Tax Tables May Be Delayed

As the WSJ notes, the irresponsibility of Democrats have caused a very rare and disconcerting problem for Americans - no one has any clue what tax rates are going to be in less than three months.

The issue: 2011 tax-withholding tables. Treasury officials usually release the tables, which determine the take-home pay of millions of wage-earners, by mid-November because it takes payroll processors weeks to adjust their systems before Jan. 1.

But congressional leaders recently postponed voting on taxes until after the election and lawmakers don't reconvene until Nov. 15. The Senate is scheduled to take up several nontax issues when it returns and is expected to leave for Thanksgiving soon after, possibly pushing a vote on taxes into December.

...Lawmakers' recent track record on dealing with tax matters doesn't inspire confidence that they will act with dispatch. Congress has yet to resolve the estate tax, which expired at the end of last year and is set to snap back to high rates come January. Nor has it tackled the alternative minimum tax for 2010, a levy that is set to hit 32 million taxpayers this year, compared with five million last year.

So a tax that was designed to hit only a few thousand exceptions when it was enacted in the 60s is now going to hit 32 million people because of the idiocy of Congress to index the amount to inflation. Nice.

Most importantly, the WSJ points out in the chart above just who will be impacted if Congress doesn't take action - and lo and behold - it's not just "the wealthy" as Democrats claim. I guess everyone really did benefit from Bush's tax cuts after all.