Reply #28: It will cause job loss on an unprecedented scale

[jmowreader]

Employee wages and benefits are currently "ordinary and necessary expenditures" and therefore deductible.

Revoke this deduction and a company that makes over $18,333,333 per year taxable income will see its personnel expenses go up 35 percent--because you won't be able to deduct wages and benefits from your taxable income. (Actually, I'm probably getting the math wrong, but no matter--I as your employer will still be paying taxes on your paycheck before you get to pay taxes on it.)

Now! If my name is Ebenezer Scrooge or Walton or Nardelli, if my personnel expenses were to immediately go up by 35 percent I'd have two immediate actions. The first would be to call Washington and ask them why I spent all that good money buying congressmen if this is what they're gonna do to me. The second is to lay off 35 percent of my workforce.

That's how to sell this to the freepers. Not some "your taxes will go up" bullshit--these fucknuts really believe that because the "average" tax cut was $14,000 or whatever it was, THEY got a $14,000 tax cut. No, tell them that "your boss deducts your paycheck from his taxes. If he can't do it anymore because of a flat tax system that eliminates deductions, he will fire you."