Tax talk from a freeper...

I don't even know where to begin with this guy.

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From another thread

"I posted something somewhere about this whole unfair taxation bullShe8. Its very unfortunate that the little guy pays more tax, and always will. "

The IRS data divide taxpayers into percentiles according to their adjusted gross incomes. Following is the share of aggregate income taxes paid by each group:

Income Group ---- Tax Share
Top 1 percent ---- 33.7 percent
Top 5 percent ---- 53.8 percent
Top 10 percent ---- 65.7 percent
Top 25 percent ---- 83.9 percent
Top 50 percent ---- 96.5 percent

The data also reveal that despite the Bush tax cuts, the income tax is still highly progressive -- taking more from each group as their incomes rise. The following percentages measure the taxes paid by each group divided by their income. Economists call this the average or effective tax rate.

Income Group ---- Tax Rate
Top 1 percent ---- 27.25 percent
Top 5 percent ---- 22.95 percent
Top 10 percent ---- 20.51 percent
Top 25 percent ---- 16.99 percent
Top 50 percent ---- 14.66 percent
Bottom 50 percent ---- 3.21 percent

Finally, the data show that the rich are not only paying tax rates as high as they were during the Clinton administration, eve after large tax cuts in 2001 and 2002, but they are doing so even as their incomes have fallen. The aggregate income of the top 1 percent was down 26 percent between 2000 and 2002. In 2000, the income threshold for getting into the top 1 percent was $313,469. By 2002, that figure had fallen to $285,424, reflecting the slow economy and weak stock market.

Please explain to me how the "little guy" pays more in tax and alway will. The top 5% income group pays over 50% of all taxes paid and they pay at a higher rate.

Just another fallacy created by the left in their hate the rich (except us, cause were rich too) class warfare agenda.

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How much shit is this guy full of?

... where's the justice?

http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so11/stratification/income&wealth.htm

hese data suggest that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small number of families. The wealthiest 1 percent of families owns roughly 39 percent of total net wealth, the top 10% of families owns over 72%, and the bottom 40% of the population owns less than 1%

We have a propaganda debunking group? Awesome.

On my way over there...thanks. :yourock:

a martyr complex for the richer than God.

Who was the dipshit that compared our tax system to the holocaust...Grover Norquist, I can't remember.

Table 1 above just takes into account gross income after adjustments (which are downard adjustments). Since the tax code is progressive up to 300k, you're obviously going to see a little progressivity when your measure is of AGI.

What if you don't look at AGI? What if you look at all income? What if you measure amassed wealth and not income? People whose assets are appreciating in value but don't sell them don't have those increases reflected in GI or AGI at all. People who inherit wealth don't have that inheritied wealth reflected in GI or AGI.

I wish I had the stats. However, IIRC, there's not point where the top x% of people measured by wealth, GI, or AGI pays more of the total tax burden than they control in terms of wealth. So, say the top 10% pays 65% of income tax -- well, they probably earn 70% of all AGI, 80% of all GI, and 90% of all wealth.

As for the second table, there was a study two years ago that measured the effective tax burden on people from all methods of taxation (state local and federal). The effective rate of taxation in the five quintiles ranged from something like 16% to 20%, and it wasn't the top quintile that had the highest effective rate and it wasn't the bottom quintile that had the lowest.

Federal income tax is one way that we tax people. FICA is another (which really skews the numbers in those tables above). Property tax and sales tax and state income tax are other ways we tax people. License fees are a form of taxation too. When put them all together, the rich really do get a relatively free ride.

And that's why we have an increasingly polarized distribution of wealth in America and it's why it's harder to become or even stay middle class, while the top .1% gets wealthier and wealthier.

State, local, property, FICA, excise & sales taxes are all highly regressive. That's why the Fed gov't made federal income taxes progressive, to help balance that out. Repubs are always trying to get you focus only on the federal income tax when they whine "class warfare". It's not the whole story.

whole story

The poor - the bottom 20% - pay a higher percentage than the top 20%.

that Bush and Cheney only paid about 21% of their income in taxes. All taxes.

I imagine this is pretty common for people in their income group.

Meanwhile, people in the bottom half usually get jacked to the tune of 30% or higher, when you figure in State, local, payroll, and income.

but FALLS to 22.95% for the top FIVE percent? His figures are completely bogus, and that's some huge asshole he's pulled them out of.

Now, if he wants to talk about the NEXT 4% down the ladder, his figures might make some sense, but that pulls the income for the top 5% up to 50.2%, which kind of takes all the steam out of his argument.

They never account for the 40% of FICA premiums paid by that bottom 80% of earners that goes into the general fund along with income taxes. That drops the percentage of tax paid by the very rich WAY down.

Tax cuts for the richest have been a fiscal disaster for this country. If they hadn't been able to rob social security over the past 20 years to cover it up, even your freeper wingnut friend would know it.

indeed the poorest 20% and the top 20% are at about 20%, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th 20% groupings are "progressive" - and within the top 20% it is progressive so the top 1% do indeed pay 27.25% Indeed payroll tax and sales tax add little to the percentage tax burden.

But that is a bit of a con - since much of the income of the top 1% is just not counted as taxable income -

Would that we all could have living expense trusts from overseas, hidden subs of subs in tax free Islands, and "unearned" income in the US that is treated as more special than "wage" income - meaning most if not all is not taxed - unlike the taxing of wage income.

Fact: More money is going disproportionately to the top AND AT A FASTER RATE than any other time in US history.
The top 1% now control over 50 Trillion in assets.

The middle class is LOSING assets, gaining debt.

The progressive tax system must be adjusted to bring money (and power) into the middle class. The people must demand it. The corporations and the elite obviously have no interest in this "vested authority in the middle class" because all they want to do is line their pockets, but unfortunately, it is key to the survival of our democracy and capitalistic system.

The capitalistic system will break down (and is as we speak) when too much power and money go to the upper class. We have now crossed over into this dangerous zone in which bottom line profits have become more important than benefits. The NEW RULING CLASS of elite rich, fed now by 20 years of undertaxing, have no need to support the American middle class because they can outsource to continue making profits, while also getting away with cutting benefits at home.

What advantage has EVER been historically beem demonstrated for piling more money at the top? Trickle not only doesn't trickle down....it results in a dysfunctional corporate attitude. Unless there is REAL power residing in the middle class, the system goes haywire, period.

The aggregate income drop for the wealthy was due in part to cutting the tax on capitals gains and dividends to 15%. So if you made $1,000,000 total, and $500,000 is from dividends, if everything were taxes at 30% you'd pay $300,000 in taxes. But since dividends aren't taxed the same as earned income, the dollar amount of the dividend is devalued so that the 30% tax rate will lower the taxes correctly. So the above guy would pay 30% on $500,000, and 15% on the dividend income, or $225,000, under the reduced tax rate. But they don't actually change his tax rate, they reduce his income by an amount necessary to get him a 15% rate on dividends. So the $500,000 in dividends earned now becomes $250,000, and his adjusted gross income is $750,000, taxed at 30% rate, or $225,000.

The other thing which reduced their income was the enormous stock market losses under Bush, which means many wealthy people have large 'capital losses' which they have been applying to the AGI over the last few years. Their actual incomes have been going up, their taxes have been going down, but the AGI have dropped because of capital loss carryforwards and lowered tax rates on capital gains and dividends.

Also, he totally omits any mention of payroll taxes for SS & Medicare. Since those taxes hit lower income people (below $90,000) on 100% of their income, and since those two programs account for something like 1/2 of govt revenues, I think he needs to redo his math.

Ask him to send you revised charts which use just income rather than adjusted gross income, so that capital gains, dividends, income from tax-free bonds, foreign income, etc, are all included, and ask him to include payroll taxes in the calculations as well and lets see where we end up.

:-)

Income tax withholding desensitizes all people so they don't know how much of their money the government takes.

I took a straw poll this morning, because we all got our W-2s in the mail yesterday, asking my 3 teammates how much thought they'd pay in taxes for 2004. All of them said: "I probably won't pay taxes, I always get a refund" with a straight face. They honestly don't know they pay taxes and the only reason they get a refund is that they just made an interest-free loan to Uncle Sam. And I bet most of society thinks that way. Amazing.

but your chains or whatever.

Jesus Christ, some people just don't get it.

:eyes: