A Tax Bracket Divided Over a Plan to Pay More

By ROBERT PEAR
NYT

DENVER — At a wine-and-cheese reception in his office here, Terry M. Barr, president of Samson Oil and Gas, made a pitch to industry executives to donate to the Republican Party of Colorado so that they could defeat President Obama and elect more Republicans at the federal, state and local levels.

After his guests left, Mr. Barr offered a surprising postscript: He agrees with a proposal by Congressional Democrats to impose a surtax on income over $1 million a year.

Republicans in Congress deride the proposal for a so-called millionaires’ tax as class warfare. But in an interview, Mr. Barr said, “Wealthy people in the U.S. should be paying more tax, and I’m one of them.”

Mr. Barr, a petroleum geologist who said he made $1.2 million a year, described himself as a staunch conservative, and said his views of tax policy reflected his fiscal conservatism.

(More here.)