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‘The Trillion Dollar Fix.’

I hope you meant that as a drug reference, Megan.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  May 1st, 2009 at 08:48 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

R.S McCain summarizes Megan McArdle’s post about our current economic strategy in three words: “It won’t work.” Which is a fair assessment, both in Megan’s analysis and in her conclusions. Personally, I would have preferred it if Stacy could have been able to summarize both with one word, though: “Oops.” Not to be a broken record about this, but I didn’t need Megan to tell me that we enjoy, ah, suboptimal economic oversight. I already knew. Or that the current administration seems to default to style over substance. I already knew that, too. Or even that we are going to have to raise taxes on the lower and middle class to pay for all of this. A lot of us knew this already.

But apparently, we just weren’t trendy enough to satisfy a sufficiently large portion of the electorate. To those of them reading this and smirking, at this point: real quick. You know that tax cut that some of you college kids received? Yeah, the $13 dollars a week thing that didn’t even register with most people. Anyway, turns out that the IRS messed up:

– A single college student with a part-time job making $10,000 would get a $400 boost in pay. However, if that student is claimed as a dependent on a parent’s tax return, she doesn’t qualify for the credit and would have to repay it when she files next year.

(Via Jammie Wearing Fool, with a fortuitous link from Instapundit. See also Brother Warner below.)

Yes, they’re going to want that money back. No, they’re going to have to insist. Sure, you can do it in stages… if you’re willing to pay interest. No, sorry, unless you’re a Democratic executive branch nominee there’s no such thing as “special circumstances.” Yes, this probably grates on the IRS’ collective soul, too, but they have to distinguish between their personal ethical system, and that of their current political masters. But look on the bright side: you’re not alone. Also in the mix are retirees, double-income married couples, and single people working two jobs. “Misery loves company,” right?  And “elections have consequences.”

Here, have some.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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COMMENTS

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  • sloeride

    Nobody is paying attention to this.

    Oh but next April, won’t it be a hoot. All these people who are expecting refunds…and then they have to pay?

    This will be rich. Three things are going to happen.

    #1. People who owe will get scared and not file at all.
    #2. People will fudge on their taxes so they don’t owe. 80% of Americans are used to never paying taxes on April 15th. Hard habit to break.
    #3. People will file and owe.

    Regardless, either way you look at it, the IRS will have to spend 80 cents – to $1.50 to collect $1…of all money that never cost them a dime to collect without the b.s. promises.

  • mom2oneson

    are going to get hit hard by this.

  • smitty

    Everyone will have forgotten the promises. The attention span of the average person is insanely short. Most probably forget the “unprecedented transparency” bs we were fed by the One. How’s that working out?

  • djemi

    BO and the Dems are going to have to raise “taxes”, and they are, all of the hidden taxes, on everyone if we comtinue to shrink at 6+% a quarter. Given the fact the th 2010 budget is not going to pass for at least another two quarters I fully expect there t be alot of hidden taxes hidden in it, come on the Dems and BO have all the power now and can rewrite the tax code anyway they want. Add to that, cap and trade, card check and health care and we are looking at 50+% of GDP going to the government simply because GDP has shrunk so much.

  • djemi

    I have to atmit that now that I’m unemployed I’ve been paying alot more attension, and I can say the same for the guys that I used to work with.

  • Dave_in_Fla

    Nothing gets a 20 year old’s attention faster than seeing the money they had been counting on to buy that new iPod suddenly heading to the IRS instead.

    The people that will notice are those that file the 1040EZ, who don’t have options for “fudging” the numbers. No one who is itemizing deductions will really care all that much about a couple 100 bucks.

  • mom2oneson

    the non payers aren’t going to get hit with this. People that pay before may end up paying more now but it’s not going to hit the non payers.
    The non payers usually aren’t going to make enough to not be elgible for this.

    Obama is giving more to the non payers. I think they even lowered the income level that people can get the additional child tax criedt like from 12,000 to 8,000. That may not be it exactly but it’s something like that.
    I don’t think it has happened but during his campaign he wanted to remove the so called “marriage penality” from the ETIC which is just ridiculous and even raise the ETIC payouts.

    I don’t know what to say about the cap and trade, card check and health care. I just know most of the non payers aren’t going to get hit with this. There is a huge group of people in the US that don’t pay a dime of federal income tax or they pay a small amount and they recieve thousands back every March..’cause they file in Feb. :)