United States
Previous examples of a broadly-levied surtax in the United States include one imposed to help finance the Vietnam War during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. It essentially consisted of calculating one's ordinary federal income tax liability and then adding another 10% to it—the amount of the surtax.
As the U.S. income tax system at that time was highly progressive, the surtax was much higher on those with higher incomes, as a 10% surtax imposed on a tax rate of 20% would result in an overall rate of 22%, while the same surtax imposed on a rate of 50% would result in an overall rate of 55%.
Some anti-war protesters refused to pay this tax, stating that while they were not anarchists and understood the need for and positive role played by government in many areas, they wanted none of their tax money going to a war that they felt was immoral. The surtax was repealed well before the war ended in Vietnam.
Surtaxes can be imposed on other taxes. They are usually imposed on the grounds of moral justification; they only affect persons who are already paying taxes rather than extending taxation to new areas or persons who are not previously being taxed.
A surtax of 4.3 percent was recently proposed on incomes over $500,000 by Congress to alleviate the alterations to the Alternative Minimum Tax code in the United States.
A surtax was proposed as part of the 2009-2010 health care reform in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Surtax
Famous quotes related to united states:
“What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Steal away and stay away.
Don’t join too many gangs. Join few if any.
Join the United States and join the family
But not much in between unless a college.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When, in some obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special town meeting, to express their opinion on some subject which is vexing to the land, that, I think, is the true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever assembled in the United States.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)