Don't Sequester my Heart!

Members present: Brian, Bickford, Yousef

A FICO score is out of 850, but then there are other groups. While these may not be as official, they might be good because they can give you a ballpark of your credit tier. Next week we should pull our credit scores.

So, we are about to go off the Fiscal Cliff, or Sequestration (Polito.com), that resulted from the failure of Congress to come up with some sort of compromise on the budget a few months back. One of the effects will be the end of a 2% payroll tax deduction. That is a pretty negligible amount, so you probably won't notice too much.

However, where do payroll taxes go?

We started talking about where the federal government gets money from us. Obviously there is income tax (and payroll tax), but we weren't sure where else. We wondered if it was fair to count the taxes that businesses pay as part of where money goes to the federal government from us, since those costs are indirectly passed on to the consumer. The question is, does the federal government make more off citizens or corporations? Moreover, who isn't pulling their weight?*

*But then that starts the whole debate of what pulling one's weight means. Equal amount? Equal percentage? Progressive tax?


Profit!