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Top 3% of U.S. Taxpayers Paid Majority of Income Taxes in 2016

code1211 said:
You seem to be in touch with this.

When I was young, I seem to recall that I could not get a paycheck kind of a job until I was 16. At that time, I started working at a hamburger stand and still have my first pay stub.

I grossed less than $40.00 on a 40 hour work week. I WAS RICH!

Anyway, are there current laws that prohibit 16 year olds from taking these jobs? I've heard that employment of minors is tough currently and wondered why.
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In my state the minimum age is 16. Kids 14 & 15 can get an exemption. The employer has to make them an offer letter spelling out the terms, then the parents and school have to sign-off on it.
 
Nap said:
I think for scientists and doctors we should be actively recruiting people to immigrate. If someone has a medical degree or an elite scientist the US should be contacting them and offer automatic citizenship for them and their family.

Actually, we disagree on social safety net. I was saying we need to limit immigration due to it in order to make sure we only allow in those with skills that ensure they would pay into the system rather than be a drain on it.
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Actually, I'm with you on bringing in exceptional people. But it would have to be those that are relatively special and the best in their fields.
 
Renae said:
https://www.bloombergquint.com/glob...xpayers-paid-majority-of-income-taxes-in-2016

And people wonder why a tax cut affects rich people more...
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Income taxes are only 1/2 of federal taxes and 1/3 of all taxes. So you really should have found the statistic for all taxes, not just 1/3 of them. Also you need to compare the percent of taxes they are paying to the percent. For example, if we find that the top 3% pay 40% of all taxes, that sounds shocking, but if they earn 35% of all income, then that is mostly a flat tax, and not shocking at all. Even better show the percent of their income they pay in taxes compared to everyone else, instead of the percent of all taxes.
 
Chomsky said:
Actually, I'm with you on bringing in exceptional people. But it would have to be those that are relatively special and the best in their fields.
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In regards to the medical field, we need anyone we can get in order to lower costs.
 
Renae said:
No, most Americans, a majority pay little to nothing in taxes. It's far easier to appeal to people to raise taxes if they aren't affected, it is far easier to say "Vote for me, I'll make sure those RICH people lose some wealth and I'll make sure you get some of it" than it is to say "Vote for me I'll raise your taxes".

It's politics 101, when most of the people aren't affected in the pocket book you can get their votes.

Imagine if every tax raise or tax cut affected everyone equally... you might just see the budget more soundly handled. But when 50% of the nations taxes come from so few...
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But this is a talking point that isn't true and has long become just a myth. Apparently, it is true that more than 44% of Americans pay no federal income tax. But this is just a thread of the tax blanket...

Approximately 76.4 million or 44.4% of Americans won’t pay any federal income tax in 2018, up from 72.6 million people or 43.2% in 2016 before President Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, according to data released Thursday by the Tax Policy Center, a nonprofit joint venture by the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, which are both Washington, D.C.-based think tanks. That’s below the 50% peak during the Great Recession. They still obviously pay sales tax, property taxes and other taxes.

“The large percentage of people who don’t owe federal income tax is a feature, not a bug, of the revenue code,” according to the Tax Policy Center. “By design, the federal income tax always has excluded a significant fraction of households through a combination of personal exemptions, the standard deduction, zero bracket amounts, and more recently, tax credits.”

...many people who work and who don’t owe any federal income taxes still give money to Uncle Sam, because money comes out of their paychecks for Social Security and Medicare, he said.

“Many low- and below-average-income families pay more in payroll taxes every year than they pay in federal income taxes...”

On the other hand, payroll taxes are mildly regressive, Burtless said. “Individual earners do not pay any additional Social Security payroll taxes on earnings above $127,200 per year (in 2018),” he said. “The implication is that federal taxes overall are progressive, but they are far less progressive than the federal individual income tax system viewed all by itself.”

“The tax reform passed in December 2017 will no doubt affect the number of people and families who pay no federal individual income taxes and who pay no net federal income and payroll taxes,” Burtless added. The Tax Policy Center estimates that roughly one-third of workers who pay no federal individual income taxes receive a net refundable credits that covers their payroll taxes, including their employer’s share.

“About 60% of those who pay no income tax will work and owe payroll taxes,” according to Roberton Williams, an associate at the Tax Policy Center. “Most of the other 40% are retirees whose income is too low to owe income tax ...Refundable credits make it possible for some low-income households with workers to avoid paying income and payroll taxes. Even so, nearly three-quarters of Americans will end up paying at least one of those taxes this year.”
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Look: Given how the wealthy own Washington D.C. and governments across the nation as Democrats and Republicans scramble about looking for donations to keep their jobs and thus then owing favor to their benefactor's economic designs, it makes no sense to declare that Democrats just want to steal the money from the wealthy, given that they too receive money from the wealthy to launch their campaigns. This is the conflict within the talking point (or myth).

This is not politics 101. This is talking point 101, pushed by the wealthy to create a mood of "class warfare," of which they need bottom defenders, and in which doesn't really exist. There is no capitalism vs. communism at play in the U.S. Just about everybody pays taxes and just about everybody complains about it. And there is no way around the fiasco of introducing a massive tax-cut Bill in late 2017 (in which much of the wealthy was insulated with permanent cuts), along side a massive increase in government spending in early 2018! The everyday American is going to have face this eventually.
 
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Chomsky said:
In my state the minimum age is 16. Kids 14 & 15 can get an exemption. The employer has to make them an offer letter spelling out the terms, then the parents and school have to sign-off on it.
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That sounds about the same, then.

I feel bad for kids that need to work under that age of 16. 16 seems like a good time to start figuring things out.

Before that, the world should be a place of hopes and dreams. In their 20's, a time of plans and schemes. In between, a combination.
 
code1211 said:
That sounds about the same, then.

I feel bad for kids that need to work under that age of 16. 16 seems like a good time to start figuring things out.

Before that, the world should be a place of hopes and dreams. In their 20's, a time of plans and schemes. In between, a combination.
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i started working in my fathers construction company the summer of the 7th grade. didn't hurt me any. i wasn't one of the kids in high school asking their parents for money to take their girlfriend out for dinner and a movie. i bought my own car. i learned a lot about real life during those years.
 
rickc said:
i started working in my fathers construction company the summer of the 7th grade. didn't hurt me any. i wasn't one of the kids in high school asking their parents for money to take their girlfriend out for dinner and a movie. i bought my own car. i learned a lot about real life during those years.
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I had a paper route at age 11.5. I had the same enjoyment of an "independent" income stream. Didn't get my own car until my senior year in high school, though. A ridiculous wreck, but it moved forward and back.

The lawn mowing at home and other chores were just an unpaid expectation. Kind of a justification to continue getting room and board.

I visited the childhood home a year or two ago. That hill that I used to push the lawn mower up is hardly noticeable now. Back then it seem like Everest. :)
 
code1211 said:
I had a paper route at age 11.5. I had the same enjoyment of an "independent" income stream. Didn't get my own car until my senior year in high school, though. A ridiculous wreck, but it moved forward and back.

The lawn mowing at home and other chores were just an unpaid expectation. Kind of a justification to continue getting room and board.

I visited the childhood home a year or two ago. That hill that I used to push the lawn mower up is hardly noticeable now. Back then it seem like Everest. :)
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I also got my first paper route at 11 years of age. I bought my first motorcycle at 16 but did not get my first car until I was 20. It was also an old clunker but it got me around.
 
marke said:
I also got my first paper route at 11 years of age. I bought my first motorcycle at 16 but did not get my first car until I was 20. It was also an old clunker but it got me around.
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It was a different world back then.

Can you imagine sending an 11 year old out into the darkness and cold at a predictable time to a predictable place every morning in today's world of perversions and sicko's?

Back then, today's brand of social acceptance of unfamiliar behavior was displaced by widely shared and accepted social norms and shared morality.

As the song says, "Something's lost and somethings gained in living every day". "Ah, Bartleby. Ah Humanity."
 
code1211 said:
It was a different world back then.

Can you imagine sending an 11 year old out into the darkness and cold at a predictable time to a predictable place every morning in today's world of perversions and sicko's?

Back then, today's brand of social acceptance of unfamiliar behavior was displaced by widely shared and accepted social norms and shared morality.

As the song says, "Something's lost and somethings gained in living every day". "Ah, Bartleby. Ah Humanity."
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As a young college student I was confronted more than once in unlit areas on campus at night by homosexuals seeking to seduce. I was never physically assaulted, however, which may have been because I did not look like an easy target for forceful physical assault.
 
marke said:
As a young college student I was confronted more than once in unlit areas on campus at night by homosexuals seeking to seduce. I was never physically assaulted, however, which may have been because I did not look like an easy target for forceful physical assault.
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hell i am 63 years old and grew up in south georgia. never have i had an experience like that. don't really believe there were any such people around. if so i sure didn't know of it. probably some around Atlanta back then maybe.
 
marke said:
As a young college student I was confronted more than once in unlit areas on campus at night by homosexuals seeking to seduce. I was never physically assaulted, however, which may have been because I did not look like an easy target for forceful physical assault.
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I may be older than you. I was in college in the 70's. If there were complaints of unwanted advances in my life, they were far outweighed by those I initiated in the company of young ladies.

My attempts were so clumsy and so ineffective that a friend noted that I could strike out in a whore house. Astonishing! How could anyone not love all this? ;)

Anyway, a different set of guidelines for personal behavior were in force. At least for me...

I had various friends who were gay in college. Both male and female. We all accepted the orientations of the others. Takes a lot of threads to make a tapestry.
 
code1211 said:
That sounds about the same, then.

I feel bad for kids that need to work under that age of 16. 16 seems like a good time to start figuring things out.

Before that, the world should be a place of hopes and dreams. In their 20's, a time of plans and schemes. In between, a combination.
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If they raise the minimum wage to $15, they are likely the ones that will get hurt the most. Anyone below the age of 20-21 will have a hard time finding any employment.
 
chuckiechan said:
It could have something to do with America being the only country that I know of that imports poverty, thereby creating cheap labor that tends to strangle upward wage pressure. The only people who benefit from cheap labor are those who hire them:
.
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There is not a modern developed nation on earth that doesn't have a problem with illegal immigration.
 
Renae said:
And people wonder why a tax cut affects rich people more...
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Ummm... No nobody wonders why they affect rich people more. That is the problem. When 1% of the country is owned by around 60% of the wealth they're the only people that can realistically afford taxes. Fix income inequality and you'll see saxes being spread around more.
 
Chomsky said:
I'm no fan of trump's tariffs, but agree with you here in that we should not be importing cheap labor to compete with American workers. And not trying to make this partisan, but Trump benefits from the cheap labor he employs. He increased the number of H2Bs recently, helping himself in the process. This is a conflict.
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It's no more conflict than Carter lowering the national speed limit to 55.

Fact is Trump and Carter are still citizens. Anything the President does affects all citizens.
 
iliveonramen said:
Federal income taxes is just one slice of the pie. I'm sure billionaires appreciate people like you though pushing the idea they are overtaxed.
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Republicans are extremely proficient at pushing their message. They're so good that they convince poor/middle class white people that wealthy peoples taxes are too high amid other things.
 
rickc said:
hell i am 63 years old and grew up in south georgia. never have i had an experience like that. don't really believe there were any such people around. if so i sure didn't know of it. probably some around Atlanta back then maybe.
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I was confronted by prowling homosexuals multiple times in downtown Austin, Texas at night in the early 1970s. I was also confronted several times by homosexuals looking for 'action', also at night, in Fayetteville, NC in the mid 1970s. I was solicited for sex, but never touched. I rejected the homosexual advances every time, but did not touch them either.
 
code1211 said:
I may be older than you. I was in college in the 70's. If there were complaints of unwanted advances in my life, they were far outweighed by those I initiated in the company of young ladies.

My attempts were so clumsy and so ineffective that a friend noted that I could strike out in a whore house. Astonishing! How could anyone not love all this? ;)

Anyway, a different set of guidelines for personal behavior were in force. At least for me...

I had various friends who were gay in college. Both male and female. We all accepted the orientations of the others. Takes a lot of threads to make a tapestry.
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I oppose sodomy purely on the basis of Biblical condemnation of the sexual immorality.
 
Deuce said:
People who make utterly obscene amounts of money also pay a lot of taxes in absolute dollars. News at 11.
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No amount of money honestly earned is "obscene".
 
MTAtech said:
That article is obsolete because Trump and the GOP substantially lowered income taxes on that group in 2017.
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Actually, he lower it on anybody who actually PAYS income tax (and boosted EITC for those that don't) and as expected CBO reported earlier this month that revenues from personal income tax was up 4%.
 
MTAtech said:
From the Balance:
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Well duh, pretty hard to lower the rate for people who pay 0% to begin with.

ETA: The Balance is one of the most ironically named sites on the internet.
 
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