teamosil
DP Veteran
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- Oct 17, 2009
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State taxes are a completely separate entity. They shouldn't be counted with federal because they have a separate use, collection system, and entirely different government running them. Are you expecting the federal government to balance out all state taxes? If so, we are in for some much larger control here.
You can't really meaningfully look at tax burdens without looking at state taxes. It artificially skews it to make it seem like rich people pay more taxes. Federal taxes hit you harder the more you make, state taxes hit you less hard the more you make. So just looking at federal gives you a highly distorted picture.
Romney's state taxes weren't included. He could pay anywhere from 0 to up to 10% in state taxes. I'd be interested to find out, but I don't really consider it relevant to federal tax discussions.
Yeah, that's true that we don't know his state taxes. Odds are though that he paid less than 1%. All the regressive ones would disappear in his bracket. Massachusetts has a capital gains tax rate of 5%, but New Hampshire has 0%, so he probably filed for New Hampshire.