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Thursday, February 01, 2007
Sawicky on Min. Wage Tax Bogusness
The Senate is scheduled to vote on the minimum wage package today at 2:30 PM...but now's a good time to check out Max Sawicky's erudite take on the unnecessary tax cuts attached to the minimum wage bill. One key passage on the tax cuts, AKA the Small Business and Work Opportunity Act of 2007 (SBWOA):
The proposed SBWOA tax cuts pertaining to depreciation and S-corps share an utter lack of targeting to any business owner affected by a minimum wage increase. They could just as easily benefit owners not affected, owners helped by the increase, and people who own no business at all but elect to invest in an old business or begin a new one in the future. The tax cuts could benefit a firm with no minimum wage employees, or a firm with no employees at all. They are completely unrelated to a business firm’s labor costs, past, present, or future.
From the standpoint of tax fairness, a business owner might be very wealthy, or he might be barely hanging on in business. Some critics of Social Security cast doubt upon the merits of providing any retirement benefits to well-off retirees. By contrast, any conceivable compensation from a business tax break has no relation whatsoever to the economic circumstances of the taxpayer in question. Businesses don’t pay taxes, people do. No tax break pertaining to a business entity can be premised in any way on the household income of the business owner who would benefit.
Posted by Matt Lewis
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