PhillyDeals: High-income earners: Let our tax cut end

"In a spirit of Thanksgiving," as they put it, more than 400 U.S. business owners and professionals last week signed a petition circulated by a Boston group, Wealth for the Common Good, that called on Congress and President Obama to let tax cuts for high-income earners expire Dec. 31.

The cuts, implemented under President George W. Bush, are set to expire for all taxpayers, but efforts are under way to extend them. The petition signers say there should be no extension of the cuts for those with taxable incomes of more than $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for joint filers.

Citing government estimates, they wrote that letting rates return to the high-30-percent range would raise "an estimated $700 billion over 10 years" to invest in "education, health, job creation, renewable energy, transportation," and you get the picture.

The idea has support in some surprising places. "People at the high end - people like myself - should be paying a lot more in taxes," the second-richest American, Berkshire Hathaway boss Warren Buffett, told ABC News in a program scheduled to air Sunday night.

The idea that money will "trickle down" from the rich to workers "has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American people are catching on," Buffett said.

The Boston group is taking the case to the working rich at local levels.

"It's damaging to the economy, both short-term and long-term, to continue the tax cuts for the top income rates," especially for "unearned" investment income, petition-signer Joe Magid, owner of Gryphon Systems, a Wynnewood info-tech consultant, told me.

"Your hedge fund managers . . . they're paying just 15 percent," said Magid, while mid-six-figure incomes are charged more than twice as much. "That's sort of insane."

But don't low taxes promote investment and job growth? "Ridiculous," Magid said. "An 'S' corporation [that passes both income and losses on to shareholders, who then report income or losses in their individual tax returns] like my business, whatever isn't spent to hire people and improve the infrastructure of my company goes to me, the owner, as personal income that I'm paying a lower tax on.

"That [incentivizes] me not to hire people. If the marginal tax rate on the 10-millionth dollar of my income is the same as on my first $1 million, I have no incentive to invest in my company. If I had to pay higher taxes it would be easier to decide I should invest more in my company and make more money."