Sen. Orrin Hatch says failure to restructure the Alternative Minimum Tax will next year leave 29 million middle-income families paying $92 billion more in “stealth taxes.”
Some Republicans have said they’d consider raising taxes on wealthier Americans, breaking their pledge to Grover Norquist never to increase taxes.
If there is no fiscal cliff deal well into December, Hatch was asked, will Republicans stick to their guns when it comes to those hikes?
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“Keep in mind that the upper two percent contains a lot of small business people who aren’t necessarily wealthy but who put their monies back into the business to hire people,” he tells Newsmax TV.
But if there is no agreement on the fiscal cliff, “in two months almost every single American taxpayer is going to be hit with the largest tax increase in history. Why is that? Because of the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax). It will turn into a minimum tax. [One newspaper] called it taxmageddon. I could not think of a better word.
“If we don’t address the fiscal cliff, taxes will go up for everybody by over $4.5 trillion over the next 10 years. To break that down, this means small business owners will face a top marginal tax rate hike of 17 percent. And the number of farmers and small business owners who will face the death tax will grow exponentially. It will be like a 25 hundred percent increase in death taxes and vulnerability.
“It means more than half, that is 53 percent, of all flow-through business income in the United States will be subject to the president and congressional Democrats’ proposed tax increases.
“That’s especially hard for the small businesses. But it also means the alternative minimum tax will leave more than 28 million middle-income tax-paying families and individuals paying $92 billion more in stealth taxes in a few months. And that’s about $2,500 a family.”
So does Hatch believe other Republicans will renege on their pledge not to raise taxes?
"I don’t. In fact, I’m not sure that those who’ve spoken up – they’re just saying, look, we consider everything. Everything should be on the table but we are against rate increases because we know that every time in the past – I’ve only been here 36 years — but every times we’ve given them rate increases with the promise that we’ll get spending cuts, we’ve had the rate increases become permanent and no spending cuts ever occur.
“Let’s face it, we’ve been through that routine far too much.”
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