Why I dont feel sorry for the rich having to pay more taxs

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When the rich start talking about raising taxes this is why they cry, If the Bush tax cuts expire the top tax rate for earned income will go from 36% to 39.8% a 3.8% increase. Compare that to the lowest paid workers who are at 10% now and will go to 15% if the b
us tax cuts expire. So it would raise taxes on the poor by 5%..But the real problem that they have if the bush tax expire the taxes on UNEARNED income will be taxed as REGULAR income. This means that they will no longer only pay 15% on Unearned Income, and since the wealthy make the majority of their money on dividends and other forms of UNEARNED income that means they will have to pay 24.8% more taxes on their UNEARNED Income. Sounds like it’s unfair right?..let’s break it down with numbers. Keep in Mind that under Clinton unearned income was taxed at 20% but the top tax for earned income was 39.8%, and under Reagan Unearned income was taxed at about 48%..Now..let’s say we have an average CEO who makes 20 million a year..let’s assume that he pays his taxes, doesn’t use loopholes or hide his money and hes single. Let’s say that from his 20 million a year 10million is earned income for the job he does, and 10 million is from capital gains from owning stock in the company. at 10 million dollars his base tax liability (im not going to go into deductions etc etc) without bush tax cuts is 39.8% that is $398k with the bush tax cuts its $360k which is an 8k savings. now let’s do his unearned income, with the Bush tax cuts his tax liability is 15% or $150K without the bush tax cuts his liability is 39.8% or $398k a difference of $248k so with the Bush tax cuts his total liability is $608K which is 3.4% of his total yearly income, without the Bush Cuts his total liability is $796k or 3.98% of their income (remember this doesn’t take into account deductions and credits)..so the Average CEO pays about 3.4% of his yearly income under Bush tax cuts and would pay a slightly higher 3.98% without them. So what we’re talking about is 0.58% of their take home pay, Less than 1%! !!.

Now let’s look at an average working class situation, again I’m going to assume they don’t take any deductions or credits. an average working class person (and I’m not talking about minimum wage workers) makes $40k a year, all Earned income, For a single person $40k falls under the 25% tax bracket under Bush Tax cuts and 28% under no cuts according the IRS web site a 3% increase. so the calculations are quite easy here, this persons tax liability would be (remember no deduction or credits here) $10k under Bush tax cuts and $11.2k without, or a true 25% or 28% of that persons yearly income..

Now lets do a single person who works for minimum wage 40 hrs a week x 52 weeks @7.40hr = 15,392 but lets go 15k just to make it easy 15k is currently under the 15% tax bracket and would stay there if the Bush tax breaks end, so $2250 or a real 15% of yearly takehome (assuming no breaks now)

so to summarize the richest people in the country would spend 3.98% of their annual pay on taxes, the middle class people would spend 28% of their income on taxes and the poor would spend 15%...I don’t know about you, but the fact that I spend 28% on my money on taxes when rich people spend less than 4% on taxes really pisses me off, and now you understand why I have absolutely NO sympathy for the rich people who cry about taxes..if that CEO I talked about spent 15% of his income towards taxes he would pay $3,000,000 a year instead of $796k..so as you can see by the NUMBERS the Rich really aren’t paying their fair share!!

Income gained through fraud is the only type of unearned income.

Another thing that people forget is that in the 1950's tax rates were a good deal higher and yet the economy was doing quite well.

http://taxfoundation.org/article/us-fed ... d-brackets

In the year 1950 for example, if you made $200,000 or more, your tax rate was 91% Frankly I wouldn't mind seeing taxes go back to that rate. Even adjusted for inflation.

The rich complain that their tax burden is so high and yet it is the lowest it's been since the 1920's (just before the great depression)

The rich are taxed much more in other parts of the world.

If you make $200,000 a year and are taxed at a rate of 91%, that will leave you with $18,000. Why even bother working?

That isn't how taxes work.

If the tax rate is 5% for the first $50, 10% for the first $100 and 50% above $100, someone earning $50 pays $2.50, someone earning $100 pays $2.50, then 10% of the second $50 which is another $5 making $7.50 in total.

If you earn $200, you pay $7.50 on the first $100, then 50% of the second $100, making $57.50 in total, not $100.

Ahh, I see. So, how much would someone who made $200,000 in 1950 take home, approximately?

You know how these rightwingers are allways saying they want to go back to the fifties... Bill Maher has said that he is a top bracket income earner and he says he does not pay enough taxes.

http://www.stanford.edu/class/polisci12 ... ackets.pdf

Assuming that the individual was entitled to no deductions from income of any kind, the take home, after income tax would be:

1950: $77,509.60 (effective tax rate of 61.25%)
1960: $65,360.00 (effective tax rate of 67.32%)
1970: $86,252.76 (effective tax rate of 56.87%)
1980: $92,968.00 (effective tax rate of 53.52%)

I don't disagree with you. Which is why I subscribe to the belief that dividend and capital gains income ought properly to be taxed as income. (Though with some exceptions, such as capital gains on a property occupied as the taxpayer's principal residence, and a preferential treatment of capital gains realized on long term investments, such as those held for a minimum of 12 months).

All political notions aside, it is insane to think that is acceptable to force people to give up so much of their earnings.

depends on the society and the services it provides,

if you never had to pay a medical or educational bill directly again then it really wouldnt be that far out.

Directly or indirectly, you're still paying for it. Of course, someone who never had medical issues to pay for would be getting financially raped in a society like that.

again depends on the society,

it all depends on what percentage of your taxes goes directly to the healthcare sector, you might get f****d for -x- dollars a year, but then again you would never have to pay health insurance, for you or your kids.
if i lived in a country without universal healthcare then a premium health iinsurance would be a minimum, then again i barely see many of the american insurance providers as proper health insurance, i would prefer the german system by far.

then comes the effects such options have on a society as a whole, it allows the society to maintain a larger healthier population and it translates into happiness that translates into productivity.
i have no idea what it does to crime statistics, i would imagine it having an effect.

the same can be said of education.

Are you suggesting that we gain no prosperity from the health and the education of all people in the economy, generally? That's a remarkably narrow minded view.

I am wealthier today than I was yesterday because I have invested in securities that have appreciated in value. Where does that appreciation come from? Primarily from the work that is performed by people. And if those people are unhealthy or uneducated, they cannot produce value for their employers or for their own businesses at nearly the same level. And when the companies that I have invested in lose money, I lose money. When Canadian society is healthy and well-educated, every one of us is the beneficiary of that.

I firmly believe that your economic ideas will drive your country headlong into disaster. You have a Congress that is too cowardly to levy the taxes that are requried to pay for the programs that voters most certainly want (I see plenty of Republicans signing "no new tax" pledges, but I don't see a single one of them lining up to eliminate medicare or social security). Any attempt to fix your fiscal deficit on the spending side would trigger a 10% contraction in the size of your economy, and your private sector is incapable of filling that void, because the vast amount of that contraction would be direct transfers to individuals (salaries to public sector workers and entitlement program transfers to individuals) or government procurement, that would result in indirect job losses.

You have financed your fiscal policy deficit on the backs of foreign investors buying up dollars--and you have reaped the reward of four decades of deficit financing. It is time to start taxing your citizens at a level that will permit you to: 1) pay for the programs that people want government to provide; 2) pay the debt you have accumulated; and 3) shrink the size of government in real terms (as a %'ge of GDP) without contracting transfers in nominal terms. (You don't want government to spend fewer dollars, you just want those dollars to represent a smaller piece of your overall economy).

In a market where the rule is "every man for himself," you will soon find yourself in a place where nobody is earning anything.

How healthy will people who smoke, drink too much alcohol and eat too much be? No amount of government-care will keep them healthy, but we will all pay for their bad habits.

ruveyn