Prohibitive Taxing of Wall Street bonuses may take this country down a road of no return (on Investment).
There is rumbling going on in some states and Washington DC about imposing a Wall Street Tax on bonuses. I guess this is Washington’s way of penalizing Wall Street for being successful.
Now that Wall Street banks are righting themselves from near disaster, the government is taking a long hard look at the bonuses that are ripening on the tree called profit and getting ready to “fall” into the hands of those farmers (read employees) who grew them.
Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General for the state of New York said..
“The banks made money only because the taxpayers gave them a lot of money,” said Cuomo, He went on to say “They are institutions that would have failed were it not for the taxpayer money . . . Let’s not forget there is a context here.”
It would be silly to argue with the facts that he stated. Here is the rub though.
If a private or stock owned entity is bailed out by the government and is bound by law to pay back the loans with interest back, and this is accomplished, then does the business have a right to conduct business as they see fit and pay their employees as they please?
Or is that entity beholden to the government forever and ever because of one good deed that government did for them but was fully repaid with interest?
Does the government have the right to tax wages beyond a reasonable amount just because of the size or amount of the bonus(es)?
What happens to a non Wall Street entity which does not have near the target on its back like the financial institutions, give out huge sums of money to corporate employees who made the company buckets of money the past year? Can the government, or better yet, will the government step in and tell this entity that “unreasonably” large bonuses will be taxed more heavily than smaller bonuses.
This class envy argument that is constantly being fed by the liberals in government, will do more to hurt the economy in the long run than help it in the short run.
Wall Street needs to thank the taxpayers for the life jacket they were thrown, but it is now time to get away from this servitude of guilt trip that the politicians are using to divide this country and get re-elected.
Related posts:
- Obama Administration Handed Out $400M in Bonuses to Federal Employees in 2009
- Wall Street bank bill does not have the votes-but has the smell
- Obama rips Wall Street while fundraising in their town
- Wall Street Transaction Tax Proposed by Democrats
- Wall Street Journal Article Holds Barney Frank Responsible
