Who Pays the Taxes

TownHall.com ^ | 10/19/04 | Bruce Bartlett

[branch1]

Maintain indeed. Now put yourself into grandma and grandpa's place with a fixed income. It's not high prescription drugs prices forcing them into a choice but an ever escalating cost of education paid for primarily by an ever increasing property tax. Another great case for school choice.

[branch1]

Danke

[branch1]

I live in Virginia and the last fiscally responsible governor was Doug Wilder, a democrat. The current leftist ran on a platform of not raising the taxes even though his play book had a $900 million tax increase planned for us. As soon as he was inaugurated, he pushed NoVa to raise their sales tax 10%. It was defeated, but the good comrade with the help of Rockefeller Republicrats, raised taxes by $900 million - exactly the amount he denied. Now it turns out the deficit was overblown and we will have a surplus of $300 million. Are we getting the tax cut. Nooooooo. It's going into a rainy day fund which is bureaucratic speak for paying off squeaky wheels come election season.

[stayout]

. . . Teresa Heinz is estimated to be worth anywhere from $550 Million to $1 Billion. Yet, Teresa Heinz paid less than 8 times more Federal taxes than I did for 2003

Hey, as long as we are looking for new revenue streams for the government, how about a gigilo/golddigger tax? Say, when the discrepancy between the spouses-to-be exceeds some multiple -- for example, 100 -- then the couple must pay 10% of their newly combined wealth to the I.R.S. I'm surry Kerry would appreciate how well this would comport with his desire that the "rich" pay their "fair share."

[spodefly]

BTTT

[lilylangtree]

I used to live in No. VA (Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax) some years ago. I thought it was expensive then. It must be terrible now.

[Ignatz]

Do you have a link to the IRS for this data?

[branch1]

That's why I'm relocating to Arizona. 20% drop in state income and sales taxes.

[branch1]

And I still don't have a clue what that means.

[urtax$@work]

Nice table, but please tie the %'s to actual $$amts.

Also the tax rate in the next table should show %bracketed
for each %amount only. Top 5 percent ---- 22.95 percent--does that include the Top 1%? or 2%-5% ?

[jb6]

when asked for the current tax rate on a typical family, the average response was 31.3 percent. The Census Bureau says the correct answer is 23.4 percent

There is a simple reason for this, most working stiffs aren't thinking just income tax when you ask what the current tax rate is. They are thinking of: income tax, medicare, social security (what a joke), and some probably figure in all their sales taxes they are paying. Add to this state income taxes, state property taxes, auto property taxes, yearly registrations and fees, inspections, etc and it all adds up quite quickly. If you figure that the average family of 3 spends around $500 on groceries with a 6% sales tax, that's $30 times 12, that's another $360 in taxes. When considering that the average income is $36k, that turns out to be another 1% tax on income just for groceries.

[jb6]

Property taxes, the lie of private property in America. Some right to private property, how is this for insane: we'll tax you when you buy it, we'll tax you when you sell it, we'll tax you every year you have it and God forbid you die and hand it to your kids, we'll take 30% for ourselves (to keep "wealth" from accumulating). What a racket of socialist crap.

It's interesting that the most widespread and fair tax laws are in nations such as: Russia, Poland, Czeck, Yugoslavia. What do they all have incommon? Guess we'll have to learn the hard way to for a generation or three.

[branch1]

http://www.taxfoundation.org/ff/zerotaxfilers.html and this might help: http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/index.html You can also contact via e-mail Bruce Batlett, Neal Boortz

[jb6]

What they don't figure is that the 1/5 of the 1% who are stinking rich can afford legions of tax lawyers and such to squirl their money away and they have hit critical mass on savings that they can comfortably live off the dividends. A person making 400 K who pays out some 40% in income tax, social security, medicare, etc is not some one who can afford to many lawyers or make such huge investments as to sit back on his laurals. These are usually the people busting their balls and employing others in their businessess or the middle-upper management of corporations making things happen.

[Reeses]

Also include the hidden John Edwards tax, which works out to $600 per year. How many of us realize we are required to buy $600 in trial lawyer lotto tickets every year? The payout isn't that good, the lawyers take more than half in fees and admin costs. Worse, it modifies our behavior to live in financial fear. If you throw a party at your house and invite your neighbors you're personally responsible for all fall downs, drunks, and anything bad that happens.

[Straight Vermonter]

I just copied the data out of the article to make it more readable.

[lewislynn]

BTTT or "bump"= Bump to the top.

It's a traditional FreerPublic way of keeping a thread going without making a comment.