Warren’s return taxes imagination
Looming elections lead to increase in Senator’s generosity
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren says that “the wealthiest should pay their fair share of taxes.”
The question, though, is what exactly is one’s fair share? And why does the fake Indian’s fair share happen to be higher now than in earlier years?
Answer: This year she’s seeking re-election, in preparation for running for president in 2020.
Massachusetts has a marvelous option on its state income tax forms. In order to accommodate the throngs of Social Justice Warriors yearning to virtue-signal, the Legislature 15 years ago gave the trustfunders a chance to literally put their inherited money where their mouths are.
It’s Line 22 — if you check the box, you can pay your income tax rate not at the current rate, a tad over 5 percent, but at the old, Dukakis-era 5.85 percent.
It’s for the children, you know.
But despite the endless number of candlelight vigils, marches, demonstrations, boycotts, Facebook postings and the like by the Resistance around here, the actual number of moonbats interested in actually, you know, doing something remains virtually nil.
At the end of last March, of the 2,027,928 individual taxpayers who had filed in Massachusetts, exactly 894 had opted to voluntarily pay at the higher 5.85 percent rate.
Try not to let those miserly, miserable numbers destroy your faith in the sincerity of the liberal community.
Anyway, after all these years of stiffing the people she claims to care so much about, the fake Indian finally checked the Line 22 box on her 2017 returns, paying at the higher rate on her $956,364 income.
But the question remains, why didn’t she contribute her “fair share” in all the earlier years, dating back to 2008?
If she had paid at the higher, voluntary rate over the past decade, the state would have had another $51,328 to provide for the oppressed victims of the Eurocentric Republican cisgender transphobic plutocracy blah-blah-blah …
Wouldn’t a virtue-signaling moonbat want to … redistribute the wealth? Especially someone like the fake Indian, who once proudly claimed she had provided the “intellectual foundations” of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
I emailed the Warren campaign Monday with a number of questions. Here are some of them:
“Why did she make the decision to voluntarily pay more only in the year when she is running for re-election? Why hasn’t she ever checked the box previously?
“Shouldn’t someone who stridently calls for higher taxes be willing to pay more herself, voluntarily? Is it hypocritical not to pay more when demanding that others, who have so much less, pay more? … Was that a mistake, does she feel remorse?
“What would Elizabeth Warren advise her fellow ‘one percenters’ to do? To act like she always has, or to act like she’s acting now that she’s running for re-election?”
Here was her campaign’s answer:
“While Republicans chose to shovel $1.5 trillion in giveaways to giant corporations and billionaires, Sen. Warren decided to make a charitable contribution to the state of Massachusetts. She supported the millionaire’s tax ballot initiative to make this higher tax rate permanent. She believes the wealthiest should pay their fair share in taxes.”
If I were in court, I would now turn to the judge and say, “Your Honor, would you please direct the witness to answer my questions?”
Looking over the fake Indian’s returns indicates just how far she has come from the jagged (or is it ragged?) edges of the middle class.
Ever since she’s been checking the box — the other box, the one on her employment applications — she’s never had to worry about shopping for specials at her local cheese shop. But she really started needing a wheelbarrow for all of her dore-mi after she was elected to the Senate in 2012.
In 2012, she reported income of $413,316. The next year, as a freshman senator, she and her husband made $1,054,868, and in 2014, $1,596,115, followed by $1,162,616 in 2015.
Bottom line: The fake Indian wants to raise your taxes, but she doesn’t want to pay anything extra herself, except in election years.
Do as she says, not as she does.