On February 3, 2012, the IRS and the Treasury Department issued proposed regulations on the new 2.3-percent medical device excise tax (IRC §4191) that manufacturers and importers will pay on their sales of taxable medical devices starting in 2013. Additional information is available in the Medical Device Excise Tax FAQs.

The IRS and Treasury Department request comments on the proposed regulations by May 7, 2012. Comments may be submitted electronically, by mail or hand delivered to the IRS. The preamble to the proposed regulations provides instructions on how to submit comments.

Industry sources have already begun weighing in through press releases of their own. There’s also a detailed analysis of the implications of the proposed guidelines here.

“The release today of proposed regulations to implement the $20 billion medical device tax scheduled to go into effect next year highlights the need for prompt action by Congress and the Administration to repeal this anti-competitive, job-killing tax.

“Studies have shown the tax will cost jobs – as many as 43,000 are at risk — at a time when the American economy is struggling and U.S. medical technology leadership in the world market is threatened by competitor nations who have grown their industries through more favorable tax and regulatory policies.

“The anticipated tax has already forced companies to lay off workers and to reduce critical R&D that will help drive the next wave of treatments and cures.

There was a rash of editorials opposed to the move back in January. It’s little wonder that the proposal would manage to find its way out on a Friday afternoon when fewer people are likely to be paying attention. It’s just another day in Obamacareville, and that means fewer jobs at a time when America can least afford it.

“Put simply, the new medical-device tax will steal jobs”

A year from now, the federal government will start collecting a new tax on medical devices — from tongue depressors to imaging machines — thanks to the sweeping health care overhaul that Democrats enacted in the spring of 2010.

People in the industry say it’s already having an effect.

In November, citing the new tax, Stryker Corp., whose products include artificial hips and knees, announced that it would let go about 1,000 of its workers.

He says the board’s big-spending habits, particularly when it comes to union labor costs, are jeopardizing the financial futures of taxpayers and younger school employees, and threatening the quality of instruction for students.

Over the past decade, Signorile has watched his school property taxes increase by 232 percent – from $2,584.97 in 2001-02 to $5,994.71 in 2011-12.

During that same period, the West Hempstead Union Free School District’s budget has increased by 56.7 percent – from $34.7 million to $54.4 million – even while enrollment has dropped by 200 students.

Signorile says “runaway” taxes make it difficult for him to keep his home or send his children to college, while the ballooning school budget puts the jobs and pensions of district employees at risk.

New York’s Education Commissioner John King echoed those concerns at a budget hearing last week. King told state lawmakers that a number of school districts are facing insolvency over the next few years, according to TimesUnion.com.

In an interview with EAG, Signorile estimated that over half of West Hempstead’s commercial property sits vacant. That leaves the average homeowner – whose income has mostly flat lined in recent years – to shoulder more of the tax burden.

West Hempstead is located in New York’s Nassau County which has the highest median property taxes in the nation, reports CBS 880.

“That means the community has to come up with the money to pay the ever increasing school costs,” he said. “Does everybody want the train to crash?”

Signorile shared his concerns at a school board meeting last summer, in hopes of waking district officials up to the possibility of a serious financial calamity in the near future.

“I told them, ‘Let’s freeze everything for five years and let the economy come back,’” he said.

Signorile was shocked by the response he received.

“A retired teacher told me, ‘If you can’t afford to pay the taxes, you shouldn’t live here.’”

That response not only revealed the selfish attitude of the local teachers union to Signorile, but it also inspired him to run for the school board this coming spring.

“I’m getting involved,” he said.

Teachers union caused much of the mess

Signorile worked for 13 years as a New York City firefighter and is proudly pro-union. Those sentiments initially made him a strong supporter of teachers unions, but not any longer.

He said he was turned off by the union’s selfish behavior during the most recent contract negotiations, which spanned two years.

Even though a state-appointed fact finder determined “the district’s financial woes are significant,” the West Hempstead Education Association managed to gain school board approval for a new contract last spring which included pay raises – 2 percent for 2011-12 and 1.75 percent for 2012-13.

The WHEA did agree to forego other types of bonuses – for longevity and continuing their education –  concessions the union president characterized as “a major sacrifice.”

Signorile was not impressed.

“How do they expect me to keep giving them more money?” he asked, noting that student achievement has stagnated over the past few years.

“If the kids’ grades are jumping up, people wouldn’t have much problem with the pay raise,” he said.

Equally appalling to Signorile is the fact that a number of young, less senior teachers have been laid off since 2008, even while the union keeps demanding more at the bargaining table.

“A union’s job is not to demand an increase in salary if it results in your brethren getting laid off,” he said. “There’s a lot of self-serving going on. They don’t even care about their fellow members.

“It’s IGM – I got mine.”

‘This is a story that is consistent across New York State’

Richard Cunningham, deputy superintendent for West Hempstead schools, understands Signorile’s concerns about taxes, but says the situation is not unique to the district.

“This is a story that is consistent across New York State,” Cunningham wrote in an email to EAG.

Like many New York school districts, Cunningham said West Hempstead is faced with higher employee pension costs, more state mandates over special education services, and the costs of transporting West Hempstead students to private schools.

He believes the district is taking a balanced approach to controlling its financial problems.

“There are many people working very hard in West Hempstead to continue to improve education and find ways to stem tax growth,” Cunningham wrote.

He added that “total budget growth … since July 1, 2009 equals 3.39 percent” and the union’s “salary schedules are among the lowest percentile” in New York’s Nassau County.

Signorile remains very skeptical.

“I’m at a loss to explain wage and benefit increases during a deflationary period,” he said, a reference to his days as a stock market forecaster.

Signorile believes West Hempstead students stand to lose the most – fewer teachers and reduced academic and extracurricular offerings – if the district doesn’t make serious changes to its budget, particularly labor costs.

“The boat is taking on water,” he warns, “and most people are oblivious to it.”

In yet another fantastic display of hypocrisy, the liberal mainstream media spent the week attacking Governor Mitt Romney for having a 15% tax rate.  Since the media is loath to engage in any actual investigative journalism when it comes to the Democrats, I decided to do a little of my own.  Here’s what I found.

Start with Senator John Kerry who is among the 400 richest Americans thanks to his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry’s, inheritance.  Their last publicly released tax returns in 2003 revealed that they paid a rate of 13.4% on a declared income of $5.5 million. This from the man who, just last year, tried to avoid half a million dollars in taxes by anchoring his yacht in Rhode Island rather than Massachusetts. Estimates pin Kerry’s net worth somewhere between $700 million and $3.2 billion compared to Romney’s lower net worth of $202 million.

Take a look at former Vice Presidential Candidate John Edwards’s 2003 tax returns, and you’ll find that he paid an astonishingly low rate of 5.1%.  Seems a bit low for a man with a net worth hovering around $54.7 million.

But, of course, Kerry and Edwards’ income tax rates were protected under lock and key by the mainstream media during the 2004 presidential race against President George W. Bush.   Speaking of Bush, you’ll also never hear anyone mention the fact that he paid a rate of 27.7% in the same year.

Tax rates aside, in yet another attempt to make something out of nothing, the media has been reporting relentlessly on Romney donating millions in cash and stocks to the Mormon Church, as if tithing to one’s church is somehow a negative.  Thanks to donations like Romney’s, the Mormon Church is able to sustain a large philanthropic network and send young men on two year missions that provide extensive humanitarian aid to a countless number of people in need.  If you call that bad, I’d hate to see what you call good.

This much I can assure you—Romney’s millions donated to the Mormon Church did far more good than the $353 Al Gore gave to charity in 1997 or the $0, $820, $175, $2,039, and $0 Senator Kerry gave between 1991 and 1995.  Contrast that to the $28,236, $31,914, and $31,292 George Bush gave between 1991-1993 when he was a mere private citizen.  That is the real story that you will never hear.

Instead, you will hear report after report on Romney’s tax rate and his donations to the Mormon Church.  You’ll hear about how the Democratic Party is the party of the little man, and the Republican Party is the party of the selfish, rich fat cat.  That’s what the Democratic Party and the mainstream media want you to believe.

So before you buy into the Left’s big tax fable like the Occupy Wall Streeters did, take a good hard look at what you’ll never see reported—the facts.

SOURCES:

KERRY & EDWARDS TAXES

BUSH/CHENEY TAX RETURNS

CHARITABLE GIVING

Sound too good to be true? Of course it is. Their real goal is to extract more tax dollars out of your pocket without having to muster the political courage to advocate a tax increase, and to do so in the most cynical way possible—by taking advantage of the least-sophisticated and lowest-income workers.

Some of our elected officials and the revenue establishment are convinced that there is a $345 billion annual “tax gap” between what people actually owe or should be paying and what the IRS actually collects. Of course, in a voluntary compliance system—the alternative to which is a police state—there is always going to be some gap in compliance. Not surprisingly, the IRS doesn’t mention the certainty that many people actually pay more than they owe because they fail to take advantage of deductions available to them.

Does the revenue establishment fault the tax code’s inherent complexity and Congress’ failure to reform it as responsible for the supposed shortfall? Guess again.

Slowly, over the past several years, the IRS has been insisting that more and more information be submitted from employers and from the savings and investment industry directly to them. At the same time, they’ve been tightening down on who can and who cannot prepare tax returns. Have you noticed?

And today, the IRS will hold its second hearing on what they call the “Real-Time Tax System,” which they claim is intended to give the IRS the ability to identify tax non-compliance in real time. Of course, the Real-time Tax System will require even more information from taxpayers, employers, banks and brokerage firms, but of course it’s being done to “reduce the burden for taxpayers.”

Of course it is. There’s actually a fairly insidious plan behind all of this. The “Real-Time Tax System” is just an appetizer for the pièce de résistance of the revenue establishment–a “return-free” system where the IRS would calculate your tax obligation for you (convenience!) and simply ask for your signature in large, friendly letters. In one fell swoop the IRS could claim to have the taxpayer’s best interests at heart, while making the calculation that reflects the best interests of the revenue establishment.

The return-free system (and thus the virtual elimination of voluntary tax compliance) is the ultimate goal of the revenue establishment. Before assisting in the destruction of the U.S. economy, Austan Goolsbee described the benefits of a return-free system in a 2006 op-ed in The New York Times. President Obama has endorsed return-free, and it was also discussed by the so-called “super committee,” which was specifically tasked with finding ways to raise more revenue for the government.

Make no mistake–Not only will the return-free system result in your paying higher taxes, it will require that substantially more of your personal financial information be disclosed to the IRS.

Perhaps the most cynical thing about the return-free system is that it takes advantage of the most vulnerable taxpayers—those with below-average incomes and below-average tax sophistication. What will they do when they get a bill from the IRS in a threatening envelope filled with legalese and threats of penalties? They’ll sign and pay up.
Our elected officials have constructed the most onerous and complicated monstrosity of a tax code imaginable, and instead of fixing it, they want to solve their revenue problem by extracting higher taxes from us without having the political courage to raise tax rates.

Our voluntary tax compliance system is a feature, not a bug. It’s a key indicator of self-government, one of the hallmarks of American freedom. The bug is our absurd tax code, which contains multiple and conflicting definitions of income, saddles the U.S. economy with an incredible compliance burden, and results in deadweight losses to the economy and to our global competitiveness.

If there is a tax gap, the fault lies at the feet of Congress for not overhauling our tax code into something that is functional and competitive in the 21st century. Fix that. In the meantime, I’ll prepare my own taxes, thank you very much.

I’m not going to name names, because everybody knows who these Republicans are. Instead, I want to go positive, and commend Mitt Romney himself. Romney did his best in the second South Carolina debate to fight for free-market capitalism and Adam Smith, and against the spread of Obama-style crony capitalism and class envy.

During the Thursday night debate, Romney launched this:

“You’ve got to stop the spread of crony capitalism. [Obama] gives General Motors to the UAW. He takes $500 million and sticks it into Solyndra. He stacks the labor stooges on the NLRB so they can say no to Boeing and take care of their friends in the labor movement. . . . He has to bow to the most extreme members of the environmental movement. He turns down the Keystone pipeline, which would bring energy and jobs to America.

“My view is capitalism works. Free enterprise works. . . . There’s nothing wrong with profit, by the way. That profit went to pension funds, to charities. It went to a wide array of institutions. . . . And by the way, as enterprises become more profitable, they can hire more people. I’m someone who believes in free enterprise. I think Adam Smith was right. And I’m gonna stand and defend capitalism across this country, throughout this campaign. I know we’re going to get hit hard from President Obama, but we’re gonna stuff it down his throat and point out that it is capitalism and freedom that makes America strong.”

Whoa. Tough stuff. The right stuff.

I watched this on DVR late at night. So just to be sure, I read the transcript the next morning. Still there. And let me say, this is exactly what the Republicans must say.

The issue of crony capitalism should be front and center in this campaign. President Obama defends his cronies instead of the so called 99 percent. That’s his contradiction. Big Labor, Big Business, and Big Green Energy are collections of cronies with big jobs, big salaries, and big privileges. Nothing to do with the 99 percent.

But Governor Romney can go even further to slam crony capitalism. This is where tax-reform and deep spending cuts come in. A flattening of tax rates should be accompanied by the elimination of cronied tax deductions, exemptions, and carve-outs. Even more, we should get rid of crony corporate welfare wherever it exists, including crony government subsidies to energy, exports, and agriculture. Wherever it exists.

Let’s say you went to two tax brackets at 10 and 25 percent, as per Paul Ryan’s plan, or even the next step of a single-rate flat tax. Here, all the crony tax advantages should be wiped out. They won’t be necessary at lower rates and their removal would end crony favoritism.

Finally, Romney can punctuate his crony-capitalism attack by telling folks he will overturn and upend the prevailing Washington, D.C., establishment.

Sadly, with the exception Rick Santorum making the case for lower tax rates, Thursday night’s debate had virtually no discussion of tax reform. Newt Gingrich never even once mentioned his 15 percent flat-tax plan. Unfortunately, Newt still leaves most deductions and carve-outs in place, and that needs to be fixed.

That aside, Governor Romney capped his strong performance with a Reaganesque summation. As he has in the past, he criticized Obama for trying to “transform” America from a merit society — an opportunity society where people are free to choose — to a European-style entitlement society. Romney said, “We need to restore the values that made America the hope of the Earth. . . . [President Obama] has made it almost impossible for our private sector to reboot. . . . I will defeat Barack Obama and keep America as it’s always been, the shining [city] on a hill.”

Strong stuff. Good stuff.

Is anyone listening?

But you’d have to be stupid, fanatical, and dishonest to argue–as Trig Truther Sullivan does–that Barack Obama’s failures are part of an ingenious “long game” that is destined to succeed.

If this is the best Obama’s supporters can do, Obama’s only hope for re-election is the weak Republican field.

Sullivan, who claims to care about national debt, begins by arguing, contrary to reality, that Obama’s massive $787 billion stimulus (actually, $862 billion) turned the economy around. He offers no proof other than the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy familiar from basic economics. Sullivan also ignores the composition of the stimulus, which shoveled cash to cronies and bloated big states with their massive public sector obligations.

In addition, Sullivan claims that Obama’s auto bailout succeeded–when in fact it pushed aside property rights and subsidized failed “green” cars, rather than allowing car makers to rebuild through normal bankruptcy. He also commends Obama for continuing George W. Bush’s bank bailouts–but does not mention the Dodd-Frank financial “reforms” that enshrine “too big to fail,” hurt small businesses and fail to address Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Next, Sullivan tries to defend Obama on taxes, pointing out that the president passed tax cuts as part of the stimulus. He ignores the numerous new taxes and tax increases that Obama signed into law–from higher cigarette taxes to the many ObamaCare taxes–as well as the glaring fact that Obama has been campaigning for the past several years on the promise to raise taxes on the rich, and would have done so if not for Congress.

Sullivan’s defense of ObamaCare is that it is more “moderate” than it might have been. That is hardly a measure of success–and after devious accounting tricks, thousands of waivers, and the abandonment of ObamaCare’s Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) program, the law is clearly on a path to failure. Fundamentally, it is unconstitutional–a reality Sullivan does not care to note in his encomium to Obama.

On foreign policy, Sullivan hails Obama’s success in the death of Osama bin Laden–giving a fantastical account of the president’s courage, and perpetuating the false meme that Bush had “ignored” Al Qaeda. In fact, it was the war in Iraq–and the interrogation methods that Sullivan decries–that produced the intelligence that led to bin Laden.

Aside from the war on Al Qaeda, Obama squandered every diplomatic and military success bequeathed to him by Bush. He destroyed missile defense in Europe, and wasted hard-won gains in Iraq by withdrawing troops against the advice of the military. While appeasing Iran and gutting the future of our defense, Obama alienated and undermined U.S allies. Sullivan, who detests Israel, even applauds Obama’s pointless confrontation with Benjamin Netanyahu–hardly a way to sell a second Obama term.

Having dealt with conservatives (in his own mind at least), Sullivan lists reasons that the left should be pleased with the president they elected. He’s correct that liberals should back Obama; they will never again see a U.S. president with such radical policies and pedigree. But he overlooks the degree to which Obama has discredited left-wing theory by exposing its flaws in practice–the real reason the left is distancing itself from him.

What is most telling in Sullivan’s admonition to liberals is his use of Obama’s inaugural metaphor of the “clenched fist.” The president, he says, “begins by extending a hand to his opponents” and outwits them when they respond “by raising a fist.” Yet Obama was referring to foreign policy, not U.S. politics. Once in office, of course, Obama embraced America’s enemies and bullied domestic opponents–as even the left knows all too well.

Sullivan quotes George Orwell: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” What is in front of Sullivan’s nose is Obama’s incompetence. He has coasted on the military success of his Republican predecessor, and is taking credit for moderate economic progress enabled by a Republican Congress that has held taxes, regulation, and spending in check. If he wins in 2012, Obama will again have Republicans to thank.

For far too long, insiders from both parties have played these games. Talk up fiscal responsibility, but spend big. Talk about a federal government that fulfills its basic responsibilities, but then vote to expand it beyond all recognition so that it cannot possibly do so. Talk about doing what’s right, but then do what the establishment wants instead.

Americans deserve better—and they deserve to get to choose something better this year. In 2012, Americans have the opportunity to decisively move away from big government, built up over years and years by both parties in Washington, D.C.

As I said in Sunday’s NBC/Facebook debate, President Obama has thrown gasoline on the fire, but let’s be honest: The bonfire was raging well before Obama ever left Chicago.

Policies and spending served up by Washington, D.C. insiders, in several notable instances designed and written by Wall Street insiders to suit their needs, not ours, caused and then exacerbated this situation. In too many cases, these advocates of big spending and bad policy have used their positions of power to enrich themselves, both while in office and once outside of it. Republicans have been complicit in this scheme, just as Democrats have.

It is time for it to end.

To accomplish that, Americans will need to seek out genuine outsiders prepared to make the powers-that-be uncomfortable by pursuing policies that will put a stop to insiders’ behavior-as-usual.

As the lone conservative outsider on the ballot, I have a clear plan to overhaul the Washington status quo.

Andy Roth, Vice President of the Club for Growth, said it well earlier this week: “Rick Perry, I think, has one of the best if not the best plans. He’s got a ‘Cut, Balance and Grow’ plan where he wants to institute a Balanced Budget Amendment and cap spending at 18 percent, and then he wants to cut taxes all over the place. That would just really be a pro-growth boon. It’d be eliminating capital gains, lowering corporate tax rates and personal tax rates down to 20 percent. Very, very strong plan.”

For many Republicans, a balanced budget amendment is little more than easy political posturing when they know Democrats will not allow one to be passed. In earlier years, when Republicans exercised 100 percent control over the purse strings, they were not for constraining spending. In fact, they were in favor of as much big government as possible, so long as the beltway establishment “blessed” that big government as serving “conservative” ends.

As Roth noted, Rick Santorum “was a prolific earmarker,” Newt Gingrich “supported Medicare Part D, which expanded entitlements in a huge way,” and Mitt Romney “actually deserves to be in last place on this because it’s very uninspired ideas that he has. He barely wants to tinker around with the tax code…”

Voters have a clear choice between big government “conservatives” and a true limited government conservative.

I am a conservative outsider committed to seriously overhauling Washington, ending the IRS as we know it by cutting taxes to a fair and flat rate, and stopping job killing regulations dead in their tracks.

But to accomplish these things, one thing has to happen first: Americans must reject those who are part and parcel of the problem at the polls – the Washington and establishment insiders. We have that opportunity to really overhaul Washington and elect an authentic conservative in 2012. Let’s take it.