Cutting Those Arrow Shaft Excise Taxes

I have come to the conclusion that the Obama campaign must have done all of the Oppo Research on each and every possible Republican VP candidate weeks ago. How else does all this good stuff come out on Paul Ryan within 48 hours of his being named Romney’s running mate?

Like how, in his 1988 high school yearbook, Paul Ryan was named the school’s “Biggest Brown Noser.”

Or how, with his widow’s peak, Paul Ryan bears an uncanny resemblance to Eddie Munster.

But today I got knocked back by the revelation that in his 13 years in the hallowed halls of Congress, Paul Ryan was successful in getting a grand total of two, count ‘em, two of his bills passed into law.

One of them was a “gimme” as they say, a bill to rename a Post Office building in a Wisconsin town. Those generally reach the floor and get passed without objection.

The other though, the other one was a true study in what makes Paul Ryan tick.

It was an amendment to the Internal Revenue Code to impose a 39-cent tax per arrow shaft, instead of a 12.4 percent tax on the sales price.

Arrow shafts as in bows and arrows.

So I asked myself, was this a move to raise the tax on arrow shafts and raise revenues, or decrease them? I really didn’t know how much arrow shafts cost, and didn’t know that they came sold separately from arrow tips, but apparently they do.

You see, the tax code in 2008 had the tax as a percentage of the sales price, but Ryan’s amendment made it a flat rate. So I had to investigate.

Now, according to the Eagle Archery price page for gold-tip arrow shafts these sell individually for somewhere between $4.50 and $6.50 each, or a $5.50 average price.

12.4 percent of $5.50 is $0.682.

So true to form, Paul Ryan’s one and only budgetary bill passed into law was a bill to save bow and arrow sportspersons an average of 29 cents per arrow shaft.

Imagine the total loss in overall revenues for this one thing. Let’s use the Minnesota Bowhunter’s, Inc. figure that 3,324,187 Americans are licensed bow hunters and let’s say that on average they buy 2 dozen arrows per year. That fellow Americans, is an overall revenue loss of over $23 million per year.

Nice job. Paul Ryan saved the bowhunters of America millions of dollars every year, but voted against Pell Grants and Medicaid.

Paul Ryan really knows how to lead the charge toward fiscal responsibility, doesn’t he?