Fair share, indeed. CNS:
According to statistics compiled from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by the Tax Foundation, those people making above $50,000 had an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent, and carried 93.3 percent of the total tax burden.
In contrast, Americans making less than $50,000 had an effective tax rate of 3.5 percent and their total share of the tax burden was just 6.7 percent.
Americans making more than $250,000 had an effective tax rate of 23.4 percent and their total share of the tax burden was 45.7 percent.
Out of the 143 million tax returns that were filed with the IRS in 2010, 58 million – or 41 percent – of those filers were non-payers.
In other words, only 85 million actually paid taxes.
But Tax Foundation data also shows that people who didn’t pay any income tax received $105 billion in refundable tax credits from the IRS.
Additionally, statistics from the Tax Foundation shows that the federal tax code is 3.8 million words long – 3.5 times longer than all seven books of J.K. Rowling’s famous Harry Potter series combined.
I’m beginning to think that had Obama’s secretary shelled out a grand or so for a really good accountant, she probably could have found within that verbal welter a way to pay a lower rate than her boss.
— Not to mention a really good egg salad recipe, some lost bits from The Poetics, and the answer to the licks/Tootsie Pop conundrum, too, more than likely. Because there’s no way the code has 3.8 million words devoted just to taxes.
That would be insane.
****
update: related? Welcome to liberal fascism. Please take your seat, citizen. We’ll be with you when we’re with you.
(h/t geoffB)
It’s almost as if everything coming out of Barry’s cakehole about taxes and who pays their fair share were a bald-faced lie.
But Barry is a good man, in over his head. Just ask any Republican wanting to be elected to anything.
Because of the fairness:
The Buffett Tax Loss
Today it’s “This isn’t math, it’s fairness.”
Barry’s handlers need to keeep him on script and away from the press unless absolutely necessary.
Is this “Fairness” business a callback to the union goons and their strikes of old with signs that proclaimed “Company X Unfair!”? Or is it plan old unvarnished commie talk?
Is this “Fairness” business a callback to the union goons and their strikes of old with signs that proclaimed “Company X Unfair!”? Or is it plan old unvarnished commie talk?
What, there’s a difference?
Communism didn’t die.
It just moved to America.
I’m asking because I can’t remember hearing grown-ups shrieking “It’s not Fa-ir!” before. Pre-schoolers and siblings, sure. Supposed adults, not so much.
Being self-employed, I enjoy the privilege of actually writing checks to the state and federal government every quarter (“What, no income this quarter? Pay a penalty for not making your quarterly contribution, citizen!”)
And of course you know that there is a special tax for being self-employed. And an Alternative Minimum Tax if they think you’re just not contributing enough. And I especially enjoy paying an accountant to figure all these things out for me.
I’m thinking that all of this is just not quite fair.
RI Red, I’m self-employed too, but I let turbo tax figure it all out. Then again, I only have one client and very little to write off.
Nothing like that 15.2% of your income taken right off the top, is there?
I’d like to see the employer contribution for SSI and medicare removed and all of it charged to the worker, with their pay being adjusted to make up the difference. Everyone would see how much of their money is really going down the Federal rat-hole.
I am a bit confused by those statistics. I make a under $50k/yr. and I pay a helluva lot more than 3.5%.
You’ve been lumped into a group in which many actually get money from the Fed because they make “too little.” What you pay makes up for people who don’t pay at all, so on average the percentage is less than what you pay.
cranky, if we had only one year where every income-earner had to pay quarterly instead of by mandatory witholding, the 16th Amendment would be immediately repealed.
The problem we have is convincing all taxpayers to just stop paying for one year. That would be more powerful than several divisions of angry armed citizens.
Neil Boortz has long advocated that, Red, do away with automatic with-holding and give every one a bill at the end of the year.
There’s seems to be a problem with the reporting of the data. The article seems to conflate the income tax with taxes generally. Do you have a citation to the original study?
The chance of that happening being slim and none, and slim just left town.
Ah yes, the aptly named “self-employment tax”. You pay that on Schedule SE. 13.3% of 92.35% of everything you made you ‘too special to work for The Man’ wretches!
And this morning’s CNN.com headline “Most Americans say tax system favors wealthy.” No word on how many are into astrology.
Zachriel,
Your lazy. It took me more time to create the link than it did to find it.
Tax Facts for Journalists (and Taxpayers)
Your Welcome
Has anybody seen my welcome and my lazy?
Even if we couldn’t get automatic withholding abolished, we could move tax day to something more reasonable. Like, say, 10 days before the national elections…
Here’s a better link.
TRHein: It took me more time to create the link than it did to find it.
That’s to an article from 2006.
Jeff G: Here’s a better link.
That’s a news release. We were looking for the original study. Perhaps we overlooked it.
Sometimes the news release says “income taxes”, but then follows it with simply “tax” as in “Only 85 million actually paid taxes out of the 143 million filers. In other words, 58 million, or 41%, were non-payers. ”
In fact, most people who work incur payroll taxes, which represent 40% of federal revenues. Income tax payers have been getting a break since the Bush Tax Cuts by making use of the payroll tax surpluses.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/numbers/revenue.cfm
Ya know, one of these days, I just might get tired of writing checks to Uncle. One year, I wrote a memo note on a check asking that the check be used for one MOAB (Mother of All Bombs). No one ever responded.
Oh, good lord. How about you look up the study?
Payroll tax goes to pay SS, no?
You may as well cite sales taxes to suggest that naturally everybody is paying in to the system equitably. Fine. Then let me see you support a fair tax.
Otherwise, you’re merely moving shells around and claiming you’ve solved the problem of the poisonous pea.
Incidentally, the CNS story says “according to statistics compiled by the Tax Foundation.” I linked to those statistics. I’m not sure that there’s an underlying study or not.
If you don’t have skin in the game, I have a hard time seeing how you get a say in how tax revenue is allocated. I think an amendment to the 16th is in order.
Jeff G: Oh, good lord. How about you look up the study?
Actually, we simply emailed the author. The article only includes the income tax, so this statement by Christopher Goins, “Americans Making Over $50,000 a Year Paid 93.3 Percent of All Taxes in 2010?, is misleading at a minimum. Here is the source of the data:
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=133414,00.html
Jeff G: Payroll tax goes to pay SS, no?
Well, no. Bush counted the trillions on his fingers. The payroll tax surpluses were explicitly used to help fund the income tax cuts. On the other hand, Gore recommended continuing to run cash surpluses. The latter option would have tempered the runup to the financial meltdown, and left the U.S. in a much better position to respond to the crisis.
LOCKBOX.
JG – my link originally went to the page you linked. Not sure what happened there.
Zachriel – if your interested in see where the numbers come from you can click on the link to the author, on the author’s page further below you will see links to the data. You will need to expand the view.
I am not a tax person but you seem to be including SS withholding and Medicare withholding with Income withholding, it is revenue yes but it does not relfect actual taxed income as JG pointed out.
Sorry for the delay in responding but different time zones will do that.
or seeing – as it were.
ohfercryin’outloud
Yea, Ernst, when Zach wrote that I knew I didn’t really have to pay too much attention to whatever argument he was trying to make.
Carin, sonny taped his shins yesterday and ran 2-miles in 13 minutes and change with a lot less pain. His gf is going to hook him up with compression socks.
Thanks again for the advice!
“fund the income tax cuts”
Ha! That’s a good one! Very funny.
FTFY
So, what funds the ‘Earned Income Tax Credits’, those little government subsidies “The credit is fully refundable: any excess beyond a family’s income tax liability is paid as a tax refund” that in many cases pays far more in refunds than were ever paid into the system through payroll taxes?
Hey man! That’s different! That’s just giving back to the folks the money that was STOLEN from them by the GREEDY RICH!
Don’t be messin with Obama’s stash man!
and BOOOSH!
Carin, sonny taped his shins yesterday and ran 2-miles in 13 minutes and change with a lot less pain. His gf is going to hook him up with compression socks.
Excellent. I can run a lot less in 13 minutes. LOL.
Oh well, I’m old. I remember when I used to get it in under 15 min though. I was a sprinter as a youth, so didn’t really have to go superfast for long distances. I’ve actually only be able to run 5+ miles (consistently) in the last few years, since I switched shoes. My knees started hurting when I was in college.
You don’t “fund” income tax cuts. The money is not the government’s to begin with.
As for the rest, I’ll just point you to Reckless Endangerment. Read it. Learn it. Live it.
Jesus. You own more property, you pay more property tax. You spend more money, you pay more sales tax. Etc. So any way you slice it, the higher burden is on the higher earners. That you want to nitpick the semantics of the article — while insisting we have to “fund” tax cuts (rather than budget our government overspending) — shows me that you and I really have no common ground on which to speak.
I don’t grant the government the right of first ownership over all revenue. And given that our government takes 36 cents from every dollar the economy earns, I’m not at all inclined to allow that they need more.
When the Government starts funding entitlement programs fueled by our tax dollars, associated costs now paid for by said meddling Government outstrips overall inflation rates. See: LBJ’s ‘Great Society’, began in ’68, creating (among other minority-enslaving programs) Medicare and Medicaid. Since turning on that entitlement benefits fire hose, health care costs have skyrocketed, and now are just another artificial bubble that wouldn’t be there if not for Daddy Warbucks.
Best to keep monies out of our Government’s hands, since they maladminister it.
meddling esses. sigh.
TRHein: I am not a tax person but you seem to be including SS withholding and Medicare withholding with Income withholding, it is revenue yes but it does not relfect actual taxed income as JG pointed out.
It’s not tax on income, but the phrase “Americans Making Over $50,000 a Year Paid 93.3 Percent of All Taxes in 2010? makes no such distinction. Most Americans incur federal taxes.
jdw: Income tax payers have been getting a [WELL DESERVED] break since the Bush Tax Cuts by making use of the payroll tax surpluses.
As the tax cuts led to cash deficits, apparently not. Keep in mind that the U.S. was running cash surpluses just a decade ago.
Well, gee, Zachriel! What on earth could’ve led to such results? In order to have deficits, you need two things, revenue and spending. Our federal government has received ~15% more revenue in 2011 than it did in 2000.
Since we were running surpluses in 2000, where could the deficit have come from?
Oh, yeah! Spending! Which rose more than 100% while revenues grew only 15%. Most of that rise was in DISCRECTIONARY (i.e., we don’t have to spend it) spending.
And you do understand the difference between a tax rate cut and a tax cut, yes?
JohnInFirestone: Since we were running surpluses in 2000, where could the deficit have come from?
Federal revenues decreased after the tax cuts, not reaching the same level until 2005, then they dropped precipitously again in the aftermath of the financial meltdown.
Meanwhile, spending rose from $2 to $3 trillion during the Bush Administration, then ballooned to $3.5 trillion due to the recession. Once the economy regains healthy growth, there will still be a structural deficit of about $600 billion going forward, or 3.5% of GDP. Long term is still the problem of entitlements.
Quite a pickle considering the U.S. was running structural cash surpluses just a decade ago.
Zachriel laffs at your curve.
Can anyone think of some event that happened between 2000 and 2005 that may have decreased federal revenues? Or what happened during the years before the perfect storm detailed in Reckless Endangerment came back to haunt us? Anybody remember who kept trying to sound the alarm on all that — and who resisted?
By the way, you won’t get any argument here about Bush’s spending. What’s curious is that you seem interested in supporting a guy who is like Bush x 100.
And of course, we all know that the “structural cash surpluses” we’re supposed to have been running is an accounting trick. Hell, even the GOP House that orchestrated it admits that.
Laffer is such an economic nitwit. Also, ignore that chart I posted today. It lies, too.
Jeff G: And of course, we all know that the “structural cash surpluses” we’re supposed to have been running is an accounting trick.
Um, no. The U.S. was running cash surpluses and using the funds to reduce debt held by the public. On budget was essentially balance. The concern at that time was that the U.S. might actually pay off its entire publicly held debt, and no one knew what that would do to the international markets as everyone uses U.S. securities for trade.
http://www.frbsf.org/education/activities/drecon/2001/0103.html
Ha. Ha. Jokes on them.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/10/21/141510617/what-if-we-paid-off-the-debt-the-secret-government-report
During the prime earning years of the baby boomers? Shocking.
But, you’re right. Let’s go back to the spending levels under Clinton.
Deal?
let’s go back to the size of the fed gov’t of the clinton admin. call it the slick willie litmus test.
The concern at that time was that the U.S. might actually pay off its entire publicly held debt…
Yeah I can remember that keeping me awake at night.
Luckily we banked all that money the baby boomers were kicking in to social security during those golden days.
We didn’t?
Well at least we then created individual accounts for them so they didn’t continue just paying a tax that could be spent in general funds.
We didn’t?
Well, at least Obama fixed that.
He didn’t?
Well, at least we didn’t create payroll tax holidays.
What?
You’re shitting me, right?
These deficits and spendings all add up to one thing: Obama’s got to be fired for his gross neglect of this Republic’s economy, and for his general, stutttttttering clusterfuckery and miserable failures whilst conducting the job he was elected to do. Rush told us he would fail, only no one dreamed it would be this spectacularly.
Oh, and also for eating dog. He’s likely the only president to have consumed man’s best friend, unless perhaps Andrew Jackson bit off a cur’s leg for biting him first.
Here’s a nice chart for this discussion.
No, we need to spend more now, and tax more to make up for the loss of revenue the government is owed. Don’t you know how it works?
Re: surplus. Sorry, I just took my cue from Newt, who admitted that the balanced budget and the surplus were not real by today’s accounting standards — but that they were under the conditions as described and understood by all parties at the time. So sure, let’s go back to a conservative Congress and the spending thresholds of the Clinton years. Works for me.
You?