For republicans who keep complaining about 50 % not paying taxes

Discussion in 'Politics' started by AK Forty Seven, Jul 14, 2011.

  1. http://www.heritage.org/research/re...olution-a-big-boost-for-families-and-the-poor

    Reagan's Tax Revolution: A Big Boost for Families and the Poor
    Published on July 25, 1985 by Anna Kondratas


    July 25, 1985

    REAGAN'S TAX REVOLUTION: A BIG BOOST FOR FAMILIES AND THE POOR

    INTRODUCTION

    Ronald Reagan's tax reform plan offers major gains for the working poor. It does so as part of a comprehensive effort to lighten the tax burden on families, correcting in part the anti-family bias of the current tax code.IThe Reagan plan seeks specifically to raise the zero-bracket amount and personal exemptions and to expand the earned income tax credit, thereby improving the lot of the poor and of families. If enacted, the Reagan proposal would ensure that families with income at or below the poverty level no longer paid any federal income tax.

    The federal tax burden on the poor has been increasing for many years. The tax code distressingly has had the same systemic bias against the poor as it has had-against taxpayers in general. Inflation-induced bracket creep, for example, has meant that taxes rise automatically with inflated incomes. Since tax brackets are narrower at lower income levels, and the personal exemption and standard deduction (known as the zero-bracket amount) constitute a larger proportion of income, bracket creep has disproportionately hurt

    This is the third in a series on the President's tax reform plan. It was preceded by "Reagan's Tax Revolution: Ending the Free Ride for State and Local Taxes," Issue Bulletin No. 114, June 14, 1985 and "Reagan's Tax Revolution: Fair Play for Energy," Issue Bulletin No. 115, July 10, 1985. Future studies will examine the plan's impact on international finance and trade, financial institutions, and savings, investment, and risk-taking.

    lower-income taxpayers. This was corrected only partially by the 1981 Tax Act. To make matters worse, while the poverty threshold is indexed to inflation, the tax threshold is not. The result: increasing numbers of Americans have been stung by federal tax liabilities, resulting in an unintended shift of the tax burden toward families, especially larger ones.

    In the 1960s and 1970s, Congress made a number of attempts to eliminate the tax burden on poor families by increasing the personal exemption and standard deduction, or by enacting tax credits such as the earned income tax credit (EITC). Despite these efforts, the real value of the current $1,000 personal exemption is now about half what it was in 1955 and has fallen from 14 percent of median family income in that year to just 4 percent.2Even the EITC lost its impact because it was not indexed for inflation.

    By removing poor families from the tax rolls, the Reagan tax revolution guarantees that they will never reenter those rolls so long. as they are poor. Indexation, already in place for this year, will prevent bracket creep. And the President's tax reform proposes to give a big financial boost to families and the poor.


    continued...http://www.heritage.org/research/re...olution-a-big-boost-for-families-and-the-poor
     
  2. Mercor

    Mercor

    The tax breaks of George W. Bush went even further to help low income people. The lowest tax rate was dropped even lower.

    The Republicans are the only party to lower taxes for the poor.

    Bush saved the poor over 2.3 trillions dollars in tax dollars over ten years. Double what he saved the the wealthy.
     
  3. So why do so many republicans constantly complain about 50 % not paying taxes ?
     
  4. Mercor

    Mercor

    Why do the liberals complain they dont have enough money to spend, and feel the rich should give them more of their money?

    Why do Liberals feel the rich dont pay enough taxes when the top 10% pay 70% of taxes? How much more progressive can it be?

    There is a problem when 50% of people get almost all the benefits but pay almost no tax.

    I have no probelm with 50% of people not paying taxes, just dont ask me to pay more taxes.

    This is scary logic:
    It is becoming a verbal tic — the tendency on the part of the president to tell wealthy Americans (“people like me,” he’s always careful to add) that they have made more than enough money and will have to cough up more of it for the government. Speaking for himself on July 11, the president offered that he had “hundreds of thousands of dollars that I don’t need.”
     
  5. TGregg

    TGregg

    It's not that. It's how the bottom 50% that pay nothing bitch about the "rich" not paying "their fair share".

    I mean, if you're sitting at the dinner table getting fed for free, WTF should you have any voice whatsoever in who pays the tab? Or what is on the menu? It's not costing you a dime.


    And yeah, I resent these people that come along and say "Oh yeah, we have the right to determine who pays for the food we eat. Not only do we get to eat for free, we also reserve the right to deliver the bill to those we see fit to charge."
     
  6. BSAM

    BSAM

    I believe everybody should pay some nonrefundable tax, via a consumption tax, not payroll tax.
     

  7. Democrats never fought for 50 % to pay no taxes,republicans did.
    The majority of democrats were against the Bush tax cuts for the rich AND middle class which is why he had to pass them by reconciliation


    I'm not sure if your %'s are correct but taxes are to low regardless of percentages .All Bush tax cuts need to end,for the rich and middle class and everyone should pay something


    We had a good tax system then Reagan fucked it up.Clinton fixed some of Reagans mess then Bush fucked it up again to where we are now





    http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_no_taxes



    Super rich see federal taxes drop dramatically



    By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press – Mon Apr 18, 3:45 pm ET

    WASHINGTON – Still scrambling to file your taxes? You'll probably take little consolation in hearing that the super rich pay a lot less taxes than they did a couple of decades ago. And nearly half of U.S. households pay no income taxes at all.

    The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.

    Over the same period, the average federal income tax rate for all taxpayers declined to 9.3 percent from 9.9 percent.

    The top income tax rate is 35 percent, so how can people who make so much pay so little in taxes? The nation's tax laws are packed with breaks for people at every income level. There are breaks for having children, paying a mortgage, going to college, and even for paying other taxes. Plus, the top rate on capital gains is only 15 percent.

    There are so many breaks that 45 percent of U.S. households will pay no federal income tax for 2010, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

    "It's the fact that we are using the tax code both to collect revenue, which is its primary purpose, and to deliver these spending benefits that we run into the situation where so many people are paying no taxes," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the center, which generated the estimate of people who pay no income taxes.

    The sheer volume of credits, deductions and exemptions has both Democrats and Republicans calling for tax laws to be overhauled. House Republicans want to eliminate breaks to pay for lower overall rates, reducing the top tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. Republicans oppose raising taxes, but they argue that a more efficient tax code would increase economic activity, generating additional tax revenue.

    President Barack Obama said last week he wants to do away with tax breaks to lower the rates and to reduce government borrowing. Obama's proposal would result in $1 trillion in tax increases over the next 12 years. Neither proposal included many details, putting off hard choices about which tax breaks to eliminate.

    In all, the tax code is filled with a total of $1.1 trillion in credits, deductions and exemptions, an average of about $8,000 per taxpayer, according to an analysis by the National Taxpayer Advocate, an independent watchdog within the IRS.

    Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., has introduced a bill to eliminate about $60 billion in tax breaks, mostly for businesses. The bill would require a regular review of all tax breaks to see if they still serve their original purpose.

    "Right how they don't even come into the conversation," Tierney said. "We need to get them into the conversation and have the information on which to make a good solid decision."

    More than half of the nation's tax revenue came from the top 10 percent of earners in 2007. More than 44 percent came from the top 5 percent. Still, the wealthy have access to much more lucrative tax breaks than people with lower incomes.

    Obama wants the wealthy to pay so "the amount of taxes you pay isn't determined by what kind of accountant you can afford."

    The Obamas released their 2010 federal income tax return Monday and reported an adjusted gross income of $1.7 million. They paid $453,770, or 26 percent, in federal income taxes. Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, reported an income of $379,178. The Bidens paid $86,626 in federal income taxes, or 23 percent.

    Eric Schoenberg says to sign him up for paying higher taxes. Schoenberg, who inherited money and has a healthy portfolio from his days as an investment banker, has joined a group of other wealthy Americans called Responsible Wealth, which is project of the group, United for a Fair Economy. Their goal: Raise taxes on rich people like themselves.

    Schoenberg, who now teaches a business class at Columbia University, said his income is usually "north of half a million a year." But 2009 was a bad year for investments, so his income dropped to a little over $200,000. His federal income tax bill was a little more than $2,000.

    "I simply point out to people, `Do you think this is reasonable, that somebody in my circumstances should only be paying 1 percent of their income in tax?'" Schoenberg said.

    Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said he has a solution for rich people who want to pay more in taxes: Write a check to the IRS. There's nothing stopping you.

    "There's still time before the filing deadline for them to give Uncle Sam some more money," Hatch said.

    Schoenberg said Hatch's suggestion misses the point.

    "This voluntary idea clearly represents a mindset that basically pretends there's no such things as collective goods that we produce," Schoenberg said. "Are you going to let people volunteer to build the road system? Are you going to let them volunteer to pay for education?"

    The law is packed with tax breaks that help narrow special interests. But many of the biggest tax breaks benefit millions of American families at just about every income level, making them difficult for politicians to touch.

    The vast majority of those who escape federal income taxes have low and medium incomes, and most of them pay other taxes, including Social Security and Medicare taxes, property taxes and retail sales taxes.

    The share of people paying no federal income tax has dropped slightly the past two years. It was 47 percent for 2009. The main difference for 2010 was the expiration of a tax break that exempted the first $2,400 of unemployment benefits from taxation, Williams said.

    In 2009, nearly 35 million taxpayers got a tax break for paying interest on their home mortgages, and nearly 36 million taxpayers took the $1,000-per-child tax credit. About 41 million households reduced their federal income taxes by deducting state and local income and sales taxes from their taxable income.

    About 36 million families cut their taxes by nearly $35 billion by deducting charitable donations, and 28 million taxpayers saved a total of $24 billion because their income from Social Security and railroad pensions was untaxed.

    "As a matter of policy, there would be a lot of ways to save money and actually make these things work better," said Leonard Burman, a public affairs professor at Syracuse University. "As a matter of politics, it's really, really difficult."
    Super rich see federal taxes drop dramatically
     
  8. Reagan also lowered taxes for the "Rich", perhaps it was his perverse view that faceless bureaucrats are not entitled to confiscate a man's property... "Not So Shovel Ready After-all...."

    I'm quite certain that Reagan never uttered the phrase "Pay Their Fare Share" when speaking of people who already spend 6+ months out of the year paying into the bottomless pit of Obama's and those like him, vision of government responsibility of a private person's life ...

    Obama looks to be toast in 2012, thank the Good Lord, otherwise known as the "Flying Spaghetti Monster"
     
  9. Max E.

    Max E.

    well said the line the dems use about how "the rich need to pay their fair share" is probably the biggest bullshit line i have ever heard, only a total fool would hear that and think it was a good idea to repeat it.

     
  10. Mercor

    Mercor

    You make my point.....Democrats never, ever, want to lower taxes for the anyone ,even the poor....

    The Liberals are so obsessed with the 1000 corporate executives and 300,000 others who report incomes over one million...

    They are living the American dream. Even if you don’t count the 1000 corporate CEO's because ignorant and judgmental Liberals think they don’t deserve what they have.
    It still leaves 300,000 millionaires who are hard working businessmen.

    Liberals should worry about fixing their neighborhoods then about some CEO flying in his company jet.
    It comes across as tabloid voyeurism.
     
    #10     Jul 14, 2011