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Do you have a higher effective tax rate than mitt romney

Do you have a higher effective tax rate than mitt romney?

  • Yes

    Votes: 21 53.8%
  • No

    Votes: 18 46.2%

  • Total voters
    39
I don't know for certain, I'll try your link tomorrow...but I don't pay income tax at all and I get a hefty return every year, so I have confidence I'm paying less than 13%.

In either case, I don't care about politicians doing shady things like hiding money...they're politicians, this is what they do. Obama isn't exactly blameless himself. I know that when I begin building wealth I'll be looking for ways to keep it away from Uncle Sam, too.
What's your secret, I want to pay my fair share too. :mrgreen:
 
Question Conservatives... YOU BE THE TAX CODE in the following...

If there is a single mom with say, 3 kids. She lives in an apartment. She has a sister who lives with her...barters her room and board by taking care of the kids. Her annual income is $28,000. What percent of Federal Income Tax should she be MANDATED to have withheld deducted from her payroll pay? And of that amount, how much should she not be able to retrieve from any taxes she's paid through payroll deductions ...which she'll file at tax time?
 
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Question Conservatives... YOU BE THE TAX CODE in the following...

If there is a single mom with say, 3 kids. She lives in an apartment. She has a sister who lives with her...barters her room and board by taking care of the kids. Her annual income is $28,000. What percent of Federal Income Tax should she be MANDATED to have withheld deducted from her payroll pay? And of that amount, how much should she not be able to retrieve from any taxes she's paid through payroll deductions ...which she'll file at tax time?

Currently, with no itemized deductions, she pays -$3,630 dollars annually in FIT. This includes the sister that she pays for more than half of expenses on as a dependent. If you don't include the sister, it's still negative.

I didn't, nor do I think anyone else did in this thread, suggest she needs to start shelling out more FIT. I think the focus was on whether her negative percentage was higher than Mitt Romney's 13.9% positive amount.

If you are referring to her state and FICA, I'd love to take that discussion up on the thread I started at http://www.debatepolitics.com/general-political-discussion/117696-fit-sit-and-fica.html.
 
The minimum amount of income when filing married jointly (as one has to assume Romney does) is $112,600.00.

I'm getting an 18% effective tax rate with that salary. In order to pay an effective tax rate for a married couple filing jointly at around 14% is closer to 70k a year. That puts the effective rate at around 13.93% which is about what Romney pays. Of course with no deductions.
 
I'm getting an 18% effective tax rate with that salary. In order to pay an effective tax rate for a married couple filing jointly at around 14% is closer to 70k a year. That puts the effective rate at around 13.93% which is about what Romney pays. Of course with no deductions.

Do you have it set to HOH or married, filing jointly?

The fact that I have to ask that is evidence of a problem here.

I get your numbers if I put HOH, but my numbers if I put married.
 
Do you have it set to HOH or married, filing jointly?

The fact that I have to ask that is evidence of a problem here.

I get your numbers if I put HOH, but my numbers if I put married.

Well..I'm looking at married filing jointly.

17,000 taxed at 10%=1700
52,000 taxed at 15%=7800
1,000 taxed at 25%=250

Total tax bill= 9750
9750/70000=.139286
 
Well..I'm looking at married filing jointly.

17,000 taxed at 10%=1700
52,000 taxed at 15%=7800
1,000 taxed at 25%=250

Total tax bill= 9750
9750/70000=.139286

I'm sorry, could you cite where you are getting these numbers? Are you including the standardized deductions?

The reason I ask is that the calculator posted by Maggie shows different values and I would like to verify accuracy of either one.
 
Tax Brackets 2011 | taxbrackets2011.com

I just based it on the tax brackets for 2011. I didn't use the standardized deductions. Using them it would be closer to a joint salary of 90k which still isn't very much for a houshold.

Well, a couple things here. The first is that I don't see a good breakdown of the standard deductions on that site, but I didn't go through it completely.

The second item is that this is regarding Romney's rates from 2010, not 2011. His rates will increase according to the OP in 2011 to 15.4. For a 1-1 comparison, I would suggest Maggie's calculator unless it is shown to be faulty. I looked at the site who put it up there and I don't see issues with it.
 
ok, i was wrong. my married filing jointly effective rate is 14.41

Sorry, I'm being nitpicky, but I'm enjoying that this thread hasn't gotten out of control. This is just FIT, not SIT or FICA, correct? And your number is based on 2010 return or a calculator for that year or something including standardized deductions?

If it is comparing directly, then thank you for being the exception. I would love to discuss the details, but I won't ask you to share any income information.
 
Sorry, I'm being nitpicky, but I'm enjoying that this thread hasn't gotten out of control. This is just FIT, not SIT or FICA, correct? And your number is based on 2010 return or a calculator for that year or something including standardized deductions?

If it is comparing directly, then thank you for being the exception. I would love to discuss the details, but I won't ask you to share any income information.

2011 calculator. just fit. standard deductions.
 
Well, a couple things here. The first is that I don't see a good breakdown of the standard deductions on that site, but I didn't go through it completely.
I didn't include the deductions

The second item is that this is regarding Romney's rates from 2010, not 2011. His rates will increase according to the OP in 2011 to 15.4. For a 1-1 comparison, I would suggest Maggie's calculator unless it is shown to be faulty. I looked at the site who put it up there and I don't see issues with it.

I'm not trying to bash Romney or call him a bad person for taking advantage of the tax laws in place. To pay a higher effective rate though even with the deduction you don't need to be making even 6 figures. I know payroll taxes aren't included (if they were, a lot more average Americans federal taxes would be higher) but it his tax bill...even paying 15%ish in 11' is pretty ridiculous no matter how you cut it.
 
I didn't include the deductions

I'm not trying to bash Romney or call him a bad person for taking advantage of the tax laws in place. To pay a higher effective rate though even with the deduction you don't need to be making even 6 figures. I know payroll taxes aren't included (if they were, a lot more average Americans federal taxes would be higher) but it his tax bill...even paying 15%ish in 11' is pretty ridiculous no matter how you cut it.

Well, that's the thing. It's not so ridiculous if most people are paying less. In fact, 97% of tax payers paid lower rates than he did.

I don't think you are making Romney out bad for this. I'm just trying to get these things in perspective. I see a lot of threads going around mixing all kinds of rates and saying all kinds of things about recessive taxes, but when you break down the different parts of the taxes and such, there isn't this huge break for the rich.
 
Based on Maggie's calculator, my households effective tax rate is less than Mitt Romney's, 10.77%. That's with the standard deduction and our houses interest/property taxes being the deductions we qualify for along with a tiny bit of student loan interest. No children.

Roughly $88.5k for taxable income, roughly $12k in deductions....came out to about 9.5k paid in taxes.
 
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Tax Brackets 2011 | taxbrackets2011.com

I just based it on the tax brackets for 2011. I didn't use the standardized deductions. Using them it would be closer to a joint salary of 90k which still isn't very much for a houshold.

Why would you choose not to take the standardized deduction AND not choose to do any kind of itemized deductions?
 
Well, that's the thing. It's not so ridiculous if most people are paying less. In fact, 97% of tax payers paid lower rates than he did.

I don't think you are making Romney out bad for this. I'm just trying to get these things in perspective. I see a lot of threads going around mixing all kinds of rates and saying all kinds of things about recessive taxes, but when you break down the different parts of the taxes and such, there isn't this huge break for the rich.

There shouldn't be a larger break for the rich at all. If anything they should be paying a higher percentage... you know progressive taxation.
 
There shouldn't be a larger break for the rich at all. If anything they should be paying a higher percentage... you know progressive taxation.

We have progressive taxation. FIT is progressive. It's not perfect, some 2% of very high earners did pay a lower rate than Romney's, but the other 97% paid less.

If you want to talk about the other taxation, please drop by my thread and talk about where you want it fixed. I welcome your input.
 
We touched on this. SS is supposed to be a situation where you get back what you put in. It's not progressive because it is a forced government retirement "plan". If you took the cap off or put it on capital gains, you just end up paying the millions back to people like Romney.

If you want to abolish it, I'll sign up. The government has shown how irresponsible it can be with money, I wouldn't choose them for a bank anyway. Of course, that's why they force us. If you want to remove the cap, that works too, but I'm going to laugh next year when Romney shows an additional million or so from social "security".

You didn't touch on this enough to explain how the SS receipts which have gone into, and have been spent from, the general fund since 1969 are not taxes that are required to be paid by most based on their entire income, are not taxes paid? Especially given the proposals by the GOP to privatize SS so they do not have to discontinue the tax cuts to the rich to repay that money owed to the SS fund.

SS is a government service, just like the other services the government provides for the taxes it collects. The SS cap on income has been increased many times in the past to keep the fund solvent. The current low cap together with the lowered capital gains tax rate is what allows those (like Romney and Buffett) who's income is primarily from investments, to pay a lower total federal tax rate than many in the middle class. And that is not even looking at state tax rates which favor the rich even more so.
 
You didn't touch on this enough to explain how the SS receipts which have gone into, and have been spent from, the general fund since 1969 are not taxes that are required to be paid by most based on their entire income, are not taxes paid? Especially given the proposals by the GOP to privatize SS so they do not have to discontinue the tax cuts to the rich to repay that money owed to the SS fund.

SS is a government service, just like the other services the government provides for the taxes it collects. The SS cap on income has been increased many times in the past to keep the fund solvent. The current low cap together with the lowered capital gains tax rate is what allows those (like Romney and Buffett) who's income is primarily from investments, to pay a lower total federal tax rate than many in the middle class. And that is not even looking at state tax rates which favor the rich even more so.

Again, SS is not really on-topic here. The debt the government owes those who have been forced to pay into a failed system is not directly relevant to Romney's effective FIT. I would, however, love your input on my other thread on this topic. I've linked to it a couple times and don't want to keep doing so.

Oh, and in the other thread, we can talk about state taxes and which of the 51 governments involved we should start with. I missed that last line when I first read. It's on topic for the other thread as well.
 
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Again, SS is not really on-topic here. The debt the government owes those who have been forced to pay into a failed system is not directly relevant to Romney's effective FIT. I would, however, love your input on my other thread on this topic. I've linked to it a couple times and don't want to keep doing so.

Oh, and in the other thread, we can talk about state taxes and which of the 51 governments involved we should start with. I missed that last line when I first read. It's on topic for the other thread as well.

It most certainly is on topic. Romney's effective tax rate of 13.9% included the the payroll taxes he paid, which were .1% of his income compared to the middle class who must pay payroll taxes on their entire income.
 
It most certainly is on topic. Romney's effective tax rate of 13.9% included the the payroll taxes he paid, which were .1% of his income compared to the middle class who must pay payroll taxes on their entire income.

I missed the point where the article spelled out whether it was included or not. However, the vast difference between FICA and FIT is a huge topic. That's why I did another thread.

I will keep it simple. The SS is essentially a loan to the government, as any investment is. The idea is that they will pay you back what you paid in with interest. If they spent that money for other things, it's the same as spending borrowed money from another country. It's spending without revenue to support it and they still owe that money back. Now, it is a flat tax because it supposedly pays you back based on what you put into it.

So, do we remove the cap? Romney would see millions in SS coming back at him. His rate would go up, but he wouldn't really be contributing more. Do we make it progressive? If so, he still gets more back.

I've seen other suggestions, like freeze benefits but remove cap. Basically, this is stating that after he's managed to cover his retirement, he should pay for everyone else's retirement with his money. This would be the most direct wealth redistribution I can see flowing through government short of taking your paycheck and handing it to the next guy.

Am I missing an option to fix it?

This is why I made another thread. FICA is not FIT. SIT is not FIT. It's something worth going into. I would honestly love to discuss it in more detail there.
 
doesn't matter how much money he paid if he is still paying a less % than many Americans. If I say earned $60k in a year and got taxed 18% I have sacrificed more for taxes than Romeny and have far less to spend on my family than he does!
The possibility exists that we need true tax reform...
This will never happen as long as the law-makers are wealthy ..conservatives ...only caring about themselves....
 
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