Wage earners.
Look at the original post. He mentioned wage earners. And that is the key word.
Nobody ever got rich by working hard for his boss and getting a promotion and/or a raise.
The richest people don’t earn wages. They cash in on their options. They get dividends. They sell stock.
Even if you’re a BIG wage earner, you’re upper middle class.
Looks like teachers are not going to get the $500 deduction for classroom supplies anymore.
Why do people think that there should be a linear relationship between income and tax paid? (flat tax rate).
Tax Paid is a function of Income and it’s upto society to pick it’s form. We use linear functions a lot, but our money utility is not linear.
[quote]Hack Wilson wrote:
meanwhile i pay the U.S. government about 45k every year so they can lay on their asses. percentages got nothing to do with it. dollars is what matters. i work for what’s mine. can’t say the same for everyone.[/quote]
45K…thats all?
[quote]skor wrote:
Why do people think that there should be a linear relationship between income and tax paid? (flat tax rate).
Tax Paid is a function of Income and it’s upto society to pick it’s form. We use linear functions a lot, but our money utility is not linear.[/quote]
Neither is peoples intellect, motivation, self worth, etc. So why do the smart, driven, successful, hardworking, etc. need to make up for those who for whatever reason do not produce in society? What do they offer society in return? If you want to talk about society making the rules, then just what does society get out of throwing money at those who will never contribute positively to society?
[quote]Hack Wilson wrote:
…our government does not do a good enough job of incentivizing hard work, savings, etc.[/quote]
Capital gains should be applied to savings accounts as investing in the equity market does nothing for our economy unless you buy IPOs.
The money in savings accounts are loaned out to consumers or business.
Personal income tax on savings accounts is a disincentive to saving money.
[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
Hack Wilson wrote:
…our government does not do a good enough job of incentivizing hard work, savings, etc.
Capital gains should be applied to savings accounts as investing in the equity market does nothing for our economy unless you buy IPOs.
The money in savings accounts are loaned out to consumers or business.
Personal income tax on savings accounts is a disincentive to saving money.[/quote]
Taxes should be lowered for anyone living in New Jersey. Living there is punishment enough.
Go Buckeyes!!
[quote]Wreckless wrote:
Nobody ever got rich by working hard for his boss and getting a promotion and/or a raise.
The richest people don’t earn wages. They cash in on their options. They get dividends. They sell stock.
Even if you’re a BIG wage earner, you’re upper middle class.[/quote]
I…can’t …believe it.
But I wholeheartedly agree with wreckless. People don’t generally get “rich” while in the employment of someone else.
[quote]bigflamer wrote:
Wreckless wrote:
Nobody ever got rich by working hard for his boss and getting a promotion and/or a raise.
The richest people don’t earn wages. They cash in on their options. They get dividends. They sell stock.
Even if you’re a BIG wage earner, you’re upper middle class.
I…can’t …believe it.
But I wholeheartedly agree with wreckless. People don’t generally get “rich” while in the employment of someone else.
[/quote]
I can’t believe it either ! ! !
When did you grow a brain?
This could be the start of a beautifull friendship.
…
Naahh.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Lots of people bitch about the small amount they get from Bush’s tax cuts. The secret to get a bigger refund? Actually pay taxes, which most don’t.
"The Top 50% pay 96.54% of All Income Taxes
(The top 1% pay more than a third: 34.27%)
October 4, 2005
This is the latest data for calendar year 2003 just released in October 2005 by the Internal Revenue Service. The share of total income taxes paid by the top 1% of wage earners rose to 34.27% from 33.71% in 2002. Their income share (not just wages) rose from 16.12% to 16.77%. However,
their average tax rate actually dropped from 27.25% down to 24.31%
*Data covers calendar year 2003, not fiscal year 2003
Think of it this way: less than 3-1/2 dollars out of every $100 paid in income taxes in the United States is paid by someone in the bottom 50% of wage earners. Are the top half millionaires? Noooo, more like “thousandaires.” The top 50% were those individuals or couples filing jointly who earned $29,019 and up in 2003. (The top 1% earned $295,495-plus.) Americans who want to are continuing to improve their lives, and those who don’t want to, aren’t. Here are the wage earners in each category and the percentages they pay:
The top 1% pay over a third, 34.27% of all income taxes. (Up from 2003: 33.71%) The top 5% pay 54.36% of all income taxes (Up from 2002: 53.80%). The top 10% pay 65.84% (Up from 2002: 65.73%). The top 25% pay 83.88% (Down from 2002: 83.90%). The top 50% pay 96.54% (Up from 2002: 96.50%). The bottom 50%? They pay a paltry 3.46% of all income taxes (Down from 2002: 3.50%). The top 1% is paying nearly ten times the federal income taxes than the bottom 50%! And who earns what? The top 1% earns 16.77% of all income (2002: 16.12%). The top 5% earns 31.18% of all the income (2002: 30.55%). The top 10% earns 42.36% of all the income (2002: 41.77%); the top 25% earns 64.86% of all the income (2002: 64.37%) , and the top 50% earns 86.01% (2002: 85.77%) of all the income.
I have made an executive decision as the owner and ultimate editor of this website that this table and these numbers stay on this website forever - updated when each year’s numbers come out, of course. In order to get these facts, you have to see them each and every day. This story, along with a link to the IRS chart, will stay somewhere on the RushLimbaugh.com homepage so everyone can see and find these numbers at any time. It’s crucial that people get this, so please, share it with a friend now!
The Rich Earned Their Dough, They Didn’t Inherit It (Except Ted Kennedy)
October 10, 2003
The bottom 50% is paying a tiny bit of the taxes, so you can’t give them much of a tax cut by definition. Yet these are the people to whom the Democrats claim to want to give tax cuts. Remember this the next time you hear the “tax cuts for the rich” business. Understand that the so-called rich are about the only ones paying taxes anymore.
I had a conversation with a woman who identified herself as Misty on Wednesday. She claimed to be an accountant, yet she seemed unaware of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which now ensures that everyone pays some taxes. AP reports that the AMT, “designed in 1969 to ensure 155 wealthy people paid some tax,” will hit “about 2.6 million of us this year and 36 million by 2010.” That’s because the tax isn’t indexed for inflation! If your salary today would’ve made you mega-rich in '69, that’s how you’re taxed.
Misty tried the old line that all wealth is inherited. Not true. John Weicher, as a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank, wrote in his February 13, 1997 Washington Post Op-Ed, “Most of the rich have earned their wealth… Looking at the Fortune 400, quite a few even of the very richest people came from a standing start, while others inherited a small business and turned it into a giant corporation.” What’s happening here is not that “the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.” The numbers prove it.
Check Out the UPDATED IRS Table of Numbers from Cy 2003…
(The IRS: Individual Income Tax Returns Each Tax Year 1985 - 2003)
{Requires EXCEL to View}
? Rush’s Coverage of the Previous IRS Data: here
Read the Article…
(AP: Obscure minimum tax will affect 36 million by 2010)
[/quote]
Umm… this is a bad thing because… why exactly? Rich people should pay becauser they have money. Duh.
Who the hell needs more than 10mil a year when there are people starving on the streets?
[quote]Beowolf wrote:
Umm… this is a bad thing because… why exactly? Rich people should pay becauser they have money. Duh.
Who the hell needs more than 10mil a year when there are people starving on the streets?
[/quote]
And who the hell are you to say how much money is enough? If you have a buck in your pocket - feed someone.
How do you know that someone that makes that much isn’t already giving to feed the poor?
You know what happens when you assume…
And what about corporate income tax? Isn’t anybody sick and tired of paying all that corporate income tax?
That’s right. If you buy anything, YOU pay corporate income tax. You didn’t think that GM, Ford, Microsoft, Intel, WalMart etc. actually pay tax do you? They simply tack it on to the price of what they sell and pass that expense along to you. Corporations don’t pay any taxes at all. They make their customers pay it.
Damn corporations.
[quote]yorik wrote:
And what about corporate income tax? Isn’t anybody sick and tired of paying all that corporate income tax?
That’s right. If you buy anything, YOU pay corporate income tax. You didn’t think that GM, Ford, Microsoft, Intel, WalMart etc. actually pay tax do you? They simply tack it on to the price of what they sell and pass that expense along to you. Corporations don’t pay any taxes at all. They make their customers pay it.
Damn corporations. [/quote]
Nononono corporations are good.
You are dead on about corporate taxes though. Every once in a while, some yutz gets on here and whines that if we need money we can just pass some new gasoline company tax or something, and we of us who know better have to teach the youngun a thing or two.
The lesson here, of course, is to become a corporation yourself. Then, you can be one of the cool dudes, evade taxes, and write everything that you do off as a business expense. That measn every meal is a business meeting, every mile you drive is business travel, etc. You can even get business accounts and corporate credit cards to make it look legit. 
That’s true. I tried that once. The only bummer is, you don’t sleep so well at night. You keep wondering if that breakfast at Denny’s was really legit, and wheather it would hold up to the IRS rules, etc.
[quote]yorik wrote:
And what about corporate income tax? Isn’t anybody sick and tired of paying all that corporate income tax?
That’s right. If you buy anything, YOU pay corporate income tax. You didn’t think that GM, Ford, Microsoft, Intel, WalMart etc. actually pay tax do you? They simply tack it on to the price of what they sell and pass that expense along to you. Corporations don’t pay any taxes at all. They make their customers pay it.
Damn corporations. [/quote]
It’s a love/hate relationship. Yeah, they get over, but here in America, they have an incentive to be the best. Have you ever tasted the food in the U.K? It’s like they put no effort into it. And forget about getting rung up in a hurry there. Long lines are the norm.
What sucks about the corporations, is … well, working for one. I’m not saying all corporations are bad, but a lot of them are really bad to work for. They don’t give a damn about their workers. And some of them pay shitty wages. This is what amazes me. The CEOs make millions, the middle managers make middle class wages, but the worker interacting with the customer is still making minimum wage.
AND IT HASN’T GONE UP IN TEN YEARS!
[quote]orion wrote:
nephorm wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
The people who make the most should pay the most. Seems clear to me.
And that is how it would work if there were a flat percentage across the board. If taxes were a flat 25%, and I make $100,000, I would pay out $25,000 to the government. If you made $10,000, you would pay $2500. Make more=pay more.
But with the current system, not only do you pay more, you also pay a higher percent of your income. That’s not right.
Unless your income is REALLY high and not from employment, than you pay zilch, nada, niente, a schmonzes so to speak…
Progressive income tax is a great way to ensure the middle class does not get uppity though…
Where HH is absolutely right is that taxes are intrinsically unfair and an act of violence, so everyone that can avoids taxation.
The only ones that are left are the ones who need employment to stay alive and pay their bills. They cannot flee and avoid taxation, which is why they are fucked.
Has nothing to do with fairness, only with a lot of sheep getting fleeced regularily…[/quote]
I think you missed the first part about the top 1% paying the vast majority of the taxes.
Of course some people evade taxes that others pay, but this whole scenario of this super rich class who doesn’t pay anything needs, you know, evidence before it becomes a believable story.
[quote]Skystud wrote:
What sucks about the corporations, is … well, working for one. I’m not saying all corporations are bad, but a lot of them are really bad to work for. They don’t give a damn about their workers. And some of them pay shitty wages. This is what amazes me. The CEOs make millions, the middle managers make middle class wages, but the worker interacting with the customer is still making minimum wage.
AND IT HASN’T GONE UP IN TEN YEARS![/quote]
LOL That’s why you go to college, man! So you don’t get minimum wage!
Or were you not paying attention for half of your life?
Seriously though, I’ve worked for several large to medium corporations in the past ten years (hospitals), and the culture there is not one of “shit on the little guy”. Maybe it’s because we all take care of sick people for a living, but there just isn’t the condescension and snootiness that we would come to expect from a Dilbert cartoon strip.
I’m sure that things are different for other folks elsewhere though. I just haven’t seen it myself.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
The lesson here, of course, is to become a corporation yourself. Then, you can be one of the cool dudes, evade taxes, and write everything that you do off as a business expense. That measn every meal is a business meeting, every mile you drive is business travel, etc. You can even get business accounts and corporate credit cards to make it look legit. :)[/quote]
Yup!
Or even better, become 2 or 3 three corporations preferably in different countries and let them deal with each other.
No matter how high the taxes get, it does no matter if your profits happen to materialize in Liechtenstein…
[quote]cap’nsalty wrote:
Of course some people evade taxes that others pay, but this whole scenario of this super rich class who doesn’t pay anything needs, you know, evidence before it becomes a believable story.[/quote]
What is the capital gains tax in the US?
What is the amount of your brutto-brutto income you get to keep in the US? I.e what do you cost your employer and what do you get to keep after direct and indirect taxes?
How much money to trust funds pay in taxes on capital gains?
If they even are in the US. Money can change locations veeeery fast given the right incentive.
The super rich don`t pay nothing, only around 15-20 % or so if they are clever, you however pay around 70% of what you produce which quite effectively ensures that you will never get rich.
For all of the liberals who are confused as to who pays the taxes in this country.
2004 tax statistics:
Top 1% ($328-k)-----------Paid 36.89%
Top 5% ($137-k------------Paid 57.13%
Top 10%($99-k)------------Paid 68.19%
Top 25%($60-k)------------Paid 84.86%
Top 50%(30-k)-------------Paid 96.70%
Bottom 50% (under 30-k)—Paid 3.30%
Now, this is not to say that people who make less are lazy, bad, insignificant or any other negative connotation that you might want to attribute to them. Or that you might want to insinuate that I am attributing to them. My point is simple, they just make less money. And because of that, they pay a great deal less in taxes.
On the other hand it appears that the rich are indeed pulling the wagon. When you make 137-k or better (top 5%) you are paying almost 60% of all taxes collected in the USA.
Instead of attacking “rich people” we should be thanking them for carrying the bulk of the financial load in America. On top of that they are also producing more relative to the GNP. They are in short “performing” and without them this country that we all love would be headed down hill at a faster rate than a bleeding heart liberal can shout “I HATE THE RICH!”
It’s odd in a way, the best performers of any business or sports team are lauded for their many contributions. But in the world of political know nothings they are attacked.