Saturday, January 24, 2015

Going where the money is

Megan McArdle tries to explain why President Obama wants to tax college savings in 529 plans.
As I observed when I first wrote about the plan, the very fact that we are discussing taxation of educational savings -- redistributing educational subsidies downward -- indicates that the administration has started scraping the bottom of the barrel when seeking out money to fund new programs. Why target a tax benefit that goes to a lot of your supporters (and donors), that tickles one of the sweetest spots in American politics (subsidizing higher education), and that will hit a lot of people who make less than the $250,000 a year that has become the administration's de facto definition of "rich"?
You saved.
The government spent.
Now the government wants your savings to continue spending.

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