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Is This Statement True Of Federal Income Taxes?

Is This Statement True Of Federal Income Taxes?

  • Total voters
    28
Taxes are a necessary evil. Taxation is legalized theft. The fairest tax is no tax at all. The second fairest tax is when everyone pays the same amount, not the same %, the same amount. Of course a fair tax is unworkable, so we have to do what's unfair. It's fairness vs. necessity. I support the extremely progressive tax code that the US has, but it's silly to pretend that it's fair.
 
mpg said:
I think you voted wrong. Your first sentence is the opposite of the rest of your post. Reread the question carefully.
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I did read the question.The first part of my post does not contradict the rest.The fact is someone who makes a million dollars will pay more money in taxes than someone who makes $50,000, it doesn't matter if that person who is making a million dollars is paying %40 or %1 of their income in taxes.You have to look at the percentage rates.The poll question does not bring that into account.
 
pbrauer said:
"If the top 10% already pay 70% of all federal income taxes then there can be no claim that they do not pay at least their fair share"

Is the above statement True or False?
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Impossible to answer without a valid or, at least, reasonable definition of "fair share", so I didn't answer your poll.
 
jamesrage said:
I did read the question.The first part of my post does not contradict the rest.The fact is someone who makes a million dollars will pay more money in taxes than someone who makes $50,000, it doesn't matter if that person who is making a million dollars is paying %40 or %1 of their income in taxes.You have to look at the percentage rates.The poll question does not bring that into account.
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The pool also doesn't bring into account what different people have as deductions. Some of the "rich" will have so many write-offs, they pay 12% or less of their income. Others may have few write-off and pay 30% or more of their income.
 
Mycroft said:
Impossible to answer without a valid or, at least, reasonable definition of "fair share", so I didn't answer your poll.
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Yep. I didn't answer either.
 
What is or is not fair is irrelevant. It isn't fair that famous people have more "voice" than non, by virtue of their fame alone. It isn't fair that some people will never have to do an honest days labour in their entire lives, by luck of birth. It isn't fair that some are born with better mental or physical facilities than others. Hell, for you Christians, it isn't fair that Jesus had to be tortured then died just so the rest of you can achieve salvation.


But what can we do? Famous people have more voice because everyone is more interested in what they have to say than most of the rest of us. Can't bar famous people from politics any more than you can bar idiots from voting. You can't kill wealthy people, or prevent them the right of inheritance...and you certainly can't force all children to develop the same way.

Rich people pay more because non rich people can't afford to. That's the bottom line.
 
pbrauer said:
"If the top 10% already pay 70% of all federal income taxes then there can be no claim that they do not pay at least their fair share"

Is the above statement True or False?
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Very few people understand that practical trumps fair and if it doesn't then you have a dysfunctional organization.

I voted true. If 10% of the people pay 70% of the income tax then they are doing more than their fair share. In this case, fair doesn't pay the bills.
 
Excon said:
Totally irrelevant.
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As is your comment here, due to the fact that the rest of my post points out the fact that the "75% of all wealth" bit is irrelevant in regards to the weighing of "fairness" when it comes to the income tax.
 
Crossroads said:
As is your comment here, due to the fact that the rest of my post points out the fact that the "75% of all wealth" bit is irrelevant in regards to the weighing of "fairness" when it comes to the income tax.
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No! It is irrelevant because the taxes have already been paid on it, as it is wealth.

There are only three things that would be fair. On earnings, everybody pays the same amount as a citizen, or everybody pays the same percentage.
Or everybody pays only for that which the consume.
 
jamesrage said:
I did read the question.The first part of my post does not contradict the rest.The fact is someone who makes a million dollars will pay more money in taxes than someone who makes $50,000, it doesn't matter if that person who is making a million dollars is paying %40 or %1 of their income in taxes.You have to look at the percentage rates.The poll question does not bring that into account.
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So you think there CAN be a claim that they do not pay at least their fair share?
 
pbrauer said:
"If the top 10% already pay 70% of all federal income taxes then there can be no claim that they do not pay at least their fair share"

Is the above statement True or False?
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fair is a loaded term

my definition of fair is a group of 10% should pay 10% of the FIT

another definition is that if the top 10% makes say 50% of the income they should pay 50% of the income tax

only if the top 10% make 70% of the income would such a tax scenario be fair

since the top 10% pay more than ten percent and more than their share of the income, then using the two most objective standards, the top 10% of taxed too much and thus treated unfairly
 
KevinKohler said:
What is or is not fair is irrelevant. It isn't fair that famous people have more "voice" than non, by virtue of their fame alone. It isn't fair that some people will never have to do an honest days labour in their entire lives, by luck of birth. It isn't fair that some are born with better mental or physical facilities than others. Hell, for you Christians, it isn't fair that Jesus had to be tortured then died just so the rest of you can achieve salvation.


But what can we do? Famous people have more voice because everyone is more interested in what they have to say than most of the rest of us. Can't bar famous people from politics any more than you can bar idiots from voting. You can't kill wealthy people, or prevent them the right of inheritance...and you certainly can't force all children to develop the same way.

Rich people pay more because non rich people can't afford to. That's the bottom line.
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rich people pay more than their fair share because they are outvoted by non rich people. the progressive tax scheme is a scheme politicians love-you can give a winning majority of voters stuff they want while making a minority of voters pay for most of it

if voters got one vote for every 100 or 1000 dollars of FIT paid, the progressive tax scheme would be far less likely to exist
 
TurtleDude said:
rich people pay more than their fair share because they are outvoted by non rich people. the progressive tax scheme is a scheme politicians love-you can give a winning majority of voters stuff they want while making a minority of voters pay for most of it

if voters got one vote for every 100 or 1000 dollars of FIT paid, the progressive tax scheme would be far less likely to exist
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It seems time to consider how much money is being wasted through mismanagement and corruption rather then how much people are contributing to an already broken system.
 
I'm curious. Why is it "just" to take from the successful and redistribute to failures?


Crossroads said:
If you consider the fact they own 75 percent of all "wealth" in the country, then no, the statement might not hold. But since this is about "income", of which they constitute about 48 percent of, then yes, the statement could be considered true.

I still voted "no" however. There are plenty of other factors to consider. There is a reason we have a "progressive" tax system, it helps compensate for the inherent inequalities in a system such as ours. Yes, that would be the "redistribute the wealth" thing.
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pbrauer said:
"If the top 10% already pay 70% of all federal income taxes then there can be no claim that they do not pay at least their fair share"

Is the above statement True or False?
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It is false because the statement does not show what share of income that top 10% gets. What's more, it does not show how much in the way of taxes that each of those in the top 10% use - both personally and by extension - as compared to how much the bottom 90% uses. For instance, someone in the bottom half depends upon his education to get a job, and upon the roads in order to get to work...but someone in the top 10% depends upon the education provided to his or her workforce in order to operate his or her business, and often depends upon a whole network of roads in order for his or her business to be able to function.

So...no, no sympathy for the rich here.
 
pbrauer said:
"If the top 10% already pay 70% of all federal income taxes then there can be no claim that they do not pay at least their fair share"

Is the above statement True or False?
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The top quintile (because I can't find statistics for the top 10%) earned 52.5% of the country's total income in 2012, and paid 68.3% of the country's total federal taxes. The top quintile also holds 88.9% of the country's total net worth, and 95.6% of the country's financial wealth (not including the value of people's homes).

So I would say that the wealthy are paying a little more than their fair share, but not as much more as some people make it out to be.
 
CalGun said:
I'm curious. Why is it "just" to take from the successful and redistribute to failures?
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Well, first off, you're a dick.

Second, even if every single American worked literally as hard as they could, THERE WOULD STILL BE PEOPLE WHO WOULD BE FAIRLY POOR, EVEN BY TODAY'S STANDARDS. That is because, inevitably, not everyone can "Get the promotion". The further up you go, the fewer positions there are. Not everyone can be rich, obviously, and not everyone can even be "middle class", EVEN IF the so called "failures" did everything the "right way". It is just inherent in the system itself. Now, obviously, very poor people often don't exercise the highest degree of logic when it comes to pulling themselves out of poverty, but there are most often a wide number of factors that help keep them poor, even things as simple as they way they are brought up and raised (or not raised) by their parents.

To help correct for this automatic imbalance, a system should exist with a mechanism to account for that inherent inequality, as even if everyone worked equally hard, some would STILL be poor. So yes, throw them (at the very least) a freakin bone, or two.
 
molten_dragon said:
The top quintile (because I can't find statistics for the top 10%) earned 52.5% of the country's total income in 2012, and paid 68.3% of the country's total federal taxes. The top quintile also holds 88.9% of the country's total net worth, and 95.6% of the country's financial wealth (not including the value of people's homes).

So I would say that the wealthy are paying a little more than their fair share, but not as much more as some people make it out to be.
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But we are talking about income tax, so you should be comparing how much they pay in income tax with how much of nationally earned income they constitute.

Financial wealth is often taxed in other ways aside from the income tax anyway.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
It is false because the statement does not show what share of income that top 10% gets. What's more, it does not show how much in the way of taxes that each of those in the top 10% use - both personally and by extension - as compared to how much the bottom 90% uses. For instance, someone in the bottom half depends upon his education to get a job, and upon the roads in order to get to work...but someone in the top 10% depends upon the education provided to his or her workforce in order to operate his or her business, and often depends upon a whole network of roads in order for his or her business to be able to function.

So...no, no sympathy for the rich here.
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the share of the income the top 10% gets is easy to find and is not 70% so your position is silly. So is your claim about what the "rich" use. Of course you don't have sympathy for the rich. Most of the rants about the rich are based on envy:mrgreen:
 
pbrauer said:
"If the top 10% already pay 70% of all federal income taxes then there can be no claim that they do not pay at least their fair share"

Is the above statement True or False?
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Neither. "Fair Share" is a poor and arbitrary notion that shouldn't factor into income tax levels. "Fairness" is not a good measurement for law as it's a completely subjective notion that has no definitive answer. Additionally, to often action that could be viewed as "unfair" can be attempted to "recitfy" something entirely seperate that they deem to also be "unfair".

IE...it's "unfair" that certain people have so much money, so we'll "unfairly" take a substantially amount away from them.

Fairness isn't the basis for which our tax code should be decided.
 
ocean515 said:
I think lots of people will claim the top 10% don't pay their fair share. I'm going to go out on a limb and surmise that's where you're headed here with the quote from Jack.
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You mean their fair share of the overspending and waste of the federal government? I mean that's what we're talking about here. Why do you never see anyone on the Left talking about the spending side of the budget?
 
TurtleDude said:
the share of the income the top 10% gets is easy to find and is not 70% so your position is silly. So is your claim about what the "rich" use. Of course you don't have sympathy for the rich. Most of the rants about the rich are based on envy:mrgreen:
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Look at the question, guy - if a question does not include all the pertinent information, then you really need to learn how to make sure that all the pertinent information is included before you answer it - otherwise your answer is based upon assumption.

And if you'd taken care to read the REST of my answer, then you would have seen how my answer would have applied to America in any case even when the top 10% is paying 70% of the taxes. And FYI, my answer's not based on envy at all - if you understood my life in the least, you'd know that. You really need to learn to stop making assumptions about what other people must be like, when all you're doing is basing your assumptions on the fact that they don't agree with you politically or socially.
 
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