Posted on 04/19/2016 8:21:27 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Democrats keep demanding that the rich pay their “fair share” of income taxes. But they never say what fair is. Probably because they know that the rich pay huge amounts while 45% of households pay nothing.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has some eye-opening statistics on its site that should silence the “tax fairness” debate, if the numbers were widely known.
For example, did you know that the richest 20% of households pay 88% of federal income taxes? Or that this is up from 64.7% the year before Reagan took office?
Did you know that 45% of all households pay zero taxes? Or that most of these people actually get money back? Tax Policy Center data show that he poorest 20% of households have an effective tax rate of negative 7.5%, while the next poorest 20% face a rate of negative 1.3%.
Ah, the argument goes, but the rich have gotten all the income gains over the past 35 years, so of course their share of income taxes has gone up. The problem is that the share of income accounted by the top 20% has climbed just 7 percentage points since 1980, while their share of income taxes went up by more than 23 points.
The argument continues that these numbers don’t account for payroll and other taxes the poor pay. Yet even when you combine all of these, the average effective tax rate for the poorest among us is a mere 1.9%, while the rate for the wealthiest climbs to 23.4%, Tax Policy Center data show.
The bigger problem with all the talk of “fairness,” however, is that it is a completely undefined term.
You could just as easily argue that the tax code is unfair to the more productive members of society,
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
First step - eliminate the EIC.
First step - eliminate the IRS
Second step - eliminate the Income Tax
We need to change the system so that 0% of Americans pay income taxes.
Romney used the “47% of Americans don’t pay income taxes” line to mean that he wanted 100% of Americans to pay income taxes.
We need an alternative minimum tax that is a single percentage number that EVERY tax payer must pay.
We also need an alternative maximum tax that is a single percentage number that ANY tax payer can pay.
And this is the roughly 45% to 47% that Romney was referring to.
I see what’s going on .... they’ve narrowed the tax base so there are fewer taxpayers who care how much the government screws the taxpayers and raises taxes, emboldening our wonderful leaders to steal more and with impunity.
The EITC is being widely abused by fraudsters. People work only enough to get it on the books and then work under the table for more. Plus you have just some purely fraudulent returns.
Kind of hard to have a country without any taxes. If the income tax goes away, there will need to be a sales tax or tariffs. But the truth is the income tax exists to control behavior, and the politicians will never give up that control.
Meanwhile, most of the bottom 50% get money “back” without ever putting a penny IN.
So... the so-called rich use the roads more, spend more time in parks, wear out stop lights more quickly, and...
Oh, wait a minute - they don’t.
So... why are the rich paying more in taxes and why on Earth is this deemed to be their ‘fair share”?????
Left-over Marxist dogma from the days of Lenin, that’s why.
Did you know that 45% of all households pay zero taxes?
Not exactly true, but close. ALL Persons pay about 8% EVERY YEAR in TAXES, it is called INFLATION! Theft of VALUE through Deficit Spending.
EITC. Earned Income Tax Credit. Not just a deduction but an honest to God CREDIT that pretends they actually paid the taxes in the first place. It is the biggest case of wealth redistribution in this country. Max is upwards of about $5-$6K PER YEAR!.....
Get this. There is even an Advance EITC Payments option. The slime can force their employer to credit a proportional amount of that EITC booty back to them each payday. It is the employers’ responsibility to foot the cost of the expense until they can file their own taxes and finally get a true credit for the government’s treachery against us.
I need to read the article, but I imagine a good chunk of that are retirees based on the population shift getting older.
Zero is their fair share. It’s also my fair share but I pay much more.
Better yet, prohibit illegal aliens from getting it.
And I pay enough to make up for them And I’m danged tired of it
A national sales tax would be the most fair It doesn’t punish saving and everyone pays the same rate
True, you would need to implement sales taxes or tariffs, though the most important thing to do is cut spending. This is what politicians resist the most, because government spending is how they create and maintain their power; in the short term, politicians will accept tax cuts because they can always just print more money to make up the windfall (though to sustain their bloated system, they will have to raise taxes sooner or later), but a spending cut will inevitably lead to the loss of political power.
The only thing the federal government should be spending money on is the military. Every other function can be provided by private industry, with pay-as-you-use schemas. This way, the bottom 50% don’t get to mooch off of the successful.
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