No one talking about My RA?

zitothebrave said:
Are you not paying attention? Where the top 1% has a lower effective tax bill than the people in the 80-90? What world does that make sense?

Yo're right the people in the middle get hurt, but in what way is what you're advocating (people who earn their money should keep it) is good for the middle class?
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Im referring to the bottom. They are paying much less as a percentage. Is that fair? Are everyone "equal?"

Ideally, it would be even across the board. But, instead the rich get richer, the poor get poorer despite having stuff handed to them, and the people in the middle get screwed.
 
So you think that someone who makes 25K or under can afford to pay 20% of their taxes as easily as someone who makes 2 million? Progressive tax works if it's carried out properly. Problem is that we don't have a progressive tax system. Instead we have a crony tax system.
 
zitothebrave said:
So you think that someone who makes 25K or under can afford to pay 20% of their taxes as easily as someone who makes 2 million? Progressive tax works if it's carried out properly. Problem is that we don't have a progressive tax system. Instead we have a crony tax system.
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All people are equal, correct? Why should my income tax% be 30%, while someone elses is 17%?
 
gilesfan said:
All people are equal, correct? Why should my income tax% be 30%, while someone elses is 17%?
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Because you having 70K in money available isn't the same as someone having 7K. You still have an impressive amount of buying power, and the lower earners can buy you know food groceries and gas.
 
zitothebrave said:
It's shortsighted thinking like that that leads to big problems. Yes the rich pay the large majority of income taxes, because they make the large majority of the money. That's really not shocking. Under any form of an income tax they'll spend the most because they earn the most.

What the problem is that as jpx pointed out the current tax system greatly benefits the very rich. When I say very rich mind you I'm not talking about you or AA who make good incomes but people who make way more than the top 1%. While the republicans have successfully conned you into thinking this is a war on people who've earned their money, they don't talk about the other tax benefits that come with being rich.

Here's a figure based on the quintiles and what they pay in payroll and excise taxes as a part of their income in 2007

5-26-11tax-f2.jpg


The same regressive trend exists on state levels as well

5-26-11tax-f3.jpg


The idea of the "burdened" tax payer does exist, but it's not the wealthy.

One more graph just for fun, this is the total tax bill federal and state broken into quintiles but expanded upon in the top 90%.

total-tax-bill-income.jpg


There's a stiff rise as you make money up til the highest quintile. The highest quintile starts at about 100K. Basically meaning that until you earn over 100K you're paying out the nose the more you earn. When you hit the 80th percentile things start to slowly go up, not at the stark increase you see when you first look at the graph.

There's barely an increase going from 90-95 to the 95-99 then a drop off for the top 1%. Basically the top 10% garners a more favorable take

More food for though, from 2000-2009 the effective tax rates of folks earning 200K+ adjusted gross income as part of their group.

37.2% had an effective tax rate of 15-20%, 30.5 20-25, 16.7 25-30 and 10 at 10-15. Basically the rich pay more in taxes that is true, but it's not by some astronomical account when you factor in their income.

I think the american tax code is very backwards and while the income tax is progressive to a point, it's the only tax that is, the capital gains is regressive, retirement taxes are regressive, and so on so forth.

Basically the rich have us by the balls, you can choose to embrace that I choose to feel disgusted by it.
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I actually agree with you on this one. It's silly to have a progressive tax in which the top earners pay less than the group below them. That's not how a progressive tax system is supposed to work. Really though rather than raise rates the way we tax needs to be changed.
 
weso1 said:
I actually agree with you on this one. It's silly to have a progressive tax in which the top earners pay less than the group below them. That's not how a progressive tax system is supposed to work. Really though rather than raise rates the way we tax needs to be changed.
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I'm a proponent of lowering rates and eliminating deductibles. As well as removing payroll caps (or at least raising them significantly), and making a progressive accumulative capital gains (read money earned minus money lossed minus money invested equals tax amount)
 
weso1 said:
I actually agree with you on this one. It's silly to have a progressive tax in which the top earners pay less than the group below them. That's not how a progressive tax system is supposed to work. Really though rather than raise rates the way we tax needs to be changed.
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You're on the right and I'm on the left, but we pretty much agree here. Continuing to dink around with marginal rates doesn't get at the heart of the issue. I hate consumption taxes (regressive by nature and can be extremely regressive if applied against all goods), but we may need to look in that direction a bit. We really have to look at the entire set of credits/deductions (good luck with that seeing every deduction and credit have about ten lobbyists representing it), but if we could somehow get find a reasonable zero-bracket, a workable definition of information, and a set of sensible marginal rates and we could head in the right direction.
 
The biggest fear I have is the government tapping into Roth IRA savings accounts. It's not hard to imagine the federal government deciding that those who were responsible, saved up money for retirement and passed on a more extravagant lifestyle, should be taxed because they have enough to live on compared to those who were less responsible.

Much better to just limit the amount of money that someone can put into retirement, which is what is going on here. That way a person doesn't get double taxed later on. Retirement savings should be encouraged, but I agree with liberals that we need to cut back on some of these tax shelters for the wealthy. Specifically the ones that have no real obvious benefit on the economy.
 
zitothebrave said:
Because you having 70K in money available isn't the same as someone having 7K. You still have an impressive amount of buying power, and the lower earners can buy you know food groceries and gas.
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In other words, the harder I work, the more that I should give to others, correct?
 
weso1 said:
The biggest fear I have is the government tapping into Roth IRA savings accounts. It's not hard to imagine the federal government deciding that those who were responsible, saved up money for retirement and passed on a more extravagant lifestyle, should be taxed because they have enough to live on compared to those who were less responsible.

Much better to just limit the amount of money that someone can put into retirement, which is what is going on here. That way a person doesn't get double taxed later on. Retirement savings should be encouraged, but I agree with liberals that we need to cut back on some of these tax shelters for the wealthy. Specifically the ones that have no real obvious benefit on the economy.
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How does limiting the amount of money put into retirement make sense? I guess we should have people work till they are 75, bc 70 is too young to retire and wouldn't want you to be able to live comfortably. (or leave money to children; which is already double taxed)
 
gilesfan said:
In other words, the harder I work, the more that I should give to others, correct?
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Hard work is relevant. Do you think a CEO at a company works harder than someone who runs their own restaurant and scrapes by? Do you think that you work harder than a migrant farmer who works in the fields from sunrise to sunset?

I think that we like ina society where we have 2 options. Option 1 is to support the society, option 2 is to not support it and everyone lives on their own. You're clearly advocating the latter. I guess you'll be avoiding cities if that actually came into effect because the crime rates there would just shoot up if they couldn't be supported.
 
zitothebrave said:
Hard work is relevant. Do you think a CEO at a company works harder than someone who runs their own restaurant and scrapes by? Do you think that you work harder than a migrant farmer who works in the fields from sunrise to sunset?

I think that we like ina society where we have 2 options. Option 1 is to support the society, option 2 is to not support it and everyone lives on their own. You're clearly advocating the latter. I guess you'll be avoiding cities if that actually came into effect because the crime rates there would just shoot up if they couldn't be supported.
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Do I work harder than someone that puts in 30 hours a week at McDonalds?

My good friend is a farmer, yep, he works his butt off (8 months a year), I tip my cap to him. The govt is royally screwing the farmers as well.

I support the society. I paid 20k in federal taxes this year and a few thousand in state taxes. Also paid a few thousand in social security. But, hey, lets get in my pocket some more.....thats not enough!
 
Its just amazing the mindset of people who feel that those who are successful need to help more and more and more to those that are not. When is enough enough? Will it be 45% 50% 60%. Where does it end?
 
gilesfan said:
Do I work harder than someone that puts in 30 hours a week at McDonalds?

My good friend is a farmer, yep, he works his butt off (8 months a year), I tip my cap to him. The govt is royally screwing the farmers as well.

I support the society. I paid 20k in federal taxes this year and a few thousand in state taxes. Also paid a few thousand in social security. But, hey, lets get in my pocket some more.....thats not enough!
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There is no words for how dumb this post is.
 
weso1 said:
The biggest fear I have is the government tapping into Roth IRA savings accounts. It's not hard to imagine the federal government deciding that those who were responsible, saved up money for retirement and passed on a more extravagant lifestyle, should be taxed because they have enough to live on compared to those who were less responsible.

Much better to just limit the amount of money that someone can put into retirement, which is what is going on here. That way a person doesn't get double taxed later on. Retirement savings should be encouraged, but I agree with liberals that we need to cut back on some of these tax shelters for the wealthy. Specifically the ones that have no real obvious benefit on the economy.
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I don't disagree with the sentiment. I don't anything could be done to any IRAs--Roth or otherwise--retroactively that would pass Congress.

The way around this is to take a longer look at capital gains. I'm not saying treat it completely as income (although that's what it truly is, I'm just realistic about how the capital class would balk at that), but the preference is too high right now.
 
thethe said:
Its just amazing the mindset of people who feel that those who are successful need to help more and more and more to those that are not. When is enough enough? Will it be 45% 50% 60%. Where does it end?
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That's not even the discussion here.
 
Its ok Zito. I understand you want me to give you more and more money bc you don't feel like working.
 
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