Liberal, Tax, Government, Incompetence, Narrative, Oops

Almost two-thirds of the country’s million-pound earners disappeared from Britain after the introduction of the 50p top rate of tax, figures have disclosed. In the 2009-10 tax year, more than 16,000 people declared an annual income of more than £1 million to HM Revenue and Customs. This number fell to just 6,000 after Gordon Brown introduced the new 50p top rate of income tax shortly before the last general election. The figures have been seized upon by the Conservatives to claim that increasing the highest rate of tax actually led to a loss in revenues for the Government.

Liberal, Tax, Narrative, Economy

The article, “The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks,” is in my view one of the most important economic articles of the last several years. The Romers examined the effects of tax policy on GDP. They found that the effects are very large. Specifically, they found that for every 1% that taxes rise (as a percent of GDP), this causes GDP to fall about 3%. The authors employed some clever methods to try to find what economists call “exogenous” changes in tax rates. When they employed their methods, they found much higher effects than economists had previously found. The article was something of a Nixon-goes-to-China phenomenon. That is, while conservatives tend to claim that taxes strongly decrease GDP, liberals tend to claim that taxes have at best a weak influence on GDP. When the Romer-Romer article reported a strong influence, one of the most interesting aspects of the finding was that it came from a very liberal quarter – namely, one of its authors was a senior member of the Obama administration.

Liberal, Tax, Oops, Socialism

The amount of income tax paid fell sharply last month in the first formal indication that the new 50p higher rate is not raising the expected amount of revenue.

The Ryder Cup could become the next event to be affected by Government tax policies that prompted Usain Bolt to withdraw from the Crystal Palace Grand Prix.

Hypocrisy, Liberal, Financial, Crazy, AntiAmerican, Communism

"They're sitting on the money, they're using it for their own -- they're putting it someplace else with no interest in helping you with your life, with that money. We've allowed them to take that. That's not theirs, that's a national resource, that's ours. We all have this -- we all benefit from this or we all suffer as a result of not having it," Michael Moore told Laura Flanders of GRITtv.