This afternoon the House overwhelmingly approved a bill that would levy a 90 percent tax on bonuses paid to individuals who earn more than $250,000 from companies that have received at least $5 billion in government bailout funds.
I would really love to hear your thoughts on this one. The government is clearly doing the popular thing considering all the outrage over these bonuses, but are they opening the door to a very dangerous precedent. Where does this stop? If your business is too profitable and the government does not like you, will they use this approach to just levy windfall taxes at anytime? Let me know your thoughts.
Hmm... I don't think that this will lead to them taxing you if they just don't like your company. They were very specific in their parameters for which companies are affected here.
True, they are responding to the public outrage, but I feel like it takes a fairly extreme situation to get the public as outraged as they are right now about AIG.
Hopefully, unless the public was this upset about another company, Congress wouldn't have the guts to try and tax bonuses 90%.
Posted by: Kel | March 22, 2009 at 12:25 AM
This is certainly a slippery slope. One could certainly be a bit apprehensive in supporting this legislation. As a taxpayer, it upsets me that the companies that received taxpayer funded bailouts would then turnaround and dish out large bonuses to executives within that company. So I do feel that if a company receives bailout money they should be taxed to recover the taxpayer money that funded the bonuses. If the bonus money is legitamately the companies money, then I do not have a problem with the bonuses being given out. The real question then becomes do we trust our government to not tax the companies that are doing things the right way?
Posted by: Lee Lewis | March 29, 2009 at 12:28 PM