Re: UNCIVIL UNIONS

The heritage foundation has a chart that shows the breakdown (based on
2006).  It is based on percent of taxes paid.

 

With the rich, a small percent pay almost all taxes paid in all brackets
combine.

 

The wealthiest 20% pay 86.3% of all taxes (up from 81.2 in 2000).  Add in
the second quintile and 40% of Americans pay well over 90% of all taxes.
The second quintile pay 12.9%, down from 13.5.

 

The middle quintile pays 4% (down from 5.7%)

 

The lowest 40% not only pay nothing, they get money back in the form of
credits, so they get more in refunds than they paid in. 

 

I am not saying that some adjustment is not needed.  Fine, bump the highest
rates.   But that is not what most of the loudest voices demand.  They just
want the rich to pay more, and don't realize that they already do and they
pay most.

 

Maybe I am wrong.  Maybe the tax increases on those filthy rich will not
hurt us at all.    Somewhere we have to remember that this is all offset by
SPENDING.  Maybe if we spent less we wouldn't need to tax the rich more.
Getting more revenue is pointless when you increase spending beyond that
too.

 

Taxing the rich is a convenient and unsympathetic target.  But it is not a
solution.

 

Unless all you want is to give to the poor in more entitlements and
redistribution of course, which many do.

 

 

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of nicholas a. evans
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 8:07 PM
To: DADL (off topic)
Subject: Re: [DADL-OT] UNCIVIL UNIONS

 


On Mar 9, 2011 8:27 PM, "Karl Swenson" <[email protected]> wrote:
> Isnt it fun that after all the tax cuts, the rich pay more in taxes now
than ever before?

Do you have data from the IRS to back that claim up?  What are you using as
the salary range for "the rich"?  And do you know whether that stat is
referring to the top marginal rate or the effective rate?  Or is it not
referring to rates at all but to absolute value or percentage of the total
tax burden? 

For the very rich the top marginal rate is almost inconsequential due to the
many available loopholes.    With income inequality being larger now than
ever before, even a highly regressive tax could still leave "the rich"
paying more than ever before, in both absolute dollar terms or in percentage
of the total tax burden.  That's just simple math, not a nefarious socialist
wealth redistribution scheme.

Here's an interesting and relevant bit of data I just recently stumbled
across: in 2007 the top 400 earners in the USA (each of whom made > $138.8M)
paid an average of 16.6% of their income in taxes (>85% of their income was
from capital gains).  The IRS hasn't released all of the data for 2008-2010
yet.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/07intop400.pdf

I wonder if there's a middle class family in the country with such a low
effective rate.  It turns out we have a regressive tax structure after all.

They've released lots of data up until 2007 and some data even for 2008 and
2009. Perhaps you can find the IRS report that will help us understand in
what relevant sense "the rich" pay more taxes than ever before.

-- 
Nick

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