Totem wrote:
Ol' Joe told us today he believes it's our patriotic duty to pay more taxes. Or rather, more specifically, he believes it's wealthy American's duty to pay higher taxes than they are paying now.
The trouble is, considering he thinks it is a duty, this is something which should not require a change in the tax law, but should come from the patriotic American's heart-- someone, I assume, like Plagerizin' Joe. I wonder if he has begun doing his duty and started giving a higher percentage of his considerable earnings to the US Treasury yet?
Of course, we need to define what wealthy is, right? Would his two to three million in assets or his Congressional salary be considered wealthy?
And how much more does one such patriotic American pay more than what is required? Does this mean he should forego tax shelters like the Black Neo uses extensively? Or should such a patriotic American just lop off, say, 50% off the top and hand it over to the gubmint?
I'm curious, because he wasn't very clear on the specifics, just that he holds this opinion. Perhaps I need to have a discussion with Joe on what "duty" means. As a non-military man, I don't think he quite understands what all that entails. I'd be happy to enlighten him.
Totem
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you want to know where your tirade falls apart?
at the line between tax RATE and EFFECTIVE tax.
tax rate is the rate you are charged on your earnings. EFFECTIVE rats is the rate you pay....after deductions.
you see, the more money you have, the more deductions are written into the tax code just for you high income earners. poor people dont have deductions other than the standard. you see, they cant afford a home so they rent. they cant afford to list their second home as rental property so they can write off ALL the home expenses......like mccain does with all 8 of his homes.
i own a single home. by the time i get done deducting interest on both my home loan and equity loan, property taxes, itemizing my sales tax because it ussually is over the standard deduction, and various other deductions like the old computer and other things i "donate" top charity....when they stop working....
my tax rate is a little over 30 percent.
my EFFECTIVE rate this year was....12 percent.
the schmuck working at mcdonalds? he is paying the full 28 percent PLUS the full 8 and a half percent because he NEVER reaches the SS deduction cap. something i hit a half way through the year effectively reducing my 8 and a half percent to somewhere close to 5 percent.
so, the low income earner with a 28 percent tax rate is paying 36 percent after you add in SS.
an upper middle income person like me is paying 17 percent inclusing SS.
and the more you make the LESS you pay.
i really dont want to hear a single person cry when they talk about raising the taxes on upper income earners. just to get them to pay their FAIR share with this POS tax code, you would have to jack it up around 70 percent or so if you ever wanted to see 30 percent.
the poor dont get tax breaks, they pay the FULL bill. the rich NEVER pay their share and probably never will.
thats right. the more you have, the LESS you have to pay.