Army Bob: Taxing the rich not as good an idea as you might think

Tax the corporations is the mating call of the green-tinted soft-beaked socialist.

How many times have we all heard this mantra from President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and every far left liberal friend we have. Businesses and the rich do not pay their fair share, the board room has all the tax breaks, the living room, none.

The truth of the matter is that the left refuses to be mugged by reality and simply refuses to acknowledge the facts concerning the tax code. The facts will get in the way of an irrational hatred of American democracy and our capitalist system.

We tax the hated, vicious corporations (well the politically incorrect corporations we should say), we establish a user tax or a federal sales tax. The left hates the concept of a national sales tax that replaces the national income tax, but loves it if it is an additional tax; the left rarely met a tax it doesn’t like. As we tax General Electric, a favorite corporation for the left to hate, we will see they simply pass the cost of the increased tax on to you and me. The poor, the rich, the middle class, each and every person who purchases the products they produce is indirectly taxed.

Ask yourself: if you owned a business and your taxes were increased what would you do? You would increase the cost of your goods or services, not a hard thing to figure out. The large businesses will do the same thing you would do as a small business owner.

To cloud the issue, a left-wing purist will say the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the hated corporation makes millions every year, true, but cutting his or her salary to zero will lower the cost of the goods or services a large multi-national corporations sells by a very small fraction of a penny. The large salary of the CEO, though not an economic factor, is an effective excuse to hate the successful and cloud the fact you and I will indirectly pay the increased costs or “tax” when we increase the evil corporation’s costs.

Half the people in the United States do not even pay a cent of income tax; the left wing requires an even larger amount of other people’s money to redistribute, so how do they tax the low/middle income earners even more than they do currently? The advocates for socialism will decry the socially unjust fact that businesses and corporations make a profit and demand they be taxed at a socially fair amount. The result of this social justice is that you and I and everyone is taxed even more, and also the lower half of income earners are now taxed; all in the name of social justice. This is social justice liberal style, but not to worry: the left will redistribute the new income to the poor they are taxing but only after the federal and state government socialists get 25% to 30% to feed the bureaucratic beast.

The unpopular truth is that a nation needs income; taxes are a necessary evil. If the left wants corporations to pay their fair share, then go to a national sales tax and let’s be done with it. Or we could go to a flat tax or fair tax, all right wing concepts, and be done with all the class warfare.

Our tax code is a monster of confusion and double speak; it is a stack of books larger than the old-fashioned set of encyclopedias. Just to read the complete tax code would take months and it would take years or even decades to fully understand.

I have never understood my left wing friends’ hatred of the politically incorrect rich and successful. If you are a professional athlete and make more per year than the highest paid Wall Street CEO you are a hero of the left? If you play act for a living and make 8 million dollars in four months (Alex Baldwin) you are a hero of the left? Ever heard of Occupy Hollywood? If you manage an international corporation that employ tens of thousands, provides health benefits, retirement benefits and profit sharing you are an evil 1% person in need of being condemned?

Come on, my liberal friends, face the facts, embrace tax reality and please stop the hate.