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The dip to 17% took place in 2009. It has since rebounded to about 25% in last figures available.
Post them along with the federal income tax shares. We'll take a look. If your info is accurate, has the top 1%'s share of the federal income tax also dropped to 25%?
Post them along with the federal income tax shares. We'll take a look. If your info is accurate, has the top 1%'s share of the federal income tax also dropped to 25%?
If the 1% gives up their government granted monopolies, we can talk about "flat taxes". As of now the government sends them money, let alone taking it away.
It doesn't. Besides, if you make "so much" and I make "so much" doesn't mean we make the same.
In your example, you're talking about two different earnings shares. The post I was referring to was talking about an earning share and the corresponding federal income tax share. So, yes, "so much" does indeed equal "so much" in that context.
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Liberals dumbed down...
"The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not onlyin proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."
- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Clearly, Adam Smith didn't preach that a flat tax would be reasonable but the opposite. Sounds like he believed in progressive taxation to me.
You do realize that Adam Smith was advocating a property tax in addition to a flat revenue tax, right? The rich would pay higher taxes by virtue of owning more valuable property/assets.
So, if you reduce taxes on the top 1% from 36% to 17%, that means that taxes on the bottom earners would have to be raised astronomically
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Originally Posted by InformedConsent
No. That's not how percentages work. Math is hard, huh?
Earn very little; pay very little federal income tax. Earn A LOT; pay A LOT in federal income tax.
Absolute fairness would be a capitation tax (head tax), in which the costs are divided equally and everyone pays the same amount. Would you rather be nondiscriminatory and absolutely fair? Or do you want to continue to discriminate against certain groups of people?
Yes it is hard and I read that you clearly haven't mastered it.
1% to a person earning $1 million per year is $10,000. If you lower taxes on that millionaire, his/her taxes will shrink by $10,000, or 1%. To off-set that $10,000 loss, you will need to increase taxes on lower income Americans. That $10,000 is far more significant to someone earning $50,000 -- which represents 20% of their income.
Since the 1% pay about 36% of income taxes -- or about $1.1 trillion, lowering their taxes in half would mean that $550 billion in taxes would have to be spread out the bottom 99%. That means that their taxes would increase significantly.
Post them along with the federal income tax shares. We'll take a look. If your info is accurate, has the top 1%'s share of the federal income tax also dropped to 25%?
Look it up. Some of us are at work.
But this is a nice long list of resources and CBO stats for you in this article that will provide some NUANCE to your "tax policy" links:
•Payroll taxes account for 34 percent of federal revenues. They only apply to income earned on the job – not income from capital gains on investments, which make up a much greater share of the income of the top 10 percent. And payroll taxes for Social Security are capped at $106,800.
•For both of these reasons, wealthier Americans face a disproportionately lower burden from payroll taxes. According to the independent, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the wealthiest 10 percent only pay 25 percent of all payroll taxes.
•Counting both payroll and income taxes, the top 10 percent only pay about 50 percent of that tax burden – not much larger than their share of our nation’s income (around 42 percent).
•The top 10 percent (households earning an average of nearly $400,000) has been earning a larger and larger share of our nation’s income. Twenty years ago, they accounted for 34 percent of our nation’s income. In the past twenty years – as tax rates have fallen for the highest earners – the income share of the top 10 percent has grown to 42 percent of our nation’s earnings.
•This aggregate figure also masks the fact that certain high-income Americans pay far less than others—and less than the middle class. That’s what the Buffett Rule is meant to address.
Discrimination based on economic status is not a protected class
So that makes it okay to discriminate? Liberal hypocrisy at its ugliest. One has to be a member of a "protected" class or liberals WILL discriminate against you. Sad.
In your example, you're talking about two different earnings shares. The post I was referring to was talking about an earning share and the corresponding federal income tax share. So, yes, "so much" does indeed equal "so much" in that context.
No, it doesn't, and the poster has already told you that.
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You do realize that Adam Smith was advocating a property tax in addition to a flat revenue tax, right? The rich would pay higher taxes by virtue of owning more valuable property/assets.
Specifics to taxes are not important, but an understanding and preaching of progressive form of taxation is. And your assumption that "their revenue" implies property value is just as off. "Their" is them, the rich. He couldn't be more clear that the rich can not only afford to pay more than just the proportion of their revenue but also that it is not unreasonable.
But while we're being imaginative, and you're going to go THAT far, then we'll have to factor in a way to equalize and make fair the COSTS of doing business:
For example, when a business spews pollution from its factory into the air, that pollution is a COST of business that is borne by EVERYONE in the country. So in effect, we have socialization of business costs.... but dare we suggest that those who most benefit from same pay a bit extra?
Um... that would be everyone who buys the services/products from said business, and anyone whose pension/retirement funds invest in the business. Prices would be higher. Pension/retirement funds earnings would decrease. Who would that hurt the most? The poor and the working class.
So that makes it okay to discriminate? Liberal hypocrisy at its ugliest. One has to be a member of a "protected" class or liberals WILL discriminate against you. Sad.
Debtor financing buying big barns of housing isn't a protected class? If I pay cash, I am a blight on the society. However if I go into hock and get a nice big tax deduction I am a hero? That it?
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One has to be a member of a "protected" class or liberals WILL discriminate against you. Sad.
