well, if nobody else will, george WILL @wapo

[lektrode]

now this is a BEAUTY....
even if only because of the focus on 2 of my fave political types in the bay state, also fondly known by us (former) New England yankee types as Taxachusettes and... well...
since he uses for an example an industry near n dear to yers truly (which has NOT 'recovered' and NO i'm not in the medical field... well... not a medical doctor anyway ;)

noted this morning on: http://www.realclearmarkets.com/ and seen elsewhere in the fishwrappers...

Taxing jobs out of existence

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...2DU_story.html

By George F. Will, The Washington Post

BLOOMINGTON, Ind.
Bill Hewlett and David Packard, tinkering in a California garage, began what became Hewlett-Packard. Steve Jobs and a friend built a computer in the California garage that became Apple’s birthplace. Bill Cook had no garage, so he launched Cook Medical in a spare bedroom in an apartment in this university town. Half a century ago, in flight from Chicago’s winters, he settled here and began making cardiovascular catheters and other medical instruments. One thing led to another, as things have a way of doing when the government stays out of the way, and although Cook died last year, Cook Medical, with its subsidiaries, is the world’s largest family-owned medical devices company.

In 2010, however, Congress, ravenous for revenue to fund Obamacare, included in the legislation a 2.3 percent tax on gross revenue — which generally amounts to about a 15 percent tax on most manufacturers’ profits — from U.S. sales of medical devices beginning in 2013. This will be piled on top of the 35 percent federal corporate tax, and state and local taxes. The 2.3 percent tax will be a $20 billion blow to an industry that employs more than 400,000, and $20 billion is almost double the industry’s annual investment in research and development.


An axiom of scarcity is understood by people not warped by working for the federal government, which can print money when it wearies of borrowing it. The axiom is: A unit of something — time, energy, money — spent on this cannot be spent on that. So the 2.3 percent tax, unless repealed, will mean not only fewer jobs but also fewer pain-reducing and life-extending inventions — stents, implantable defibrillators, etc. — which have reduced health-care costs.


The tax might, however, be repealed. The medical device industry is widely dispersed across the country, so numerous members of Congress have constituencies affected by developments such as these:


Cook Medical is no longer planning to open a U.S. factory a year. Boston Scientific, planning for a more than $100 million charge against earnings in 2013, recently built a $35 million research and development facility in Ireland and is building a $150 million factory in China. (Capital goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well-treated.) Stryker Corp., based in Michigan, blames the tax for 1,000 layoffs. Zimmer, based in Indiana, is laying off 450 and taking a $50 million charge against earnings. Medtronic expects an annual charge against earnings of $175 million. Covidien, now based in Ireland, has cited the tax in explaining 200 layoffs and a decision to move some production to Costa Rica and Mexico.

(and hey, we havent even started yet, with the 'grand plan')

Already 235 members of the House of Representatives — 227 Republicans and eight Democrats — are co-sponsors of a bill to repeal the tax. Twenty-three Republican senators but no Democratic senators favor repeal. The Democrats who imposed this tax on a single manufacturing sector justified this discrimination by saying Obamacare would be a boon to the medical devices industry because, by expanding insurance coverage, it would stimulate demand for devices. But those insured because of Obamacare will be disproportionately young and not needing, say, artificial knees. And well before Obamacare, the law had long required hospitals to provide devices to the needy who are uninsured.

(whooooops!!! SURPRISE again - theres them dang unintended consequences...)

Unsurprisingly, Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) supports repeal of the tax. Surprisingly, so does his opponent, Elizabeth Warren, an impeccably liberal Obamacare enthusiast who notes that in Massachusetts the medical devices industry has 24,000 employees and accounts for 13 percent of the state’s exports. Warren is experiencing another episode of New England remorse: “When Congress taxes the sale of a specific product through an excise tax . . . it too often disproportionately impacts the small companies with the narrowest financial margins and the broadest innovative potential.”

Well, yes. In 1990, when President George H.W. Bush’s recanted his “no new taxes” pledge, he enabled the Democratic-controlled Congress, with a legion of New England liberals in the lead, to impose a 10 percent tax on yachts costing more than $100,000. Yacht sales plunged 70 percent in six months, a third of all yacht-building companies — many in New England — stopped production and more than 20,000 workers lost their jobs. In 1993, the tax, although not the damage, was repealed.


Given humanity’s fallen condition, almost everyone’s tax policy is: “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree.” There are, however, vulnerable wealth-and-job creating businesses behind most trees.

georgewill@washpost.com

and altho i am disappointed with the rightwing bashing of miz warren, someone even a guy like me would vote for - in a heartbeat - at least the incumbent is on the right... i mean CORRECT page on this one, something i suspect the prev occupant of browns seat wouldnt be (and then theres his 'other half' who keeps HIS yacht south of the border, in rhode island, nears i know, but he might've decided to park it elsewhere, you know, after he decided to keep it out of the reach of his home states excise collectors (wonder if he has a place north of the border too, to register his cars - but likely he has one of them single digit mass license plates, so prolly not...)

[dcarrigg]

Re: well, if nobody else will, george WILL @wapo

something i suspect the prev occupant of browns seat wouldnt be

You might be surprised there. The Kennedys always did love their boats. His son Patrick put this together in '98 (even though it didn't pass):

Now comes Kennedy with "The Boat Building Investment Act," which he calls "exactly the opposite of a luxury tax." Indeed it is.Its centerpiece is a 20 percent tax credit for purchasers of American-made luxury yachts more than 50 feet long. So the purchaser of a $1 million yacht would get a $200,000 credit against his federal income taxes.


However, this would not be an unlimited benefit for the upper crust. The credit would be capped at $2 million, so the government would help only with the first $10 million that a purchaser spends on a yacht.


You probably have not heard of Kennedy's legislation. Do you think you might have heard a media uproar about it if its author were a Republican? Just a thought.


Kennedy says America lags behind other nations in "supporting" boat manufacturers, so this bill also would spend $25 million annually on "export assistance"--for example, marketing American-made yachts at overseas expositions--and training employees of America's yacht-builders. This is necessary, Kennedy says, to "continue the revitalization" of the industry after the "near-fatal experience when the luxury tax was implemented."


This legislation is a matter of fairness, says Kennedy, who acknowledges that hitherto he has supported "targeted tax cuts" targeted at people of modest means. But his proposal, as he explains it, is really sort of like that. The benefit of up to $2 million for each purchaser of a luxury yacht would benefit the nearly 6,000 Rhode Islanders working in the state's more than $1 billion-a-year boat-building industry, and workers elsewhere.

Yachts, to this day, are not hit with excise tax or sales tax in RI. Just last year they started hitting all cars over $500 with excise tax though. And at 6.5% per year of the maximum NADA value for that model-year down in Providence regardless of the car's actual condition, options, or mileage, no less.

[lektrode]

Re: well, if nobody else will, george WILL @wapo

You might be surprised there. The Kennedys always did love their boats. His son Patrick put this together in '98 (even though it didn't pass):

yeah i guess i might/would be, if eye could find the rollcall on the 1990 item, but only ref i came up with is this:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LI...n=1&vote=00263

seems it (the '91 luxtax repeal) was tacked onto something called:
S.543
Latest Title: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d102:SN543:

jeeeze dc, we might be opening a whole new can o worms with this one, eh?
and again, thanks for helping to keep the discussion (and my rants) honest.
i wouldnt want to be posting untruthful stuff, its not my style (not when theres more than enuf truthful stuff to use)

Yachts, to this day, are not hit with excise tax or sales tax in RI. Just last year they started hitting all cars over $500 with excise tax though. And at 6.5% per year of the maximum NADA value for that model-year down in Providence regardless of the car's actual condition, options, or mileage, no less.

yeah, huh?
i know its hard to fathom why this makes sense in the longer run, but - am told - all one has to do is go down to mexico to see all the CA reg'd boats to see why these sorts of taxes result in LESS revenue, not more - apparently the revenue people over there on the left coast have made it so that the buyers of new boats have all kinds of incentives to either take delivery south of the border or leave the state for some period of time to beat em - the funniest part of all this is that most of the yachties _arent_ rich guys (the <=50footers anyway) they just like to spend all their money on their 'favorite women' (and some are even smart enuf to call em their 2nd homes, if not first)

but ad valorem on a >$501 beatbox???
now there's some brilliant tax strategy....
(i'll bet theres quite a few NH plates sittin in RI driveways midweek too - just like in MA, and never mind NV plates sittin in the bay area)

[dcarrigg]

Re: well, if nobody else will, george WILL @wapo

yeah i guess i might/would be, if eye could find the rollcall on the 1990 item, but only ref i came up with is this:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LI...n=1&vote=00263

seems it (the '91 luxtax repeal) was tacked onto something called:
S.543
Latest Title: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d102:SN543:

jeeeze dc, we might be opening a whole new can o worms with this one, eh?
and again, thanks for helping to keep the discussion (and my rants) honest.
i wouldnt want to be posting untruthful stuff, its not my style (not when theres more than enuf truthful stuff to use)

It appears you were right. Teddy did vote for the initial bill. Mea culpa. Thank you for keeping me honest. Somehow I just couldn't separate yachts over $100k and summertime Teddy in my mind.

yeah, huh?
i know its hard to fathom why this makes sense in the longer run, but - am told - all one has to do is go down to mexico to see all the CA reg'd boats to see why these sorts of taxes result in LESS revenue, not more - apparently the revenue people over there on the left coast have made it so that the buyers of new boats have all kinds of incentives to either take delivery south of the border or leave the state for some period of time to beat em

It might be true. But I think it has to be fair. As in NH, a state that doesn't do it to cars or yachts. Hit the poor guy's beater, but not the rich guy's yacht, and watch the political fallout.

but ad valorem on a $500 beatbox???
now there's some brilliant tax strategy....

It has to be the dumbest thing ever...next to financing a $500 beatbox, that is.

(i'll bet theres quite a few NH plates sittin in RI driveways midweek too - just like in MA)

I think the fashionable thing to do in RI is to own a shack in Naples, FL and get your plates there.

[lektrode]

Re: well, if nobody else will, george WILL @wapo

It appears you were right. Teddy did vote for the initial bill. Mea culpa. Thank you for keeping me honest. Somehow I just couldn't separate yachts over $100k and summertime Teddy in my mind.

no sweat big guy - you are one of The Most Honest Commenters here and i for one appreciate it.
but yeah, i hear ya on ole ted - he meant well, i guess - mights well leave him out of this tho (dont like to dump on the deceased, when theres still plenty of the livin-highonthehog pols to work on)

It might be true. But I think it has to be fair. As in NH, a state that doesn't do it to cars or yachts. Hit the poor guy's beater, but not the rich guy's yacht, and watch the political fallout.

uh huh... altho they've had to jack up fees lately too - but you and i have already concurred just how fair NH's plan is (since their leg. gets only 100bux/year and still manages to get the job done, w/o sales or income taxes)

It has to be the dumbest thing ever...next to financing a $500 beatbox, that is.

yep.

I think the fashionable thing to do in RI is to own a shack in Naples, FL and get your plates there.

must be pretty fashionable for NY, NJ too, altho the hamptons crowd likely doesnt worry much about such minutiae, they can just fly down and keep a 2nd benz or their roller at the 'shack' in boca... theres nothing quite like having the top down in ones corniche cruising chix at the beach in fort liquordale - esp when one has ones... 'grand-daughter' riding shotgun in the seat next to ya (not that i would know anything about that, but eye did see quite a few of em flaunting said 'grand-daughters')

i also suspect that FL (being a red state, that relies on 'user fees' to fund the) county mounties, dont want to hear "but i'm only visiting for a couple days" from the seasonal types when they get pulled over (for any number of minor infractions, that i dont want to bore you with - the guy that nailed me for one, was first drawn to my outa state plates "where DO you live, anyway?" ;)