IMF Says US Budget Requires 35% Spending Cuts and 35% Tax Increases

[MothBalls]

I'm fine with all of this as long as they don't increase MY taxes or cut MY benefits.

[mookiemookie]

Goes along with the St. Louis Fed's analysis: http://research.stlouisfed.org/publi...s/article/8856

The rise in the national debt... is entirely a consequence of the federal government’s increase of expenditures without an offsetting increase in revenues.

[Castout]

Is it possible in all chances that this debt be solved in the long run with long run economic growth. Honestly I don't see this ever happening.

Or must it be just tax increase and cuts in spending?

US could end up like Greece . . . . there's no time for politicking. US losing global dominance will have resonance in every part of the world. I'm concerned with its effect on global stability and emboldening threats to civil liberties globally. You know how China treats their own citizens. They will have big influence on those people not yet enlightened to copy them. For China there's clearly a clear distinction between government of a country and its citizen with the latter being in every possible way expendable. I'd say in their mind govt to govt relation has nothing to do with its population. Citizens are all just petty expandable. I certainly hope I'm wrong. A dominant country must have an advance philosophical grip on rights and wrongs, more than an advance military. Sadly this is often unlikely.

[Platapus]

I would be happy if there were no increases in the tax rate, as long as people and corporations actually paid those tax rates.

We can have tax rates of 100% but if there are loopholes and deductions that bring the actual tax I pay down to single digit percentages, the rate is meaningless.

Some complain that the US has the highest corporate tax rate in the universe. But how many corporations actually pay anywhere near that rate?

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Platapus

I would be happy if there were no increases in the tax rate, as long as people and corporations actually paid those tax rates.

We can have tax rates of 100% but if there are loopholes and deductions that bring the actual tax I pay down to single digit percentages, the rate is meaningless.

Some complain that the US has the highest corporate tax rate in the universe. But how many corporations actually pay anywhere near that rate?

According to an August 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO):

"Statutory tax rates do not provide a complete measure of the burden that a tax system imposes on business income because many other aspects of the system, such as exemptions, deferrals, tax credits, and other forms of incentives, also determine the amount of tax a business ultimately pays on its income." In the report, GAO estimated that "[t]he average U.S. effective tax rate on the domestic income of large corporations with positive domestic income in 2004 was an estimated 25.2 percent." Moreover, in June 2007, the Treasury Department concluded: "If the revenue from tax preferences were used to lower the corporate tax rate, the rate could be lowered from 35 percent to 27 percent while producing approximately the same revenue."