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

teamosil · Jan 19, 2012

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

Dickieboy said:
FEDERAL

Right, mine lists total taxes. Not just federal. Just looking at federal is distorting because federal taxes tend to be more progressive where state taxes tend to be more regressive. People in about the bottom 50% pay more state taxes than federal.

teamosil · Jan 19, 2012

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

TNAR said:
I agree with your conclusion but this is not what you said earlier. I just wanted to make sure we were all being honest here.

I did miss that he said "income taxes", but it works out the same. The other taxes don't really apply to him percentage wise.

TNAR said:
Taxes are absolutely regressive. But then again so are all prices!

Taxes aren't like prices for buying things. When you're buying things, for every $1 you spend you get $1 back. With taxes different people benefit from the stuff the taxes pay for to different degrees. A wealthy person, by definition, is drawing far more benefit from the society that the taxes maintain. For example, where a middle class person only benefits from their own education, a wealthy person benefits from the educations of all the people that work at companies they own stock in. Wealthy people benefit far more from having a stable economy, from having a strong consumer base, from having a stable currency, from law and order, from the infrastructure, etc. So, to translate that into the "buying things" metaphor, they're getting a lot more things, so they have to pay a lot more, where a working person is getting less things and so they pay less.

Dickieboy · Jan 19, 2012

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

teamosil said:
Right, mine lists total taxes. Not just federal. Just looking at federal is distorting because federal taxes tend to be more progressive where state taxes tend to be more regressive. People in about the bottom 50% pay more state taxes than federal.

You miss the point. Your list includes a column 'Federal Taxes'. This is where the disparity between the numbers is thus my question. I have yet to find another source to corroborate the numbers in your link which I agree is inclusive of ‘all federal, state & local taxes (personal and corporate income, payroll, property, sales, excise, estate etc.)’ as it states. Also consider this data is generated via the ‘Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy Tax Model’. This model while based on a vast collection of data would not necessarily lend itself to Romney’s rate specifically as it is merely an average of ALL data.

TNAR · Jan 19, 2012

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

teamosil said:
A wealthy person, by definition, is drawing far more benefit from the society that the taxes maintain.

I want what you are smoking!

teamosil said:
For example, where a middle class person only benefits from their own education, a wealthy person benefits from the educations of all the people that work at companies they own stock in. Wealthy people benefit far more from having a stable economy, from having a strong consumer base, from having a stable currency, from law and order, from the infrastructure, etc.

Everyone benefits from the education of others.
Everyone benefits from a stable economy.
Everyone benefits from a strong consumer base.
Everyone benefits from a stable currency.
Everyone benefits from law and order.
Everyone benefits from infrastructure.

teamosil · Jan 19, 2012

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

Dickieboy said:
You miss the point. Your list includes a column 'Federal Taxes'. This is where the disparity between the numbers is thus my question. I have yet to find another source to corroborate the numbers in your link which I agree is inclusive of ‘all federal, state & local taxes (personal and corporate income, payroll, property, sales, excise, estate etc.)’ as it states.

So your numbers show everybody paying federal taxes 3% to 5% higher. So, if we went with your numbers, the average American would be paying approx 31% instead of 27%, so Romney would be even further out of whack.

My guess would be that yours counts FICA as a tax and mine doesn't. That would give you about that much of a gap. But that's just a guess.

Dickieboy said:
This model while based on a vast collection of data would not necessarily lend itself to Romney’s rate specifically as it is merely an average of ALL data.

Yeah, Romney was only talking about income taxes, where my data is about all taxes. But, that doesn't really matter. Income taxes (including cap gains) are the only taxes that would be a meaningful percentage of the income of somebody in Romney's tier. The other taxes are regressive, meaning you pay a lower percentage the more income you make, and Romney's income is extremely high.

Neomalthusian · Jan 19, 2012

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

teamosil said:
For example, where a middle class person only benefits from their own education, a wealthy person benefits from the educations of all the people that work at companies they own stock in. Wealthy people benefit far more from having a stable economy, from having a strong consumer base, from having a stable currency, from law and order, from the infrastructure, etc. So, to translate that into the "buying things" metaphor, they're getting a lot more things, so they have to pay a lot more, where a working person is getting less things and so they pay less.

What a bunch of bologna. Rich people have more money in the game. They stand to lose more. They are taking on more risk when they run businesses and hire people. They are paying a larger amount of money in taxes, an ever-growing portion of which is now dedicated to help the poor specifically rather than The People generally. Just because the rich have more does not mean they "benefit more."

That is a bunch of

uch:

teamosil · Jan 19, 2012

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

TNAR said:
Everyone benefits from the education of others.
Everyone benefits from a stable economy.
Everyone benefits from a strong consumer base.
Everyone benefits from a stable currency.
Everyone benefits from law and order.
Everyone benefits from infrastructure.

Not equally, no. For example, amazon.com has benefited more from the internet than my grandmother has, right? A company with 50,000 employees benefits from 50,000 educations. I only benefit from one. Etc.

pbrauer · Jan 19, 2012

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

Dickieboy said:
I’m having trouble with your link. The CBO report, Effective Federal Tax Rates Under Current Law, 2001 to 2014
Indicates the 2010 effective FEDERAL tax rates to be first Q- 5.8%, 2nd - 12.3%, 3rd – 16.1%, 4th – 20.5% 5th – 27.1% . The numbers in the column on your link ‘Federal Taxes’ appear to be vastly different. What gives? Which is the more reputable souce?

This is an apples to oranges comparison. Did you read the note at your link:

Notes: Effective tax rates are calculated by dividing taxes by comprehensive household income. A household consists of the people who share a housing unit, regardless of their relationships.

The income measure, comprehensive household income, comprises pretax cash income plus income from other sources. Pretax cash income is the sum of wages, salaries, self-employment income, rents, taxable and nontaxable interest, dividends, realized capital gains, cash transfer payments, and retirement benefits plus taxes paid by businesses (corporate income taxes and the employer's share of Social Security, Medicare, and federal unemployment insurance payroll taxes) and employees' contributions to 401(k) retirement plans. Other sources of income include all in-kind benefits (Medicare, Medicaid, employer-paid health insurance premiums, food stamps, school lunches and breakfasts, housing assistance, and energy assistance). Households with negative income are excluded from the lowest income category but are included in the totals.

Income categories are defined by ranking all people by their comprehensive household income adjusted for the size of the household--that is, divided by the square root of the household's size. Quintiles, or fifths, contain equal numbers of people.

Individual income taxes are generally distributed directly to households paying those taxes. Social insurance, or payroll, taxes are distributed to households paying those taxes directly or paying them indirectly through their employers. Corporate income taxes are distributed to households according to their share of capital income. Federal excise taxes are distributed to them according to their consumption of the taxed good or service.

The calculations of income taxes from 2002 through 2014 are based on the assumption that inflation is 2.2 percent per year and that nominal incomes grow at 4.5 percent per year. Most changes to individual income taxes are estimated by simulating the effects of applicable law on 2001 incomes. The reduced tax rate on dividends is allocated to households according to their share of capital income. The estimated effects of partial expensing are allocated to taxpayers on the basis of capital income and noncorporate business income. See the text for further detail.

teamosil · Jan 19, 2012

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

Neomalthusian said:
What a bunch of bologna. Rich people have more money in the game. They stand to lose more. They are taking on more risk. They are paying a larger amount of money in taxes, an ever-growing portion of which need to be dedicated to help the poor specifically rather than The People generally. Just because they have more does not mean they "benefit more."

You aren't countering any of my arguments. Do you have responses? For example, how does an employer not benefit from the educations of all their employees?

Neomalthusian · Jan 19, 2012

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

teamosil said:
You aren't countering any of my arguments. Do you have responses? For example, how does an employer not benefit from the educations of all their employees?

The employer is paying for what the employees' educations provide his company. You attempt to distinguish this from "buying things..." by saying "When you're buying things, for every $1 you spend you get $1 back." Well, when you employ people, you pay for their KSAs and labor. For every $1 you spend on labor you get... $1 worth of labor.

You're just making stuff up as you go.

teamosil · Jan 19, 2012

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

Neomalthusian said:
The employer is paying for what the employees' educations provide his company. You distinguish this from "buying things..." you say "When you're buying things, for every $1 you spend you get $1 back." When you employ people, you pay for their KSAs and labor.

You're just making stuff up as you go.

Just because an employer pays for something doesn't mean they don't benefit from it. The median productivity of an American worker is $97k/year, but the median compensation is only $44k/year. So, for every year an employee works, on average, the employee gets $44k of the value they create, the employer gets $53k of the value they create. If the employee were less educated, and less productive as a result, both the employer and the employee would make less off of his work.

mike2810 · Jan 19, 2012

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

teamosil said:
If I had a dog and a cat, and I said "my pets are hungry" would you assume I just meant my dog?

No because you used the word "pets", that is plural.

Sorry you don't see that the article from the OP is about federal tax rates and what rich people pay (Romney). You may not like it but until the federal tax laws change, Ramney, Obama, Pelosi, et.al have done nothing wrong as long as they are in complaince of current federal tax laws.

teamosil · Jan 19, 2012

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

mike2810 said:
No because you used the word "pets", that is plural.

Doh! Ok, fair point. If I had 2 cats and 2 dogs and I said "my pets are hungry" would you assume I only meant the dogs?

mike2810 said:
Sorry you don't see that the article from the OP is about federal tax rates and what rich people pay (Romney).

It doesn't say that anywhere. I'm not sure where you got that idea from.

Dickieboy · Jan 19, 2012

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

teamosil said:
So your numbers show everybody paying federal taxes 3% to 5% higher. So, if we went with your numbers, the average American would be paying approx 31% instead of 27%, so Romney would be even further out of whack.

My guess would be that yours counts FICA as a tax and mine doesn't. That would give you about that much of a gap. But that's just a guess.

Actually yours does include FICA, not the 'payroll' in my previous post which was copy/pasted from your site. Pete also posted apples/oranges which possibly expains it somewhat. Your source is very lacking in the specifics on the calculations of income and such compared to the CBO data...but whatever. The data you provided is interesting.

Of course there is another option you have avoided. Why don't we reduce everyones rate to that of Romney's 15%? I mean from the articles I've read on the matter the consensus seems to be 'why do I pay more than he does'.

teamosil · Jan 19, 2012

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

Dickieboy said:
Of course there is another option you have avoided. Why don't we reduce everyones rate to that of Romney's 15%?

Because we're already running a $1.4 trillion/year deficit and have a $15 trillion debt. We can talk about doing something like that once we've paid down the debt and are running a surplus. But for now, we can't possibly afford that.

Neomalthusian · Jan 19, 2012

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

teamosil said:
Just because an employer pays for something doesn't mean they don't benefit from it.

They benefit from it to the degree they pay for it. JUST LIKE BUYING THINGS.

The median productivity of an American worker is $97k/year, but the median compensation is only $44k/year.

1) Are non-wage benefits included in this?
2) If an employee's productivity equalled the cost to compensate him, there'd be no incentive to hire.

If the employee were less educated, and less productive as a result, both the employer and the employee would make less off of his work.

Uh okay. So?

You've got nowhere to go with all this.

pbrauer · Jan 19, 2012

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

Dickieboy said:
Actually yours does include FICA, not the 'payroll' in my previous post which was copy/pasted from your site. Pete also posted apples/oranges which possibly expains it somewhat. Your source is very lacking in the specifics on the calculations of income and such compared to the CBO data...but whatever. The data you provided is interesting.

Of course there is another option you have avoided. Why don't we reduce everyones rate to that of Romney's 15%? I mean from the articles I've read on the matter the consensus seems to be 'why do I pay more than he does'.

Have you ever done your taxes, lol

Federal Tax Brackets

Your tax bracket is the rate you pay on the "last dollar" you earn; but as a percentage of your income, your tax rate is generally less than that. First, here are the tax rates and the income ranges where they apply:

Follow the following link to the calculator:

Tax Brackets (Federal Income Tax Rates) 2000 through 2011 and 2012

teamosil · Jan 19, 2012

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

Neomalthusian said:
1) Are non-wage benefits included in this?
2) If an employee's productivity equalled the cost to compensate him, there'd be no incentive to hire.

Uh okay. So?

You've got nowhere to go with all this.

I think you lost track of what we were discussing. My position was that the employer draws benefit from the educations of all their employees and that that benefit is not entirely cancelled out by the fact that they pay the employee a salary. They keep roughly 55% of the benefit of the education and give 45% of it to the employee on average. So, a working person gets 0.45 (45% of 1) educations worth of benefits, where an employer with 100 employees would get 55 (55% of 100) educations worth of benefit from it. So it makes sense that the employer would pay 122 (55 / 0.45) times as much for education. You follow?

Catawba · Jan 19, 2012

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

TurtleDude said:
stop lying. Mitt is an exception to the top one percent

As Mitt Romney has admitted, and as the fact checking organizations have confirmed, those that get most of their income from investments, like Romney, pay a lower effective tax rate because the tax rate on capital gains is 15%.

Neomalthusian · Jan 19, 2012

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

teamosil said:
I think you lost track of what we were discussing. My position was that the employer draws benefit from the educations of all their employees and that that benefit is not entirely cancelled out by the fact that they pay the employee a salary. They keep roughly 55% of the benefit of the education and give 45% of it to the employee on average.

Wage expense is not a business' only expense though. The employees have to be productive enough to cover their own wages and a whole bunch of other business expenses, otherwise the business shuts down. And I also asked you if your numbers account for non-wage benefits. 401(k) matching? Health insurance?

Rhapsody1447 · Jan 19, 2012

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

Catawba said:
As Mitt Romney has admitted, and as the fact checking organizations have confirmed, those that get most of their income from investments, like Romney, pay a lower effective tax rate because the tax rate on capital gains is 15%.

And where do you figure they get the capital for their investments?

Catawba · Jan 19, 2012

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

Rhapsody1447 said:
And where do you figure they get the capital for their investments?

From other investors most likely so they don't have to take any risk themselves, unlike me who used my own money to start my business.

teamosil · Jan 19, 2012

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

Neomalthusian said:
Wage expense is not a business' only expense though. And I also asked you if your numbers account for non-wage benefits. 401(k) matching? Health insurance?

Yeah, that's total compensation. Median wages are lower.

Neomalthusian said:
The employees have to be productive enough to cover their own wages and a whole bunch of other business expenses, otherwise the business shuts down.

Productivity figures aim to be AFTER expenses. So each employee is creating $97k in value for the employer. Some people argue that the expenses they count are too minimal, but their intent is to say how much value each employee adds after all expenses except their salary.

But, regardless, even if there are some additional expenses not counted, that doesn't change anything. An employer is still benefiting from being able to cover their expenses. A more educated employee is still more valuable to them than a less educated employee. Perhaps the education of their employees just makes them more profitable, perhaps it is that education that allows them to stay in business at all, but either way, they should be chipping in for the education system they're benefiting from.

Neomalthusian · Jan 19, 2012

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

teamosil said:
Productivity figures aim to be AFTER expenses. So each employee is creating $97k in value for the employer. Some people argue that the expenses they count are too minimal, but their intent is to say how much value each employee adds after all expenses except their salary.

But, regardless, even if there are some additional expenses not counted, that doesn't change anything.

Are you ****ing kidding me? It changes everything about what you're talking about. Your claim that the wealthier employers benefit from their employees as though it's some oppressive one-way street are dead in the water because you're imagining the balance sheets and income statements like they're just a few items long.

An employer is still benefiting from being able to cover their expenses.

And the employee is benefitting from having a job. He's trading his skills and knowledge and labor for money. It's a contract. You chipping in your judgments of those contracts from the sidelines is irrelevant, and it stinks of envy and entitlement.

A more educated employee is still more valuable to them than a less educated employee.

A more productive employee is more valuable to him than a less productive employee.

Let's say you think your labor is worth $97k to an employer, and I happily offer to do the same job for $44k. Why can't your employer hire me instead of you? If the employer does hire me instead of you, and I do the same job for $44k, then I am clearly the more valuable, regardless of education. That's what "value" is.

teamosil · Jan 19, 2012

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

Neomalthusian said:
Are you ****ing kidding me? It changes everything about what you're talking about. Your claim that the wealthier employers benefit from their employees as though it's some oppressive one-way street are dead in the water because you're imagining the balance sheets and income statements like they're just a few items long.

Whether it is "oppressive" or whatnot is a different conversation. I'm saying they benefit from the education financially. It seems like I've documented that clearly, no?

I think you're getting distracted by the numbers. Yeah, they do seem to indicate that employers are screwing employees over. But that isn't my argument here. That has nothing to do with my argument here. So arguing that it is fair or whatever doesn't counter my argument. My argument is just that they draw benefit from the educations of their employees. That's clearly true, since they're keeping or using 55% of the productivity of the employees, and education is a huge variable in productivity. You don't need to think that they're big meanies or whatever to see that.

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

teamosil

teamosil

Dickieboy

TNAR

Revolutionary

teamosil

Neomalthusian

teamosil

pbrauer

teamosil

Neomalthusian

teamosil

mike2810

teamosil

Dickieboy

teamosil

Neomalthusian

pbrauer

teamosil

Catawba

Disappointed Evolutionist

Neomalthusian

Rhapsody1447

Skeptical Optimist

Catawba

Disappointed Evolutionist

teamosil

Neomalthusian

teamosil