In my opinion, in order to truly know your candidate one must understand all sides of said candidate, and then you put those issues in to order based on your personal priorities. It is a huge pet peeve of mine, when hippie liberal friends of mine (I have plenty as do most that went to law school), proclaim their hatred for McCain, because,
McCain is going to keep us in the War, and start more wars, and blah blah blah
but as soon as you ask them
What are some of Obama’s proposed tax changes and how do you feel about it?
They either have no idea or give a wrong answer. To be fair, I also hate when I ask a righteous conservative friend about our presidential candidates and they (inevitably) respond with,
I hate Obama, my income taxes are going to go sky high and he is too young and blah blah blah
But are clueless when asked if they agree with McCain’s stance on gay rights (or lack thereof).
I am not an expert on political theory or history, but as anyone in my generation will attest to knowledge is half the battle (I hope someone out there gets that reference), so as I come across these tidbits and insights into our candidates I will continue to share them.
The question posed to the WSJ is:
What is Sen. Obama’s position on capital-gains tax on the sale of a primary residence? I’ve heard he’s talking of changing the long-existing rules, which include certain exemptions, and making any gain taxable. This could have a serious financial effect, especially on empty-nest seniors who may be looking to downsize.
The article indicates that Sen. Obama wants to keep the current personal residence rules and exemptions (I will outline them in a post later on), but wants to raise the Capital Gains Rate from 15% to 20% for those households with more than $250,000 in income.
This however leaves some unanswered questions for me, that I couldn’t find answers to yet:
- What is considered income under Obama’s plan? Is this plan going to include just actual earned income (i.e. your salary), or are we talking Requirement Minimum distributions, passive capital gains increases, etc.?
What I learned from this quick post is that Obama’s proposed tax increases as far as capital gains do not affect me that much as my household does not earn $250,000 yet. This, however, does not mean I will not get killed on future income tax rate hikes.
FYI:
I am very open with sharing my political views, and I am positive as we get closer to election time you will get an earful/eyeful from me, and I am open to debate. Just for all those curious I am a libertarian which Wikipedia says is,
a label used by a broad spectrumof political philosophies which prioritize individual liberty and seek either to minimize or eliminate the state. What it means to be a libertarian in a political sense is a contentious issue, especially among libertarians themselves. There is no single theory that can be safely identified as the libertarian theory, and probably no single principle or set of principles on which all libertarians can agree.
Basically, I want as little government as possible in both the economic world as well as civil liberties, i.e. Low Taxes but let people do what they want. Regardless, my views are not at the crux of this post, I can promise I will go further into detail about one day, but right now I want to simply outline a piece from the Wall Street Journal Online, Personal Finance Section
