I am simply
astounded that Trump issues, or even contemplates, an executive order suspending
payroll taxes. Adding to the confusion is that Trump campaign advisers are
saying that the president wants to go further and pass a permanent
payroll tax cut if he is re-elected. On August 7, speaking at his private golf
club at Bedminster, he said, “If I'm victorious on November 3rd, I plan to
forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax."
The administration has not explained how Social Security would be funded if a tax dedicated to it evaporates. There’s so much wrong with even considering that, that the villagers should rise up and surround the castle of the evil Baron (‘s father).
For the uninitiated or those who have been asleep for the past 40 or 50 years and expressed in simplest terms: Payroll taxes are taxes paid on the wages and salaries of employees. These taxes are used to finance social insurance programs, such as Social Security and Medicare. ... The largest of these social insurance taxes are the two federal payroll taxes, which show up as FICA and MEDFICA on your pay stub.
When Trump
ballyhoos cutting payroll taxes, he is catering to those (employers) at the tip
top of the food chain who simply redirect part of employees’ salary to the Federal
government for the Social Security Trust Fund and Medicare and add a similar
amount of their profits. Suspending payroll taxes costs those employers nothing,
actually increasing their profit, and, in fact, does put some more money into
the employee’s paycheck. Here’s why: The
current tax rate for social security is 6.2% for the employer and 6.2% for the
employee, or 12.4% total. The current rate for Medicare is 1.45% for the
employer and 1.45% for the employee, or 2.9% total. Combined, the FICA tax rate
is 15.3% of the employees’ wages.
Of course, normally
the employer “writes off “ (deducts from taxable income) the full amount they
(he, it) pays as business expenses, while the employee who does see a paycheck increase, also adds that income to his taxable
income. Understand the “bait and switch” here, “Yeah, we’re not withholding your
FICA, but it will be taxed as income now.” Let’s take the worst-case scenario,
which would be that all payroll taxes cease except income tax withholding.
Now the canny
employer, if such waivers were made permanent, could (as just an example) reduce
salaries by, say, half the former payroll tax rates (15.3% total, remember)) claiming
he’s given the employee a 7.6% raise and pocket the other half. Of course, most
employers will never be dependent upon either Social Security or Medicare,
since their extra profit will feed their Keoghs, Roths or 401k portfolios.
Meanwhile, the majority
of Americans over retirement age (60% by 2018 data) who admit that they “rely
on Social Security as a “major source” of their income and Medicare for healthcare", would be looking at vastly
reduced resources and medical options just when
they need them most. Of course, to Trump and his cronies, this is
inconsequential as they will still be able to afford high end luxury insurance programs,
paid for with the added profits from payroll tax relief.
By the numbers: About 50 percent of federal revenue comes
from individual income taxes, 7 percent from corporate income taxes, and another
36 percent from payroll taxes that fund social insurance programs
(figure 1). The rest comes from a mix of sources. That works out to 3% of
the federal budget per month of eliminated payroll tax!
What
goes unnoticed here is that eliminating or reducing payroll taxes is of absolutely
no significance to the unemployed, who need help the most. Meanwhile, with
already huge budget deficits adding to burgeoning national debt (which candidate Trump said he would “eliminate in 8
years”) Three months of waived payroll taxes would have the immediate
effect of a 9% drop in already insufficient federal income.
Down the road however
is an even starker picture of what would have to happen to Social Security and Medicare
if Trump has his way. I am as sure as it is possible to be that a lot of Trump
supporters are of the over 65 set and unaware that the empty suit, reality TV,
talking head they idolize simply doesn’t give even half a shit about this. The same
candidate who promised naïve supporters that their Social Security and Medicare
would remain safe will never have to rely on either program.
"I
am going to save Social Security without any cuts. I know where to get the
money from. Nobody else does." (May 21, 2015) (Turns out he doesn’t
either!) The ego evident in this and similar statements rank right up with
Nixon’s “secret plan” to end the Viet Nam fiasco.
“Save
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without cuts. Have to do it,” “Get rid
of the fraud. Get rid of the waste and abuse but save it. People have been
paying it for years. And now many of these candidates want to cut it. You save
it by making the United States, by making us rich again, by taking back all of
the money that’s being lost.” (His failure is epic in that regard, beginning
with the disastrous effects of his tariff war.)
As a sidebar,
briefly (I’ll try to be) the Medicare waste/fraud/abuse statement is simply a
gratuitous and unverifiable statement designed to appease the deplorables. In truth,
Medicare is very efficient by any objective means: According to the Urban
Institute's Marilyn Moon, who testified before the Senate Committee on Aging,
Medicare expenditures between 1970 and 2000 grew more slowly than those of the
private sector. Note that around 2000, we began to see the marked proliferation
of Medicare Advantage plans. So, they made everything better huh? Not so much.
The average Medicare
Advantage (MA) plan payment has been
estimated to be 12 to 14 percent over Medicare fee-for service
costs each year since 2003, which in 2009 amounted to between $10 billion and
$12 billion in additional Medicare program spending, That this overpayment,
coupled with the rising enrollment in MA plans, accounted for 0.4 to 3.4
percent of total Medicare expenses. In short, to date the Medicare Advantage
program has cost more than traditional Medicare And even worse, tend to be regionally
limited where as Medicare is Nationwide. Of course, since MA plans are a valentine
to private insurers, and the insurance lobby is second only to the Big Pharma
lobby……!
Medicare
Advantage plans as of today are more expensive for the federal government than
the traditional public plan. But when you look at how much the private plans
say their benefits actually cost -- rather than what they get paid to deliver
them -- Medicare Advantage comes out as the less expensive option. What a huge
leap? It really means that MA insurers pay providers even less and pocket the
difference.…plus! Again we put profit (for some) ahead of efficiency and cost
to all taxpayers. Trump is fine with this. After all, he’ll never need either
Social Security or Medicare and he sure as Hell doesn’t care if you do or not.
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