Bush’s tax reform no help to the middle class

Re “Mortgage deductions could use a ceiling,” Opinion, Nov. 3

I’d like to invite Robert Reich to come by my place next Sunday and I’ll show him some of the two-bedroom, one-bath “mansions” you can get in Santa Monica for $1.1 million. Then he can show me where I can buy a vacant lot for $412,000.

The mortgage interest cap, cutting the deduction of state and local taxes and most of the rest of the proposed tax reforms are economic warfare against the blue states. I understand why President Bush wants to make his enemies pay taxes on their taxes and further subsidize the already parasitic red states, but why is Reich giving him cover?

MARK MILINICH

Venice

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Re “Popular Tax Breaks Put on Chopping Block,” Nov. 2

I am incredulous that President Bush’s advisory panel is recommending reducing the mortgage interest deduction -- the only real write-off I have. I’m at the highest tax bracket in a family of two incomes with two children in college. Bush continues to find ways to keep his “base” -- the super-rich corporations -- from paying taxes, while they reap record profits. Meanwhile, my tax dollars are wasted on an immoral war in Iraq that I oppose.

This is taxation without representation, not to mention a disregard for America’s middle-class and family values.

JOHN WOOD

Pasadena

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I have a $270,000 mortgage at 5.6% interest and a $7,000 annual property tax bill. My income puts me in the 25% tax bracket. I am middle class. Under the two “tax reform” proposals put forth by President Bush’s panel, I would pay an additional $3,269 in taxes over the considerable sum I am already paying. The panel could have recommended eliminating deductions only on vacation homes. They could have put forth a proposal that did not cut the capital gains tax in half for the wealthiest of this country’s citizens. Instead, they chose to once again favor the rich.

Frankly, I cannot afford this tax reform and simplification. And I will be watching very carefully what my congressional representatives do with this latest sop for the wealthy.

CHRISTOPHER G. BLOOD

San Diego