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Taxes reach historic low

Well look what I found. In that bastion of socialism no less, SoCal. :2wave:


<While Republican lawmakers appear unified against tax increases and many Tea Party activists want existing rates rolled back, statistics consistently show that federal taxes are at a historic low.>


<For the past two years, a family of four earning the median income has paid less in federal income taxes than at any time since at least 1955, according to the Tax Policy Center. All federal, state and local taxes combined are a lower percentage of per-capita income than at any time since the 1960s, according to the Tax Foundation. The highest income-tax bracket is its lowest since 1992. At 35 percent, it's well below the 50 percent mark of much of the 1980s and the 70 percent bracket of the 1970s.>

Taxes reach historic low - News - The Orange County Register

I suppose you want us to give Democrats credit for low taxes?
 
Or just challenge the narrative that taxes have been too high under Obama, or that people have been "Taxed Enough Already."


Mornin' SB. Your post here leads to the obvious question, how much of MY money should the government take?

Secondly, the source in the OP seems questionable. At least Krugman thinks so.....But then again I think Krugman is questionable.....so Eh? who knows?

Look, the bottom line is that we have as reported repeatedly today, that upwards of 47% of Americans won't pay ANY TAXES this year. While the top earners pay a lion share of the burden in this country. Now you can sit there and believe that the wealthy got to where they are because they fell ass backwards into a pile of cash, or won 'life's lottery' or something, but I think that honestly you know that isn't true. And to hear all of this talk like the money we make is somehow allowed to us on how much we keep? That is arse backwards, don't you think?


j-mac
 
Mornin' SB. Your post here leads to the obvious question, how much of MY money should the government take?

Secondly, the source in the OP seems questionable. At least Krugman thinks so.....But then again I think Krugman is questionable.....so Eh? who knows?

Look, the bottom line is that we have as reported repeatedly today, that upwards of 47% of Americans won't pay ANY TAXES this year. While the top earners pay a lion share of the burden in this country. Now you can sit there and believe that the wealthy got to where they are because they fell ass backwards into a pile of cash, or won 'life's lottery' or something, but I think that honestly you know that isn't true. And to hear all of this talk like the money we make is somehow allowed to us on how much we keep? That is arse backwards, don't you think?


j-mac

J-mac, I understand where you're coming from and the points you've laid out here are probably suited for a separate discussion.

It's clear to me, however, at least at the federal level, that tax rates on personal income have remained relatively low (compared to the past) for all income brackets. That's the point the OP was trying to make.
 
Revenue will increase by $4 trillion over 10 years if the Bush tax cuts are ended? Where do you get that number?

Obama plan is a terrible plan. He wants to increase spending, not cut spending. Not sure where you get the $7-10 trillion number either. Obama doesn’t have a real budget yet and he hasn’t said what his numbers are when he says we need to “invest” (code for spend) in everything under the sun.

Do some reading. Everything I have read says that the cost of he bush tax cuts are about 300 billion a year, so 10 years plus growth of the eonomy gets to approximately the $4 trillion I used. You may not recall, as it was about a month ago, but the president did in fact unveil his 10 year plan. His folks said it would increase debt over those 10 years by about 10-11 trillion, while the CBO scored it at $13 trillion.

Note: the number I used for the bush tax cuts assumes two things. First we are talking about all of the cuts, not just the 25% of the cuts that Obama focuses on. The other thing is that you have to believe as some do and some do not that you actually collect are of the theorectical dollars calculated. Does not take into account any adverse to the economy, nor other tax avoidance measures people would take.

Hope this helps.
 
J-mac, I understand where you're coming from and the points you've laid out here are probably suited for a separate discussion.

It's clear to me, however, at least at the federal level, that tax rates on personal income have remained relatively low (compared to the past) for all income brackets. That's the point the OP was trying to make.

If the point is that simple and small, why have a thread?
 
Let's say you're an employer. You're considering whether to hire another person. Do you ask yourself:

A) Do I have cash lying around with which I can hire another person?

or

B) Does market demand justify another hire at this time?

Conservatives often seem under the impression that "the job creators" are working in a vacuum and will just hire people out of the goodness of their heart if only taxes were lower so they had the money to do so. If my widget makers can currently produce 1000 widgets per month and right now I'm only selling 800 widgets per month, does how much money I have even really factor into the hiring decision? On the other hand, if I'm currently selling out all 1000 of those widgets and believe I can sell 1200 per month, I'm going to hire some more widget makers pretty much regardless of the corporate tax rate or my personal income tax rate because either I expect to turn a profit on those new employees.

Supply side economics that ignores the demand side of the equation is just laughable.
 
Interesting, but then again it's better than them paying excessive taxes at corporate levels and leaving the country, which seems to be the popular trend now a days.
 
Do some reading. Everything I have read says that the cost of he bush tax cuts are about 300 billion a year, so 10 years plus growth of the eonomy gets to approximately the $4 trillion I used. You may not recall, as it was about a month ago, but the president did in fact unveil his 10 year plan. His folks said it would increase debt over those 10 years by about 10-11 trillion, while the CBO scored it at $13 trillion.

Note: the number I used for the bush tax cuts assumes two things. First we are talking about all of the cuts, not just the 25% of the cuts that Obama focuses on. The other thing is that you have to believe as some do and some do not that you actually collect are of the theorectical dollars calculated. Does not take into account any adverse to the economy, nor other tax avoidance measures people would take.

Hope this helps.

That is actually a much more honest answer than I am used to getting around here. You obviously understand that interpreting/projecting the revenue results from tax increases/cuts isn’t a true science and can’t be deterministically quantified due the inordinate number of other variables involved in the economy.

I was about to hammer you if you hadn’t included all the tax cuts and instead played the kind of partisan politics that seem to permeate this forum but I must stand down and respect your opinion.

I still think 300 billion a year is a bit high considering the dot com recession and the effects of 911 but I’m not an economic expert so I’ll leave it there.
 
Perhaps he was referring to this article.

<The Government Accountability Office said 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005.>

Study Says Most Corporations Pay No U.S. Income*Taxes - Home - Staple News

I would have to see the numbers behind the study but the article clearly points out that this was due to operating losses, tax credits and shifting assets overseas so it isn’t even close to the claim that 2/3 of corporations don’t pay their taxes. Some of those corporations might have gone out of business or done no business in the US in that time frame, the article doesn’t say.

If you add up all of the corps that did business in the 7 year period the article points to, divide them by 7 (years) you will get a number. If you then add up the number of them that didn’t pay taxes in a single year for any reason during that time span, you will get another number. If you divide the number of corps that didn’t pay taxes for a year in that span by the total number of corps who did business in the US over that 7 year span, you will get a percentage but the percentage is worthless unless you know why they didn’t pay taxes for one out of the seven years isn’t it?
 
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I would have to see the numbers behind the study but the article clearly points out that this was due to operating losses, tax credits and shifting assets overseas so it isn’t even close to the claim that 2/3 of corporations don’t pay their taxes. Some of those corporations might have gone out of business or done no business in the US in that time frame, the article doesn’t say.

If you add up all of the corps that did business in the 7 year period the article points to, divide them by 7 (years) you will get a number. If you then add up the number of them that didn’t pay taxes in a single year for any reason during that time span, you will get another number. If you divide the number of corps that didn’t pay taxes for a year in that span by the total number of corps who did business in the US over that 7 year span, you will get a percentage but the percentage is worthless unless you know why they didn’t pay taxes for one out of the seven years isn’t it?

BTW, I think we need to simplify the tax code in the most extreme way. I would like to see something more along the lines of a straight percentage of profits/income without any deductions but at a lower tax rate. I think corporations and rich people need to pay more taxes, plain and simple.
 
BTW, I think we need to simplify the tax code in the most extreme way. I would like to see something more along the lines of a straight percentage of profits/income without any deductions but at a lower tax rate. I think corporations and rich people need to pay more taxes, plain and simple.


Before we hammer the well off, and our few remaining corporations for more of their own earned monies, do you think it too far off that the 47% that pay nothing should kick in?

j-mac
 
Before we hammer the well off, and our few remaining corporations for more of their own earned monies, do you think it too far off that the 47% that pay nothing should kick in?

j-mac

By all means, please tell me how much someone making 12g's a year should pay the federal gov't for their irresponsible spending sprees.
 
By all means, please tell me how much someone making 12g's a year should pay the federal gov't for their irresponsible spending sprees.

5%, 10%, I don't know, you tell me? Something though don't you think?

j-mac
 
5%, 10%, I don't know, you tell me? Something though don't you think?

j-mac


Lets put it this way, what % of their income would you consider a fair amount of taxation?
 
Lets put it this way, what % of their income would you consider a fair amount of taxation?

If you ask me I think that every person in this country that earns a paycheck should have to kick in 10%. And Corporations that do business here, 15%. Along with that do away with ALL, and I do mean ALL deductions. There, tax code simple. Hell, one page even....

j-mac
 
If you ask me I think that every person in this country that earns a paycheck should have to kick in 10%. And Corporations that do business here, 15%. Along with that do away with ALL, and I do mean ALL deductions. There, tax code simple. Hell, one page even....

j-mac

The "poor" don't pay taxes, our owners pay taxes, we pay rent to our owners. :roll:
 
Before we hammer the well off, and our few remaining corporations for more of their own earned monies, do you think it too far off that the 47% that pay nothing should kick in?

j-mac

I wouldn’t say “before” we hammer the well off because we need to make major changes in a big hurry. When we make the kinds of cuts in government spending that I see as part of the necessary actions we must take, we will see more Americans who are capable of doing work who will go find a job out of necessity, thereby increasing the number of people who are working and increasing the incoming tax revenue from that segment but it will take a bit longer to see results from those actions for obvious reasons.

Low/zero income Americans won’t do the kind of work illegal aliens will do even for minimum wage because it’s much easier to let the government take care of them. This must be changed. There is no reason we should allow lazy Americans who can but don’t work to draw government benefits and when they are force to choose between starving on the streets and getting any kind of job they can possibly get, they will go get a job.
 
At last something we can semi agree upon.

It is unconscionable that huge corporations aren’t paying any taxes. This has to change.
another faith based belief
 
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