Growls

Ryan Ellis of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) reminds us this morning that "Sunday will mark the start of the 100-day countdown to “Taxmageddon” – the date the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect.  They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2013" (emphasis added)

• The first wave involves the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief, the so-called Bush tax cuts.

• The second wave will the Obamacare Tax Hikes, which are the "twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare" although "(s)ome have already gone into effect (the tanning tax, the medicine cabinet tax, the HSA withdrawal tax, W-2 health insurance reporting, and the “economic substance doctrine”)."

• The third wave includes the Alternative Minimum Tax and several others.

The ATR post has the needed details on the specific taxes involved.

Will Congress find the chutzpah to forestall Taxmageddon as well as the "fiscal cliff" also scheduled to go into effect on January 2, 2013. Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) write about it in their weekly "wastebasket" article here. Here's how TCS concludes their piece entitled "Fiscal Cliff Jumping:"

"Lawmakers and the administration complain about the idiocy of sequestration and how it is irresponsible to let it occur as if sequestration dropped from the sky without warning. They’re right. It is irresponsible. In fact the only thing that would be more irresponsible is to simply undo it and ignore the deep budgetary hole we’re in. The markets were jittery last summer when a final deal to raise the debt ceiling was struck (that’s what gave us the Super Committee and sequestration). To not follow through on what the nation’s leaders promised to do is inexcusable. So how about this: cut spending and raise revenue in a smart and targeted way to reduce the deficit by trillions of dollars. Here’s one plan we at Taxpayers for Common Sense came up with, but Congress, feel free to use the Domenici-Rivlin plan, or the Simpson-Bowles plan, or put your heads together and come with a new plan. Just do it."

Other resources: We've growled at least three times about Taxmageddon -- here, here, and here. And, at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's blog, they show NPR's effort to breakdown the fiscal cliff.