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Romney reveals he pays about 15% in taxes(edited)

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Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

jamesrage said:
A sales tax is extremely fair.Fair implies equal share or treatment.Equal means the same as or evenly proportioned. Everybody paying the same percentage is fair.Everybody paying the same sales tax percentage is fair.



That has nothing to do with whether or not the taxes are fair.Fair implies equal share or treatment.It doesn't have squat to do with how much you have after taxes.
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There is nothing fair about tanking our economy to give the wealthy further advantages. A national sales tax would be disasterous for the economy and would drop spending and the GDP roughly the same amt. as the tax.
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

jamesrage said:
A sales tax is extremely fair.Fair implies equal share or treatment.Equal means the same as or evenly proportioned. Everybody paying the same percentage is fair.Everybody paying the same sales tax percentage is fair.



That has nothing to do with whether or not the taxes are fair.Fair implies equal share or treatment.It doesn't have squat to do with how much you have after taxes.
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You can't determine what's fair without looking at the totality of the circumstances. Otherwise you come up with bizarre results. For example, why not tax people by the pound? You weigh 200 lbs. you owe $20k. You weigh 100 lbs. you owe $10k! That's fair, right? Everyone pays the same amount per pound!
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

Gill said:
Imagine what a top rate of 100% would do ??
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We have had it as high as 90% and had good results with that. That rate got us to the moon and back in a decade. Do you think we could do that today?
 
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Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

liblady said:
maggie, romney's income is made up of dividends and capital gains. those are taxed at 15%. I am taxed at higher than 15%. so he really DOES pay a much lower percentage of his total income in federal taxes than I do. THAT'S what is ****ed up.
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It has been that way for years. Differnt types of income, his capital, yours non capital.
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

Fishstyx said:
Then you should be fine with the current tax structure. A family making $40k either pays 0% or actually -0% in federal income tax.
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and it rapidly goes negative. I made a shade under 30K this last year, and my "refund" is about 5K more than I had withheld for FIT.
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

iguanaman said:
We have had it as high as 90% and had good results with that. That rate got us to the moon and back in a decade. Do you think we could do that today?
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Great idea. I think you should get Obama and the other Dems in Congress to campaign on that.
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

Gill said:
Great idea. I think you should get Obama and the other Dems in Congress to campaign on that.
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I'de settle for a 50% flat tax on all income over $1 million no matter where it came from. That would be a winner with the voters too, don't you think?
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

iguanaman said:
I'de settle for a 50% flat tax on all income over $1 million no matter where it came from. That would be a winner with the voters too, don't you think?
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People don't mind tax increases as long as they are not the ones paying it.
 
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Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

AdamT said:
You can't determine what's fair without looking at the totality of the circumstances. Otherwise you come up with bizarre results. For example, why not tax people by the pound? You weigh 200 lbs. you owe $20k. You weigh 100 lbs. you owe $10k! That's fair, right? Everyone pays the same amount per pound!
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Body weight has nothing to do with income or the amount of money someone spends.A sales tax means you are taxed based on what you spend. For example if the sales taxes is ten percent sales tax means if you spend a dollar you pay ten cents you spend a million dollars you pay 100,000 dollars.
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

jamesrage said:
[...] A sales tax means you are taxed based on what you spend. For example if the sales taxes is ten percent sales tax means if you spend a dollar you pay ten cents you spend a million dollars you pay 100,000 dollars.
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If I spend a million dollars in the stock market (buying stock), how much do I pay?
 
AdamT said:
You can't determine what's fair without looking at the totality of the circumstances. Otherwise you come up with bizarre results. For example, why not tax people by the pound? You weigh 200 lbs. you owe $20k. You weigh 100 lbs. you owe $10k! That's fair, right? Everyone pays the same amount per pound!
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Obesity is an epidemic. Perhaps Government SHOULD tax this way. It's for our own good. And obesity is linked to numerous health problems that are expensive to treat. It's not fair to tax the thin equally when they're LESS likely to need as much government health care later. Good idea Adam.
 
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Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

jamesrage said:
Body weight has nothing to do with income or the amount of money someone spends.A sales tax means you are taxed based on what you spend. For example if the sales taxes is ten percent sales tax means if you spend a dollar you pay ten cents you spend a million dollars you pay 100,000 dollars.
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It's barely less arbitrary then taxing based on weight. Middle and lower income people have little discretion about what they spend, given that so much of their income is spent on housing, transportation, food, and child care. In contrast, wealthier people have a great deal of discretion over what they spend. It's actually a lot less fair than a flat income tax.

Of course it also incentivizes NOT spending, which is hardly what the economy needs right now when the biggest problem is a lack of consumer demand. Slap a 17% national sales tax on top of your 6% state and local taxes and see how that impacts the economy.
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

AdamT said:
It's barely less arbitrary then taxing based on weight. Middle and lower income people have little discretion about what they spend, given that so much of their income is spent on housing, transportation, food, and child care. In contrast, wealthier people have a great deal of discretion over what they spend. It's actually a lot less fair than a flat income tax.

Of course it also incentivizes NOT spending, which is hardly what the economy needs right now when the biggest problem is a lack of consumer demand. Slap a 17% national sales tax on top of your 6% state and local taxes and see how that impacts the economy.
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speaking of incentives--when the lower and middle classes face tax increases every time the government spends more or every time the government wants to raise taxes on "the rich" I suspect government spending will start to become a FAR LESS popular strategy for politicians to buy the votes of the middle class
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

iguanaman said:
We have had it as high as 90% and had good results with that. That rate got us to the moon and back in a decade. Do you think we could do that today?
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you are lying. the 90% rate was gone before LBJ took office. and the effective rate back then wasn't much different than it is now due to all kinds of exemptions, write offs and other ways to lessen that confiscatory top marginal rate.

If you think 90% is a great rate you need to start paying that much of every next dollar you earn. If you aren't willing to keep only 10c of every dollar you earn you have absolutely no integrity demanding that others pay that rate
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

teamosil said:
You don't want to hitch your cart to that horse. :) I'm not replying to him because we've had that same debate like 500 times. Every time he is unable to come up with counter arguments to all the arguments people present on it and just goes off to another tread to claim the same thing over again... I suspect he's doing it intentionally to annoy people at this point.



No, the gains they draw from it are not nearly the same. For example, the stimulus spending appears to have boosted the stock market by approximately 25%. So Bill Gates drew roughly $10 billion in benefit from that. How much benefit did the average taxpayer get out of the stimulus? Maybe they got a new job a few weeks earlier because of it? Or maybe not even that?

Companies require a large, educated, prosperous, society to make money. They need customers that can afford to buy their product, employees that are educated enough to do the job, employees that are healthy enough to work, etc. You're right that they pay the employees, but that doesn't mean they don't benefit from them being educated and whatnot. The median productivity of an American worker is an outstanding $97k/year. That's how much value they bring to their employer. But the median compensation is only $44k/year. So, the employer is keeping more than half of the value employees generate. So, roughly, each person gets half the value of their education, but their employer is collecting the other half.

On top of that, you have things like defense, police, and fire. Those things benefit the super rich because they have more to protect. The homeless guy on the street would probably be better off if there were no police, where Bill Gates would be like $40 billion worse off. So, the value of police to Bill Gates is much greater.

Also, you have infrastructure. A company that runs heavy semi trucks all over the country is drawing way more benefit from the highways. An office in Nevada gets way more benefit out of the electricity of the Hoover Dam than an individual does. The internet has done a smidge more for amazon.com than it has done for my grandmother. And so on.



"Regressive" means "a lower percentage of their income". At least that's the common usage of it. If you want to talk about what percentage of Romney's income he pays in taxes and compare that to the percentage the middle class pays, you can't really exclude those taxes that the middle class pays more of. That's just distorting the comparison.
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Lets see, here is the argument.

TD-I pay too much tax for what I get

TSL-you need to pay more even though you pay more than most people


so who has the proper standing? someone who is paying the top rates vs someone who thinks others who pay more ought to pay even more

and no one has advanced a credible argument against me because they are all based on the following two assumptions

1) ability to pay (and of course they exempt many people who can actually pay more than they do-ie almost all the middle class) is the most important factor for determining taxes

2) the rich have too much money and the purpose of the tax system is to make things "fairer"

well I reject both of those assumptions so all the arguments that are based on those premises have absolutely no value in a debate on this issue.
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

Catawba said:
No wonder Romney didn't want to release his tax records! And no wonder he supports continuing the tax breaks for the wealthy!
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and Romney pays far more than thousands of Americans COMBINED. what is sad is that the parasite mentality demonizes this man for being successful and paying far far far more than he uses
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

TurtleDude said:
speaking of incentives--when the lower and middle classes face tax increases every time the government spends more or every time the government wants to raise taxes on "the rich" I suspect government spending will start to become a FAR LESS popular strategy for politicians to buy the votes of the middle class
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I'm all for it. I agree that too many people aren't paying any income tax.
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

TurtleDude said:
and Romney pays far more than thousands of Americans COMBINED. what is sad is that the parasite mentality demonizes this man for being successful and paying far far far more than he uses
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You think he didn't benefit far far far more than the average person from the bank bailouts?
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

AdamT said:
You think he didn't benefit far far far more than the average person from the bank bailouts?
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don't know, don't care but what I do know is that no matter how he got his wealth, the people whining about his tax rates would still be whining now
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

TurtleDude said:
and Romney pays far more than thousands of Americans COMBINED. what is sad is that the parasite mentality demonizes this man for being successful and paying far far far more than he uses
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if he paid far more than he benefited, he would be in another country. I think it is very fitting that someone who pays an effective tax rate of 15% represent the 1 percenters in the big battle in November in the GOP class war against the 99% (or "parasites" as you refer to them).
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

Catawba said:
if he paid far more than he benefited, he would be in another country. I think it is very fitting that someone who pays an effective tax rate of 15% represent the 1 percenters in the big battle in November in the GOP class war against the 99% (or "parasites" as you refer to them).
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ah the old class warfare mantra-whine to millions who pay nothing in federal income taxes that a guy who pays millions in federal income taxes isn't paying enough. parasites come in all income groups-its a mindset not a bank account that makes one a parasite
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

TurtleDude said:
don't know, don't care but what I do know is that no matter how he got his wealth, the people whining about his tax rates would still be whining now
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Hmm, if your argument is that he doesn't get back what he pays in, and then you say you don't what he gets back ... that's not all that convincing.
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

TurtleDude said:
ah the old class warfare mantra-whine to millions who pay nothing in federal income taxes that a guy who pays millions in federal income taxes isn't paying enough. parasites come in all income groups-its a mindset not a bank account that makes one a parasite
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Your shell game, does not obscure to the middle class that they are paying a higher percentage of their income in taxes than are the 1%ers like Mitt Romney, who brazenly proposes even more tax cuts for him and his rich buddies.

But hey, the debt for tax breaks will trickle down to the middle class, so it all works out, right?
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

AdamT said:
Hmm, if your argument is that he doesn't get back what he pays in, and then you say you don't what he gets back ... that's not all that convincing.
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read that statement of yours again and rewrite it-it makes no sense-there is either a typo or the wrong word someplace in that comment that buggers things up
 
Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays

Catawba said:
Your shell game, does not obscure to the middle class that they are paying a higher percentage of their income in taxes than are the 1%ers like Mitt Romney, who brazenly proposes even more tax cuts for him and his rich buddies.

But hey, the debt for tax breaks will trickle down to the middle class, so it all works out, right?
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stop lying. Mitt is an exception to the top one percent

here are the actual effective tax rates


GI. Avg tax % of AGI
1-25k. 1.76
25-50k. 5.32
50-100k 8.41
100-200k 12.59
200-500k. 19.5
500-1MM. 23.92
1-10MM. 24.47
10MM+ 20.89
109.7MM. 18.11

the top one percent start around 375K a year. that means those paying around a 20% effective tax rate

those making between a half million and a million a year are paying about 24% and the group with the highest average effective tax rate are people in my group-those making 1-10 Million a year. Once you get over 10 million but below 110 Million they are down to about the same rate as people in the bottom of the top one percent. its those over 110 million are dropping down to the same average rate as those in the 275K range

so the crap that the average top one percent tax payer pays less than the middle class is complete and utter crap and even those making over 110 Million a year are still paying more than people making up to 200K a year


(those are 2008 figures)
 
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