Here’s Republican budget guru Paul Ryan, explaining WHY Republicans fight so hard against higher taxes on job creators.
I think more Republicans need to explain the basics of job creation to the people, and often.
Tag Archives: The Rich
Do secretaries usually pay more in taxes than their rich bosses?
Excerpt:
Treasury Secretary Geithner yesterday declined to answer a key question about the president’s proposed “Buffett Rule”: How many millionaires and billionaires pay lower tax rates than middle-income families?
The answer: not that many.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has crunched the numbers and found that Warren Buffett and his secretary are the exception to the rule. For the most part, the wealthy pay a significantly higher percentage of their income in taxes than middle-income workers.
The key numbers: this year those earning over $1 million will pay, on average, 29.1 percent on federal taxes. Those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15 percent.
That’s not to say that there aren’t wealthy people who are even better than Buffett at avoiding taxes. In 2009, 1,470 people with incomes over $1 million a year paid absolutely no taxes. But that represents less than 1 percent of those earning over $1 million a year. Raising their taxes may be the fair thing to do, but it will not bring in much revenue.
The Cato Institute has a lovely graph of income tax rates by income earned.
Well, how much revenue can we generate if we take 100% of everything that people making over earn? (Assuming that they keep working solely for the government, of course, which Democrats would assume)
Excerpt:
So taking half of the yearly income from every person making between one and ten million dollars would only decrease the nation’s debt by 1%. Even taking every last penny from every individual making more than $10 million per year would only reduce the nation’s deficit by 12 percent and the debt by 2 percent. There’s simply not enough wealth in the community of the rich to erase this country’s problems by waving some magic tax wand.
Finally, to put everything in perspective, think about what would need to be done to erase the federal deficit this year: After everyone making more than $200,000/year has paid taxes, the IRS would need to take every single penny of disposable income they have left. Such an act would raise approximately $1.53 trillion.
George W. Bush’s last deficit, with a Republican House and Senate, was 160 billion. But Obama’s deficits are about TEN TIMES that amount.
See:
But Obama’s current annual budget deficits exceed 1.53 trillion. So taxing the rich at 100% isn’t enough to pay for All of Obama’s spending. That’s how big a hole Barack Obama has got us into.
By the way, Warren Buffett’s blathering about wanting to pay more taxes is a load of garbage. His company is currently in a dispute with the IRS to avoid paying as much as ONE BILLION DOLLARS in back taxes. You would not have heard of this if all you watched was Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on the Comedy Channel, or Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.
How Obama’s tax increases affect private charity and non-profit organizations
The Washington Examiner takes a closer look at President Obama’s latest stimulus bill.
Excerpt:
A significant portion – $400 billion over 10 years – of President Obama’s jobs bill is apparently funded through the limitation of itemized deductions for the “wealthy.”
This proposal would create a perfecta of unintended public policy consequences.
First, taxes for wealthy philanthropists would go up while taxes for wealthy Scrooges, those who make no charitable contributions, would remain virtually the same.
Second, if the philanthropists decide to reduce their philanthropy because of the additional taxes due, charities would have less revenues and would need to contract their charitable missions. Not good.
Over the years, the Internal Revenue Code has been amended and amended again. These amendments have severely reduced or eliminated the availability of most itemized deductions for the “wealthy.”
The article explains how the current tax code limits the wealthy from claiming most tax credits that are available to lower and middle income earners. The only tax credits that the wealthy can use are the mortgage interest deduction and the charity deduction. Whatever taxes that Obama wants to raise before he can raise the income tax brackets will have to come out of those two credits.
The article continues:
The home mortgage deduction is currently limited to the interest on a $1 million mortgage. With interest rates at 5% or so, the maximum tax increase related to home interest for any individual taxpayer from the proposed limitation on itemized deductions would approximate only $3500.
Therefore, the expected increase of $40 billion dollars a year in federal revenues for the next decade must be funded from “wealthy” individuals losing a portion of their itemized tax deduction resulting from their charitable contributions.
Consequently, we get to this unusual social result. If a “wealthy” philanthropist donates $1 million dollars to the Red Cross in 2012 and then does so again in 2013, his or her taxes would increase by $70,000 in 2013 over 2012.
If the “wealthy” next-door neighbor, Scrooge, made no charitable donations in 2012 and continued that pattern in 2013, Scrooge’s taxes would not increase in 2013. Now there is a piece of public policy – let’s raise taxes only on the good guys!
Most ‘wealthy’ individuals donate to charity only after determining how much they can afford in after-tax dollars. One has to think that the practical result here is that many, if not most, “wealthy” taxpayers would reduce their contributions to achieve the same after-tax cost of their charity.
So, by raising the taxes on the “wealthy” philanthropist, the proposed bill would very likely punish the poor by reducing the funds received by the local food bank etc. as large charitable donations decline. It is odd public policy, in troubled times, to propose a jobs bill that would hurt charities and therefore the poor.
This policy of Obama’s will result in a massive cut in funding for private charities and non-profits, including churches. Including churches. But that is exactly what a secular leftist like Obama wants. The state has to be everything, and all rivals to the state must fade away. The family has to be destroyed, and the church, too.
WINTERY KNIGHT 