OneGoodLeg wrote:
big kahuna wrote:
blueraider_mike wrote:
I not sure the median or average makes sense since the bulk of the taxes are paid by the top 20%. I think you have to look at this stuff in income groups.
It's true that high-income Americans pay most income taxes. Below, how the government is funded:
Who pays taxes? The rich, mostly?
Um, so your first graph shows a substantial portion of total revenue coming from payroll taxes (~33 vs 47%, paid moreso by blue-collar wage earners since it gets capped beyond a certain income, as opposed to those w/ more investment income and the like), and then you try to follow it up with a graph of just income taxes to show that it's mostly the rich paying it all? I thought you were smarter than that.
Leaving aside Mr. Slowman's judgment that my "propaganda" is both second-hand and possibly right-wing, ideologically speaking ;-), I think that "payroll taxes" are those paid for by both employers and employees (FICA, etc.) as well as a portion of income taxes. That's what the first chart illustrates (and I saw the "payroll tax" section right off the bat). My thoughts on that:
If you're self-employed, you pay both sides of the payroll tax equation, though, and many of the so-called "rich" are self-employed, it seems to me, or are high-earner/highly taxed persons. (Also, in parts of the country, especially the coastal Northeast cities and out in California, in the coastal enclaves, $250K to $500K yearly isn't really "rich rich," if you know what I mean.)
As someone here (Mr. Schroeder I think) pointed out: we have a progressive tax system, so of course the rich would pay more in taxes (which the second Pew chart illustrates), both as a flat figure and in terms of percentage, at least in the U.S. Being fair-minded, I would ask whether or not they're paying a share proportionate to what they're earning in the aggregate. They might not be, actually.
Also, there seem to be a wide swath of taxpayers today either not paying anything or paying very little. This is another reason why I'm in favor of a vastly more simplified tax code, or even a flat tax
Honestly, I think the two charts complement each other. I get the sense that the group here is evenly divided, though. Half maybe feel threatened by the proposition that perhaps we're paying more in taxes, as a "consumer unit," especially over the last three years (2013 to 2016) - and why the plain fact that we're paying more taxes, generally speaking, over the last several years is somehow an "ideological" statement is beyond me, and it's certainly not a criticism of previous tax policy on the part of any president or Congress -- and half maybe want to batten on the data contained in the OP to support their position that the "rich" are paying too much in tax.
Here's my position on this issue:
Every person, or "consumer unit," has to have some skin in the taxpaying game, even if it's just paying $1 in tax annually. No more mortgage interest deduction or property tax deduction. No real personal deductions at all (except for maybe the charitable deduction). No more tax credits, no more massive tax refunds (because a fairer, flatter tax would eliminate such a thing), no more any of that.
To do the above requires a comprehensive reconfiguration of our tax system to make it both fairer and more equitable. But the fact is, we have far too many people not paying enough in tax, and too few of the higher earners paying too much (and that's not a contradiction of what I wrote above). Corporate-tax-wise, business may not be paying enough tax, either.
None of the above, to me, is equitable whether or not the higher-earning cohort can afford it or not. But I suppose all those filled-with-white-guilt rich liberals won't support such a thing, right up until a modern-day version of the French Revolution's "Terror" is upon them, n'cest ce pas? ;-)
"Politics is just show business for ugly people."
