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 The surtax was repealed well before the war ended in Vietnam.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:
“We can beat all Europe with United States soldiers. Give me a thousand Tennesseans, and I’ll whip any other thousand men on the globe!”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kow-tow before any United States pro-consul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.”
—Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (1909–1989)
“God knows that any man who would seek the presidency of the United States is a fool for his pains. The burden is all but intolerable, and the things that I have to do are just as much as the human spirit can carry.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“In the United States the whites speak well of the Blacks but think bad about them, whereas the Blacks talk bad and think bad about the whites. Whites fear Blacks, because they have a bad conscience, and Blacks hate whites because they need not have a bad conscience.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“In the United States there’s a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)