Soak the Rich? Ok, So Who's Rich Now?

Determining whether they're rich may be almost as difficult for taxpayers as paying their higher taxes this April.

President Obama's first term ended with one new definition of who's "rich," but his second term began with many conflicting ones.

Five major new tax provisions just kicked in just this year at least ostensibly aimed at making "the rich" pay more taxes. Even the tax hike enacted over New Year's has no single definition of who "the rich" are.

Soaking the rich is not a new exercise. Decades ago, Washington adopted one landmark effort to make sure "the rich" didn't escape paying hefty taxes: Congress layered an entirely new tax system - the Alternative Minimum Tax - over the regular one. Anyone subject to the AMT has to do his taxes twice, according to two completely different sets of rules - then pay whichever result is higher.

But the convoluted AMT quickly began to catch more and more middle class Americans, because its levels weren't indexed to inflation. This begat another "solution" - not AMT repeal, but temporary "patching" (an escape hatch to let out some of those who weren't supposed to get hit by the new tax system).

The fiscal-cliff deal finally ended the temporary patching of the AMT, with a permanent change: Now the AMT's levels are indexed. While still exceedingly complex, the measure also still sees couples in high tax states like New York with incomes in the $180,000 range falling into the AMT.

That's even lower than the "rich" income thresholds proposed over last summer, when Democrats urged reinstating the top pre-Bush tax rate for incomes over various levels - $1 million in some proposals, and $250,000 in President Obama's.

The fiscal-cliff deal also addressed this question - and put the threshold for the "rich" as couples making over $450,000 a year.

But that deal actually set a third definition: It also gave full effect to two obscure provisions that limit high-earners' use of tax exemptions and deductions. The "rich threshold" this time? The limits start kicking in at $300,000 for couples' income.

The new year also brought two other notable tax hikes on the rich, both part of ObamaCare's phase-in. One is a 3.8 percent surtax on the rich's capital gains and dividend income; the other, a 0.9 percent rise in the Medicare payroll tax. And here, the old Obama definition of "rich" prevailed: The taxes hit couples making over $250,000 a year.

So that's a grand total of four different thresholds for five different provisions intended to apply to the rich - all just this year.

No wonder people have to hire accountants to do their taxes - it's not just to figure out how much they owe, but to check whether they're rich.

At least these "rich" Americans can take solace that the tax code is now much "fairer," right? Not so fast. Those making over $200,000 make up just 4.3 percent of taxpayers, yet Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation estimates they paid 58.3 percent of all federal income taxes in 2012 - before these new hikes hit. You can bet they'll pay an even larger share this year.

It is time we got beyond the arguments that these changes are about "the rich" or about "fairness." These changes were about raising revenue. Simply: You shear to get the wool, not to benefit the sheep.

Over the last four years, the federal government's spending has averaged just over 24 percent of the nation's GDP - roughly a quarter of everything America makes. During that time, it has had deficits over $1 trillion in each year. These four-year spending and deficit levels are peacetime records.

If Washington is going to keep spending like that, it's going to keep taxing like this. And if so, we are all going to find ourselves "rich" before we know it.