Down to the end of the line and still no Cliff. These clowns of Congress just couldn’t bring it together for the middle class. I guess now most middle class citizens will see what their elected leaders really think about them. We’ll the countdown begins until the middle class gets cliffed. Read full story below.
Stock Market News – Middle Class Cliff Fate Hours Away..
Unbias Stock Market News -
There’s a common misperception about the fiscal cliff— that the tax increases only apply to 2013. Not true.
In a cruel epilogue to 2012, roughly 28 million families would owe the IRS $86 billion more than they anticipated for this year should the country plunge off the cliff, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
Those families would face the “Alternative Minimum Tax,” which was introduced in 1969 to supposedly guarantee that wealthy Americans could not elude the taxman. But the AMT not only flopped, it was never indexed to inflation. So with each passing year, it seeps away from high society and into the wallets of Target and Wal-Mart shoppers. That sets up a disaster for April 15.
“Because most affected taxpayers will not have put aside money for it either through withholding or estimated taxes, it will cause more hardship in April than tax increases usually do,” Eric Toder, co-director of the Tax Policy Center, told The Fiscal Times. “The economy is facing huge risks from what could be entirely self-inflicted wounds.”
After a manic Thursday on Capitol Hill, lawmakers were treading through waves of cynicism and desperation. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., predicted yesterday morning that the country would enter the New Year without a deal to stop more than $600 billion worth of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, called his chamber into session for Sunday — two days before the year-end deadline.
“You cannot legislate with yourself,” a frustrated Reid said in a Thursday afternoon floor speech. “We have nobody to work with.”
His Senate Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., labored in a rival speech to shift the blame onto Democrats, saying he expects President Obama to submit a new proposal that can clear both chambers. “Hopefully, there is time for an agreement of some kind that saves the taxpayers from a wholly, wholly preventable crisis,” McConnell said.
Congress usually approves an AMT patch each year to account for inflation, but lawmakers bypassed the annual fix this time in hopes of gaining more leverage in cliff negotiations.
Earlier this month, Reid told Bloomberg News that an AMT patch must be accompanied by a measure to preserve lower income tax rates for 98 percent of the country, while the current rates expire on incomes above $250,000. The Fiscal Times reported that Republican lawmakers also viewed the AMT as a tool for hammering out a bargain on their preferred terms.
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