Raising Taxes

Liberals want to raise taxes? Instapundit has an exceptional idea:

If I were a Republican member of Congress, I’d be proposing big excise taxes on movie tickets, DVDs, CDs, digitial movie and music downloads, etc. Then let Hollywood scream about how the tax increase would destroy American jobs. . . .

But wait, he has more ideas:

Here’s my proposal: A 50% surtax on anything earned within five years after leaving the federal government, above whatever the federal salary was. Leave a $150K job at the White House, take a $1M job with Goldman, Sachs, pay a $425K surtax. Some House Republican should add this to a bill and watch the Dems react.

UPDATE: Should we also provide that salaries paid to former government officials aren’t deductible for corporations? Or is that going too far? I say: Put it in as a negotiating point!

Sounds smarter than a tax on tanning salons, don't you think? And much more fun. After all, if taxes are there to change behavior, reward friends, and punish enemies, well....

Update, July 8, 2011: Gotta love the Hollywood angle:

Check out the Domestic Production Activities Deduction (§199), created by the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. It classifies moviemaking as a production activity, and gives a tax credit for it (I think 9% or half of salaries paid, whichever is less). (Might PajamasTV qualify, I dunno). Hollywood thus gets a special tax credit of its own, on the theory (which Hollywood types would reject if applied to anyone else) that reducing taxes increases employment.