More Fallout From Tax Day

obama is prancing around touting his 'Buffett Rule,' which does little to reduce the budget deficit. In fact, it turns out that the Buffett Rule, as currently written, would actually INCREASE the federal budget deficit by $800 billion.

The case for the Buffett tax keeps eroding. When President Obama announced the idea, he said it would help "stabilize our debt and deficits over the next decade." Then came the inconvenient revelation that the new 30% millionaire's tax would raise only $46.7 billion over 10 years, and would leave about 99.5% of the deficit intact in 2013. It was a far cry from "stabilizing the debt."

Now we learn that the Buffett tax the Senate is expected to vote on early next week will make the deficit worse. That's because both Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats have made it clear that their new "fairness" tax is to offset the revenue loss from another provision related to the Alternative Minimum Tax.

The Joint Tax Committee—the official scoring referee on tax bills—calculates that the combination of AMT repeal for the middle class and the Buffett tax would add $793.3 billion to the debt over the next decade. As Mr. Obama has said, "This isn't politics, this is math."

It now seems that obama flunked not only economics, but also math.

There is, however, an alternative solution. As John Hinderaker of PowerLine suggests: "Instead of the Buffett Rule, How About the Geithner Rule?"

President Obama has now admitted that the “Buffett Rule,” formerly the centerpiece of his re-election campaign, is a silly gimmick that will raise hardly any money for the treasury. (Actually, it might cost the federal government money, as increases in the capital gains rate have been known to do.) So how about if, instead, we start talking about the Geithner Rule, which is: everyone pays what he owes under existing laws?

... The IRS estimates that year in and year out, around 15% of what Americans owe in taxes isn’t paid. This is mostly due to under-reporting of income. For FY 2011, the IRS collected around $2.3 trillion in tax revenue. Fifteen percent of that amount is $345 billion. Here, unlike the Buffett Rule, we are talking about real money.

Most tax evaders don’t wind up in prison. In fact, some wind up working for the government. Take Tim Geithner. Geithner, Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury, is a tax cheat.

Strong words, perhaps? Here's why I, and many other Americans, consider him a tax cheat. It's not just that he underpaid his taxes. To say the tax code is complex and complicated is a huge understatement. While one might reasonably expect the Secretary of the Treasury to understand its ins and outs, it is also understandable that such a person, plus his accountants, tax advisers, and lawyers, might become confused. After all, "the tax code is so complex that, according to a government study, even IRS employees answer tax questions correctly and completely less than half the time."

But here's where the 'tax cheat' part comes into play.

When the IRS audited Geithner, he paid what he owed for 2003 and 2004. But he didn’t pay what he owed for 2001 and 2002. Why? Because the statute of limitations had run on those years, so the IRS couldn’t sue him to collect the money or charge him criminally for failing to pay it. Only when he was nominated as Secretary of the Treasury did Geithner go back and pay what he owed for 2001 and 2002.

In other words, Geithner only paid up when it became public knowledge as part of the confirmation process. If he hadn't been nominated, he never would have paid. What a fine, upstanding paragon of virtue and integrity.

And what better example of the type of people obama associates himself with. But I digress.

So instead of wasting time on the Buffett Rule, how about if we promote the Geithner Rule, i.e., everyone pays what he owes under existing law. This will certainly promote fairness; is anyone in favor of tax evasion? And, unlike the Buffett Rule, if Tim Geithner, Berkshire Hathaway, Obama’s White House, and everyone else pays what they owe, it will go a long way toward solving the nation’s fiscal crisis.

Gee, what a novel idea...