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In the midst of all the heated conversation about health-care reform, a Michigan Congressman is sponsoring a bill to give pet owners a tax break for pet care.
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mi) has introduced H.R. 3501 to create a deduction of up to $3,500 on federal tax returns for the care of “qualified” pets, defined as “legally owned, domesticated, and live animals.” Animals used for business purposes–say, a dog that helps round up sheep or a cat filmed in TV commercials–aren’t covered. The bill says qualified care includes veterinary care, though it doesn’t mention what else (pet sitting? chew toys?) would be included. There’s no apparent provision for people who don’t itemize and utilize the standard deduction instead. And there’s no word on whether the pet needs a valid Social Security number. (Just kidding.)
I wonder if Michael Vick supports this.
I already object to subsidizing other peoples’ children (little carbon emitters).
Now the pet care industry expects me to subsidize them too?
I say, a carbon tax on pets!!
The Health Control Bill registers doctors and veteranarians as health care providers. If it passes, you and your dog can make an appointment to see the same doctor! How thrifty! You might not like the way he checks your temperature, though…
Start watching at 5:09 to the end of the video to see the tie-in with pets:
This nicely demonstrates that “all taxes” have a social element to them: what is taxed, how much, what is not taxed, exceptions, exemptions.
If you take just a casual look at the tax code you will see the LARGE LETTERS taxing everybody==rich and poor alike, except for the starting point and the progressivity, but the -small letters- favoring the rich.
There are about 10,000 LARGE LETTERS taxing everyone and about 6,495,678 small letters exempting the rich. The result was Warren Buffet (?) commenting that he paid less taxes than his secretary.
Who has the income and the pets? The third vacation home? The capital depreciation schedule? etc???
The reason the top 1% of us own 95% of everything is because of provisions like this one.
Yup, that’s folks who don’t want to waste money on our human health care. Makes sense to me, too damn many humans cluttering up the country anyway. And they don’t have any money now that we stole it all. They can’t buy all the stuff we want to advertise to them about. Good stuff from Wally’s China-Mart store. Yup, lets get rid of the humans, save the money for my pet.
Go to a Flat or Fair Tax system instead of the graduated income tax, and then people can stop whining about how the rich get away with things.
It won’t happen though. It’s too transparent for government and doesn’t allow them any room for their shell games.
Flat tax = regressive
regressive tax = hurts poor people
Guyver = moron
#7,
The poor don’t pay taxes in the current system and they wouldn’t be paying in the other systems. Your whining is noted. 🙂
Correction, I should have said the poor wouldn’t be paying in the flat tax system just like they don’t in the current system.
In the Fair Tax, EVERY person / family would get a monthly allowance for what the government states are the basic needs for food and utilities to cover for taxes. People who want to eat more lavishly pay out of their own pockets.
How “fair” is it that in a society of millions, affairs are arranged so that a few make billions while others are unemployed?
Corporations are legal constructs subject to whatever rules are made. Why not have the CEO and Shareholders limited to a multiple of the “average pay” of the employees? Don’t like that? Don’t go corporate.
But I have never met a “rich” person that worked for the money alone ((ie–I don’t know any financiers)). They all would do what they do regardless of the pay and are just happy to make money at it as well.
Something is “basically wrong” in a system that benefits one rich guy at the top when he lays off many poor people at the bottom.
Lots of changes could be made to “redistribute” the wealth of this country AT THE FRONT END making a flat tax make more sense.
What doesn’t make sense is a progressive tax with loop holes taking the progressivity away.
While it might be time to rewrite the entire tax code, that is a subject for another day.
This is the typical reaction by the right wing. Animals matter more than people.
#3, Guyver,
Stossel is an idiot and so are you. It is easy to do a hit piece without any references and just edit the story the way you want. But most of what I saw was just plain wrong. Yet this is how the right wing answers, with lies and invented stories.
He complains that a couple of Canadians came to the US for treatment. He missed that 45,000 Americans will die this year because they can’t afford ANY treatment.
For example, Natasha Richardson initially refused medical treatment. Later she asked to be transported to a larger hospital and was, an hour away. Montreal has all the best neurological treatment that anyone can find anywhere in North America. McGill University is a world leader in neurological research and is affiliated with several hospitals.
What happened to Richardson happens several times every year in the US ski resorts.
The Shirley Healy example is also bogus. She wanted the surgery whether she needed it or not. It wasn’t needed. The intestines are fed by many arteries. Block a few of them and the rest will still function very well. Block too many and she wouldn’t be walking.
Why some may say I’m more right than the rest on this blog I happen to have 6 animals in the house and would love to see this go through.
All are rescues except the dog.
Fusion, Is the last part a lie about a dog being able to get an MRI the next day and a human would have to wait a month?
I’m asking, not judging because I want to know.
ahh good. Now the pet people can feel like they have had their say.
11, My comment was in response to Bobbo’s comment. I really wasn’t trying to “react” to anything.
12, So 20/20 is in the business of hit jobs because you just don’t happen to like one of their segments in which you’re somehow an authority on? 🙂 BTW, Stossel is a Liberal turned Libertarian. LOL.
People who want the best medical treatment come to the U.S. Those who go outside the U.S. usually pursue cheap cosmetic surgeries or they’re wanting experimental surgeries that are not allowed in the U.S.
Life is not fair. Suck it up. No need to make things more unfair because you like to cry about it and use government as an instrument of force.
There is just no end to all of this bullshit!
You would think that a politician from Michigan, of all places, would have more to worry about than this. But, maybe he lives in a predominately UAW district (they are keeping their pay and benefits, aren’t they?). And I hate bashing the union, but they seem to have Obama’s (winner of the what?) ear.
Term limits. Maybe just 6 months instead of 2 years.
Anything that returns the property back to the individuals who earned it, I am all in favor of.
I would really like to see medical expenses reimbursed for individuals like it is for companies, too.
Companion animals, pets, add years to the lives of the elderly and retired. In the case of chickens, they also produce eggs and an endless supply of roast dinners.
Guyver,
How are the rich hurt by a flat tax?
Mind you, the bills, thems a’ coming. And someone has to pay.
In the last decade, I’ve paid combined state and federal taxes in amounts that varied from ~$2,000 to $70,000 in a single year.
You and your fair tax brothers are either liers or too stoopid for words.
#14, Mr. Diesel,
I don’t know.
I had an CAT done the same day in about ’95 and when my father had an MRI on his knee it was done maybe two days later in ’05.
Since moving to Indiana I had a nuclear imaging (gall bladder test) done that took about 10 days to arrange in ’04. And my ma-in-law had a nuclear imaging on her heart that took two days to schedule in a Chicago ‘burb hospital.
I much prefer the availability of services I had in Canada to what is available here. Most of that though is because we live in a very small community with limited services and physicians.
Personally, I think the month wait is just fud. I don’t know of anyone that waited that long for any test.
#8 and #9
The poor don’t pay taxes. Yeah those lucky poor people, they don’t pay taxes. It’s a good thing they’re lucky too because if they were to get sick and need hospitalization, they’d be in debt for life -if they can get someone to treat them- because they have no health insurance. But hell yeah those shiftless bastards don’t deserve any better right? I got a friend in WV right now dying because she’s poor and made the mistake to get sick.
But HOORAY some fat cat wants a tax break for his frakkin’ pet’s veterinary bills! The USA sucks and I feel fortunate to have emmigrated when I did.
#2 I think you just may have come up with the answer to a major health care issue. The shortage of Doctors. If vets are allowed to treat humans as well as animals that should go a long way to reducing the lines shouldn’t it?
“Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mi) has introduced H.R. 3501”
Chairman, House Republican Policy Committee
elected to Michigan’s 11th congressional district in 2002. According to Wikipedia, this district has not elected a Democrat in 44 years.
I am embarrassed that I belong to the same party as this bonehead.