Give me a good reason why the rich should pay more taxes

There you go.

They pay an effective 15% tax rate for SS/medicare taxes, which is a higher percent than Romney pays on his $20 million income. What is their "fair share" in your view?

 

First: They're the ones who uses Social Security and Medicare the most so they should be paying into what they claim to benefit the most from. I don't think it's fair that people like Romney and Warren pay Social Security and Medicare taxes and clearly have no need for it. When Social Security was set up, it was set up so only the low income earners paid into it.

As for fair share, the Bottom 50 percent want all of this Government. They need to know that it needs paying for and they should be the ones to pay more for it if they want it. So 3 percent increase in taxes is only fair.

Second: Romney's income is in Capital gains and it doesn't make sense to compare it with individual income like wages and salaries.

 

Irrelevant to the issue of who pays taxes.

I don't think it is fair that a typical middle class family is paying a higher effective tax rate than a guy worth a quarter billion dollars and taking in $20 million a year in in income.

I don't follow what you mean "the Bottom 50 percent want all of this Government"

Good point. Since it is passive and not earned income, arguably it should be taxed at a higher rate.

 

Relative to GDP, no. Relative to the individual sources collected, yes.

Yes, it does. Just look at it from a business aspect. Sony Plazma TVs cost effectively $15,000 - $20,000 when they were first released. The only people who could really afford this were the wealthy, which consist of amount 2 million households. Now plazma televisions are $500 - $2000 and now everyone can afford one. Do you think Sony is making more money selling TVs at $20,000 to 2 Million or TVs at $2,000 to 143 Million?

The point is the rich -- the people who this tax hike is suppose to be targeted at -- will do anything to avoid paying taxes. The more bonuses they pay early, the higher their company's earnings and the more taxes they can afford in dividends. Also they can increase their company's earnings by not taking a salary at all or paying themselves a low salary. The point is, there is no way you're going to be able to change financial behavior the same and raise rates.

Nothing. The Euro Crisis has nothing to do with the decline in people filing over the 1 million pound bracket.

They're doing it to avoid a high corporate tax rate and burdensome regulations. Companies like Dell, Wal-Mart, J.P Morgan, Google, Apple, Johnson & Johnson keep most of their profits offshore. Companies like HP, Cisco, and Microsoft keep all of their profits offshore. The CEO of Coca-Cola pretty much already said that Communist China is more business friendly than America.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-more-friendly-to-business-than-uscoke-ceo-2011-09-26

But it must hurt. All of the successful companies that made it out of the Dot Com bubble betraying America's best interests. I'm telling you, just create another asset bubble and your problems will be over!

It's not my imagination. From the Bottom 50 percent to the Top Dogs like Warren Buffet, everything people do is to avoid paying some sort of taxe

You're really that cynical to expect revenue to GDP to stay there at a constant rate of 19 percent? I bet you thought housing prices would never fall, huh?

The GDP in today's US dollars wasn't $15 Trillion around that time. It was somewhere around $12 Trillion when the revenue to GDP averaged 17 percent. Which is only 200 Billion dollars, which can easily be fixed by cutting a small part of the budget. But i guess you aren't really concerned about deficits, but accumulating imaginary tax revenue.

Nice selective posting. Show the rest of the Bush years.

Bush cut taxes in 2003 as well. But the taxes didn't increase again, which demonstrates that the government brought in more revenue. Or at least it will demonstrate if you stop picking and choosing the facts.

Yes, it's called the "I'll win no matter what" technique. It's super effective.

For one year during the recession. But not every year after that. 2.5 Million people filled in the Top Income Bracket in 2003. 3 Million people filled in the Top in 2004. 3.5 Million people filled in the Top in 2005. 4 Million people filled in the Top in 2006. And so on and so forth. Every year when taxes were lower, more people in the top contributed in the federal revenue and as a result, more revenue came in. When you compare that to the Clinton years with only 1.5 Million people in the Top filled in 1996, 1.7 Million in 1997, 2 Million in 1998, 2.4 Million in 1999, and 2.7 million in 2000.

The amount of people who contribute to the federal revenue barely increase when you increase taxes. Its when you decrease taxes that you begin to see more and more Top earners paying their share.

 

And it's the rich who do. They pay mostly all of it.

The middle class almost barely has any skin in the game when it comes to the contribution of the federal revenue and historically, they never had any until the 1950s.

The Bottom 50 percent are the ones who want all the government programs and all the government safety nets. They are the ones who benefit from it the most so they are the ones who should pay into it along with the rich. It's how it's done in Denmark and Norway. Places most progressives would like America to be more like.

You make it sound so easy. If it's so easy to earn some extra income with stocks or ETFs then what exactly is holding people back? These things aren't only for the wealthy anymore. Investing has never been easier, especially with the internet. People don't and probably never will because they're afraid of this little thing called 'risk.' Capital gains involves the biggest risk, which is why it shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate. If all investments have the luxury of panning out at a rate of 100% then it wouldn't matter what the tax rate was, but unfortunately they don't. Some investments don't yield returns at 100% or even 50 or 40%. Some investments return something we call 'losses.'

People who earn wages and salaries are always guaranteed a paycheck as long as they are employed. Investments yield no such guarantees.

 

Depends on what it costs them to make it.

So your point is because many will try to dodge taxes, we just shouldn't tax them?

Not buying it.

You don't think so, eh?

The number of millionaires in Britain has more than halved in the past two years, new figures reveal.

http://www.jhowe.co.uk/ard/enews_article.asp?ID=1449&AID=1430&CID=2

Please cite the data that backs up your assertions.

So let's cut investment taxes to less than half of earned income taxes. That would be a great way to get speculative investment bubbles.

Sure. I'm dying to see the data that supports your claim that businesses aren't hiring because they are too busy dodging taxes.

Where did I say that? But it doesn't fall from 20% to 15% unless you cut taxes a lot.

You must be really stubborn to claim you can cut taxes many hundreds of billions of dollars and it wouldn't affect tax revenues.

It is today. That $750 billion dollars is a big part of the deficit.

Why? You claimed "the Government brought in more revenue when the taxes were lowered." My data showed that was not true.

The 2001 income tax cut was the largest.

The government will generally bring in more tax revenue every year, if you don't slash taxes. Inflation, economic growth and population grow all contribute to growing revenues. That is the norm. Not falling hundreds of billions a year.

Many must perceive it so. I see a lot of folks trying that method.

No, millions stopped paying income taxes as a result of the bush tax cuts. You don't remember him bragging about that?

Then close loopholes and audit them more.

 

Not true. They effectively don't pay SS taxes as a percent of their income.

They pay a higher rate of effective tax than a guy like Romney. So they have proportionately more skin in the game than he does.

Baseless overgeneralization. You can convince me otherwise with reliable data.

Shoot, beats working for a living. One you got that 1/4 billion in your Cayman Island accounts its not so tough.

But they are not taxed on losses which offset profits.

Sure. Tell that to the 10 million or so net who lost their jobs in the recession.

Are you educated at all in investing? Never heard of CDs or government securities?

 

Friends:

If Mitt Romney, just Mitt Romney, paid 1% more in tax, so 15% net tax, that would mean TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY households who make $80,000 per year, could pay 1% LESS, so 24%, and the US Government would gain equal money.

T W O H U N D R E D A N D F I F T Y H O U S E H O L D S

That is how many people Mitt Romney and the US Government have allegedly ROBBED, BECAUSE MITT ROMNEY IS PERMITTED TO LEGALLY CHEAT ON HIS TAXES, and that is just from saving an extra 1% on his 20 Million income!!!

Now I ask, WHO PASSED THE LAWS permitting the rich to legally cheat on these taxes? MITT ROMNEY!! BARAK OBAMA!! GEORGE BUSH!! The rich!!! The rich!!!

MY FRIENDS: They are in it for THEMSELVES and the US Government "We The People", is in BREACH OF CONTRACT!!!

 

It was actually Clinton who signed the first cap gains cuts as a compromise with Republicans who were threatening to shut down the Govt. Bush cut them further, which Obama extended for two years to get unemployment benefits extended.

 

And I like how many of them? ... In fact, I DO like Clinton. The proof is in the pudding, my love! (If you haven't heard this expression, it means when wifey questions the recipe (I cannot cook, by the way), the cook needs only to say the proof of validity of the claims of reality is on the manifest outcome). The USA was VERY NICE under Clinton, and while the Bernie Maddoff, and Enron, and Lieman Brothers, and Goldman Sacks, and AIG, and JetBlue, and many other American style corporate "too big to fail" scams would have still been perpetrated against the people of the world, old slick willy would have found a way to make things better, BECAUSE EVERYTHING WAS BETTER UNDER SLICK WILLY, and you know it, or you are afraid to agree.

 

You don't have to sell me on Clinton. But that doesn't change the fact from what I stated.

 

The bottom 50 even using your silly method of net accounting spend 50% - 100% of their income on survival. The rich pay less than 1% of their income on survival. Taxes even things out. When your simply trying to survive you shouldn't be forced to pay taxes on top of that.

 

That's another topic entirely, but we know it doesn't cost Sony much to make them if they can afford to sell them at lower prices than they did years ago when the television sets were new.

No, my point is that taxes influence financial behavior.

All that article says (which is outdated) that revenue has fallen during the recession. It doesn't link the cause to the recession or anything of that sort. It was even gutsy to report that there have been predictions made that number of UK millionaires will return when the housing market recovers. Well, the UK housing market recovered, but the millionaires have not.

Download this PDF to view the report. It's quite a read.

Speculative investment bubbles don't happen simply because you lower taxes. They happen when you expand credit and take away the risk of failure. As shown during the 90's when tax rates were higher, but I shouldn't have pointed that out because that would have ruined your precious narrative.

It's not only taxes which are the problem. It's also increased labor cost and regulations. But for the purpose of this discussion, we are saying that it's taxes

It didn't fall from 20% to 15%. It simply went back to it's normal rates. When the recession happened it fell from it's average historical rate of 17% to 15%. That's all that happened.

But you're not going to get 20 percent of revenue to GDP so I don't know why you choose to dwelt on this.

But all you did was just show the first three years of the Bush years instead of showing the rest where revenue increased.

So now we're bringing Inflation, Economic Growth and Population into this? Fair enough.

The annual inflation for both periods average around the same, so I doubt inflation made much of an impact. The only thing you can really find is that economic growth was more robust in the 90s. 1.5 percent of the earners at the Top participated in 2000 with the highest rate, as oppose to 2.8 percent more in 2006.

The keyword being try.

No, I don't. Who bragged about that? It's not what the IRS Income Statistics shows. You have a higher annual increase of people at the top contributing at a higher rate during the Bush Years than the Clinton Years.

Don't you think that is a waste of resources? The whole tax industry is set up to avoid paying taxes in the first place. Why do you think IRA's, Roth IRA's, Spousal IRA, Conduit IRA and Pensions exist?

 

The problem with comparing percentages here is that 1% for a poor person means something quite different than one percent for a rich person, and certainly so for a wealthy person.

 

Yes, they do.

The middle class pay 4 million dollars in income taxes? Wow, I was totally wrong about them.

Which data are you referring to. Specifics please.

You can't use losses to offset taxes on profits. You can only do it up to $3,000. It's not 1950.

I did say for as long as they are employed. And for as long as they are unemployed too, as they are able to collect a check from the government too.

I own Heng Seng/Philippines stocks, ETFs and foreign currencies.

And how well exactly are CDs doing? And yeah, Government securities? .05% for a 13 Week Bond. .76% for a five year. Maybe I should be clear: No such investment yields 100 percent returns for investments which actually involves risk. And for people who want to make any REAL money might I add. Government securities are partially risk free. Well, unless you're loaning money to the US Government. Then you're screwed.

But you can try it out if you want to contribute to the US treasury's Ponzi Scheme.

 

They're not. The bottom 20 Quintile actually has a negative effective tax rate.

Any more pointless (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)ing you'd like to do?

 

I think when comparing the two classes, rich vs poor, you need to compare not just how much of their income they spend on taxes but also how much of their income they spend on surviving. The less of your income you need to survive should be compensated via taxes to equal things out.

 

That's nice.

 

Then your issue is with consumption taxes, not federal or state income taxes.

 

I agree. When we slashed investment taxes to less than half the rate of earned income, should it be any surprise we've had two disasterous speculative investment bubbles in the past 12 years, and so much more of our economy is dedicated to hedge funds and finance as opposed to earning and production?

Well when the number of millionaires dropped by half because of the recession, don't you think that might be a reason less folks filed returns showing income over a million?

It does look interesting. On what page does it support your assertions?

Did you check out the chart on page 5? It really shows how our Govt revenues now come far more from payroll taxes (the working poorer pay) and far less from corporate taxes (mostly born by the wealthier). Quite illuminating.

You don't figure that a max tax rate of 15% for investment compared to 35% plus FICA has an effect on behavior?

You just stated: "my point is that taxes influence financial behavior." This is a clear example.

If you want to look at the 1990s, it was after the 1997 cap gain tax cut that you really saw the dot.com bubble take off.

Sure. I'm still dying to see the data that supports your claim that businesses aren't hiring because they are too busy dodging taxes.
That's a new one on me. You'd think that would make them hire more people to do the taxes.

You are wrong again.

Year - Rev:GDP
2000 20.4%
2001 19.4%
2002 17.4%
2003 16.0%
2004 15.9%
2005 17.1%
2006 18.0%
2007 18.3%
2008 17.7%
2009 15.1%
2010 14.9%

Before the 2000s, we had not seen a sub 15% rate since 1950. 15% is not "normal" at all in the modern era.

I was just demonstrating why our deficit is so high now when we had a surplus in 2000, in response to repeated claims "it's a spending problem."

When revenues are proportionately $750 billion a year lower than they were 12 years ago, it seems like there is a revenue problem as well to me.

So what? It proves revenues did not grow with the Bush tax cuts. In fact they tanked hundreds of billions over 4 years. It was unprecedented. They finally started growing years later, but by that time we were trillions more in debt, and they never caught up.

Correct. Inflation doesn not explain why revenues skyrocketed in the 1990s and tanked in the 2000s.

Well no, that is not the only thing you can really find. You can really find there was a major tax increase in 1993, and a major tax cut in 2001. Tax revenues come from taxes, remember?

It is true that after Clinton's major tax increase (which conservatives of the day loudly proclaimed woud kill jobs and wreck the economy) the economy enjoyed one of its most robust periods of growth. GDP grew a health 49.3% during his term.

But revenues during the same period grew from $1,154.4 to $2,025.2, a whopping 75.4%, far faster than could be explained by the economy alone.

So when you take out inflation and GDP growth, what other explanation is there for the dramatic growth in revenues that gave us the surplus?

Tax revenues come from taxes. Increase taxes (within reason) and you increase revenues.

Bush did: Bush: Nearly 5 million taxpayers will be off the rolls as a result of the tax relief this year.

http://www.factcheck.org/here_we_go_again_bush_exaggerates_tax.html

Ironically, many conservatives today complain that fewer people pay income taxes, thanks in large part to the Bush tax cuts they supported!

I'm not exactly sure what you are saying here. But the overal tax rates on the wealthiest declined significantly after the Bush tax cuts.

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43373-Supplemental_Tables_Final.xls Table 1.

No, increasing revenues as part of a program to reduce the deficits is critical IMO. I certainly agree the tax code should be greatly simplified.

 

That's just indisputably false. If someone inflicts harm on you, and violates your rights causing you to suffer a loss, and they do not make just compensation, then you are perfectly within your rights to take their property. Now, to prevent this sort of thing from getting out of hand if undertaken by private individuals, we have a court system that RIGHTLY TAKES THE PROPERTY OF THOSE WHO HAVE INFLICTED HARM ON OTHERS, and devotes that property to the compensation of the injured party's loss.

Conclusively refuted above.

There is a difference between taking and stealing.

 

But there are no speculative bubbles anywhere else in the world. Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore. There weren't any speculative bubbles during the 80s either. Only when the FED decided to lower interests rates and explain credit.

The reason was because they increased the Top marginal rate to 50 percent. Otherwise, the millionaires would have returned when the housing market recovered. But they haven't, which I'm sure you will continue to ignore.

I'm not sure if you know, but payroll taxes are payed by the employer. They're merely offset through the employee. And yes, Government Revenue is now lower from Corporate Taxes. I'm sure it has nothing to do with them escaping the second highest corporate tax in the world, but whatevers.

Anyways, anyways, anyways, look at page 10 to see top companies with offshore cash reserves.

38 to see their cash pool of loans and Page 41 to see their earnings.

The Corporations that apparently really hate America borrow money domestically, and then use the money they've borrowed for their overall operating expenses. None of their profits they use in America for growing their busines

Again, tax rates are lower in the East. In fact, Hong Kong has no Capital Gains tax. No speculative bubbles here. You can keep ignoring the FED's credit expansion during the 90s if you want. I'm sure it'll make your case for higher taxes much more appealing.

I've already shown it to you. You just refuse to read all of it. It's all in the Senate report.

Your data shows exactly what I just said. When the Dot Com bubble burst, the average Revenue to GDP rate went back to 17 percent. It tanked to 15.1 percent during the recession.

Do surpluses normally increase the federal debt? That's a new one for me.

Revenues are not $750 Billion lower than they were 12 years ago. You just made that up.

Revenues did grow has shown here.

2001 1,991.1
2002 1,853.1
2003 1,782.3
2004 1,880.1
2005 2,153.6
2006 2,406.9
2007 2,568.0
2008 2,524.0

Funny how you only liked to pay attention to the first three years of the Bush term and then cut off the last 5. You're very good at ignoring data you don't like. But at some point you have to come to grips with your own intellectual dishonesty.

.

First it does, now it doesn't. You move back and forward faster than two Chinese Ping Pong players...

Yes, revenue comes from taxes as clearly as milk comes from cows. How much tax revenues is all a matter of the proper rate using the correct volume and margins. And the data shows that lower taxes covers all of these bases.

Decrease revenues and you increase it even more.

Who do I believe more: The IRS or Factcheck.org? The organization which steals from me or the organization which hasn't accurate factcheck a single thing ever.

Well, wrong is wrong and I'm going with the IRS. As I've already shown, more people filed taxes at an annual rate of 500,000 during the 2000's as oppose to just a 170,000 annual rate during the 90's.

By significantly, you mean 2%? Sure. Still more people contributed to the tax revenues with the tax rates than with the tax hikes. And the Government collected more as a result. Margins and Volume.

Well, as long as you acknowledge that it's your opinion. I'd preferable go with spending cuts but since that's off the table, I don't care. Might as well prove you wrong by increasing taxes.

 

Yes, they are. But I don't see where you are getting at. Maybe it's just me.