President Sandtrap and his White House of Horrors insist tax increases are needed to dig the nation’s golf ball out of the divot he’s hacked. Believe it or not, there’s one revenue-raising plan we endorse.
Glenn Reynolds urges restoration of an excise tax on movie theaters’ gross revenues enacted briefly after WWII:
[Republicans should] be agitating to repeal the “Eisenhower tax cut” on the movie industry and restore the excise tax… [as well as] look at imposing similar taxes on sales of DVDs, pay-per-view movies, CDs, downloadable music, and related products.
I’d also look at the tax and accounting treatment of these industries to see if they were taking advantage of any special “loopholes” that could be closed as a means of reducing “tax expenditures.” (Answer: Yes, they are.)
Mr. Reynolds highlights another rich vein of spreadable wealth to mine:
Obamacare drafters went to work for the health care industry at inflated salaries. And drafters of the Dodd-Frank financial bill have gone on to big-shot lobbying and consulting jobs at high salaries.
Because much of their value to their employers comes from their prior government service, I think that the taxpayers deserve a share of the return, say in the form of a 50 percent surtax on any earnings by political appointees in excess of their prior government salaries for the first five years after they leave office.
Why stop there? We’d also like to see a tax on the fair market value of all travel, vacations, parties, etc, taken at public expense by President Obama and Congress (i.e. the guys who fly around on corporate jets they don’t pay for) deducted from their paychecks.
That’s what we call “shared sacrifice”.
– Written by Bonfire of the Absurdities
Source: Washington Examiner
