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I'm all for those 47% paying something. I think everyone with income should pay something, but at the same time I don't think that the tax burden should fall dramatically for the richest. I think the rich should have every right and opportunity to continue to be rich, but I'm not going to roll over and be their nice little lap dog without question when I see something that is blatantly unfair.
Why should exceedingly wealthy hedge fund managers (who are not "job creators", by the way) get such amazingly favorable privileges via carried interest to dramatically reduce their tax bills compared to anyone else, even other investment professionals? And why, when their risky bets F up, do *I* have to bail them out with my own much smaller pile of highly-taxed dollars? It's bull****, and you can't defend it.
The hedge fund manager provision should be eliminated. And when people and companies f-up, they should get nothing from taxpayers.
And I have said it over and over - every person with wage should pay income taxes, even a trivial amount. They should feel the bite of it.
I don't want stupid marginal tax rates. The rich WILL pay more even with lower overall rates if the tax code is cleaned up.
This year, we hit the 33% marginal tax bracket - alternative minimum tax and all of that. We don't own a home or have kids, so we don't really get to deduct anything.
I'm grateful for our income, and I'm not fundamentally complaining about having to work hard for it and pay my fair share. I know that we're very fortunate.
But why is it fair for my personal share to be up to TWICE the rate of the fair share of people with gargantuan incomes like Romney and Buffett who will never have real financial worries again in their lives? We're doing well, but unlike those guys, we do depend heavily on our cash flow to generate our critical savings for future needs as well as to cover our day-to-day expenses. We get hurt by the loss of that marginal dollar A LOT more than the multi-millionaires and billionaires ever would be.
And why is it "class warfare" whenever I point this out? How is it not "class warfare" for me to be reamed porportionally so much more than the super rich - many of whose enterprises I also have to pay to bail out of their bad business decisions?
I'm not saying that the Buffett rule is the way to go, but why can't we have a tax system that institutes some sense of consistent fairness relative to income all the way across the income spectrum? Why is this concept so fundamentally controversial and anti-American for conservatives?
Income tax vs capital gains taxes
The income used to purchase investments which generate captial gains has already been taxed once. Ideally, in a "fair" world, the capital gains tax would be ZERO.
I am in the highest income tax bracket for the income I generate, yet am taxed at a lower rate for capital gains. It is pretty simple.
If you want to be taxed at a lower rate for capital gains only, become wealthy and live off of your capital gains. Don't be jealous of what others have.
I wrote a five thousand dollar check to the IRS yesterday. Yet the Reps have nominated a man who pays a lower income tax rate than I do and they expect me to vote for that greedy, useless pig. It's disgusting.
Your statement on face value means absolutely nothing. Why did you write that check? Poorly planned W-4? Short term capital gain from sale of stock? Why did you owe the IRS $5K? Was $5K a lot compared to your income?
Romney by all accounts has followed the law throughout his life. He also gives 10% of his income away every year. He has also been pretty damn successful. I see nothing wrong with that.
If the wealthy want to donate to charity, that's fine. Don't let them fool you when they say they all do it magnanimously. They do it because of the tax writeoffs and loopholes involved.
Please explain to me how massive charitable donations actually take advantage of loopholes.
The man that owns my company has given gifts to charity that are multiples of his income. ($75M to a university for example). He gave away far more than he made. He doesn't get to report a negative taxable income to the IRS. He didn't get a rebate from the feds. He gave that money because he wanted to.
Note that I want the deduction for charity to go away. No one really and truly gives to charity because of taxes. They may give $125 instead of $100 because of t deduction. But take away the deduction and they would still give money to charity.
How is it fair for people to be a lazy leech and pay no FIT?
A lazy leech?
A person working full time making $8 an hour, probably working harder then youve ever worked in your life, makes $16,640 before taxes. That is just slightly above poverty level.
Probably every penny this guy makes, and then some, will need to be spent on basic neccessities.
Yet, you think, instead of eating, or paying for his bus pass, he should be paying federal income taxes.
The fundamental flaw with the argument that you we need to induce rich people to invest their money but don't have to do the same thing for people who work, is obvious.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher. According to your theory, the rich should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.
They didn’t refuse. We have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.
There is no evidence -- repeat -- none -- that lower capital gains rates induce more investment. It's a BS argument that the rich use to try to convince the rest of us that the elite should be privileged -- and it works on some people.
Please read the following exchange......
From April 16th, 2008 debate between Clinton and obama.
GIBSON: Senator Obama, you both have now just taken this pledge on people under $250,000 -- and 200-and-what? $250,000? OBAMA: Well, it depends on how you calculate it, but it would be between $200,000 and $250,000. GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton," which was 28 percent. It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.
But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent. OBAMA: Right. GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent. OBAMA: Right. GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.
So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected? OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.
Gibson is far from a RWNJ.
So, in obama's warped little mind, "fairness" trumps revenue. How do you get through to a person with this mindset?
Or those smart enough to live below their means and not get caught up in validating their self worth based on what they CONSUME.
So, you advocate living in a carboard box, or with 5 roommates to a person living at the poverty level, so they can take their couple thousand bucks, and put it in the market, and make a whopping $100 return over the course of a year?
Wow, thats absolutely worth living in a carboard box. Let me jump right on that.
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