You really can’t blame former President Donald Trump for coming up with ideas to eliminate taxes on tips and, now, overtime.
In years past, this type of pandering and attempted vote buying would have sounded the alarms. But the door was opened wide when the Biden administration sought to buy votes from the college-educated by eliminating the requirement to pay back student loans. It was a horrible idea that unfairly punished those who already paid off their loans or who never went to college in the first place. It would have lower- paid, blue-collar and working-class individuals pay off the loans of higher earning professionals.
But Biden and Harris didn’t care, figuring that the minimal pushback from the liberal media would be minimal and worth it as they banked votes for the upcoming election.
So you have to figure President Trump was frustrated sitting back watching this vote-buying scheme. He figured if they can do it, he can do it too. In fact, many on his team figured that if Biden-Harris did it, Trump HAD to do it to keep up.
And so he looked at the elimination of taxes on tips as a surefire way to gain votes in Nevada, with its big casino and tourist/restaurant industries. It was so successful that it prompted Harris to copy the same policy.
Now Trump is upping the ante knowing that the United Auto Workers and many who engage in big overtime numbers can reap handsome rewards with no taxes on this overtime.
However, this is getting into dangerous territory now. As it is, overtime is paid at time-and-a-half or sometimes double-time. Eliminating taxes on that is terribly unfair to those who aren’t working overtime. You are already getting a bonus working OT.
All this just leads to is a bigger federal deficit that everyone will pay for with higher interest rates and higher taxes down the road.
Let’s stop the pandering on both sides.
As stated above, we don’t like this proposal, but we understand why the Republicans presented it. They felt they had to fight fire with fire. All right. Now that that’s done, let’s stop and get back to traditional policy that helped all Americans without picking winners and losers.