Issues

 

At a time when Americans are struggling to make ends meet and jobs are frighteningly scarce, the last thing Americans can afford are higher taxes. Earlier this year, in the midst of a horrific recession, John Boccieri voted for one of the largest tax increases in American history, and to me that is unconscionable.

 

While Washington is engaged in the most reckless spending spree in our nation’s history, hard working people in this district and across the country are barely scraping by each month. It is imperative that we leave more money at home with the American people, and send less of their hard earned paychecks to Washington. If we’ve learned anything in the past 12 months, it’s that the American people can manage their money far better than Washington can, and its time we have people in Congress who understand that.

 

In Congress, I will fight for across the board tax relief to ease the current financial strains on hardworking Americans and to help foster economic growth by keeping hard earned dollars at home and in the market place, rather than in the hands of Washington bureaucrats.

 

In Washington, I will fight to keep the 2001 & 2003 tax cuts permanent. Allowing these tax cuts to expire would amount to a significant tax   increase on the middle class, with the average Ohio family of four seeing their tax bill increase by $2,156 annually.

 

I support a 100% repeal of the death tax, period. We are taxed on our income, our property, our investments, our businesses- we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. The American people are being taxed to death, but there are people in Congress who don’t want to stop there…when you die, they want to take another 45% of whatever’s left. The Death tax needs to be repealed, permanently and entirely.

 

 

At a time when we are desperate to spur investment, the last thing we need are higher taxes on investments. I support maintaining the current rate of 15% and strongly opposed the idea embraced by Democrats to nearly double the rate to 28%. Every time we have increased the capital gains rate, revenue has gone down because it chokes the flow of investment activity in America. To restore jobs and grow the economy, we must have new investment, and the Democrat plan to increase the rate would strike a deathblow to the type of investment we so badly need.

 

 

I strongly support a full repeal of the AMT. In 2006, the IRS's National Taxpayer Advocate's report highlighted the AMT as the single most serious problem with the tax code. The AMT has become a mechanism to negate other forms of tax cuts that have been implemented to provide tax relief to hardworking Americans and has a stranglehold on millions of middle class families. It must be eliminated and we must do it now.

 

 

 As a candidate for congress, I proudly signed the Americans for Tax Reform’s pledge to oppose tax increasing in Washington, and it’s a commitment I will keep once elected.

 

 

I strongly believe in the need to simplify our tax code and ease the overall tax burden on the American people. Two proposed reforms that I believe should be examined are the “flat tax” and the “fair tax”, however any plan for reform must not contain any net increase on the tax burden in order to earn my support. While I believe that a form of “consumption tax” or “fair tax” in lieu of a federal income tax is an idea worthy of further examination, I could only potentially support such a concept if the tax would serve as a replacement to the income tax, not an addition to it. I strongly oppose any effort to add any consumption tax or sales tax to the tax code if it would exist in addition to an income tax.