France says they should pay 75%.
Problem is, the percentage they pay is based on their income. What they ought to do is have everybody file an income tax return, then the government determines the top, say, 10%. The government then sends these toppers a bill. Nobody would no for certain whether they're actually IN the top ten percent until they get the bill.
As it is, these top earners in France are heading for the Chunnel and the low-tax haven of Great Britain as fast as their Mercedes can go.
Giggle
The Republicans have 43 safe seats in the Senate. There are 9 toss-up races right now. They are: Arizona. The GOP candidate is up 3.5% Connecticut: The Dem is up by 2.4% Indiana: Even Massachusetts: The Indian (Dem) is up by 2.0% Montana: GOP up by 1.7% Nevada: GOP up by 2.0% North Dakota: GOP up by 5.0% Virginia: Dem up by 3.6% Wisconsin: Dem up by 5.0%
If you add the 3-4% by which Republicans usually outperform the polls, the GOP wins 7of these toss-up races.
" snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@a7g2000yqo.googlegroups.com:
The top 5% paid 58.66% in 2009 i.e. those with AGI over ~$155K
Now today, 155K is not an exorbitantly high income, in fact Mitt says you're barely middle class with 200-250K. Even the top 1% has an AGI of just over 394K.
I am saying that people with less than those amounts in income should pay less than they do now, and those that have higher incomes should pay more than they do now. First step would be to limit the favorable treatment of divds&capgains to a maximum, above which it would gradually be taxed at rates of wage incomes. Also, everyone should pay payroll taxes such as FICA and MediCare over the first $110,100, regardless of whether it is "earned" as wages or divds/capgains.
OK, that is what Romney's accountants claim, but it has not been vetted, and as such is only his word. Note that the letter quoted above, or comments thereon state that Romney could very easily amend his return and reclaim the half million or so that he "overpaid" for 2011. For now, his generous gesture to forgo those 2 million in "charitable" tithing (completely legal as charitable) is just that a gesture, he can take that $500,000 almost anytime he wants to within the next ~3 years.
You're right, Reid should apologize AND publish the name of his source.
What is wrong with a flat tax is, that it isn't. It's a slogan and a lie. You yourself say that there ought to be a limit to the income under which no tax is paid. That makes it "unflat". And it makes taxation implicitly progressive. So there is no reason that an income of $100,000 should be taxed the same (over the minimum) as an income of $100,000,000, and no reason a personal income of $1 billion shouldn't be taxed at even higher rates.
That's not what I was trying to say. First eliminate the loopholes and skewing deductions (we could discuss which ones those should be), then tax at increasing rates incomes over X, Y, Z, similar to what is done now. And yes, I am liberal enough to want people who can afford it to pay more.
Now you are just mumbling Tea Party nonsense. You say there ought to be a minimum under which no /federal/ taxes are paid. Those 46% of households are exactly that. They pay all the other taxes, sales, FICA, state, gas, property etc.
Glad you caught my hyperbole! The (now old) premise of Romney was that by lowering the rates (which would have benefitted the rich most) he would increase employment and thereby lift the poor out of poverty. When that was debunked as pure hocus, because trickle down has never worked, he changed his tune and says now that people shouldn't expect less total taxes, because as he lowers tax rates, he is going to eliminate tax loopholes. Now he is becoming a socialist, because the loopholes are used by the rich, not the poor, so the rich would pay more even though the rates would be lowered. No wonder he is sinking in the polls.
I fully admit being confused with all the flat tax proposals that aren't flat tax. As I said, flat tax is a slogan and a lie. Read again what I just said above.
OK, I get your confusion. If 50K is not taxed, and between 50 and 100K is taxed at say 20%, the tax on 60K would be 2K, or 3.3% of the total of
60K (if I calculate correctly). Tax on 75K would be 5K, or 6.7%, and tax on 100K would be 10% of the total. That's what I meant by floating.Congress, representing the people, introduced economic incentives into the tax code(s). Yes that introduced "distortions" that were seen as beneficial to the wellbeing of all. Because of a whole bunch of reasons, people took advantage of rules, gamed them, and committed fraud on a wide scale. People with responsibilities looked the other way, with wishful thinking or malice, doesn't matter anymore, because the statute of limitations is running out soon. Of course I embrace mortgage interest deductions and property tax deductions. sing Mitt's words, I'd be unfit if I didn't follow the rules.
Fine by me in principle. I would prefer rates of 10, 20, 30, perhaps even 50% for the highest incomes. For the same reasons you mention. Everyone should have a stake in these taxes, but lower incomes need a boost by having lower rates than higher incomes.
I could use epithets too, but won't. Just pay attention. If you suddenly eliminate mortage interst and property taxes as deductions (which I think are some of the bigger loopholes in current tax rules), that would really screw a lot of people. By setting a cap on those deductions that are NOT subject to COLA, you eventually get close to eliminate a large part of those deductions, in a much less painful way.
It isn't complicated at all. Simplifying is what it is all about, but you can't radically change things in one fell swoop without hurting a lot of people.
Just try to think about it.
The numbers I trust-- this guy averages polls [and even uses Rasmussen]
R +6
D +6
D +2
Tie
Tie
R +1
R +9
Tie
D +4
It is certainly a horse race- 'my' site has it 49 D & 47 R with 4 ties. [including MO!!] In the last 2 election cycles, by mid Oct it has been uncanny how accurate he was. [the commentary on that site leans a bit left, but the numbers have been dead on for 8 years]
Jim
The term "flat tax" is often misused, but there are other forms of taxation besides what mess we have now.
The code has to be greatly simplified. Most deductions should be eliminated. Credit card interest was and so should home mortgage and home equity. Want that $150,000 RV? Sure you can get a tax break. If you want to go into debt over your head on a house, why should you get a tax break for doing so? If you want to have 12 kids, good for you, but why do you get a tax break for making babies? That may have made some sense 200 years ago when they wanted to populate the country.
You can still have a 0% bracket under say, $20,000 a year, then 5% to $60k, then 15% for everything above.
Why should so many people need a paid tax preparer for what should be a simple form?
The problem with a simple tax setup is that it puts lawyers and accountants out of work. Won't ever happen.
snipped-for-privacy@a7g2000yqo.googlegroups.com:
Just like every dyed in the wool lib that I have seen, you refuse to answer the question I asked. The same very simple question I've seen libs asked over and over and they refuse to answer:
What percent of their total income should those in say the top 5% pay?
And now, you're apparently claiming that those you seek to soak for more don't include people below $394K. Funny thing that, because your lib friends lead by Obama say they want to raise the taxes on those making $200K and above. But, I'll play your game, let's look at the those, the top 1%. They currently pay a whopping 37% of the total tax burden.
So, Mr. Lib, what percent of their total income should they be paying? How much is enough for you? A number please.
And here is a new question. If you raise the taxes on those making 200,000 and above, per Obama, how much money does it raise? He's running around with that as the first thing on his list to fix the deficit. So, how much a year would that increase bring in and what percent of the deficit does it represent?
Great idea. Start taxing capital gains at 35% in the middle of an economic crisis where we need investment to create jobs.
Yeah, sock it to em. Did you ever see a tax you didn't want to increase?
I'll take the word of his public accountant over your rank speculation or that of Joe Biden any day.
Yeah, and you could turn into a conservative tomorrow morning. The chance of that happening is about the same. Romney has paid
20% average in taxes over the last decade. About what Obama paid last year. Why not start your class warfare with Obama? His income is way above your threshold for socking it to the rich.=A0>For now, his
Now you really are a village idiot, just like Biden. He's paid 20% average over a decade while giving VERY generously to charity. Now, just because YOU say he might choose to, we're supposed to believe he's going to ammend his return to take more deductions. You can't argue the facts, so now you're just making shit up.
You should apologize too because you're right there with Reid, trying to smear Romney instead of celebrating that he gave back 40% of what he made to the govt or charity. Isn't that exactly what you libs want? For the rich to give back more? When is enough, enough?
It's still widely been called a flat tax by those that propose it, those against it, and the media for decades
=A0>And it makes taxation
Which you like as I recall...
How many times do I have to say it. Rich people were for the most part NOT paying 70% of their incomes in taxes when the top rate was 70% prior to Reagan. And as evidenced by Warren Buffet and Romney, they aren't paying 35%, the top rate today. They are paying more like 20%. So, why have a BS tax code, full of loopholes, full of deductions that results in these people paying about 20% anyway?
As for the basic premise, there is indeed a very good reason to tax someone with say $1mil in income at the same rate as someone making $100k. They still pay 10X the total tax. Capiche?
Yes, you're probably right about that. What you really want is to have a high tax rate and no deductions. How much you really want to grab we don't know, because you won't say.
And like every other dishonest lib, you won't man up and answer the simple question as to what percent of their total income the top 5% should pay. Or the top 1%.
I didn't say that minimum should be such that half the people avoid paying ANY income tax at all.
None of which pay for the operation of the federal govt, through which they benefit directly and should have at least some taxes on the line.
Lowering tax rates worked in 1981. It set off an unprecedented economic boom that lasted decades. It worked again in 2001, when the economy was in recession and was hit by 911.
I guess you must have missed those decades of explosive growth, when the US economy was the miracle of the world. More likely, being a lib, you just pissed and moaned and ignored it, preferring to bitch about all that's wrong with the USA and how it's all the fault of the rich. For the record, Reagan inherited one hell of an economic mess too. He had Tbonds and mortgage rates at 18%, inflation in the double digits, high unemployment and a stagnant economy. By this point in his presidency, we were creating 400,000 jobs a month. One month we hit 1.2 mil. And he did it with a Democrat Congress. What's Obama's excuse? And after the election you never heard Reagan blaming everything on Carter.
The whole idea is to eliminate most of the deductions, most of the loopholes, and get closer to a flat tax. He's clearly stated that he is NOT going to raise taxes on the poor or middle class. But we know who did do that and it's Obama.
So, being confused and too lazy to educate yourself,, you just condemn that which you can't understand. I guess we should add nuclear physics to the list of lies too.
I'm not confused, but you just admitted that you are. How having a tax threshold equates to a "floating tax" is one for the books.
Ed Pawlowski wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Correct. But you do know Ed that in your and my corner of the US deductibility of mortgage interest, and state and property taxes would be tough to nix. I owe a pittance on my home, with a 2.24% interest, but my kids owe much larger amounts and they wouldn't like having that deduction removed. Apart from theresistance from the lawyers and accountants.
Home ownership has been the American Dream for decades. But should the government subsidize it?
The difference between owing and renting usually comes down to two things: down payment and credit. Typical month rent is about the same as a mortgage payment.
I probably would have complained if it was eliminated when I had a mortgage but I've not been able to itemize deductions for a few years now.
Stop right there! Why should the rich pay more than the currently pay? Alternatively, why should the rich pay as much as they currently pay?
In other words, why is a progressive tax scheme a good idea?
You've got it backwards. There is no logical reason why an income of $1 million should be taxed at a different rate than an income of $25,000. In point of fact, there is an unassailable reason to tax an income of $1 million at a LESSER rate than incomes below it (the rich use fewer of costly government services).
Regrettably, removing loopholes is a fool's errand. Taxes are levied, in addition to the goal of raising money, to foster certain social outcomes promoted by our betters (home ownership, non-polluting cars, etc.). As long as our betters think they are our betters, we'll be burdened by someone else's view of what's good for us.
Don't you have it backwards? 10% for the rich down to 50% for the less-rich? Wouldn't that act as an incentive to work harder, earn more, move up?
The enthusiasm gap heavily favors the Republicans in every poll I've seen. Heck, the Republicans are even encouraging supporters to vote absentee at the first opportunity. That way if the voter gets gets killed by a runaway cement truck, his vote will still count.
This is in contradistinction to the Democrat's technique of voting by people who died in the last century...
Of course Han is against your proposal too, which is a flatter tax, with two rates. I think the rates would have to be a bit higher to make it revenue neutral as I think there are a lot of people paying 20% or so today. But it's basicly the same concept that Romney and other Republicans have put forth for years. The libs of course want nothing to do with it. They prefer to remain in dreamland, pretending that if there is a top rate of 70%, the rich actually pay it. The truth is few ever did and many rich people today are paying a lower percentage than middle class folks. Romney and Buffet are examples of that. A flat tax, or your flatter tax would fix that.
I'm still waiting for some simple answers from Han. The same questions that I've seen libs refuse to give an answer again and again:
For someone in the upper 5% of incomes, what percentage of their income should the govt take?
For someone in the upper 1% of incomes, what percentage of their income should the govt take?
Can you site one? Here's one from last week that has [swing states] D 73%, I 43%, R 64%
Not to be repetitive-- but cite? You can repeat the voter fraud claim as often as you want-- It won't make it a fact.
Jim
What do you suggest?
-- Doug
" snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@h4g2000yqo.googlegroups.com:
I am too lazy to go back over this thread, but I believe I have stated something like rates of 20, 30, 50, 70% at something like 100K, 1 million, 50 million, 200 million. It really isn't the exact numbers, but the principles. And as a liberal person, I believe that lower incomes need more help than higher incomes. If you consider that punishing people who are doing well, so be it.
As far as the upper 5% of Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) is a nonpartisan federal budget watchdog organization based in Washington, D.C. in the United States. TCS is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization; its 501(c)(4) affiliate is Taxpayers for Common Sense Action (TCS Action). The current president of TCS is Ryan Alexander. Founded in 1995 by Jill Lancelot and Rafael DeGennaro, TCS works to ensure that the federal government spends taxpayer money efficiently and responsibly.
Perhaps we all should take a look at and
Please note that Congress always plays to the funders of their next re- election campaign. The people should be pushing them to do the right thing. IMO, that means we should discuss all possibilities, be ready for compromise, and above all stay polite. I KNOW that many here do not agree with my opinions, which makes me sometimes state them more strongly than I might mean. That is because I think that the opinions here are generally much more to the right than they are in other groups.
And, I mean my "Best regards" to all Han
"HeyBub" wrote in news:cKqdnUvzx7KNGPTNnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:
I really don't get that philosophy of taxing the poor more than the rich. Let us assume a worker earning now $50K/year and paying hardly (if any) Federal income taxes. He is paying all kinds of other taxes, though, and pays/buys rent, food, gas, and other necessities of life. Now you want him to pay 50% of his income in federal taxes? Where is that 25K going to come from? Or is in your scheme everyone's income suddenly 25K greater? Who pays that?
Even if you make 50K tax free, and then start taxing at 50%, why would anyone work harder to get just above the 50K? (that is your argument that the rich won't strive for more if they are taxed more, which is a fallacy). It makes much more sense to tax lower incomes less than higher incomes (as a net % of total AGI, or MAGI, whatever the exact definitions are).
snipped-for-privacy@h4g2000yqo.googlegroups.com:
I see, so it isn't principled enough for you that the upper
1% is already paying 33% of the total tax burden. So, yes, I consider that to be punishing people who are doing well and already contributing 33 times their respective share.Also, you're tilting at windmills. Do you realize how little in revenue this would amount to? You only want a tax of 20% on incomes from $100K to $1million. That sure gives one hell of a lot of rich people a rate of only 20%. Then from $1mil to $50mil you have a rate of 30%. And there are so few people left after $50 mil of income that it isn' worth even talking about. I don't think you've even thought this out.
Most of those $50mil+ would be people who have some extraordinary income one year, like selling off a business they spent a lifetime building. And then, with your 70% tax rates in place, they would be quick to figure out a way around it, ie selling the business off over time so that they fall into your $1mil to $50mil bracket where it's taxed at only 30%. That is exactly what is being done now.
So again, why all the class warfare? Why force people to restructure their income to avoid your crazy punitive rates? It also creates economic distortions and interfers with efficient capital utilization. Let's say an investor decides a stock he has invested in has peaked out and may decline. If you have a flat tax, he can sell it all right now and put that money to work in a new investment. That moves capital to where it;s needed and can do the most good. Faced with a high taxation rate, the investor may delay selling or they will sell only some this year and wait to sell some more next year to escape your confiscatory rates. In the end the govt doesn't get the
70% you think it's going to produce and the economy suffers from sub-optimized capital allocation.The problem is that there isn't very much revenue to be "extracted" Obama's big plan to raise taxes to solve the deficit, do you even know how much that amounts to? It's a whopping $75bil. The freaking deficit is $1.2tril. See the problem?
And your extracting takes money out of the free economy where it is productive and puts it into big govt with much of it going down a rat hole. Let's say someone has a profit of $2mil from selling a business or investing in stock. Do you think they are going to eat it? Or do you think a lot, probably the vast majority of it is going to go into another business or another stock investment? That process creates jobs. Taking the money and giving it away for social programs does not.
That's nice. How many of their proposals for reducing govt waste has Obama put into effect? How many has he championed and asked Congress to act on? See the problem?
Well, a) We're not talking about "other" taxes. b) He has many avenues for extra money: He can get a better job. He can sell a kidney. Lots of possibilities.
A. Many people avoid the marginal income higher tax rate. There was a recent report of a chap saving $13,000 in state income tax simply by moving from New York to Florida. Oh, that $13,000? It was $13,000 per DAY.
B. My scheme is based on incentive; the more you earn, the more of it you keep. A person earning $50,000 might pay $25,000 in taxes. A person earning $100,000 may pay only $10,000. That's a pretty big incentive.
This plan also has the numbers behind it: there are WAY more middle-income earners than wealthy income earners.
" snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@l32g2000yqb.googlegroups.com:
If I had all the answers in excruciating detail, I'd give them to you. Obama has proposed some things and gotten blocked. But now is the moment that polite and rational discussion should take place so we can all together pressure the lame duck Cngress to do something that is at least somewhat constructive. I think that for the sake of FICA that tax holliday should go, as it probably will. I never liked the idea of robbing that kitty to stimulate spending by working people. But what about an equivalent tax break/credit for those earning less than the current ~$110,000 FICA limit? To be paid for by an increase in taxes elsewhere (I'd prefer loophole cuts, but an extra tax on higher incomes would be fine too). There are currently limits on all kinds of deductions (medical is an example). Perhaps we can do a reverse limit - rather than making only amounts over a certain percentage of AGI deductible, we could limit profligate spending (ahum) by limiting the deduction for mortgage interest, property and state taxes to a % of AGI.
At the moment it seems to me that class warfare is going very strongly against the poorer people, with all the statistics pointing to an ever increasing rate of wealth being accumulated by rather few people. Perhaps, there isn't all that much money to be collected from the rich by increased taxation. Mitt paid a tax rate of let's say 15% ($3 million) for round figures. Had he paid a 40% tax rate, that would have been $8 million. He had a very large deduction for charitable contributions. An upper limit to those would be a good thing (IMO). Still it would be a paltry sum to distribute over all the households in the US. But how many are there like Romney? I bet it would add up, especially if it were to go to the poorest quintile. Or to the deficit. And yes, there might have been less material things purchased by the Romneys.
"HeyBub" wrote in news:K6SdnbRFpe1JdvTNnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:
The other taxes are a fact of life, certainly here in the NE. How is he going to get a better job? Where is that better job? Who is going to educate him for the better job? Selling a kidney is a reprehensible idea (my opinion). Moreover, it has been made impossible to do legally. We aren't talking about $1.50 extra, but thousands of dollars. Each year.
snipped-for-privacy@l32g2000yqb.googlegroups.com:
It isn't that you don't have all the answers in excruciating detail. You brought up the Taxpayers for Common Sense. They seem to have a long list of govt waste and programs that should be cut. Obama has been president for 4 years. I just want some examples where he's cut something. He sure has increased spending by
40%, so if he's cut anything, it sure can't amount to much.But I know, his plan just needs more time.....
Obama got through what he deemed important. That was Obamacare and his $800bil stimulus that he told us would keep unemployment under 8%. It peaked at 10%, was over
9% for two years and is still over 8%. The Democrats controlled the Senate and House for his first two years. He could have passed anything he wanted. He has no excuses. Reagan never had control of the House, only had control of the Senate for part of his years, yet he got through a stimulus that worked. By now in the Reagan presidency we were creating 400,000 jobs a month. One month we hit 1.2mil. Obama is lucky to break 100,000.Polite? You mean like Obama treated Paul Ryan? You mean like he just insulted Netenyahu? That kind of polite? When John Bohner became speaker, the White House didn't even have his phone number so they could call him.
On July 26, Obama held his second cabinet meeting for the year. The last one was in January. Does that sound like leadership or what a president should be doing? He hasn't met with his Jobs Council in SIX MONTHS. That's right, with unemployment over
8%, he hasn't deemed it important enough to even hold a meeting. See the problem and why being polite isn't the issue?Do you really think tinkering around the margins of the current tax system is going to make any difference? Why bother? Now simplifying the whole thing, making it a flatter tax, while getting rid of most deductions, that could make a difference. But you won't get there because you insist on tilting at windmills, trying to impose a 70% tax on the rich that we all know that for the most part, they have never paid. All that does is create economic distortions and poor allocation of capital. Instead of people being free to put their money to work where they know it will be most productive, they have to channel it into what they need to do to avoid 70% tax rates.
I'd like to see one successful society where the country grew into an economic miracle where the rich didn't get richer. Just like with taxes, you have a static view of the rich and the poor. With taxes, you assume that if you levy a 70% tax, people will just pay it. They won't. They adjust accordingly and a lot of it is avoided. A classic example of this is the foolish tax on luxury yachts. That was class warfare. Screw that rich guy. Well, the folks that got screwed were the boat builders and all the workers that lost their jobs.
In the case of the rich and the poor, you assume that the guy that is poor today is going to be poor tomorrow. This country has an outstanding record, up until now, where individuals are free to work themselves up and improve their economic situation. For examples, look at the boat people from Vietnam who came here in the 70s with nothing. Before long most of them were middle class, many better, working hard, building businesses, etc. The essential component to this and to the deficit is TO GROW THE ECONOMY. And you don't do that by campaigning to raise taxes on business owners and having an anti-business outlook and agenda. All that will change if Romney replaces Obama.
That is straight out of the lib playbook. Charities help the poor and needy. And they have a pretty fine record of doing it. Why would anyone want to discourage people from giving money to them and instead have the govt take that money? Only libs because they insist that the govt help those in need because they want people more dependent on the govt, more dependent on the politicians that pander for their votes. The founding fathers must be turning over in their graves on that one.
You could get more money out of Romney and folks like Warren Buffet by going to a flat tax with a rate of 20% as I and others have proposed. That would be close to a 33% increase in the tax Buffet pays. But that isn't enough, because you won't settle for some more. You want rates as high as 70%. I'd like to know on' what moral basis you think the govt has a right to take
70% of what someone has made? And again, typically the folks that would fall into those high brackets would be someone who for some reason has an extraordinary year. Like someone who built a business over a lifetime and then sold it. Or someone that sells the family farm that has been in the family for generations. What gives the govt the right to take 70% of that? And then of course the state could take 7 or 10% more, maybe the city grabs a bit. Then they would be left with what, less than 20% of what was theirs?HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.