Joe Willie On The Shrimpbox: "A Simple Idea To Kick Start The Economy"

A simple idea to kick start the economy

Here’s a simple idea that could be enacted almost with the stroke of a pen. This could be just the catalyst to get consumers spending which, in turn, will allow small business to start hiring employees.
Suspend and permanently forgive all federal payroll taxes (employee and employer) for
3 months for people making under $250,000 per year, and “pay” for this “tax holiday” by using unspent stimulus and TARP funds.
With swift action by the US Congress, this could easily be enacted by April 1, 2010.
Just think what this simple plan would do for your personal income and the national economy.
If you agree this is a good idea, then immediately send this to your Representative and Senator, to everyone in your email address book, post this on your Facebook page and write a letter to your local newspaper. Maybe someone will listen.
Read further if you’re interested, but the plan is very simple.
The Problem
The problem right now, for a wide variety of reasons and without playing the blame game, is that consumers are not spending money at the local retail level (the restaurant, the dentist, the car wash/quick lube, the card store, etc.) When consumers spend money at the local level, then retailers, a.k.a. small business, will hire people. When small business hires people, then these people will have money in their pocket to spend at the local level. And on and on it goes. See how simple this is.
I am a small business owner in Brunswick, GA operating two car wash/quick lube stores. We have cut back on employees because customers are not spending money at our car wash/quick lube stores. When consumers start spending money, we will hire employees to service those customers. To suggest the solution is for us to incur more debt by taking a loan from the bank to cover payroll costs so we can hire people to have them stand around is the last thing we need! What we need is customers spending money at the retail level.
This could just be the answer.
How to Make It Work
Of course, Congress has to pass a law. Then, every employer, payroll service and accountant is notified by the IRS of the tax holiday period. The instructions are simple:
For a period of three months, do not withhold any federal payroll taxes (federal income tax, social security tax, Medicare tax or federal unemployment tax) from employee paychecks and stop the employer share on these same employee earnings. By year-end tax filing time, publish the formula that employees and employers are to use to calculate the new tax liability incorporating the three month “tax holiday”.
Very easy. Very simple. Very clean. Think about and act today.