BiggerPockets

Once you start raising taxes, what's to hold you back? Of course they might keep raising taxes on the high end.

It's not the income tax that worries me so much as the cap gains tax and more than one person thinks it's possible as we had the largest post-election stock sell off in the history of the US.

Then again, none of it really worries me. There's so many ways of accessing cash without creating income it's ridiculous.

The implications of a much higher cap gains rate on the commercial side of the business is hard to quantify. Cap rates are rising as we speak throughout the country and the uncertainty does not help.

I agree the best medicine is to work hard and it will all work out. Also agree on the opportunities present in the market.

Yes, Obama has stated all along that he would raise the top tax rate to 39.6%-the rate before the Bush tax cuts. The tax cuts are scheduled to last only through 2010 as they were passed which is why Bush spent all that time saying that his tax cuts would 'pay for themselves' in 2012 as that gave him 2 years of higher taxes to payback his deficits. Unless Obama changes the tax code before 2010, it is the Republican Congress and President of 2001 & 2003 that will be raising the income tax rate ON EVERYBODY as the new 10% income tax bracket was apart of those cuts (the $300 checks that were sent out) that will expire.

To sum it up:
If nothing is done, the Republicans of 2001 & 2003 will raise the taxes of everybody in 2010. (the sunset was put in there by the actual Republicans not the fake 'let's increase the government by the largest amount ever in history' Republicans.)

If Obama gets his way: The Democratics of 2009 will cut (by not allowing cuts to sunset) 4 out of 6 tax brackets. With our tiered income tax system EVERYBODY gets those tax cuts. Only those in the top 2 brackets will see their marginal rates increase by 3% or 4.6%, depending on the bracket, to what tax rates were in 2000.

That is a very grim outlook on our country Mike. It is quite clear you are very dissatisfied with our country's President Elect, but speaking more optomistically, I believe our country will prevail from this recession and prosper once again.
I have many complaits as well, but I have realized it is futile to waste time and breath expressing them at this point. The ONLY thing we can do is to take care of "our shop" and weather the storm or even take advantage of it. This will allow us to get through these hard times.

Huh? This country was founded because a bunch of elites in England (feel free to insert Washington D.C. for modern day purposes) decided to over tax, over regulate, take away representation and not because "it took a village."

This is starting to sound familiar.

But, I voted for him twice because he was still better than the alternatives. Can you imagine what our response in 2001 would've been from President Gore? He would've wanted the US to pay some kind of tax or penalty for the carbon emissions from the 9/11 attacks.

I think it's interesting that people think I'm talking doom and gloom when I say that our country will collapse. Two or three years ago, I was criticized for saying that the real estate bubble was going to bust. People kept saying that I was spewing doom and gloom and that "things were different this time". Ironically, that's what people ALWAYS say when there's a bubble and they want to believe that things can only go up, up, up in price.

We've witnessed powerful countries collapse time after time throughout history. The latest big collapse was the soviet union, which is headed back toward being a dictatorship. The root cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union was over-spending. Does that sound familiar?

The United States started out as a country of hard working, self-sufficient individuals with a can-do attitude. Over the past 230 years, we've turned into a nation of mostly mamby-pamby whiners who feel entitled to having the government take care of their every need! It's gotten so ridiculous, that we now apparently believe that it's impossible to fail in the US. Wall Street can't fail; insurance companies can't fail; the auto industry can't fail; irresponsible homeowners can't fail; and soon even those that wrecklessly ran up their credit cards will be bailed out!!! We've now elected an OVERT SOCIALIST to be our president. I'll bet our founding fathers are spinning in their graves!

This country WILL collapse and it deserves to collapse. It is an absolute certainty.

Mike