Taxing Health Care Benefits

This should get interesting pretty quickly!!!

The Obama Administration is getting serious about health care reform. There are several concerns to deal with but the administration is focused on reducing the number of uninsured Americans.

The solution includes taxing employer provided health care benefits. Obama hammered Senator John McCain during the general election for proposing such a heinous idea. It could become law.

Property Taxes

http://online.dbu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl%3Fcourse_id%3D_19398_1

I came across this article about property taxes. Two things interested me in this article. First it takes place in Detroit, my birth place. And second property taxes. Living in Texas now, property taxes always seem to be on a homeowner’s mind.
For me this article covers a few areas. First, another Politian with tax problems they deny or claim ignorance. JoAnn Watson a Detroit city council member paid $68.00 this year for property tax. Supposedly because the city tax assessor assessed the property as vacant. Secondly, if you knew your property taxes dropped to a minimal fee your honesty should have taken down to the tax collector to inquire about the drop. Thirdly, common sense would have told you that something is wrong. ~Chris Carson

Visual of the day - Taxes; Obesity

The above image shows that US is one of the least taxed countries in the world, if we look at tax revenue as percentage of the total economy. Granted, these are 2005 stats. Some things have changed. (From thinkorthwim; full 4 page report here).
On an unrelated note, but possibly useful for our Tuesday discussion - this image relates recent OECD statistics about eating time in various nations to obesity in various nations. Interesting, isn't it? This comes from Econmix.

I was perusing a report from a Federal Reserve Conference that Jekabs and I both attended last November. The topic was the state of the economy and how the fed planned on intervening in the future. In reality, this conference played more like a horror movie convention rife with gloom and doom.

Here is a little nugget filled to the brim with a dash of gloom and a heaping tablespoon of doom:

•75-year unfunded liabilities from entitlement programs sum to $40.3T.
–Social Security $4.3T
–Medicare Part A $12.4T
–Medicare Part B $15.7T
–Medicare Part D $7.9T
–Medicare represents almost 90% of the problem. Privatizing SSN will not work-reduce deficit.

To summarize, projected revenues for Social Security and Medicare falls short of expected budget needs by $40.3 trillion over the next 75 years. Again, that figure does not represent the total amount required to fund the programs through 2084. The programs will be in the red by that amount.

So, how do we as a country close the gap? Here are two viable options. I use the term "viable" very loosely:
•Total per-capita entitlement debt of $330K –to close gap.
•Could raise indiv. Income tax rates by 85%.– (Relative to current 8.9% of GDP)
–This is a static estimate•
could cut discretionary spending by 97%.– (Relative to current 7.8% of GDP)

•could make no tax or spending changes.

Your eyes do not deceive. We would need to either raise individual income tax rates by 85% or reduce discretionary government spending by 97%.

Have a good weekend!!

Graph of the day - Tax burden in the US

From the Congressional Budget Office (CBO): it is interesting to see how much taxes people pay when the tax-payers are categorized in income quintiles. Here is the data for the above graph, and here are some more charts from CBO.