Mulligan9111
Go Skers!!
It was an example of effective tax rates paid, so I'm not sure how it's a bad example.
Death and Taxes, 2016 version
It was an example of effective tax rates paid, so I'm not sure how it's a bad example.
I don't like it any better than you do that the richest 400 earners pay a lower rate than I but it has gone up for them dramatically the last 4 years. The federal tax rate paid by the richest 400 earners in 2012 was 17% and last year it was 27%. The Bush tax cuts expired on the top 15% and some rates and loopholes have been eliminated. The top 400 earners make a lot of money, averaging something like $400 million a year, but they aren't enough of them to make a dent in the federal budget. That group of the 400 richest paid about $25 billion in taxes last year but the federal budget is $3,800 billion dollars. If you tried to double their taxes paid, which would be impossible since they could move their money elsewhere such as overseas, it wouldn't make any dent in the deficit. I do agree that we need to figure out the growth of the income gap which is increasing in other countries around the world as well. Eventually the masses are going to pick up pitchforks and go after the richer demographic groups, your average golfer included!
Mulligan9111
Go Skers!!
I agree with you 100%. By the way I know it sounds like I'm coming off against the rich, but I swear it's not my intention. The majority of them aren't doing anything illegal to get their effective tax rates, they are simply taking advantage of the tax code. I do get tired of hearing some of the rich play the victim with regards to taxes, when they are often paying a lower % compared to total income.
There are many pro's and con's to all the suggestions out there, but I don't think we are even close to an answer yet.
Part of the answer is that everyone should be paying something, if you aren't part of the solution you are part of the problem.
Class warfare will not solve our problems, tax the rich 100% of the earnings and you will still have a massive deficit, you will still have entitlement programs that have run amuck, and you and be sure that you'll have politicians rubbing their hands together saying oh goody, more money for us to waste.
Class warfare will not solve our problems, tax the rich 100% of the earnings and you will still have a massive deficit, you will still have entitlement programs that have run amuck, and you and be sure that you'll have politicians rubbing their hands together saying oh goody, more money for us to waste.
We are not close to a fix and I'm not optimistic that one is coming in my lifetime. Some sort of a flat tax or simpler 2 tier tax rate with credits/exemptions for people at the bottom 50% of income might work, but the devil is in the details. I think we are doing a poor job of educating people for today's job market and until we figure that out, the income gap will only grow.
On the issue of tax rates on the rich, the only rich people I know that are paying rates similar to someone making $75,000 a year are those that have a small business with a ton of write offs. The other thing people rarely consider when complaining about the rich is it's super rare to stay in the same tax bracket year after year. The year after I graduated from college I made less than $20k and so did my wife. When my wife and I got married our combined income put us in the bottom 40% of income earners but over 25 years we slowly moved up. When we retire we will move down again.
Here's a quote from an article explaining how rare it is to stay in that top 1% for a decade straight, with only 0.6% doing so. It's very interesting that 56% of American will find themselves in the top 10% of earners at least once in their lives and that 54% will experience poverty or near poverty.
…Thomas A. Hirschl of Cornell and I looked at 44 years of longitudinal data regarding individuals from ages 25 to 60 to see what percentage of the American population would experience these different levels of affluence during their lives. The results were striking.
It turns out that 12 percent of the population will find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution for at least one year. What’s more, 39 percent of Americans will spend a year in the top 5 percent of the income distribution, 56 percent will find themselves in the top 10 percent, and a whopping 73 percent will spend a year in the top 20 percent of the income distribution.
Yet while many Americans will experience some level of affluence during their lives, a much smaller percentage of them will do so for an extended period of time. Although 12 percent of the population will experience a year in which they find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, a mere 0.6 percent will do so in 10 consecutive years.
It is clear that the image of a static 1 and 99 percent is largely incorrect. The majority of Americans will experience at least one year of affluence at some point during their working careers. (This is just as true at the bottom of the income distribution scale, where 54 percent of Americans will experience poverty or near poverty at least once between the ages of 25 and 60).
A further example of such fluidity can be found in an analysis by the tax-policy expert Robert Carroll. Using data from the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Carroll showed that between 1999 and 2007, half of those who earned over $1 million a year did so just once during this period, while only 6 percent reported millionaire status across all nine years.
- See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/margi...the-top-one-percent.html#sthash.r2Mozp5d.dpuf
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Mulligan9111
Go Skers!!
Not paying anything and not paying your fair share are the same thing in my opinion. Now determining "fair share" is the hard part of this. Having said that, people taking advantage of entitlement programs is just as big of a problem in my opinion as people and corporations taking advantage of tax loopholes. They both mess with the amount of money our country has to spend on actual needed expenses.