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88% of federal income taxes are paid by the top 20%. Most of the top 20% do NOT make the bulk of their income on capital gains...that would be the top 5%....many small business owners who risked everything to fund their start up....like me.
Who is talking about top 20, 10, 5, or 1%? The discussion is about much higher incomes.
Tell me how these people "benefit most from our system" will you? Lets take almost every top athlete in every sport, all of the top actors and actresses. How are they "benefiting the most from our system" and are you implying they use more infrastructure than we do?
There would be no commerce without infrastructure. If you have ever seen a sticker on a semi about the amount of fuel taxes paid by the owner of the rig, you will understand it. Those taxes are paid to maintain the roads, because the tractor trailer rigs create far more wear and tear on the pavement than do passenger vehicles. Business necessarily uses infrastructure and government resources more than individuals, therefore the burden should fall on them to maintain it. Businesses once had a choice of using profits for paying bonuses and raising wages, expanding, or paying the money in taxes. In those days the disparity between CEO compensation and employee compensation was not nearly what it is now - maybe ten to twenty times a worker then, hundreds of times now.
The tax rates in the Eisenhower years built the Middle Class and paid for the Interstate Highway System, among other things. They were still high during the Kennedy years, and we went to the moon. We need a return to those levels in order to repair and improve infrastructure.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by t206
It's really quite simple. Bribery is illegal, what you seem to be talking about is lobbying and there are strict laws around lobbying (which I don't like, lobbying not the laws) so this is all irrelevant. Especially considering that taxes are not intended as a method of law enforcement or any other way to corral the activities you suggest, thats just not how it works.
As for corporations, they absolutely deserve the rights of individuals, since they also are governed under our system of laws. Many corporations (unions, and non-profits included) actually have to sometimes use their voice to represent and protect their employees and/or members, its an essential voice that should be heard.
The most you showed is that we need to expand bribery laws to include donations above a certain fixed amount ($1000 per person, $5,000 per organization, per campaign). Better yet, have 100% federal funding for campaigns for every candidate whose party gets more than 5% of the national vote. I think there's already eligibility for federal matching funds above a certain comparatively low amount for a candidate - which is good, but not good enough. We can take a lesson from the UK, Australia, and similar such nations.
All this does nothing to address my earlier post - that money and speech are not the same thing, contrary to the SCOTUS ruling, for the reasons I gave above: Speech is simply communicating a point of view and has no more elements than the substance of the message expressed. Money, though implicitly communicating a point of view, is much more than that. It can be used as a medium of exchange (for other goods and services), a storer of value/wealth (amt of G&S you can exchange for it), and a unit of account (closely related to the other two). As I said, you cannot in any reliable sense acquire a predictable amount of goods and services via speech (verbal or visual). That makes speech, mere verbal or visual expressions, practically worthless at enabling the beneficiary of that speech to obtain new goods and services, and thus has no value as a bribery device.
So relax, corporations can simply spend their own money advocating a point of view - and yes, to be sure, contribute only a very tiny (for them) amount of funds to a campaign. But don't call money speech - for it has more elements in it than mere communicating of ideas and thus not a relevant parallel to "speech" as defined in the First Amendment.
This means that in NY and CA, when you include state and local taxes, some people will be paying over 80% in taxes. Thats just absurd, regardless of how much money anyone makes. The federal government does not have the right to take 70% of anyone's income, taking ~30% is questionable, especially considering how wasteful they are with it.
Those were the tax rates during the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.
So, at this point, what percentage of Americans pay little-to-no income tax?
Around 50% and this is because of tax credits. I would much rather this 50% get their tax credits eliminated so they can start paying instead of getting massive "refunds" each year. The rich already pay most of the taxes and shouldn't be taxed any higher.
Even if I am a right winger I don't hate Ocasio-Cortez. She is a liberal acting like a liberal should. She is sincere and means well even if I think her policies wouldn't work.
On the other hand I do hate a Republican politician, Marco Rubio, for doubling the child tax credit. This was the single worst thing any politician has done in my lifetime. Just typing in his name is making my blood pressure go through the roof.
the median family income for SF is 120k
-same link as above-
now you want to get to what Firebird was talking about is the per capita..which is an average based on total population for show median individual incomes..
for SF its 52k....and yes for Arizona it is 29k... but it is a median which mean 50% of all earners make MORE than that
The average person that works in the liberal Mecca of San Francisco, can't afford to live there.
Prospective home buyers tromped through an open house in a fifth-floor unit: two bedrooms, 430 sq ft, $599,000. Just outside the building’s front door, a couple dozen of the homeless and hard up gathered for Open Cathedral, a regularly scheduled Sunday service followed by a free lunch.
There it was, all in one place: outrageous prices for a tiny slice of a scarce commodity. Haves. Have nots. And the yawning gulf between the two.
San Francisco has the priciest real estate in the country by many metrics. It has been ranked among the 10 least affordable cities in the world. It suffers under the worst income inequality in California. The top 1% of households in the metropolitan area earned $3.6m on average in 2013, according to one recent report, or 44 times the average income of the bottom 99%.
Prospective home buyers tromped through an open house in a fifth-floor unit: two bedrooms, 430 sq ft, $599,000. Just outside the building’s front door, a couple dozen of the homeless and hard up gathered for Open Cathedral, a regularly scheduled Sunday service followed by a free lunch.
There it was, all in one place: outrageous prices for a tiny slice of a scarce commodity. Haves. Have nots. And the yawning gulf between the two.
San Francisco has the priciest real estate in the country by many metrics. It has been ranked among the 10 least affordable cities in the world. It suffers under the worst income inequality in California. The top 1% of households in the metropolitan area earned $3.6m on average in 2013, according to one recent report, or 44 times the average income of the bottom 99%.
Don't forget also about those zoning laws and current property owners who resist additional residential development which does not help the situation.
Around 50% and this is because of tax credits. I would much rather this 50% get their tax credits eliminated so they can start paying instead of getting massive "refunds" each year. The rich already pay most of the taxes and shouldn't be taxed any higher.
Even if I am a right winger I don't hate Ocasio-Cortez. She is a liberal acting like a liberal should. She is sincere and means well even if I think her policies wouldn't work.
On the other hand I do hate a Republican politician, Marco Rubio, for doubling the child tax credit. This was the single worst thing any politician has done in my lifetime. Just typing in his name is making my blood pressure go through the roof.
Have any statistics on that?
I'm willing to bet most people do not pay income taxes is because of the standard deduction or are itemizing a load of deductions. Most are married and have children and a mortgage, that standard deduction is effectively a 0% tax on the first chunk of income of which the first bracket is double what the bracket is for single filers. (12k single/24k married) which 24k being almost already half of the median household income in the US.
The extreme right is so obsessed with AOC that they get online to comment on every move she makes and every breath she takes. Pay attention to the biggest liar in presidential history, Individual 1. He will announce more lies tonight. I won't watch but I will be on the WaPo and WSJ as their servers crash from all the fact checking they will post from the lies that are coming. Stay tuned.
The extreme left (correct: modern Democratic party) is obsessed with AOC judging on all the media attention she gets. Keep it up, 2020 can't come fast enough to through the radical left out of the House of Representatives and re-elect President Trump.
I'm willing to bet most people do not pay income taxes is because of the standard deduction or are itemizing a load of deductions. Most are married and have children and a mortgage, that standard deduction is effectively a 0% tax on the first chunk of income of which the first bracket is double what the bracket is for single filers. (12k single/24k married) which 24k being almost already half of the median household income in the US.
Married people with children, earning $30k or so a year, fill out their 1040 form and end up getting more money back than they paid in
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