While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, the mega-rich continue to get tax breaks.
Some are investment managers who earn billions but are allowed to classify income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate.
Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/op...uper-rich.html
The super-rich pay lower tax rates than others...
The tax rates on investments tend to be lower than taxes on regular income.
If you make money buying and selling stocks or receiving dividends from stock ownership, those earnings are generally taxed at 15 percent, the rate for long-term capital gains and qualified dividends.
Some hedge fund managers and other finance-sector executives get taxed at this rate on their earnings because their compensation is classified as "carried interest" and taxed as a capital gain.
Payroll taxes are separate from income taxes.
Payroll taxes are not progressive -- the rates don't get higher the more you earn.
In the case of the Social Security taxes, which disappear once your reach a certain level of earnings, the percentage actually gets smaller if your income is higher than the $106,800 cap.
People who don't pay any income tax at all tend to have limited incomes, or they qualify for enough deductions -- think of child tax credits and mortgage interest -- that they have no income.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...wer-taxes-oth/
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