Trending
No tax on tips! That means that a person making $30,000 per year with tips, gets a tax break while a person making the same $30,000 per year with no tips does not get that tax break. How fair is that? How shortsighted and/or illogical did a member of Congress have to be in order to vote for the BBB that included this travesty? Meanwhile the Federal Deficit and the National Debt increase due to the loss of revenue that no-tax-on-tips creates.
Why not give every worker, tipped and untipped, the same tax break by raising the standard deduction, and then claw back the resulting lost revenue by raising the top progressive tax rate, currently set at 37%, so that upper income people pay more taxes? Congress should be clawing back as much of the tax money as possible that has been lost over the last 40 years since Reagan lowered the top tax bracket from 70% to 45%, which lost tax money has significantly added to the current $40 Trillion National Debt.
Given the new requirement that able bodied adults have to work at least 80 hours per month in order to qualify for SNAP, the new no-tax-on-overtime is just as dumb as "no tax on tips". When full-time workers seek overtime hours due to this tax-free benefit, they take away the opportunity for these SNAP recipients to find the jobs needed to fulfill their 80 hour per month requirement.
Moreover, it's noted that the unemployment rate currently stands at about 4%. The official criterion for determining this rate is by classifying anyone not working and looking for a job, as unemployed, but not including anyone who is not working and not looking for a job. Employers complain that when the unemployment rate falls below 3.5%, they have a hard time finding qualified workers. Assuming that most workers classified as unemployed under the above criterion, have held previous jobs and therefore have some job skills, while many people who are not working and not looking for a job, may have never held a job in recent memory, it would appear that these non-working, non-looking people have far fewer job skills that those people who make up the 3.5% unemployment figure. If the unemployed 3.5% of the work force is poorly qualified, how can it be expected that the even less qualified SNAP recipients will be able to find at least 80 hours of work per month, especially when employed workers are sucking up overtime hours due to the fact that such overtime hours are no longer taxed?
What is apparently needed is the re-institution of a public works program similar to the CCC program of the 1930s, which program will provide low skilled jobs, not currently being done by regularly employed people, for SNAP recipients.
JOHN SILVERSTRIM
South Williamsport
Submitted by email