How? Go to the U.S. Senate website http://www.senate.gov/index.htm , choose your state at the top right corner to find your Senators, and under each one choose the "contact" option and click on the link. In the message submission form that pops up, enter your information, then copy the text below and paste it into the body of your message. (Feel free to customize it to add your own thoughts), then hit "submit.
Now, do the same thing for your U.S. representative by going to http://www.house.gov/ and entering your zip code in the Find Your Representative box. Choose your representative, and from their home page choose Contact to bring up the message form. Again, enter your details, paste in the text below, and hit submit.
If you have time, please also copy the text into a fax, using either a fax machine or the free fax service at http://www.bestfreefax.com/BFFSendFreeFax.php , and send it to Senator Orrin Hatch, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, at 202-228-0554 . Chairman Hatch is working on a tax proposal based on the dividends-paid deduction to be issued in the next few months. We want to help him to get it right.
If you are a Change.org user, please also sign our petition.
It's fast, it's easy, and it will help to save our economy!
Cut and paste the text below:
Please sponsor the Shared Economic Growth tax reform proposal. The bill text is at the link below, and a full explanation can be found at http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/plr/vol35/iss3/4/. Only Shared Economic Growth can do all of the following in a revenue-positive manner:
1. Make the U.S.A. the most attractive location
on the planet for American companies to locate their high-value operations, so
that American workers would regain market power;
2.
Allow corporations to bring cash home to
invest in those high-value operations;
3.
Enable American firms to compete effectively
against their foreign rivals;
4.
Provide a benefit to middle-class workers who
do the right thing and save money for their children’s educations and for
retirement;
5.
Avoid increasing the deficit today, and provide substantial additional revenues and private savings in order to help
prevent a fiscal crisis as the baby boomers retire;
6.
Eliminate the incentive for corporations to
take on too much destabilizing debt by eliminating the tax advantage of debt
financing;
7.
Improve the efficiency of our economy by
unlocking cash and encouraging its rapid flow to the most efficient
investments;
8.
Put an end to corporate tax shenanigans and
solve the problem of corporate tax shelters and the complexities of transfer
pricing enforcement;
9.
Put C corporations on the same tax
footing as pass-through entities, without double taxation of corporate
earnings, eliminating tax distortion of entity choice;
10. Increase corporate responsiveness to shareholders and regulators;
11. End the practice of compensating corporate executives for artificial “growth”
that consists only of retaining earnings rather than paying them out as
dividends; and
12. Improve the efficiency of our allocation of talent
by eliminating the strong tax preference for pursuing unproductive – and often
destructive - speculation rather than productive work, while at the same time
improving the fairness of our tax system
The text of the Bill can be found at http://sharedgrowth.blogspot.com/2013/03/shared-economic-growth-draft-bill-and.html
Thank you.
Brilliant!
ReplyDeleteCan I assume the DPD would be accompanied by removing preferential tax treatment of dividends received by taxpayers? If not, then the deduction would have the effect of both eroding the tax base as increasing the tax burden on wage earners and benefiting shareholders by increasing their wealth through increased share prices.
ReplyDeleteSuch a policy would accelerate the rate of income disparity and increase the amount of that disparity. I find it hard to think of a more inequitable tax "reform."
Mark, the question you raise is exactly why the Senate needs to hear from people as suggested on the Action Page rather than being left to its own devices. You may wish to look at the bill and summary here http://sharedgrowth.blogspot.com/2013/03/shared-economic-growth-draft-bill-and.html or the long article here http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/plr/vol35/iss3/4/ You would then see that indeed it does eliminte the shareholder level special dividend and capital gains rates on equity, and that in fact it reduces wealth disparity by requiring the capital-owning class to pay tax at ordinary rates and inclusive of full employee-side FICA like regular working people do, while allowing the benefits of the proposal to flow to the IRAs, 401ks and progressive-rate savings of middle-class savers, thus shifting the burden in the appropriate direction. You might enjoy the article, which explains how the proposal would do much more, realistically, to address the inequities and inefficiencies in our economy than strengthening unions, raising the minimum wage, or doing anything else that in practice would be undermined by the fundamental lack of market power of American workers in a globalized economy.
DeleteI want to clarify, the current proposal, and the author's comments do not contain this flaw. However, I have heard many advocate a DPD without the corresponding correction to the dividends received tax break. The comment is more of an afterthought to such persons than a criticism of the post.
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