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" Here&amp;#039;s a hilarious sentence from the new issue of Forbes Magazine: &amp;quot;The big news for high-income folks is a new 3.8% &amp;#039;Medicare&amp;#039; tax on investment income and an additional 0.9% Medicare tax on wages...&amp;quot; High-income folks?  This was no accident, since Forbes writer Ashlea Ebeling used the phrase again toward the end of her article: &amp;quot;All these changes make tax-efficient situating of assets more crucial than ever, particularly for higher-income folks...&amp;quot; There&amp;#039;s more: &amp;quot;Workers at all income levels could be squeezed by new limits on medical flexible spending accounts and medical deductions.&amp;quot; Um, no. Workers at all income levels can&amp;#039;t afford to fund medical savings accounts and don&amp;#039;t take medical deductions. That&amp;#039;s the exclusive burden of higher-income folks. This Luntzian bit of propaganda appears in an article titled &amp;quot;How to Duck ObamaTax,&amp;quot; a piece overflowing with sympathy for the Ma and Pa Trumps out there who struggle every day to survive on their capital gains \u2014 those tragically disadvantaged advantaged folks. &amp;quot;The high-net-worth, high-income taxpayers \u2014 they are in the crosshairs. They have a target on their backs and on their fronts.&amp;quot; The good news, though, is that the sky falling on wealthy workers falls pretty gently. Deeper in the article, we learn that the 3.8 percent Medicare tax only applies &amp;quot;to the lesser of your net investment income or your adjusted gross income in excess of the threshold amounts,&amp;quot; the threshold amounts being $250,000. So if you make $350,000 and don&amp;#039;t itemize your deductions, give to charity, or hide a chunk of cash in your offshore tax haven, you pay a big $3,800. I&amp;#039;m sure some Obamacare-haters really do care about the deficit, although they didn&amp;#039;t care under Reagan or Bush Jr. But this Forbes article reveals what much of the heat and noise about health care is really about: a little bit more taxing on greedy folks. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a7227/taxing-the-rich-to-pay-for-health-care/>