republicans do not have any new ideas. to them every problem can be solved by cutting taxes. years of republican ideology has left us deep in debt. how did we destroy our tax base? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/...xes_n_875067.html#s290516&title=10_Tax_Breaks 10 Ways America Has Become A Low-Tax Country [CHARTS] Many disagree, and few more so than Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). âWe donât have this problem because we tax too little," McConnell said in a press conference at the end of last May. "We have it because we spent too much.â Still, the statistics show otherwise. Among the 30 nations included in studies by the Organization For Economic Co-Operation and Development, the United States ranks among the countries with the lowest effective tax rates. At an average of 26.9 percent of America's gross domestic product from 2004 to 2008, the effective federal tax rate is significantly lower than in Denmark, for example, whose average effective tax rate was the highest of the countries studied, at 49.3 percent of its GDP. Similarly, the United States taxes corporations at lower rates than other countries. American corporations enjoy a rate of 13.4 percent of their profits. Compare that to Australia, whose corporations cough up 30.5 percent of what they make. In many ways, American taxes have decreased significantly over the last half-century. In 1945, for example, the highest possible tax rate was 94 percent of income. Today, the highest rate is only 35 percent. Federal tax revenue today accounts for only 14.8 percent of America's gross domestic product. In 2009, the most recent year with data available, the average ratio of tax revenue to GDP of OECD nations was 33.7 percent.
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So true. Somehow we've let the 1%'rs frame the debate, and conveniently leave themselves out of it. Government expenditures, the other half of main equation, are spiking at the current time (39% of GDP), as they typically do during wartime (we are, after all, fighting somewhere between 1-3 wars, depending on how you define "war"). All republican ideas will do, if implemented, is keep the US on the brink of deflation, and the 1%'rs comfortable.
its not a tax issue, its a spending issue. raise taxes, whatever it wont solve anything. 3 words. medicare medicaid social security thats your problem.
Comparing Federal Tax rates to other countries is misleading. In California we pay 9+% state income taxes, plus the highest sales and gasoline taxes in the country. Our property taxes are high relative to income because property values are high. We also pay the highest electrical/utility taxes in the country. If you're successful in California you're paying 40% of your income in taxes. The same is true if you live in New York, Connecticut, Hawaii, etc. The 90% tax rates of the fifties were a joke. Nobody paid them. Wealthy people used leveraged non-recourse tax shelters (now illegal) to cut their taxes by 70% and also kept large amounts of their net worth in places like Switzerland. The Rockefellers never paid 90% tax rates on anything. US Corporate tax rates go as high as 35%, but the tax breaks are geared toward specific industries which creates a mess. If you're in the oil and gas or bio-tech fields you end up paying a much differnet rate than if you're in the low-tech widgets business. Not fair. As final point, low taxes are a good thing. But I would be willing to pay higher taxes to pay down our debt if I could trust the politicians. Unfortunately, they can't be trusted. Given more funds, they will squander it. Polticians' highest (and only) priority is getting re-elected. They use our tax dollars to pander to special interest groups and buy votes in upcoming elections. It would be foolish to give more money money to the political crooks (of both parties) who run this country.
It's not a bad bet that other countries have also averaged in high and low effective tax states/provinces into their national data, as we have.