Is the payroll tax holiday a re-election ploy?
Okay, so the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 extends the payroll tax reduction through 2012. Will someone please tell me how the so-called payroll tax holiday makes sense? I see our Congress concentrating on re-election and voting to keep payroll taxes artificially low for people who are among the lucky ones who still have jobs. The reduced payroll taxes remove billions of dollars from a social security program that is already struggling to position itself to handle the throngs of baby boomers who are about to drain the program.
In addition, this "holiday" piles more responsibility on the youth of America who will have to somehow manage to find jobs (latest figures show roughly half of recent college graduates are without work) and who will have to pay more to fund their own unlikely retirement all while struggling to help their ailing parents who didn't put enough away to protect themselves in old age. I could actually see taking that estimated $1,000 per worker in reduced payroll taxes and investing that in a locked down retirement fund that can't be accessed until the owner is over age eighty, but beyond that, I'm having trouble seeing the logic in this legislation.
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Perry is a CPA and a former senior tax accountant with Big Four firm Deloitte. She maintains a small tax practice, she is a personal finance instructor, and the author of thirty books, including Surviving Financial Downsizing: A Practical Guide to Living Well on Less Income (Adams Media); QuickBooks on Demand (Que); Excel 2007 Macros Made Easy (McGraw Hill); The Complete Idiot's Guide to Doing Your Income Taxes (Alpha/MacMillan); and, most recently, Mint.com for Dummies (John Wiley & Sons). In addition, she is a former columnist for the Indianapolis Star and Indianapolis News daily newspapers.
Perry is a nationally recognized speaker who advises public accountants on using Internet tools to improve their accounting practices. She also taught a college-level introductory accounting class and was on staff at the Indiana CPA Society as a computer applications instructor. For five years, she was a contributing editor for Accounting Today magazine before taking over the helm at AccountingWEB.
Perry is a graduate of Indiana University where she earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She returned to school to study accounting at Illinois State University, passed the CPA exam (in one sitting!), and worked for Deloitte in the Chicago tax department.
Gail has been named one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Accounting by CPA Practice Advisor magazine and the American Society of Women Accountants.
