Class wafare?

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Class warfare?

The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years.


The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation's balance sheet.


Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks for the rich.


"We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share," he thunders to a crowd in Georgia.


Such tax loopholes, he adds, "sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that's crazy."


Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. "Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver," he demands, "or less?"


The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!"



storyimages_1294964073_classwar.jpg_640x640_310x220





http://www.rollingstone.com/politic...-the-party-of-the-rich-20111109#ixzz1dbw4ORPU
 
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This is the kind of problem that people Don't talk about, nobody really understands the law save for lawyers(even then it's only a maybe). People can tell you that, "The rich are using loopholes to not pay taxes" and do you know? How do you know? Do you even know the reason that they manage(assuming they do) to avoid paying taxes?* We've hung a rather large sign around all the rich, Wall street, Bankers, investment firms, and said PAY UP, you have too much money and we want some of it. At this point peoplea re convinced that the economy is the fault of the rich people who "made deals" and "broke the markets" Whatever the hell that means. I don't really have a solution by I do think it's a serious problem.

*For the people who want to answer those questions, I want citations from sources, and not just more people spewing the same statements, I want documentation and legitimate facts.
 
This is the kind of problem that people Don't talk about, nobody really understands the law save for lawyers(even then it's only a maybe). People can tell you that, "The rich are using loopholes to not pay taxes" and do you know? How do you know? Do you even know the reason that they manage(assuming they do) to avoid paying taxes?* We've hung a rather large sign around all the rich, Wall street, Bankers, investment firms, and said PAY UP, you have too much money and we want some of it. At this point peoplea re convinced that the economy is the fault of the rich people who "made deals" and "broke the markets" Whatever the hell that means. I don't really have a solution by I do think it's a serious problem.

*For the people who want to answer those questions, I want citations from sources, and not just more people spewing the same statements, I want documentation and legitimate facts.

Then maybe you should do your own research and homework.
 

I'm going to work my way through this a bit at a time

A quarter of millionaires in the United States pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than many middle-class families, according to a new congressional analysis that offers fresh support for President Obama’s push to raise taxes on the nation’s wealthiest households.

The report, by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, found that when all federal taxes are taken into account — including those on wages, investment income and corporate profits — some households earning more than $1 million a year paid as little as 24 percent of their income to the Internal Revenue Service in 2006.

That’s substantially less than the share paid by many families making less than $100,000 a year that faced a top effective tax rate exceeding 26.5 percent, the report said.

2.5% that's the percentage they're arguing? lets work this one out in the math, the millionaire paying 24% of his income pays 240,000 where the guy making less than 100k (call it 75k) paying 26.5% pays 19,875, millionaire still paying 10 times that

All told, 94,500 millionaires paid a smaller share of their income in taxes than 10 million households with moderate incomes, the report found.

Smaller Share of larger Pie, they're still paying a larger amount, by quite a bit

“Most Americans think millionaires ought to be paying a higher rate than middle-class taxpayers, not a lower one,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has long urged policymakers to raise taxes on the wealthiest households. “This report increases the momentum for our proposal to ensure millionaires pay their fair share.”

Please define "fair Share" does it include contributions to charities which may be tax deductable? Does it include church donations? Does it include starting buisnesses which can be tax deductable?

The report offers the first government analysis of federal tax data since billionaire investor Warren Buffett, a former Washington Post Co. board member, complained that he pays a lower tax rate than the 20 employees in his office, who earn much less than he does. After Buffett wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, Obama argued that policymakers should overhaul the tax code to ensure that millionaires pay at least as large a share of their income in taxes as middle-class families do, a principle the president dubbed “the Buffett Rule.”

see Above statement

Late Tuesday, Senate Republicans rejected a variation on the Buffett Rule — a 5.6 percent surtax on income over $1 million — to cover the cost of Obama’s $447 billion jobs package.

Critics initially blasted the Buffett Rule, arguing that the average millionaire already pays a significantly higher effective tax rate than middle-class families do. The CRS report, by Thomas L. Hungerford, a specialist in public finance, found that to be true: Millionaires, on average, paid about 30 percent of their income in federal taxes, while households earning less than $100,000 paid closer to 19 percent.

Just finger pointing on why the "good law" didn't get passed

But the averages hide wide variations within income categories, Hungerford wrote, with millionaires paying anywhere from 24 percent to more than 35 percent of their income in federal taxes. The lower tax bills are primarily the result of low tax rates on investment income, such as capital gains and dividends.

35%? That seems like quite a bit more than 26.5 percent, why its more than 26.5 than 26.5 is from 24%

Although ordinary earnings are subject to payroll taxes as well as income tax rates as high as 35 percent, investment income — which constitutes the bulk of earnings for many very wealthy households — is taxed at no more than 15 percent.

“The current U.S. tax system violates the Buffett rule in that a large proportion of millionaires pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than [do] a significant proportion of moderate-income taxpayers,” Hungerford wrote, although “not to the extent alluded to by Mr. Buffett.”

Congressional Republicans have attacked the Buffett Rule, as well as the idea for a surtax on millionaires, as “class warfare.” They argue that raising taxes on millionaires would penalize many small businesses, the primary engine of U.S. job growth. They also oppose raising taxes on investment income, arguing that doing so would discourage savings and risk-taking.

The CRS report offers a withering rebuttal to both claims. Just 1 percent of tax returns with business income have adjusted gross income of more than $1 million a year, the report says, and those businesses are some of the least likely to create jobs.

“Many observers claim that small businesses are the primary creators of jobs,” Hungerford wrote, but “most of the research cited by these observers is from the 1980s. More recent research suggests that small businesses contribute only slightly more jobs than larger business.”

The main difference “appears to be due to hiring by new startup firms,” which “generally do not generate much business income in their first years in operation.” Consequently, higher taxes on millionaires are unlikely to affect them, the report says.

As to savings, the report argues that private savings rates have fallen over the past 30 years even as the capital gains tax rate dropped from 28 percent in 1987 to 15 percent today, suggesting that “changing capital gains tax rates have had little effect on private saving.”
The rest not very relative to the point



Now, My point still remains that people don't really understand why this is possible, I certainly don't. But we're just so happy to hang our hats on the "Rich man's fault". As a side note I would rather see the raw data from the study rather than the shortened analysis of a study that they glanced at to prove their point.
 
As a side note I would rather see the raw data from the study rather than the shortened analysis of a study that they glanced at to prove their point.

Then go to the CBO source info in the story...and you do understand that the CBO says 1/4 of millionaires pay less as a percentage of their income than middle-class wage earners, don't you?
 
Yes, and you do realize that that is still a Larger Amount, even so, re the little math bit I did up there, still came out to over 10 times the amount
 
Yes, and you do realize that that is still a Larger Amount, even so, re the little math bit I did up there, still came out to over 10 times the amount

Proportionately, it is a lower effective rate, isn't it?


The top 400 U.S. individual taxpayers got 1.59% of the nation’s household income in 2007, according to their tax returns, three times the slice they got in the 1990s, according to the Internal Revenue Service.


They paid 2.05% of all individual income taxes in that year.


In its annual update of the taxes paid by the 400 best-off taxpayers, who aren’t identified, the IRS also said that only 220 of the top 400 were in the top marginal tax bracket.


The 400 best-off taxpayers paid an average tax rate of 16.6%, lower than in any year since the IRS began making the reports in 1992.


To make the top 400, a taxpayer had to have income of more than $138.8 million. As a group, the top 400 reported $137.9 billion in income, and paid $22.9 billion in federal income taxes.


About 81.3% of the income of the top 400 households came in the form of capital gains, dividends or interest, the IRS data show. Only 6.5% came in the form of salaries and wages.


tax-rates-top-1-percent.jpg





http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/02/17/a-look-at-the-tax-returns-of-the-top-400-taxpayers/
 
...Warren Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”

Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html

About time average tax payers realized they are in a war and losing. Many do and that's the reason for the backlash that will oust Disillusions heros next election. Does Paris Hilton need a tax break?
 
Maybe Disillusioned is a multibillionaire and takes advantage of the tax breaks. Somehow I don't think this is the case and Disillusioned is just a toadie for Limbaugh and Hannity.
 
Maybe Disillusioned is a multibillionaire and takes advantage of the tax breaks. Somehow I don't think this is the case and Disillusioned is just a toadie for Limbaugh and Hannity.

You think Disillusioned is disingenuous?
 
No I'm an unemployed college student, if I was a multibillionaire, I wouldn't care what you thought. This is what the Occupy Wall Street guys don't get, the rich don't care what you think, they're rich, in the game that is america they've won
 
No I'm an unemployed college student, if I was a multibillionaire, I wouldn't care what you thought. This is what the Occupy Wall Street guys don't get, the rich don't care what you think, they're rich, in the game that is america they've won

So you're disinterested.
 
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