Just about every state's tax system treats the rich better than the poor, writes the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in a new report today. The Institute says the states with the most regressive (read: unfair) tax plans are Washington State, Florida, South Dakota, Illinois, Texas, Tennessee, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Alabama.
When you add in all the state and local taxes, the poorest fifth of us pay at a rate of about 11.1 percent, nearly twice the 5.6 percent paid by the wealthiest among us. The view is not much better in the middle -- they're paying at 9.4 percent, enough to make a mogul blush.
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The view is not much better in the middle -- they're paying at 9.4 percent, enough to make a mogul blush.
But it's not enough to make a Republican Tea Partier blush.
>But it's not enough to make a Republican Tea Partier blush.
Or Phil Mickelson.
How horrible it must be to have to play golf for money.
Evidently is IS good to be the King
Is it the fault of the rich? Are they to blame for the legislatures bowing to them?
Are you jealous because you do not have a handful of office holders in your pocket? Would you suggest electing blue collar workers to office and getting them to rid us of lobbyists and kickbacks?
This is a republic! Not a democracy. We need wealthy scum floating on top as the rest of us sink.
(this unpaid political BS brought to you in the interest of seeing both sides?)
It is the rich's fault, because they paid lobbyists to pay lawmakers to make the rules. And after decades of making the rules, they have what they want. So yeah, it really is their fault.
You forget that the legislators are rich or become rich by the time they leave office. You don't spend millions of dollars to get elected to a $175k a year job for nothing.
So, at the state and local level, the 1% are the people getting free stuff and the moochers who should be threatening to go galt?
This is all very confusing. I'd better just reach for some kind of an ad hominum or red herring and see if I can't purge all of this horrible, confusing complexity out of my brain.
the gun lobby has just what you need. i think they refer to it as "high-speed mental floss."
You know the fix is in when there's no sales or property tax on legislators.
Yeah, the chart gives some empirical evidence class warfare has been alive and well for the past 2 generations - it's merely been a clandestine war for the most part up to now!
And of the effort to bring a more balanced approach to revenue streams? It's being labeled by the uber rich and their Republican allies as class warfare!
Have the rest of you noticed a pattern?
Republicans protect the rich and condemn revenue reformers as anything from uninformed to anti-American while all along they've been part of the upward distribution of wealth for the past 30 years.
Boehner tells Obama to get to work as the House adjourns for a week and a half.
The Republicans condemn the deficit while it was they who created it!
The Republicans condemn as partisan the president's inaugural address, while tickling the soft white underbelly of the Tea Partyers among us.
The Republicans say stop uncontrollable spending when already a 2.1 billion dollar reduction has taken place.
The Republicans say violent video games murder people, not guns!
Notice a pattern that goes like this:
The arson hiding his matches yells and points toward a man walking briskly away, "Catch that arson!"
or
The purse snatcher who has just hidden the stolen purse in his overcoat yells and points as a man walking briskly away, "Stop that purse snatcher!"
Well, have you notice the same ignoble pattern I have? -Kevo
opps, the top - worst - state is bright blue in presidential elections
So..... using percentages means absolutely nothing in this discussion except that you know how to spin a tale to show your biased and kissing up to the uninformed voter.
give me the number that represents the exact dollars they pay.... then compare that number as a total via each class to the total dollars paid. The rich pay far more than their fair share. See.... the rich know how to put money away into investments. Those investments give a return that is not included in earned income the average person receives for the work they do. Those investments power the economy to keep those people employed, hence their lower taxation. But you want to take that away so they will just put that money in a bank account and forget the risk of putting it to use and providing an income for someone else.... then who wins.... nobody... thanks.
Awwww, boooo hoooo, now you got me crying for all those poor little rich folks!!
Wow, if we don't stop taxing them so bad, they are going to take all their money away andl put it into yachts and Lear jets and fancy houses instead of "investing" it to help all us selfish little folks!!!
In context, "fair share" seems to mean "per capita share of government spending."
Well, capitation is the only taxation scheme explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, so the tricorn-hat set might like it.
However, since jo white asked for numbers:
Texas is not most folks' idea of a low-tax State so I'll work the numbers for Texas. Texas' State budget comes to just about $3000 per capita: man, woman, and child. Local government, schools, water districts, etc. are extra, but let's just look at Texas State taxes. That means that your basic Texas family of four with a median income of around $48,000 would pay a quarter of that to the State as taxes (compared to about half as much for Mitt Romney.)
If Federal taxes were similarly apportioned, they would come to about $10,000 per capita. Thus, not counting local, water district, etc. that Texas family of four with an income of $48000 would be paying $52,000 in taxes. Mitt and Anne Romney, with an income of about $20 million would be paying half that ($26,000) unless they could get some credits for horses or whatever, in which case the State might end up paying them.
That's what "fair share" means in these discussions.
Oh, for God's sake. That is just insane. Favoring raw numbers over proportions is simply an ignorant right-wing tactic to obscure how regressive the tax system is.
Obviously, I'm not going to waste my time addressing my remarks to a tr0ll who can't even be arsed to capitalize properly. But to everyone in the sane world, it absolutely is the percentages that matter.
If I'm paying fifteen septillion dollars in taxes, that sounds like a lot. In raw terms, it is a lot. But if that represents only 0.00000001% of my annual income, it's an amount I can easily afford to part with.
If I'm paying fifteen dollars in taxes, that doesn't sound like a lot, and it isn't in raw terms. But if that is 99% percent of my annual income, then I am being severely over-taxed.
Only a cretinous yahoo would be unable to understand why percentages, rather than raw numbers, are the important thing in this debate. (And, equally, only a cretinous yahoo would fail to understand that I am exaggerating for clarity.)
Another thing in play here that you didn't mention in your article is the effect that inequality of income has on the percentage of tax rate per income. This is another good argument to turn around the income slide of middle and lower income groups.
By increasing incomes at the lower end of the continuum we could not only lower the tax per percentage of income number, but we can also decrease government discretionary spending, while increasing revenue.
One important variable missing from the last three Republican administration, all which engaged in the 'trickle-down theory of economics', was the legislative fortitude to force their own policy to work. A good first beginning to solve this problem would be to pass legislation that would adjust the minimum wage to it's natural inflation adjusted level since 1967, and then continue to adjust the minimum wage,(also knowmn as the wage floor) by COLA as reported by the CPI annually thereafter.
I know this has been my petpeeve my entire adult life. However, all one nneds to do is run the numbers to see the result of doing as I suggest. For those that contend that raising the minimum wage is inflationary I would caution that even in years since 1967 that the minimum wage was not increased we still had inflation. In fact, it was that very annual inflation that has severly eroded the purchasing power of millions of Americans in today's economy.
No. Adjust the minimum wage by the per-capita GDP increase since your start date.
Think about it.
Are we going to ignore that you are upset that the top percent of people pays less than a demographic 20 times it size? I would expect them to pay less, there's a fraction of them!
Are we going to ignore that you don't understand the problem? No, we're not.
Did you fail to note the % symbols all over the chart? A % doesn't mean the same thing as a $. That's an important fact.
The point of this is that the more money people have, the smaller the proportion of that is paid in taxes; and that the less money people have, the greater of proportion of that is paid in taxes. In other words, the more money you have, the smaller your tax burden, while the less money you have, the greater your tax burden. Get it?
Yep.... well for all you whining, oh wait... sorry about that... for all you people out there that think your neighborhood drunk is going to give you your next paycheck... I will go on my way by taking all my money out of the stock I own in many different companies who employ you.... and out of the bonds that help finance your cities and state governments.... and stick it in my hidden safe in the form of gold and silver.
When everyone gets done selling all their stocks and has it safely invested in real estate, metals, foreign currency, you will discover we don't have any taxable income and then you will have to devise a way to start taxing our wealth, I will never acknowledge I have any wealth because all you want to do is suck it out of me... forget it.... just go sit in the corner and twittle your thumbs and suck on your rock soup because you aren't getting any more from me.
What you need to learn is that the top 10% of the earners in this country are paying 85% of the tax burden..... that is far more than their fair share. If it was fair, everyone would pay tax on their earnings.... THAT MEANS EVERYONE. Just because a person works 100 hours a week and owns a business and employs a couple of hundred people, doesn't mean that he should pay an unfair burden just because you feel he has a larger share of disposable income than you and you resent that. Guess what! He earned it... by working for it.
You can take all his income, and everyone else's income in the top 1% and you wouldn't be able to make up for the deficit this country runs each year. The real problem is the SPENDING.