In the thicket of Democrats running for the White House, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson outlined some of his tax and economic ideas for BusinessWeek. Among them, Richardson called for a national pension system to replace Social Security akin to a 401(k) that would be portable as workers moved from job to job, he said. When it comes to keeping cuts to the dividend and capital gains takes, Richardson’s answers are somewhat ambivalent. As for capital gains tax, which went from 20% to 15% in 2003, but is scheduled to be revised again in 2010, Richardson said he’d push to keep it. “I'm a pro-growth Democrat,” Richardson said. “As President, I would use the tax code to incentivize the economy. I would give tax incentives to companies that pay over the prevailing wage, to technology startups, to companies that move into rural areas. I would try to get tax simplification, tax fairness. I would increase tax incentives for the middle class.” But keeping the 15% rate for dividends, which were taxed at 35% before the 2003 law, might be a different story. “I would look at all the Bush tax cuts but not make them permanent. I believe we have to shift them to the middle class,” he said. The staff of Money Management Executive ("MME") has prepared these capsule summaries based on reports published by the news sources to which they are attributed. Those news sources are not associated with MME, and have not prepared, sponsored, endorsed, or approved these summaries.
