Whose taxes to cut?

[dca221]

There is still the debate on what will happen with the Bush tax, especially those making over $250K. The cuts for that group total $700B over 10 years, while the rest of the population would get about $3,000B over 10 years.

The debate is now centered around whether to extend tax cuts for this higher income group, let them expire at the end of the year, or let them expire after a one or two year extension. (mind you EVERYONE would get a tax reduction up to $250K even if they make more than that, but that's a different topic)

I'd like to bring up another option for debate and get your thoughts:

Let the tax cuts expire on people (families) that make over $250K per year. Take the $700B and provide ADDITIONAL tax cuts for people who make less than $250K per year.

Share with the forum if you would go for this option, and why. What is your tax cut/extension criteria? Is it to boost the economy (and if it is, what's your factual proof that this is the best option?) If you believe tax cuts for the higher income people provide more boost to the economy, then would it actually not make sense to reduce tax cuts for lower income people and give the higher income people even more tax cuts?

 

[Patranus]

The rich and then raise them on the 47% who pay no federal income tax so that everyone is paying their "fair share".

When you have the top 50% paying 97% of all taxes and the bottom 50% paying 3% of the taxes you have a problem.

Hell, the top 25% pay 85% of all taxes.
(the top 25% starts at $66,532)

How about everyone just pays 10%?
You make $20,000? You pay $2,000.
You make 20,000,000? You pay 2,000,000.

No if, ands, or buts. No accounting tricks or paper work. 10% is 10%.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

The emphasis should not be who to tax, but how to make the best use of taxes. There is an apparently unknown word in much of government, stewardship . When they figure out what that means and how to apply it let me know.

 

[Orsorum]

The emphasis should not be who to tax, but how to make the best use of taxes. There is an apparently unknown word in much of government, stewardship . When they figure out what that means and how to apply it let me know.

Agreed.

 

[theeedude]

Let all Bush tax cuts expire.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

The glaring problem that neither party is addressing is the lack of brackets above $250K. That top .5% is using legitimate small business owners as human tax shields. Maybe when the R's take congress this compromise can be reached.


Hahaha, who am I kidding.

 

[dca221]

The rich and then raise them on the 47% who pay no federal income tax so that everyone is paying their "fair share".

When you have the top 50% paying 97% of all taxes and the bottom 50% paying 3% of the taxes you have a problem.

Hell, the top 25% pay 85% of all taxes.
(the top 25% starts at $66,532)

How about everyone just pays 10%?
You make $20,000? You pay $2,000.
You make 20,000,000? You pay 2,000,000.

No if, ands, or buts. No accounting tricks or paper work. 10% is 10%.

Do you also have handy what percent of the income the top 1%, 25%, and 50% earn?

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Let all Bush tax cuts expire.

Lets do it on the same day that all bills which involve spending do. I'd endure the chaos while Congress has to get its act together.

 

[cganesh75]

Lets do it on the same day that all bills which involve spending do. I'd endure the chaos while Congress has to get its act together.

will it be an equal compromise if obama repeals the healthcare bill and in turn let the bush tax cuts expire?

 

[BoberFett]

Taxes need to be raised on everyone. People need to know what the government they vote for actually costs. They won't vote to actually cut anything until they see the government getting more of their paycheck than they do.

 

[Jhhnn]

The rich and then raise them on the 47% who pay no federal income tax so that everyone is paying their "fair share".

When you have the top 50% paying 97% of all taxes and the bottom 50% paying 3% of the taxes you have a problem.

Hell, the top 25% pay 85% of all taxes.
(the top 25% starts at $66,532)

How about everyone just pays 10%?
You make $20,000? You pay $2,000.
You make 20,000,000? You pay 2,000,000.

No if, ands, or buts. No accounting tricks or paper work. 10% is 10%.

Nice distortions. You're only talking about federal income taxes, not payroll taxes or state and local taxes. When the rest are taken into account, the picture is a whole lot different-

http://www.ctj.org/pdf/fsl2004.pdf

That doesn't fit into your usual song and dance routine, nor will facts do much to change it...

Yes. facts do have a liberal bias...

 

[Throckmorton]

Nice distortions. You're only talking about federal income taxes, not payroll taxes or state and local taxes. When the rest are taken into account, the picture is a whole lot different-

http://www.ctj.org/pdf/fsl2004.pdf

That doesn't fit into your usual song and dance routine, nor will facts do much to change it...

Yes. facts do have a liberal bias...

Wow. The tax shares match almost exactly to income shares. Apparently our taxes aren't really progressive at all. Closest thing to progressive is the bottom 20% making 3.4% but only paying 2.2%. 2/3 what their "fair share" would be with flat taxes.

 

[Fear No Evil]

I propose the rich liberal tax. If you complain that you aren't paying enough in taxes you immediately lose 90% of your total net work and your tax rate goes to 90% on everything you make.

 

[Sinsear]

We need to raise taxes on everyone. We dont know how to handle our own money. The government knows best and can definitely put it to better use.

 

[Fear No Evil]

We need to raise taxes on everyone. We dont know how to handle the governments money. The government knows best and can definitely put it to better use.

Corrected.

 

[JS80]

Increase taxes on the poor, that way they will be forced to find more work and make more money, and have more skin in the game. Also increase the taxes on actors, directors, and news anchors on income made over $500k a year. Apply a special tax on entertainment royalty revenues >$250k/year to an individual/entity. Increase taxes on hedge fund managers greater than $500k. Increase taxes on people named Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, and tax their wealth. Apply a special tax to legal monopolies (MLB/NFL/Hollywood owners).

 

[Acanthus]

The rich and then raise them on the 47% who pay no federal income tax so that everyone is paying their "fair share".

When you have the top 50% paying 97% of all taxes and the bottom 50% paying 3% of the taxes you have a problem.

Hell, the top 25% pay 85% of all taxes.
(the top 25% starts at $66,532)

How about everyone just pays 10%?
You make $20,000? You pay $2,000.
You make 20,000,000? You pay 2,000,000.

No if, ands, or buts. No accounting tricks or paper work. 10% is 10%.

So, you advocate lowering the quality of life for the poor by taking away their direct income which will in turn barely make any sort of dent in the tax revenue base?

If you take $2000 from someone making $20k that is significant. If you take away $2m from someone making $20m their lifestyle doesnt change AT ALL.

This is not a difficult concept.

 

[BoberFett]

So, you advocate lowering the quality of life for the poor by taking away their direct income which will in turn barely make any sort of dent in the tax revenue base?

If you take $2000 from someone making $20k that is significant. If you take away $2m from someone making $20m their lifestyle doesnt change AT ALL.

This is not a difficult concept.

Do you really think there are enough people making $2M/yr that it matters? There are hundreds of millions of middle class people. There are only a relative handful of people who make millions of dollars per year. Math. Learn it.

 

[Darwin333]

Nice distortions. You're only talking about federal income taxes, not payroll taxes or state and local taxes. When the rest are taken into account, the picture is a whole lot different-

http://www.ctj.org/pdf/fsl2004.pdf

That doesn't fit into your usual song and dance routine, nor will facts do much to change it...

Yes. facts do have a liberal bias...

The fact that you pay for other services has little relevance to the discussion imo. If it is relevant, it should be across the board but I don't usually see your side including those taxes into what the rich pay. I bet most rich bastards pay an absurd amount of money in property taxes relative to what the rest of us make but again, not relevant to the conversation.

It is virtually impossible to use state and local taxes as a guide to impose federal taxes on people due to the thousands of different state/local tax situations. The only reasonable way to have an honest discussion is to remove them from the picture.

 

[Jhhnn]

Do you really think there are enough people making $2M/yr that it matters? There are hundreds of millions of middle class people. There are only a relative handful of people who make millions of dollars per year. Math. Learn it.

You'd do well to learn math, yourself.

In 2008, it took $380K of *taxable* income to enter the top 1%. They brought home 1/5 of total taxable earnings. The top .1% had incomes of $1.8M and above, and took home 10% of all taxable income.There were almost 140M returns filed in 2008. Which means 1.4M and 140K families respectively.

Oh, yeh- 2007 was a very good year for America's wealthiest, even as the economy headed down the shitter. The income share of the top .1% was just about the same as that of the bottom 50% combined...

http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

It seems a bit unseemly for people making upwards of $380K to be snivelling and raving about their taxes going up by ~4% of their taxable income...

Most of America would give their left nut and their first born child to make that kind of money... and weep tears of joy when they sent off the cheque to the taxman...

 

[Jhhnn]

The fact that you pay for other services has little relevance to the discussion imo. If it is relevant, it should be across the board but I don't usually see your side including those taxes into what the rich pay. I bet most rich bastards pay an absurd amount of money in property taxes relative to what the rest of us make but again, not relevant to the conversation.

It is virtually impossible to use state and local taxes as a guide to impose federal taxes on people due to the thousands of different state/local tax situations. The only reasonable way to have an honest discussion is to remove them from the picture.

That's lame and obfuscational. Taxes are taxes- it doesn't matter which govt entity receives them, at least not to anybody's bottom line.

Part of the reason state and local taxes have increased is that federal disbursements haven't kept up with needs of states and munis- they've gone to military hardware that has no mission, wars of adventure and maintenance of debt created by cutting taxes at the top in the first place...

 

[Darwin333]

So, you advocate lowering the quality of life for the poor by taking away their direct income which will in turn barely make any sort of dent in the tax revenue base?

If you take $2000 from someone making $20k that is significant. If you take away $2m from someone making $20m their lifestyle doesnt change AT ALL.

This is not a difficult concept.

That isn't the answer but there must be a middle ground. We will never get a government that has motivation to at least get our financial situation out of FUBAR range unless everyone is forced to pay for the government they desire. Why does someone who actually gets more money back from income taxes than they put in care about how much more we spend than we take in?

It is simple human nature to look out for ones self and family first and foremost. I agree that taxes on the rich must go up, and they should be progressive in nature, but everyone that earns an income should be forced to pay something towards Federal income taxes. When Federal spending goes up, so should those taxes.

Or we can continue our unsustainable path to ruin. You simply can't beat the math on that one. BTW, the poor and middle class will likely be hurt the most when we hit the wall. The rich folk yall are talking about have backup plans and the means to implement them. Just like during Katrina, the real elites of the city had very well trained and armed people protecting their properties. The rest had the NOPD, or as we liked to call them Not Our Problem Dude(back then at least, improvements are being made but I will wait for results before passing judgment) and it didn't work out very well for them.

Now we are getting into another point, the difference between the truly wealthy and the people the government considers wealthy. I agree with the flat percentage tax rate but it still has to be progressive. Get rid of ALL of the deductions, loopholes, exclusions, etc... I say make the tax code less than a dozen pages but they will obviously never do that. That means that they would lose the social engineering power that the current tax code affords them.

 

[Argo]

So, you advocate lowering the quality of life for the poor by taking away their direct income which will in turn barely make any sort of dent in the tax revenue base?

If you take $2000 from someone making $20k that is significant. If you take away $2m from someone making $20m their lifestyle doesnt change AT ALL.

This is not a difficult concept.

Not - it actually is a very difficult concept. What you're advocating is forced charity. "We'll take it away from you because you don't need it very bad" is an extremely dangerous concept.

What gives one person the right to decide for another person? I consider myself upper middle class, people like me are a target of a lot of the "new taxes" that are getting proposed. Well, I can say with certainty that the increased taxes will not go unnoticed. That's the money that's being taken away from my kids college tuition, or some work on my house, or a vacation. So let me repeat: what gives another person a right to say that I do not need those things?

Also - who decides on these threasholds? Let me have a proposal: lets increase the taxes on all the people that make slightly more than me. I mean those bastards don't need the extra money, while I certainly do. What do I need to do to make that happen?

 

[Acanthus]

Do you really think there are enough people making $2M/yr that it matters? There are hundreds of millions of middle class people. There are only a relative handful of people who make millions of dollars per year. Math. Learn it.

Err i tutor math.

What cumulative share of wealth do the bottom 80% of americans have, vs the top 20%?

Do you know how many billionaires live in the united states, millionaires?

It's a lot more than you think.

A level of math above high school. Learn it. We are talking integrals, not your times tables.

 

[Acanthus]

Not - it actually is a very difficult concept. What's you're advocating is forced charity. "We'll take it away from you because you don't need it very bad" is an extremely dangerous concept.

It's not forced charity if it is used on roads and defense.

Or reversing crippling financial oppression from the state-sponsored monopolies on finance and capital.

When one in 7 american families are on some sort of assistance, is it reasonable to have people raking in billions overseas on 1% taxes?

This isnt charity, it's outright class warfare, and the top 10% are winning.