exactly what rich blue-staters have been beating down the doors of the local tax office demanding for the past week? Affluent liberals have launched 2018 with a display of shameless hypocrisy that makes “Evangelicals for Roy Moore” look righteous.
Good, progressive, protax towns like Milton and Weston have been trying to help their good, anti-Trump taxpayers game the system to pre-pay their property taxes and — to quote U.S. Sen. Liz Warren on tax cuts — “avoid paying their fair share.”
And it’s not just Massachusetts. As the (liberal) website Vox.com reported in a post entitled, “This one weird trick lets blue states avoid Trump’s tax hike”:
“A few possible options have emerged to evade the new limit. … New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, and the government of D.C. are urging residents to prepay their 2018 property taxes in 2017, so they can still be deducted.”
“Weird” is right. Why are allegedly progressive politicians like Cuomo trying to help Bernie Sanders’ “millionaires and billionaires” loophole their way out of a tax bill? If you truly believe, as the members of the Boston Globe-Democrat editorial page pretend to, that income inequality and economic injustice are a threat to our democracy, you should love the tax law’s cap on state and local tax deductibility at $10,000.
According to a report by the Heritage Foundation, more than half the benefit goes to a handful of rich states, like Connecticut, New York and, yes, Massachusetts. And 80 percent of the local tax deduction scam winds up in the pockets of the top 20 percent of earners.
Just look at the towns where people are pushing to pay early and avoid “tax justice”: Places like Sherborn (average single-family home tax bill, $14,000), Wellesley ($15,000) and Weston ($20,000).
This is a tax law only a Koch Brother could hate. Why are progressives trying to twist their way out of it?
Could it be that liberals aren’t nearly as interested in “paying their fair share” as they are in making everyone else pay theirs? Perhaps that’s why Democrats didn’t seem to care that the gap between rich and poor widened during most of the Obama years — often faster than it did under that rightwing war-monger George W. Bush and his corporate henchman Dick Cheney.
The constant complaint on the left about the GOP tax bill has been that it disproportionately benefits the “rich,” that is, people earning $100,000 or more per year. And they’re right.
But these “rich” people benefit because they pay 80 percent of all federal income taxes, while people earning less than $50,000 pay almost none. It’s almost impossible to cut taxes without benefiting the people who actually pay them.
Capping state and local tax deductions solves this (alleged) problem. It doesn’t raise anyone’s taxes, it just ends a loophole that overwhelmingly benefited top earners. Not only that, but as Vox.com explains — or more accurately, complains — this policy “reduc[es] a key federal subsidy that makes it easier for states to charge high taxes on rich residents,” while evading it “reduces future pressure for state tax cuts that the federal law could create.”
In other words, making liberals actually pay the taxes they keep voting to raise might make it harder for politicians in Massachusetts and New York to keep raising them. It might put pressure on these states to do more with the money they collect rather than just sticking it to the taxpayers.
And which taxpayers are least likely to have an expensive lawyer or handy loophole to help them avoid these high taxes? And therefore, who would benefit most if local property or income taxes came down?
The middle class. No wonder the liberals of Wellesley are feeling left out.