Senate Democrats yesterday introduced legislation — as they’ve been promising to — that would extend a soon-to-expire payroll tax cut, and pay for it by implementing a surtax on income above $1 million. Republicans, of course, are opposing the plan, reviving their false claims that taxing the very wealthiest Americans will hit small businesses and job creators.

In essence, the GOP is saying that it’s willing to allow higher taxes on middle- and lower-income Americans in order to prevent tax increases on the very wealthy. According to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, provided to the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, the surtax would affect exceedingly few taxpayers, while a payroll tax cut expiration would wallop more than 100 million households:

The surtax would impact around 345,000 taxpayers, roughly 0.2 percent of taxpayers, or one in 500 of them. Those people would pay on average an additional 2.1 percent of their overall income, or just over 1/50th of that overall income, in taxes.

In a majority of states, only one-tenth of one percent, or one in 1,000 taxpayers, would pay this surtax.

And how many people would benefit from the payroll tax cut? According to the group, around 113 million tax filing units — either single workers or families that include more than one worker — would see their payroll tax cut extended. That’s a lot of people — well over 113 million workers, in fact.

Allowing the payroll tax cut to expire at the end of the year would hit middle-class families with a $1,000 tax increase, providing a substantial drag on the economy. In fact, according to Macroeconomic Advisers, allowing the payroll tax cut to lapse “would reduce GDP growth by 0.5 percent and cost the economy 400,000 jobs.” Other estimates are even worse, with Barclays’s estimating that a payroll tax increase could say 1.5 percent off of GDP growth.

The GOP has, time and again, blocked any legislation that would increase taxes by the slightest amount on the ultra-wealthy, even with tax revenue at a 60 year low, taxes on the rich the lowest they’ve been in a generation, and income inequality out of control. Instead, Republicans would prefer to raise taxes on the middle-class, knocking the economy where it can least afford it.

There is currently a special loophole in the tax codes of most states that allows online retailers like Amazon.com and Overstock.com to avoid charging the very same sales tax that brick-and-mortar stores are required to collect from customers. This loophole denies states billions of dollars of tax revenue. For example, in “2011 alone, Wisconsin will lose an estimated $127 million in uncollected sales tax on purchases made online.”

Yesterday, the Daytona Beach News-Journal asked Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) about this loophole. Scott admitted that the loophole is “not fair” to bricks-and-mortar stores, but then said he does not advocate closing it anyway because he doesn’t want to raise taxes:

Q: Today is Cyber Monday and thousands, if not millions, of Floridians will go online to make holiday purchases without paying the sales taxes they face in downtown shops. Bricks-and-mortar retailers not only provide jobs in our communities, but they pay property taxes that help fund services and education. What should the Legislature do to level the economic playing field?

SCOTT: It’s not fair. You shouldn’t be treated differently, whether you’re selling online or in bricks-and-mortar. That’s not fair. But, at the same time, my focus is not to do it where we raise taxes. I don’t want to take money out of the private sector. Is it raising taxes to have a mechanism that helps Florida collect the sales taxes we’re already supposed to pay? If it’s out of your pocket, that’s a tax.

Scott’s answer is disappointing, given how states ranging from California to Connecticut have moved to close this revenue-draining loophole.

2012 GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich today, during an event in South Carolina, said that he repudiates the very idea behind the Occupy Wall Street movement — that the economy should work for everyone, not just the richest 1 percent — and called on President Obama to do the same:

I repudiate, and I call on the President to repudiate, the concept of the 99 and the 1. It is un-American, it is divisive, it is historically false…You are not going to get job creation when you engage in class warfare because you have to attack the very people you hope will create jobs.

Watch it:

Gingrich may be spooked by the power of the narrative of the 99 percent, and is thus resorting to the tired charge of “class warfare” to deride anyone who points out the extent of income inequality in the U.S. But a recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found that “60 percent of respondents strongly agreed that America’s economic imbalance comes from policies that favor the rich over the rest of the country,” while 55 percent “said income inequality is a significant problem in the country.”

Online sales yesterday hit a new record for “Cyber Monday,” the Monday following Thanksgiving when online retailers have, in recent years, been boosting their efforts to take a larger chunk of the post-Thanksgiving shopping binge. According to data from Coremetrics, online sales yesterday were up 33 percent over 2010, and more than $1 billion in merchandise was sold. The average online order value was $198.26.

While this may be good news for retailers, it’s bad news for state budgets. As Matthew Gardner of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy noted yesterday, many online retailers are able to use a tax loophole to avoid collecting sales taxes, depriving states of badly needed revenue:

The National Retail Federation predicts this holiday season, 36 percent of all purchases will be made online. But too many of these purchases will be tax-free, due to an unfortunate loophole allowing e-retailers to shirk their role in helping states collect sales taxes — which cost states $10 billion last year alone, according to researchers at the University of Tennessee.

More tax-free sales mean fewer tax dollars for states — not to mention the consumer dollars that won’t circulate in our local economies because the current system rewards online shopping with out-of-state businesses.

The Supreme Court has ruled that retailers only have to collect sales tax in states where they have a physical presence. That ruling was handed down in 1992, before the rise of e-retailers, yet has allowed companies like Amazon.com to undercut competitors by not collecting sales tax. When lawmakers attempt, as many have, to close this loophole and force Amazon to collect sales tax, Amazon has threatened to simply leave those states.

According to the latest Fiscal Survey of States by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers, state budgets have improved slightly since the beginning of the Great Recession, but states “still face a dire fiscal situation.” The revenue generated from online sales could certainly help, but a pernicious tax loophole with no public policy purpose is depriving states of those dollars, forcing them to cut ever deeper into programs upon which people depend.

For months, major banks have been dealing with the fallout of the “robo-signing” scandal, following reports that the banks were improperly foreclosing on homeowners and, in many instances, falsifying paperwork that they were submitting to courts. Banks have been forced to go back and re-examine foreclosures to ensure that homeowners did not lose their homes unlawfully.

In the latest episode of this mess, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has found that banks — including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup — may have improperly foreclosed on up to 5,000 active members of the military:

Ten leading US lenders may have unlawfully foreclosed on the mortgages of nearly 5,000 active-duty members of the US military in recent years, according to data released by a federal regulator. [...]

The data released by the OCC are based on estimates prepared by lenders and their consultants. BofA said it is reviewing 2,400 foreclosures involving active-duty military families to see if they were conducted properly. Wells Fargo is reviewing 870 foreclosures and Citigroup is looking at 700 cases.

Also under review are 575 foreclosures at OneWest, formerly known as IndyMac; 87 at HSBC; 80 at US Bancorp; 56 at Aurora, formerly known as Lehman Brothers Bank; 25 at MetLife; six at Sovereign; and three at EverBank.

Back in April, JPMorgan Chase, which was not one of the 10 banks that the OCC examined, agreed to a $56 million settlement over allegations that it had overcharged members of the military on their mortgages. Chase Bank has even auctioned off the home of a military member the very day that he returned from Iraq. Two other mortgage servicers agreed in May to settle charges of improperly foreclosing on servicemembers.

Even without the banks illegally foreclosing, military members have been hard hit by the foreclosure crisis. Last year alone, 20,000 members of the military faced foreclosure, a 32 percent increase over 2008. The newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is tasked with ensuring that military members are treated fairly by financial services companies — a job that is obviously necessary — but Republicans in Congress have, so far, refused to confirm a director for the agency, leaving it unable to fulfill all of its responsibilities.