Howard Gleckman thinks the Democrats' Millionaire's Tax is political theater:
Democrats now insist that somebody making $999,000 a year is in the struggling middle-class and needs to be protected from tax increases. It was ridiculous enough when President Obama decided that $200,000 ($250,000 for couples) defined middle class. It was even stranger when GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney adopted that number. Median household income in the U.S. is, um, $60,000. Sorry, but if we are going to get serious about the deficit, people making $200,000 (or even $100,000) have got to help out.
A reader makes related points:
First, on the semantics of it, I don't know when, exactly, a "millionaire" went from someone with a net worth of a million dollars to someone with an annual taxable income of a million dollars. The latter suggests a net worth of more like $10-20 million. I don't think anyone believes a "billionaire" is someone whose annual income is a billion dollars, do they?
Secondly, by framing the discussion as a "millionaire's tax" and yet limiting it to these extraordinarily wealthy individuals, I worry that we're setting the (income) bar too high in relation to inevitable upcoming debates on the sun-setting Bush tax cuts. If we were to impose this "millionaire's" tax now, I'm guessing that in that upcoming debate, the "millionaire" definition would suddenly be deflated back to those with a million or so in net worth, and incomes in the, say, $200,000+ range. But then we'd find great resistance to increasing the tax on these impoverished folks, since we "already imposed a millionaire's tax."
On the plus side, however, I think we can reliably count on the GOP members of Congress to block any additional taxation of even those who earn more than a million dollars a year, which will make good fodder for the 2012 campaign.
The Dish 