During the 2020 campaign, Joe famously gave his solemn pledge that no one making less than $400,000 would see a tax increase. Unsurprisingly, Joe Biden was lying.
Jen Paski attempted to “clarify” in March that Biden was talking about household income, not personal income, so the actual threshold was $200,000. And then again last night during his first joint session to Congress, Biden said that no one earning less than $400k would see tax hikes.
So clearly we’re getting missed messaging here.
Per reporting by Axios, one of the many tax increases that Biden proposed last night to pay for the useless programs he wants to push, hits married couples at a rate far below $400 thousand dollars each.
Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on Americans who make less than $400,000 only applies to individuals — not married couples filing jointly, a White House official clarified to Axios on Wednesday.
The declaration means a hypothetical couple, with each spouse making $399,999, would not escape the tax increase even though they individually earn less than $400,000.
Their combined income would be $799,998, which the White House believes is sufficient to help underwrite the expanded social safety net the president is proposing.
Biden plans to raise the top tax rate to from 37% to 39.6% for families with taxable income above $509,300, and for individuals above $452,700, to help fund his $1.8 trillion American Families Plan, the official said.
That $509,300 limit means that two married individuals, who each have a taxable income exceeding $255,000, would see the portion of their earnings above that figure taxed at the highest rate.
Given that marriage is the bedrock of our society and that children raised by a man and a woman statistically outperform children raised by single parents in almost every way imaginable, we certainly shouldn’t be putting this steep marriage penalty in place.
The counter to that is always, “these are rich people.” However, is that really true? There are an awful lot of people in the middle class who move to the ranks of the “wealthy” based on a relatively small number of years in their lives. Admittedly, it’s more of a factor with something like the capital gains tax which Biden wants to increase to an insane level of 43.4%. Someone’s middle class and they sell a business, a house, or get some other kind of one-time windfall worth several hundred thousand dollars. Are they rich? No, but Joe Biden still wants 43.4% of their money. The same thing does happen with regularly taxable income, too. Maybe you bought some Doge cryptocurrency before Elon Musk mentioned it and saw your $1000 swell up to hundreds of thousands. Maybe you finally got that dream job in New York and San Francisco, then lost it after 2-3 years. You may never have that opportunity again — so, why should the government get so much of that money?
Last but not least, no program should be paid for entirely by “taxing the rich.” Any program that the middle class isn’t willing to pay for with their taxes is a program that needs to die. There is not a single thing that Joe Biden is proposing to do that is worth a thin dime in new taxes from anyone, including the middle class.
John Hawkins is the author of 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know. He also owns Linkiest.com.
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